As it may have occurred to you all from that last remark, I've worked every Saturday since starting at Gading Serpong. This is unusual as my contract allows me to take one Saturday off in four but due to it being the probationary period and that for the last few Saturdays I've been teaching a private student how to deliver a presentation in English, I haven't had the opportunity. Let's just say I was looking forward to it!
Firstly I will take the TKT test on Monday morning so part of the weekend has actually been spent revising for that. The TKT is a test of teaching methodology knowledge, linked to EF through Cambridge University. I already hold the CELTA qualification but all of our teachers attain the TKT so it's only fair that the DoS leads by example and takes the same exam. I don't know why but I'm quite nervous about it, hopefully it'll go ok.
So Thursday night I headed back home after some food in Salsa, the food court I've referred to in a previous blog. The lie-in on Friday was great. really needed and I probably stayed longer in bed than I'd intended.
My laptop hasn't been working and I've been waiting for a suitable opportunity to go the 30 minutes to the Supermal at Karawaci. Here you can find all manner of electrical help. Be it a new mobile phone (or a second hand one come to that), Pulsa, the local term for mobile phone credit as there are no real contracts to speak of here, plus computers. You can find laptops and notebooks of all shapes and sizes and along with this there are all manner of shops set up to mend any problems that you come across. My problem was that no power would get to the laptop so I took it to one of the sites, immediately found a guy who had a good grasp of English (although my Bahasa Indonesian is improving, I could never carry a conversation on the technical difficulties of a computer!) and explained the problem. he plugged it in and of course it immediately started working!
Next stop was a trip to see Bhoni. Bhoni is a girl who works at one of the knock-off DVD stores you can find here. Whatever you're looking for you can probably find it. As a movie buff it's a godsend, especially considering the current craziness going on in the Indonesian government and cinemas but more of that in a future blog. Rp21,000 or the equivalent Sterling of £1.75 saw me walk away with perfect copies of Inception, The Fifth Element and Rise of The Silver Surfer. Now it was time for a coffee.
There's a Coffee company called JCO where they give you a free glazed doughnut with every coffee purchased so it was washed down with an excellent hazlenut latte. As a matter of note, the guy behind JCO got his idea from Krispy Kreme doughnuts from the USA. He applied to hold the franchise rights for Krispy Kreme in Indonesia and, after attending the orientation course, decided to set up his own operation!!....They have a great range of doughnuts and sell a box of 12 for about £6.
Having just moved into a new house my last purchase today was a wi-fi router and with a working laptop this would now come in handy. So all of this in hand I jumped onto my borrowed moped and headed back to Gading Serpong.
I had no real plans for Friday night but that all changed with a phonecall from Zia. She's an Indonesian girl I know and she asked if I'd meet her and some of her friends and maybe record an English introduction for a company her friend works for. We arranged to meet in the Downtown Walk area of SMS and an hour later saw the voice recording done and a fun conversation over a coffee
Before leaving SMS Zia asked if I had any plans for Saturday and I told her no. She had to meet some other friends in Blok M, an area of Jakarta, to pick up the fabric for a bridesmaids dress for a wedding she'll be attending in July and asked if I wanted to go along. Any excuse to go into jakarta is fine by me and especially with a pretty girl too. So on Saturday morning I rode the moped the hour or so it takes to get to her house in Pamulang and we jumped into her family's car and I drove us into Jakarta.
We'd arranged to meet Zia's friends at 1.30 but a delay meant this was now going to be 4.00 and so to fill some time we headed to the Jakarta Convention Centre in the Senayan area where they were hosting and Indonesian handicrafts exhibition.
No sooner had we got through the entrance doors we bumped into Roach, a teacher who'd previously worked at EF Gading Serpong but for his second year he'd be working at EF Tangerang City. Roach was there with his girlfrind Alve and her young neice. I guess it wasn't difficult to spot Roach as we westerners do tend to stand out. We spent some time with them wandering through the exhibits before saying our goodbyes and heading back to the car.
From the cafe we then went around some stalls looking for a trophy. Two of Zia's friends are getting married and the four of them had a plan to buy a trophy which would be passed onto the next one to get married....interesting.
With the trophy bought we headed back to the car to return to Pamulang. It was totally dark now and this makes driving even more of an experience.Motorbikes and mopeds buzz around you like angry mosquitoes and you really do need to keep your wits about you. Arriving back at Zia's house i spent some time talking to her sister and her mum while waiting to see if the spitting rain would turn into anything more serious.......it did turn serious but not until I was back in BSD. Needless to say by the time I got home I was completely drenched!
It's now Sunday morning and my plan today is some more revision, probably over a coffee and doughnut in JCO. From there I'll head to ITC, a shopping mall in the BSD area where Iwant to buy a bookcase and a bed.
That's how this DoS spent his Easter weekend....
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