13 Mar 2012

Well hello!!

I am very, very new to cyberworld, and indeed blogging!  I am still getting the site up and running - I think!! I have no idea what I am doing really, but I'll bumble along if you can all bumble with me!!

Parts of the page are still displaying on my computer in Bahasa Indonesian, so I am not sure what will show at your end...or how to change/fix it!!

We have been in Jakarta now for nearly 11 weeks - which is hard to believe! It seems like an eternity, and a blink all at the same time! What a whirlwind!!

We are much more settled in our house now, things are more and more unpacked AND put away in (by our standards) logical places!!  When we moved in there were 11 Indonesian men from the removalists, their foreman, our driver, maid and gardener and us, plus three kids all unpacking! It was CHAOS!!!! It was great as everything got unpacked rapidly and the boxes and paper all disappeared on day one (I am not at all complaining!!!) - but I then of course had ABSOLUTELY no idea where ANYTHING was!!  I have managed to rearrange the kitchen and S3's room, so it is nice now to also have a bit of order.  D1 and D2 have managed to rearrange their rooms themselves with the help of our house keeper. Our bedroom is not too bad.

After 10 weeks in the hotel, can I say it was just bliss to melt into OUR BED!!!! Night one....ooooohhhhhh, it felt soooooooo gooooood compared to that hotel bed!!! Soooooooo nice!!

We settled in all excited that first night, ready to channel surf away on our newly acquired cable/pay TV!!!! Oh wow!! We had never succumbed to cable TV in Australia as we always felt it was a waste of money, and that the children (and we) would of course just watch MORE TV!  Here of course, all the local channels are in Bahasa Indonesian...so not really an option.  Anyhow, then Daughter 2 (D2) went to change channels and it all fell apart!  This message came up...IN RED...(never a good colour for information text!!)..."unable to something or rather...please contact service provider".  So, of course we got mad at her, she got upset, then we got upset. That was about when MOTH (Man of the House) pipes up and says..."oh yes! I think I was supposed to pay them some money by today.  Do you think that might have something to do with it....?" Do ya reckon!! Yup!! Nothing to do with poor D2...it was that the bill hadn't been paid!! DUH!!! All fixed now thank goodness!

We have had our second water delivery today.  You cannot drink the tap water here, or even cook in it! It is OK for bathing and washing only.  Apparently there are high levels of E.coli contaminants, and also heavy metals, chemicals etc.  Noooice! Arranging the delivery was not easy! I had sent a few website enquiries, then phoned many times all to no avail...various reasons had been given, none consistent...but eventually I was told someone would call me.  Someone finally did call, but they didn't clearly identify themselves at the outset of the conversation.  So I started in on them about coming to install our washing machine!  I asked at least 5 times were they from Miele..."yeeeees"...each time was the reply.  I could not make head nor tail of their end of the conversation...until I caught "aqua" at one point.  (aqua is Indonesian for drinking water)...that is when the penny dropped, and I said "ohhhhh, you are from Aqua (also happens to be the company name too!)..."yeeees" was the reply.  Well, you could hear the relief from both sides!!! Pheww!  Within an hour or two a man from Aqua was at the hotel, signing the papers with me...all done!! I was very proud of myself indeed for sorting that out!  (A lot more communication has happened behind the scenes for sure with our driver and the water company...but I'll run with that small victory!!)  The water people reappeared today and have replenished the supplies, so, so far, so good.

1 comment:

  1. Hi

    Congrats on starting the blog, only your comment section is not in english so all seems to work. I assume it's an offshoot of dutch so you can kind of work it out! hope you are enjoying being settled and making the most of your adventure,

    Di

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