January 26, 2006 @ 3:07pm. I’ve had a busy past two days. I only had to go to one office yesterday - Immigration - but the process took forever. We first had to ride a taxi there and the traffic was awful. After arriving and submitting my paperwork, we waited and waited and waited some more. Rizma eventually had to return to the AMINEF office, while I stayed behind. I waited through the office lunch break and stayed put until my name was called. The office was very busy and people couldn’t really leave and come back since your name could be called at any minute (or hours in my case). The wait would not have been so bad had I not seen several people arrive after me, but leave earlier because they paid “extra money.” I was frustrated to see my folder get moved to the bottom of the pile repeatedly as others cut in front of me. After I finally paid all the appropriate fees, signed various documents, and got fingerprinted, I was told I could come back next week to pick up my papers and passport. As a side note, it’s weird not having my passport on my person right now.
After the immigration office, I was very happy to meet up with another Fulbrighter and good friend who is also from the University of Michigan. We met up at Plaza Senayan, which is a mega-mall and super-fancy (e.g., marble floors). The first stores I saw were Dior and Louis Vuitton! We went to this mall, however, because it’s relatively close to where he lives in South Jakarta, not too far from the immigration office, and there’s a huge bookstore inside. There were so may books I wanted to purchase, but left with only a map of Jakarta. We had lunch at the mall, too, at a Japanese restaurant, but it wasn’t that good unfortunately. One thing we both noticed about the mall, which we found unusual, was the many red and gold decorations for Lunar New Year. There were Chinese characters on posters, holiday sales, and the like. Seeing such items told us that (1) Jakarta and maybe other places around Indonesia are perhaps opening up further and tolerance is growing for the Chinese, a minority community, and (2) the commercialization of cultures abounds.
I eventually took a taxi back to Central Jakarta and returned to the Freedom Institute for an evening lecture/panel. There were some VIPs present and it was a lively discussion. I didn’t follow everything, however, since my Indonesian is poor when it comes to certain topics like economics. I have a hard enough time understanding things like “capital outflow” and “emerging markets” in English! The main speakers were Professor Liddle, Mohamad Sadli, M. Chatib Basri (Dede), and Thee Kian Wie (the book editor). The moderator was Hamid Basyaib. The discussion centered on the book launch of “Recollections: The Indonesian Economy, 1950s-1990s ” in Indonesian (it was previously published in English).
I was exhausted when I finally made it home around 10pm. Being so tired helped me sleep, though, so I’m slowly getting over my jet lag.
Today I returned to the Department of Home Affairs to pick up some paperwork. I have a day off tomorrow since I have to wait a few days to a week for the various offices to process things. There is also a holiday - Lunar New Year: Year of the Dog - next week, which may extend the wait.
My general work has been settling in (biggest task!), reading, and chatting with colleagues so far. I can’t get started on my other more formal research methods until I hear back from the Institutional Review Board at U-M. I recently submitted revisions, so here’s hoping that the approval comes through soon.
