Following my last post about how to retrieve your Indonesian driver's license the right way, I am now going to share how to get your bike paper (STNK) back. Again, the right way.

If it ever amazes you how quick and police services in reobtaining your driver's license (approx. 30 minutes), it should awe you more with getting your STNK back. Of course, the only way to do it is when you get the right information and you have all the right papers to bring. Here it takes only 15 minutes.

Remember though, the very first thing you have to do when your wallet/purse is stolen is to report it to the Police. Right away. They will issue a statement that you lost your important papers that can be useful to apply for new ATM cards, credit cards, national ID card, driver's license, motorcycle paper, ANYTHING you have lost in the mishap. It is like a magical piece of paper. Also ask a few copies instead of one. They normally give you only one. As you read in my previous post, it was used to get my SIM back. Now it is also used to get my STNK back.

The steps:
  1. Go to the SAMSAT (one roof system) in your city. In my case, I went to the SAMSAT in Renon, Denpasar.
  2. Always put your documents in a paper folder. The documents here are: the statement letter from the Police that you lost your STNK and your real motorbike blue book paper (BPKB) and the recommendation letter from the POLTABES, which I obtained after I got my SIM. That is why you have to do your driver's license first, then STNK.
  3. Go to the Leges department. Here they will crosscheck your data in their system, making sure that you already paid your bike tax, then they will issue a letter stating that it is true that you have no problem with your motorcycle taxation. You will need to pay Rp 10,000 here.
  4. Put the letter together with the other documents in the folder and go to the STNK Duplikat department. You will be given a form which you have to fill in, return the form with the rest of the documents to this department, pay Rp 60,000 and you will be given a receipt to take your STNK duplicate in 3 days working time.
All that takes 15 minutes.

I actually thought with the former bureaucracy that I would be totally bored waiting for my papers to be processed. And therefore, I had John Grisham's novel The Appeal with me. But again, no bullshit at the Police department. They were quick and effective and I must say I am very proud of them.

Now I have to go somewhere to read my novel. Reading it at home will only make me fall asleep. :p
9:00 am
How many of you makes your SIM legally? Until this moment, approaching 31 years of living in Indonesia, I have NEVER known anyone - including myself - who gets their Indonesian driver's license legally. The calo (illegal agents) practice is so much widespread and though they charge 2 to 3 times more expensive than the legal price, they do help save a lot of time of the applicants by tipping one police officer to the others to get things done in a wink.

It has been over three months since my purse got stolen, and I only equipped myself with the letter from the police that my papers were stolen. But I knew that it could not stay that way forever. So after I got some fee of a photography project I did recently, I went to the police office on Jalan Sangyang Kerobokan yesterday to retrieve my SIM. This time, legally.

I suppose it is an easier procedure to prolong your SIM's term or retrieve it when lost than to apply a new one. If you have to do it in Denpasar, Bali, this is the list of things that you need to do:
  1. Go to the same police station that issued your last SIM and ask for the printout of your old driver's license at the PRODUKSI SIM department. On a piece of paper you have to write your full name, the address stated in your old SIM and your birth of date.
  2. Get a doctor check up on you and make him make a good health statement of you. Next to the POLTABES - 1 minute walking from the SIM office - there is a small clinic that is probably good only to give the health statement. I giggled when I went there, but hey, it was easy and fast. It costs you Rp 25,000.
  3. Go to the Bank inside the SIM office and pay Rp 60,000 (for retrieving lost SIM or prolonging your SIM). Rp 75,000 if you make a new one.
  4. Submit the letter from the police that you lost your papers + the SIM printout + the proof of payment to LOKET 1.
  5. Wait until you are called. It took me less than 10 minutes.
  6. They will give you a registration form that you need to fill in then submit it in the LOKET KOREKSI SIM, next to Loket 1.
  7. Wait until you are called. Took me 2 minutes.
  8. Take the documents they gave you back to LOKET 4 - SIM production and photo booth. Here they will crosscheck your data. Takes less than 5 minutes.
  9. Get your photo and thumbs finger prints taken. Takes less than 5 minutes.
  10. Submit the documents to LOKET PRODUKSI SIM 8 CETAK SIM
  11. Wait until you are called. Took me less than 5 minutes.
  12. You get your new SIM.
Total time: 30 - 45 minutes.

The moral of the story: If it takes only 30 minutes of your time to get your driver's license rightfully, why would we need to hire a calo? Although not perfect yet, but I have noticed that the government institutions are getting better and more efficient with their services since Yudhoyono became a President. Most have no more bullshit with delaying the process as it was in the former days, and that prevents bribery. I am not denying that it still happens (corruption). Even when I got my printout, one of the officers was offering me his "magic help". But you know, it just takes a polite no to take things right. And the money will go to the right departments. And hopefully after some time, it can be used for the better sake of that department. And hopefully it will give advantage to us when they are better taken care of.

It takes a while to educate people, but it does not mean it is impossible. I'd rather be on the positive side that things can change, and it has changed, and it will always change.
11:43 am
I am actually far from the proper description of being a superstitious person. But the last so many happenings in the past 3 months were way too overwhelming for me not to become superstitious.

Let's recap it.
  • On the 4th of March, a thief broke in to my house by breaking one of the windows on the first floor. I suspected that it happened when I was at home because whoever had this evil doing did not climb upstairs and steal more valuable things like laptops, surround speaker or my precious camera and lenses. Things missing were my purse that had only about Rp 300,000 (but it meant a lot to me!) and my very important papers, a mobile phone that I bought 2 years ago which cost Rp 500,000 that I suspect wouldn't be worth more than Rp 250,000 now and even the coins my maid collected and saved on the dining table that we reserved for parking fees. It was not a big robbery but it still made me paranoid in case these thieves dared to do more on their second visit. I keep a knife under my bed ever since.
  • Not long after, I went to Fabio's place for lunch and parked my motorcycle in front of his house. When I was about to leave, I saw one of the mirrors was gone and the other one was left half unscrewed.
  • I suffered from lymphadenitis, an infection on the lymph (Bahasa Indonesia: Kelenjar getah bening) right on the left side of my bikini line. It first felt like I had a very small lump far inside my skin that I could only feel by pressing the surface of the skin hard. In one week, it got bigger and another small lump appeared on the right side of my bikini line. In two weeks, it got so big that naked eyes could see that there was a lump under my panties. One night I had a terribly high fever and I hallucinated that I saw my father. I thought it was very serious so I took myself to an international clinic in Bali, SOS, and got diagnosed that I had this lymphadenitis. The doctor immediately ran a blood check on me to know if it had spread to other parts of my body. Lymphadenitis appeares to be a relatively curable infection IF treatment is early. A few days late, I may have developed a cancer. I couldn't walk properly for 3 days afterwards.
  • I had never had allergies of any kind before and I was always proud of that. But it just so had to happen that the antibiotics that the doctor gave me was rejected by my body. There were red rashes all over my right face and I felt so terrible. I went back to the clinic and was given another type of antibiotics. I just had to remember that next time if a doctor wants to prescribe me an antibiotic I should tell him/or that I am allergic to Penicillin. That is weird. I am pretty sure I was given penicillin before and I was okay.
  • Our kitten, Geisha, was the next to be sick. She was weak for 2 weeks and became not greedy anymore as she was always known to be. Vincent finally took her to a vet and after a week, she got better and active again (read: naughty). That did not last very long. One morning, I had a tukang to fix my broken waterheater and she got out to eat the grass. I let her do that while I was busy with the tukang. Then I heard a cat howl that did not belong to Geisha so I checked it out. A black cat that was three times her size was threatening her. Vincent came out and tried to hush away the black cat. And only when he did that, the cat attacked Geisha and bit her back. Geisha was terrified and ran and hid inside the compartment that kept our water pump. She was sleeping the whole day that day and died less than 24 hours after the attack. I blamed myself for being a bad mother and not protecting her from that evil cat. We wept for 2 weeks until...
  • Vincent lost his passport and KITAS blue book - 2 very important papers for every expat in Indonesia. We looked around the house literally everywhere. We even removed the furnitures to see if they somehow fell down. Nothing. My maid helped to look for it every where but they just disappeared. I had terrible nightmares for days where Geisha alwas appeared in the beginning or the end of the dream and the rest was spent on forcing my unconscious brain to remember and think where these papers could be. These dreams did nothing good but giving me revelations of other things that had gone missing: my red CDMA phone and the certificate of my ring. The mornings when I woke up all sweaty, I would get up and looked for these things that I saw were missing in my dreams, and they were indeed gone. I went to look for my actual ring, and it was still there. It was only the papers that disappeared.
  • I formerly did not speak much to my neighbours next door. But the one on my right side just approached me and said that someone was trying to break his window - same MO like when my house was broken in. The next day he came to me again saying that there was this large 2 meter cobra that got into his kitchen at midnight. Not long after the neighbour on my left knocked my door and said that she saw a huge snake crossing the path in front of my house and then hiding in my water pump compartment. And also that she caught two men wearing helmets trying to break her window too. I never really saw the actual snake maybe because I don't have a garden like they do. But the story from Karen freaked me out. Now we were thinking that maybe Geisha did not die from the black cat's bite, but maybe from the snake's. Think about it: would your kitten die from a cat's bite in less than 24 hours without any open wounds?
Anyway, Vincent has been so much under pressure since if he did not do anything about the papers right away, his arse is on the line and he can be kicked out of the country soon. That means my arse is also on the line. And there was still the dispute of his sister's villa in Canggu that never seemed to end and he had to take care of everything because he was the only one residing in Bali that they could ask help from. He wouldn't normally complain about it, but with all the things that are in his hands now, he really does not need anymore burden.

Lately I have been thinking if it was the house. I can hardly remember any single good thing that happened to us since we moved to this new house in January. There have been pains and more pains. And unlike the rule of wheel of life that I believe, all these bad things happened in only a short time. I really, really can't help being superstitious after all these. Maybe it was an exaggeration. Maybe I just need someone or something to blame. Maybe it was just the effect of watching too much TV Series Supernatural. But I need an explanation, logical or otherwise, why we had these in our life when before, things were always looking good even in bad moments.

I am still stressed out and just recently started to pray again to God. But whether it is superstition or not, I am definitely moving to another house next year. I'll start hunting for houses again next month.
11:03 am
Jatiluwih is located in Tabanan, central Bali. It's one of the biggest protected green belts in Bali and if one goes there, it gives them an absolutely different perspective of green. The weather is much cooler than most of the parts of Bali or Indonesia because it's close to Mount Batukaru, Tabanan. The people are friendly but I didn't see many local tourists coming to Jatiluwih. Maybe because the view of ricefields is already too common for them? But the foreign tourists who came there enjoyed the breathtaking views and some even go against the rain and walked through the fields. Below are some of the pictures I took when I went there last week.




1:10 pm
The period before and during the first days a woman gets her period every month is sometimes filled with negativity. I don't get that often but when I do, I get a real bad one.

I've been very upset with Mr Boyfriend. As other girls may have experienced, the period of the period makes us very emotional and every small thing appears big and life is just full of drama. But this has started even before that period of the period. Anyway, I'm not going to go into details of what our problems are - or may I say MY problem since he doesn't seem like he feels it but I just feel..... lonely. And worse, neglected. Again, I may not be necessarily intentionally neglected, but that is what I've felt. I guess I just did not expect that he was a real hardworking person who would be willing to spend the entire day and night at the office than be with me doing the boring stuff like watching TV. I guess I did not expect that his concept of having fun with friends always involved so much alcohol and empty conversations till dawn or worse, morning. Empty here goes only for me since all those convos were in French. I guess I was being too individualist for having fed up with being ignored (or not involving myself) in the conversations that were mostly in French at dinners with his bosses and workmates and so I pulled myself away from it, came to an empty and cold bed and left him grab his own fun until the morning came. Seriously, I didn't give a damn if it happened once in a while. But I am frustrated that it's starting to become a habit. And oh how much I hate being a dramatic nagger. But should I shut up and keep it to myself until I get crazy? No, I just had to blurt it out at the worst timing and ruined everything. Maybe not everything but I feel like shit.

At these times, I'd like to run to friends, or whoever that would listen, but I just realised that I had made myself exclusive in my circle of friends this past couple of years. Who do I want to share things with except Pam and Fabio? The others may have forgotten my name and deleted my number from their list for having been idle and not in touch for so long.

Of course there's family. But my only family here in Bali - my sister Ita - has her own problem and worries. And the fact that we don't live close to each other makes it even worse to have a nice communication. I'd like to call my mother, but the last time we were on the phone she was upset with me for not supporting her financially as regularly as I did before due to the instability of the early stage of my photography business.

Negativity.... negativity it is when a woman has her period. Plus fucking situational occurrences. Plus fucking thieves.

Yeah, one of my motorbike mirrors was stolen today when I parked it in front of Fabio's house.

Such a perfect day.
7:56 pm

I have decided to make an annual contest, starting this year, by selecting one photo I made of EVERY one of my clients the year before; in this case 2009. There will be two winners; i.e. one of the last year’s clients who gets the most votes and one random VOTER. Prize for the winners of this contest? A free session with me this year entitling the winner to run the next year’s contest again with it + 20 hi-res digital files + 1 canvas print (mounted).

HOW IT WORKS:

  • Check my facebook fan page for the candidates’ photos.
  • Vote your favourite photo(s) by clicking the thumb-up (like) button. Of course to do this, you will need to be the fan of the page.
  • You will be given a month to vote starting from today so ask as many of your friends to vote for you if you are one of the candidates.
  • The contest ends on May 12, 2010.
  • The winners of the contest (2009 candidate + 1 voter) will be announced on May 18, 2010.
  • For winners outside Surabaya and Bali, travel and accommodation fee of the photographer is to be paid by the winners.

This contest is ANNUAL. So to reserve your place as a candidate in 2011, book your session with me this year ASAP.

9:21 am
I was assigned to write an article for Aquila - a new magazine for modern Muslim women in Asia recently. I was asked to write two articles, but due to the ridiculous tight deadline they gave me, I had to drop the other one or I wouldn't make it at all.

Anyway, I was happy to take up the challenge since the issue I had to write was interesting; i.e. Muslim comedians. I had to go through YouTube blogs to see the videos of these amazing comedians and found that some of them were really such quality, honest comedians! My favourite is Baba Ali. I am not going to explain it here thoroughly but when it does come to print, I'll put the writing on this blog.

However, while in the process of making the article, I was online on facebook on the other tab, and an old acquaintance was congratulating me for the Good Friday.
I haven't talked to her in a while and I was still in the research period to build the article, so chatting with her was not a disturbance.

It started to disturb me, however, when she knew that I was writing for Aquila, she said:
"Sorry to ask this, but have you converted to Islam?"

I said, "Did I have to? If tomorrow I wrote about Balinese Hindu, would you think I'd converted to Hindu?"

She replied, "Well, no, but last time I checked, you were still Christian."

Me: "AND?"

She: "Well, why would a Christian write about or for Muslims? You know that they are anti-Christians!"

Me: "Says who? You? Obviously you don't know too many Muslims."

She: "Most of the Muslims in Surabaya are anti-Christians!"

Me: "That proves it again that you don't know anything about them. I have a lot of Muslim friends, since I should remind you that unlike you, I'd always gone to public schools before university that 90% of the students were Muslims. And hardly 5% of them had extreme belief in their religion. I must even say that over 50% are moderate and the rest doesn't even practise it at all. And even the ones who do practise it (praying 5 times a day and fast without interruption during Ramadhan) do NOT hate Christians."

She: "Really?"

Me: "Of course! It is so unfair for you, or anyone else to stereotype Muslims as such just because of what a few of them did. Give it some thought and DO mingle and befriend some of them. You'll see that what I say has a lot of truth in it."

--

If you think the way she does, it is time for you to go out and find some Muslims and see if they are Christian haters like what you think.
4:59 pm
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