Eager Waitresses and Singapore (Shortly)

After work on Friday Steve, Tanti, Tommy and I decided to go out to a local food court for a few drinks. It was definately an experience. The place is called Windsor Food Court, an open-plan space with tables in the middle, restaurants around the outside and, curiously, a giant karaoke stage in the middle.

From the moment we walked in it seemed as though every waitress wanted to serve the bules, and we were immediately surrounded by about 20 of them, all trying to persuade us to drink their beer or buy their food. I am not great at making decisions at the best of times, and was instantly lost. Luckily the others ordered the beer and the surplus waitresses left us, so I had chance to drink Bintang (the local lager) and peruse a menu. I decided I wanted to try flower crab but, as the menu had no prices, I was advised to check the price before ordering. Tommy came with me to translate. I chose my crab from this tank;

and we negotiated a price, then they asked me what I wanted with it, I chose some broccoli and then Tommy (whose English isn't the greatest, but not for lack of effort or enthusiasm) said to me "Do you like seafood?", to which I answered; yes, I do.

When the food arrived there was more than I expected, at a higher price. It seemed what Tommy wanted to ask me was "Would you like extra seafood with that?". So this is what I ended up with;

but it wasn't a problem, I ate it all anyway, and it was delicious and still relatively cheap.

After food we started to play some drinking games, with waitresses watching interestedly. One of the waitresses asked me if I was married, I said, "No, I'm not", shortly afterwards another waitress asked if I was single, and before I had a chance to reply, the first waitress said, "Yes, he is.". It seems there are no shades of grey here. We continued to play drinking games and listen to the strange choices on karaoke (the most popular song was a dance version of 'Happy Birthday to You').

As we were heading home, I was drunkenly telling Tommy he was a good guy, to which he answered "I am not a guy." I had about a minute of confusion, where I was wondering about ladyboys, until I realised he was confusing the difference between 'guy' and 'gay'.

I didn't do much for the rest of the weekend, just a trip to the supermarket and some minor chores. This was the most intriguing thing I saw in the supermarket;

Now, I've heard of whitening toothpaste, but whitening body wash???

On Monday it was back to work for a busy week. I am now taking more classes each week, and really do have a full schedule. Monday was good though, my regular classes are easier to manage now I know all the kids names and habits.

Today is Tuesday, and it's already been a long day. I have now been in Batam for 30 days, and my original entry visa was about to run out. Indonesian beauracracy moves even slower than Polish, so my final work visa has not yet been confirmed, but the easiest way to fix this problem is simply to leave the country and come back, getting a new entry visa. So I have woken up at 5am this morning, taken the ferry across to Singapore, hung around there for the return ferry, and returned to Batam. All I did there was buy a couple of books and some breakfast sushi, and take this photo from the returning ferry;

So now I am pretty tired and still have 3 classes to teach... I wonder if I can get Red Bull in Batam?

Making Learning Fun

A busy week, but not so much news. I have taught lots of lessons, and met one of the owners of the school. In fact my entire week has been dedicated to teaching - so that's what I'm going to write about.

As far as lessons have been concerned, it's been fun. I've played a some word games (Jimmy's Island and How Many Giraffes - a throwback to my hostel days) with my more advanced classes, and done a general knowledge quiz (Indonesians seem to be really bad at Geography - no, Paris is not in South America) but I've had good students with interesting questions. With my teenage class I talked about sports, and then used kung-fu to teach punctuation (this involved everyone standing up, doing chops and punches and yelling ha! or hwaaah! at the grammatically correct point) that was very fun.

The kids' classes are a different matter entirely, its closer to working as a security guard in an insane asylum than teaching, no time to relax at all. I left a class for one minute to get some paper, and when I came back they had turned the light off and started screaming and fighting! However, in one of the classes I invented a superhero (dlatego jestem bohaterem) to help talk about fancy dress costumes, so I can take the good with the bad.

The owner of the school is friendly, and on Thursday organised a teaching workshop, which was pretty good, I learnt a few things about the theory of teaching and how to control riotous children, and also a few useful tips on Indonesian culture.

So it's now Friday, and I have one more lesson to teach before the weekend!

Not Your Average Weekend

Another interesting weekend; After work on Friday I was persuaded to go to Kampung Bule – the White Village. A collection of bars aimed at pleasing the typical white tourist/resident. We went to a bar with a pool table, which played cheesy pop music and was filled with girls of a questionable moral nature (interpret this however you like), whose job is pleasing bules.

When I walked in all the girls came over to say hello; with their well-oiled smiles and handshakes that lasted far too long for a normal introduction. To be honest, I felt a little uncomfortable there, and I couldn’t help thinking that the girl (personal waitress/woman of ill repute) who was serving me drinks was assigned to me, and I'm pretty sure her ways of trying to distract me when I was playing pool would probably be illegal in Europe. When she asked me to buy her a drink, I originally said no, but reconsidered when I was told it that was extremely impolite not to.

One of the highlights of my evening was seeing my first ladyboy, a sight which I had heard a lot about before I left on my travels. I wanted to take a picture of him/her to post on here, but when I asked, he/she said no. In fact, the only photo I took that night was this one;

Of a rather intimidating ashtray, but if you look in the mirror you can kind-of see both my 'waitress' and the ladyboy. I'll let you guess which one is which.

As midnight was approaching, I started to feel drunk, and my waitress was becoming more forward with her advances, so I knew it was time to leave. While I was on my way home on the back of a motorbike taxi I congratulated myself for leaving that bar/brothel (barthel??) with my dignity intact.

On Saturday I decided again to have a relaxing day – to rest up and recover from my hangover. The only interesting thing that happened was again gecko-related. While I was skyping I spotted a cute little baby gecko running around. I wanted to take a photo, but it kept moving and ran behind a curtain. When I moved the curtain, the mother-gecko scuttled out, carrying the baby on its back. A little later I saw a larger, darker-coloured, gecko, which I think is the father. I’m sharing my house with a happy gecko family!

On Sunday I’d arranged to meet some students from my conversation class to play football. We went to a 5-a-side pitch and played for over an hour. It’s difficult to play in Indonesian heat, and the opposition was very good, so we ended up losing and I only scored one goal, but it was really fun. I was particularly amused by the way my students continued calling me 'sir', so that was what everyone on the pitch called me - every time I had the ball I heard "Sir, pass!" or "Sir, shoot". I think we are going to do it every week and I'm really looking forward to it. After the game my students also showed me a really good noodle bar.

In the evening some of the teachers went out for a meal, because it was Phil’s (an English guy who used to work at the school) birthday. We drove out over Barelang Bridge to Galang Island and went to a restaurant called the Golden Fish, where the tables have a view like this;

We had a delicious selection of dishes, the most interesting of which was sea-snail, and the tastiest was snow fish, or maybe breaded prawns, or perhaps squid. In fact it was all delicious. A portion of the meal and the people are pictured below.

So, well-fed, well-exercised and well-rested, I’m ready for another week of work, although having eaten so many snails, I am worried about waking up with a shell on my back.

Geckos and Mopeds

After an interesting first week, the weekend came and I planned to relax. After we finished work on Friday, Steve and I went to "My Place" to meet Tanti, and stayed for a few beers with the owner, Alfred. After my time in Poland I am able to drink copious amounts of vodka and still feel fine, but beer seems to go straight to my head. Therefore I was feeling a little tipsy on my way home. When we got back I had a skype conversation with my girlfriend, which I barely remember, somehow managed to lose my cigarettes when sitting on the sofa, and went to bed rather early.

When I woke up on Saturday I wanted to go and try out the swimming pool in our housing complex, but I reconsidered that when I heard thunder and saw the heavy downpour outside, so I just stayed in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2kJXlhQBvM

When I remembered about my lost cigarettes I decided to pull out the sofa to search for them - in vain, and as it was out I started to sweep behind it. Suddenly, I felt something strange touch my ankle. Surprised, I hit it with the broom. It turned out to be a gecko - a pretty harmless creature. It stopped moving and I thought I had killed it, but when I went close to check it ran away, without it's tail! The tail continued moving without the gecko attached, and I started to feel pretty bad, until I was told that it is a normal defense mechanism for geckos and it would grow back. Here's a pic of the gecko later on.

On Sunday I needed to do some shopping, so I borrowed Tommy's moped and, after a few minutes getting used to the controls, set off for the nearest mall. The journey went without incident - I think I'm a natural biker. At the mall I headed to Carefour, and was stopped on my way by a guy who wanted to give me a free vegetable peeler - the advantages of being a bule, ha.

When I was shopping I managed to find some food I wanted to eat, all the time with everyone smiling at me, but struggled to find toilet paper (which started to get me worried). After asking about 10 shop assistants if they spoke English, I finally found one who did. At first he took me to the aisle with nappies (diapers), and I had to explain I needed paper for adults, but in the end I got everything I needed.

So then it was back on the moped, and home to rest before work.

On Monday I had a full schedule including 2 kid's classes - and Indonesian children are crazy! After my first class one boy started following me everywhere, even into the teachers' room and the first half of my next lesson he spent pulling faces at the window. The second lesson was fun because we were planning an imaginary camping trip, and told a ghost story. The kids seemed extremely scared by it, until after the class when I found out all Indonesians, even adults, believe in ghosts.

So today is Tuesday, and it looks like it will be another interesting week.

A Working Week

It's now Friday, the last day of my first week, and it's been a good start to my new job at EF. I have been taking classes every day, and they have all been fun. The students are all nice, and I think they really enjoy meeting a new "bule" (pronounced boo-lay, a not-too-polite term for a white person).

I had a lot of fun trying out games and ideas for helping with learning English. For one group, studying a unit about love, dating and meeting people, I explained the concept of 'speed dating' and persuaded them to try it out in class. To start with the boys were much more eager than the girls, but after they realised there would only be time to introduce themselves, everyone was happy to play and they really enjoyed it.

There is also a conversation class, which I have now taken twice, who are very friendly but in my first lesson with them I found out, whilst telling them where I'm from, that their geography knowledge wasn't great, so the I taught them about Britain, and the next lesson I made a quiz about world geography, which they really enjoyed. Here's a photo of them;

Although this photo came at a bit of a price, after this, a lot of the girls wanted an individual photo with a "bule", and I ended up staying in the classroom for 15 minutes after class, so they could all take one.

From my other classes, some hi-lights were being asked if I knew Prince William and Wayne Rooney, being told that all English people have yellow skin and having to explain that England is not a place in America.

It looks like this will be a fun year!

Do Andrzej, i wszystkich z Polskii - wiesz mogę czytać po Polsku, ale moj Angielski jest lepiej. nie panikuj! Pamiętam o Polsce i bardzo dużo tęsknie. Będę wracać!

First Day of School

So, yesterday was my first day of school, and it went pretty well. I was shown around, and introduced to everyone. It was really good. As you can see in these pictures the school is well-furnished and very modern;

My fellow teachers are very friendly, although all the other native speakers are American, so I had to defend my language by explaining that pants are worn on the INSIDE.
It's fun, and I enjoy the office banter. The Indonesian teachers are also cool, as are the secretaries.

I was shown the computer system I will be using, the organisation of classes and where things are kept. Then I went to observe a lesson...

That was a shock, it was a class of 14 children, all under the age of 6, and there was a clear divide - the girls sat on one side of the room and were very studious, and the boys sat (well, occasionally sat) on the other; fighting, shouting, doing cartwheels and generally going crazy. The teacher, Joko, was good, but it seemed a very difficult task to get the students who wanted to work to learn a few things. I was very glad after the lesson when I was told that non-Indonesians rarely teach those classes.

Next I was supposed to observe Steve teach a teenage class, but because of a mix-up with the schedules, I ended up teaching my first lesson, with no preparation. It went really well, the group was advanced in their English, mostly adults and friendly. We did all the set work for the lesson and then I made them laugh by doing a few accents, so it went well.

Afterwards, I observed another teacher, Robert, teaching teenagers, which was a good class, towards the end of the lesson they played the whisper game (I think it's safer not to refer to it as 'Chinese Whispers' here), but one girl in the class (who was Chinese, behind the others in English, and didn't speak Indonesian) didn't want to play, so I got her to teach me some Chinese and practice her English.

That was the end of the day, so we went home, had dinner and went to bed. Oh, and I worked out how to eat dragon fruit;

It was delicious, had the texture of a kiwi fruit, and the taste was a mix of strawberry and raspberry.

Now, it's my second day, I'm going to be teaching two classes - one I will be watching a movie (easy!) and the other is a conversation class. It should be fun!

Monkeys and Beaches

Yesterday I took a bit of a tour around the islands, Steve and I drove across Batam, then across this bridge, which is sometimes used as the symbol of Batam;

To another island, then two more bridges and two more islands to get to Barelang Island. There we visited a Vietnamese refugee camp, which was set up when a load of people fleeing the war got on a boat, and set up a village wherever it landed. The camp is abandoned now, except for monkeys and tourists, so we drove around a little and tried to feed the monkeys;

After that we went to this idyllic beach;

and swam in the sea, tossed a football, and let Zbyszek roam the sands;

We left as the sun was going down;

and went back to the first bridge, where there are many stalls selling fruit and barbequed sweetcorn;

I bought some corn, a dragon fruit (which I'm still not sure how to eat) and a coconut. The coconut was prepared with a machete, the outside chopped off and some straws inserted, and tasted very good.

Then it was the rest of the drive home, with some more Batam traffic;

Once we got back I played PlayStation for a little while, before taking a walk around my neighbourhood and getting some seafood noodle soup. On my way back I stopped at a mini market and saw this strange combination of Eastern and Western cuisine;

When I got back home it was some skype conversations with friends and a relatively early night.

Today I finally got my new laptop working. I'm heading back home now to rest because...

First day of school in tomorrow!

Welcome to Batam!

So, I'm here and I'm safe. I have to apologise for not writing this post sooner, but I've had a few computer problems... more about that later.

After saying goodbye to my Mum at the airport I boarded an aeroplane for the 12-hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, and soon realised I had foolishly left the charger for my laptop in England - computer problem number 1. I got my first stamp in my passport - for entry into Malaysia - after filling out this rather imposing form.

I then spent 4 uneventful hours in Kuala Lumpur airport, got my second passport stamp - for leaving Malaysia - and caught my plane to Singapore.

An hour later I landed in Singapore (another form, another stamp), where I had to take a taxi across the city to the Harbour Front shopping mall, where I was to meet my new boss, Steve, and take a boat to Batam. My taxi driver was friendly, and told me a little about Singapore life, which apparently is very expensive, but it's a very clean place where chewing gum is illegal! The shopping mall was ultra-modern and western in style, with a few minor differences, such as this shop's name...

I met Steve in a Starbucks, and he's a lot cooler than I was expecting... he's a 27 year old tattooed American from Boston. We had a little introductory chat, before getting the ferry to Batam. The boat took 45 minutes and everyone was staring at us because we were the only white people. When we arrived in Batam I finally entered Indonesia and got the last stamp in my passport.

As it happened, my first night in Batam was Hare Riya, the last day of Ramadhan (the Muslim month of fasting), a national holiday and an excuse for the whole of Indonesia to party. Everywhere people were shooting fireworks into the sky with strange guns, and trucks were driving round playing loud music with upto 30 people on the back. We drove to my new house, which is very nice and spacious, where I met my other housemate, Tommy - an Indonesian guy who works in the school's offices, and Steve's girlfriend Tanti.

Tanti and Steve

Together we went to the food court to get something to eat. I wanted to try something different, so I ordered goat koftahs in chilli sauce (below)

They were delicious! Especially accompanied by some local beer. Then we went to the bar where Tanti works - named "My Place" and I introduced everyone to traditional Polish honey vodka. Then we sang on Karaoke for a while before we made our drunken way home to sleep. A good first impression of Batam indeed.

The next day I woke up pretty late (more due to jet-lag than alcohol, seriously) and as I needed to buy a few things - including a laptop charger - we headed to the nearby mall and I had my first glimpse of Batam in the daytime. The first thing that I noticed was the traffic - it seems as though nobody obeys any rules (although this was apparently because the police were also on holiday) and there were motorbikes everywhere like swarms of bees, never looking where they were going, rarely looking where they were going, and sometimes looking like this;

That is my current record of seeing five people on one moped. When we got to the shopping mall it was pretty cool - although a lot of the shops were closed (including everywhere that might sell a charger - computer problem number 2) but we went shopping in Carefour, a common sight between here and Poland, although inside was very different.

We went to get some food - I had some very tasty noodles with a mixture of seafood;

Then we went to another, bigger mall to try to find a charger. Nowhere had anything for my samsung laptop, but I bought a multi adaptor designed for many things, but when we got home none of the plugs fit my laptop (computer problem number 3). Slightly annoyed, I fell asleep on the sofa and when I woke up played some PlayStation with Steve.

By the way, if you are wondering why I haven't been to work yet, again Hare Riya means the school is closed until Monday, and so my first days here are all holiday!

The next day, Thursday I think (jet lag is confusing), we went back to the mall to return the charger I bought and try to find one that worked. Nowhere sold them (computer problem number 4), and as I desperately wanted to contact the world outside, and my old laptop isn't very good (with a broken keyboard - lost count of my computer problems by now) I decided to buy a netbook. The guy in the shop selling it said he needed 30 minutes to install all the software. Steve and I went for food, came back 40 minutes later, and he said another 30 minutes, and he would call me when it was done. We went to a bar to play pool while we waited - which was another experience, the place was run by young girls, who were very eager to give is beer, set up the pool table for us and try on my Wyraybane sunglasses;

After about an hour I called the computer guy and he said 10 minutes, so I waited another 30 and took a ride on the back of a motorbike taxi back to the mall, where my computer still wasn't ready. I waited, and complained a little and he gave me a free mouse and headphones, and I finally got my computer. I took the motorbike taxi back to the bar where Steve was waiting, and found my new computer wouldn't connect to wi-fi. (f**king computers!!!!).

We left the bar and went to 'My Place' to meet Tanti and I ate a crocodile curry;

which was very spicy but very nice, then I came back home to try plugging in an internet cable. Again, my new computer refused to connect to the internet, but as it was also a samsung, I used the charger to charge my old laptop, which connected to the internet with no problems, and now I have been typing this post for about 6 hours - either side of sleeping (it's now Friday), because all I have is an onscreen keyboard.

Later today I will go back to the shop with my computer and try to make the guy fix it. My school reopens on Monday, so I will be able to type easier then.

Sampai Jumpa Lagi! (See You Later)