Yesterday Jackie and her friend Elisa intended to accomplish two tasks. Open bank accounts and repair the screen on a phone. Seems easy right? Set aside 2 maybe 3 hours right...? No, here in Indonesia one must set aside 5,6, up to 8 hours to accomplish simple tasks. First there were problems with Jackie's visa because it did not show her address. Then the real problems started when they tried to get the phone fixed. After agreeing upon a small price of about $10 to fix the broken screen they returned an hour later to a new inexplicably inflated price. Nearly 80 dollars... to fix a cracked screen! I arrived and spoke to them in Bahasa Indonesian to the shop owner who swore up and down that it was always that price. I demanded that they give me the phone back in its original state then walked around the corner to a different shop where I was able to fix the phone for half the price. The first shop however, angry with the loss of business took their sweet time in returning the phone so hours later Jackie was finally able to use the phone. After all the problems and concerns she and her friend went back to Jackie's Apartment where I had made fresh tortillas to go with some soup Jackie had made the night previous and we all sat down to a nice dinner with some red wine.
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