Clean Up, Aisle 9

Asia loves its grocery store competitions. A decade ago I was on the receiving end of a 5 kilo bag of rice after entering a drawing at the Carrefour in Singapore. That was second place. First place was a rice cooker.

Today, Indonesia raised the bar.

During a routine grocery stop, John and I came upon a real-life Supermarket Sweep about to go down in the Bali Gourmet. An employee asked John if we wanted to participate. I took one look at the brochure showing a man pushing a shopping cart while his female companion rode inside, and said: absolutely.

The game, in fact, did not involve riding in a shopping cart, but it was still awesome. We were ushered to a side of the store where six other couples - all Indonesians mind you - were lined up behind numbered shopping carts. An excited MC was explaining the rules of the game, which we sort of figured out to be: each couple will have a grocery list, whoever fills their basket with the items and returns to the starting area first wins. Important: one hand from each participant has to be on the cart at all times. No divide and conquer. This is a couples’ race.  

The rest of the story is best told through video. In case you cannot tell from the footage below, we are shopping cart #5.

Before the checkered flag was up, John said, "you realize the shopping list is going to be in Indonesian, right?" Good thing one of us has been listening to those boring Indonesian podcasts that seem to always be playing in our living room! I sure haven't been!

The list consisted exclusively of packaged, processed food. Had it involved selecting and weighing produce - nearly half of which we don't recognize - we would have been screwed. But, boxed pancake batter and fake sugary coffee drinks? Who knows processed foods better than Americans? Welcome to our wheelhouse, Jakarta.

I took a look around. We were killing it. We grabbed our last item - a bag of bbq chips, brand name: Chitato - and made an empassioned dash for the finish line. It was probably unecessary to do the flying leap over the stacked wet wipes display, but we did it anyway.

As the MC checked our basket of items against our shopping list, a small group formed. How did we do?

 Do you even need to ask? We crushed the competition. It wasn't even close.

The second team to come across the finish line actually had to be sent back because they picked up a wrong item. We might as well show the footage of that trot of shame:

In the official post-win interview (conducted by, er, moi), John reports that "he's still got it":

After our impressive win, we were ushered to the red carpet for photos with our winning shopping cart. And we were given prizes: oven mits and serving spoons (also known as the stocking stuffers I now don't have to buy).

But wait! There's more! It turns out our win qualifies us for the final event, a cooking competition, to be held in one week. For that event, contestants will be given a budget and then will be asked to shop for and prepare a meal to be judged by a celebrity chef. The grand prize is a ~$200 credit at Bali Gourmet. A two-part, multi-week grocery store competition? I love this country.

Unfortunately, we are scheduled to be out of town during the finals. We are seriously considering altering our holiday vacation in order to participate. Dominating mall-based grocery store antics promises a whole new genre of activity for us. This could realistically turn into how we spend all our weekends: searching Jakarta for yet another supermarket game. Now accepting suggestions for what to prepare during the finals.....

Licensed to Make It Happen

Here's a terrifying thought: I'm now licensed to drive in Indonesia.

Is it even scarier that I've been driving unlicensed? Well, now I'm official.

The whole family ventured off to one of two DMVs that services the approximately 25 million people of Jakarta. That's right. Two DMVs. Sometimes countries achieve impressive technology leaps and skip entire generations of development steps, like how many Indonesians first accessed the world wide web via a cell phone and not a desktop computer. The Jakarta Department of Motor Vehicles is not one such example. It is the crowded, queued-filled experience that we have all come to know and dread.

Not that we really got to experience that here. We employed alternative means to, er, acquire our licenses, which involved jumping to the front of all the lines and walking out, license in hand, within an hour of parking the car. We had a fixer. Someone else arranged it. I know nothing. 

Absent from our experience at the DMV was any sort of demonstration that either of us was at all equipped to handle a motor vehicle. Missing from the list of questions that nobody asked us was whether or not we'd ever been licensed to drive or confirmation that we understand traffic signs. Heck, no one even said, "how many fingers am I holding up." So all of this made us feel a lot better about the company we'll be keeping on Indonesia's roads.

Most notable about our trip to the DMV was just how unremarkable it really was. A DMV is a DMV. It's an unattractive government building full of people who would rather be doing anything but what they are currently doing. It's endless waiting rooms. It's take a number and find a counter.

We arrived at a room with darkened windows. Our fixer told us to go inside and sit down and wait for our names to be called. We sat on a bench at the back and watched as folks were called to the front of the room, asked to verify name and address, provide a thumb for a print scan, and sit for a photograph. After 3 or 4 of these cycles, two things were abundandtly clear: under no circumstances was there to be any smiling and the angle of this photo was undoubtedly going to favor the underside of my chin. Basically my worst possible side.

In other words, drivers license photos in Indonesia are just as bad as everywhere else.

Happy motoring!

 

Does This Car Come with a Floation Device?

 

Pulling out of a mall parking garage after lunch, we came face to face with RAINY SEASON.

 

Just when I thought we'd made it home unscathed, we turned down our street to find this blocking our path:

Wind knocked down trees and braches around our neighborhood and three of the four streets that lead to our house were blocked by debris. But we finally found a way in. Fortunately, we live next door to a police station and the chainsaws were hot as soon as the rain stopped.