J_39: Interviews, interviews, interviews!

PACHOW!

I'm running out of ideas for the beginning of these things. Not that you can tell from that stunnner.

Today was a full on day, I kid you not. I got about 5 hours sleep due to my outta whack sleeping patterns, and emerged grainy eyed at 9:30am (I know, it's a hard life) to head to work a bit early and get some serious interviewing done, since last week was a bit of a wash.

Cue ringing people frantically all day, and trying various University departments in Malaysia, and FINALLY pinning down the elusive and slippery urban planner in Jakarta after being incredibly patronising and firm with the non-English speaking secretary, who then APOLOGISED to me for her lack of English when I arrived for the meeting. I felt awful, but assuaged my guilt by assuring myself she was still in the wrong for not actually liasing with her boss as to his schedule, and making me travel to her office for no reason last week. Ay yah.

I had to hang around until 7:30 to do a phone interview with an architect, and while I was waiting for the arranged time to call, I joined, with great mortification, a dating website on Facebook in order to steamroll ahead with Sarah and my feature that we forgot was due this Wednesday and thus have done no work on. I chose one of my awesomest photos (for the Facebook friends - and fiends - it's the one where my face is right up in the camera and I have crazy eyes). To make sure the ethics weren't too shady, we decided I should announce in my profile thing that I was a journalist looking for interviewees and NOT a lonely soul adrift on the sea of...loneliness? Alone.

It's all a bit meat marketish, unsurprisingly - so many people claiming they want to find love, and then partake in a site which fundamentally involves clicking 'Yes' on a person's photo. I suppose you have to start somewhere? Anyways it's quite a lot of fun and I'm hoping I get some people willing to be quoted because otherwise I'm done for. We're also looking to find what net people are intending to do for Valentine's Day - is there a virtual restaurant you can go to? Do you just set up Skype and have a candle burning to the side of the screen? ("How exactly did you damage your laptop ma'am?" "Uh...sabotage?") Our back up plan is to interview one of the copy editors and bribe them to make up answers. Ethics shmethics!

After this, it was a quick-fire mission to find shoes since my last pair exploded AGAIN. I don't mean that they exploded once and that I painstakingly reassembled them and fixed the leaking reactor, but that this is the second pair of shoes that has exploded, having had my huge Western feet jammed into them everyday for a grand total of oh, A WEEK. Sigh. I know the reason they keep dying is because they're cheap, but there are no reasonably priced shoes in Jakarta - it's cheap and explodey, or expensive and uncomfortable. Helena and I spent a good half hour or so perusing footwear and quoting IT crowd at every turn ("THE SHOEZA!" "Like all women, she's gone shoe mad.") and then headed to disgusting Pizza Hut for tea where I got the grossest pizza I've had in a long time, complete with potato on top and Thousand Island dressing (tastes like sweet fish paste) blearghhhhh.

At home, we finally discovered the band that generally rocks up at 1am and blasts us awake, and in the mellow twilight they're not half bad and make me want to clap, cheer and sashay rather than throw a shoe at them. They have this portable keyboard which is set ontop of two amps (as far as I can see) which are in turn set on a cart that one man pulls around, followed by a whole rag tag group of people carrying guitars, microphones, tambourines, flutes...it's brilliant! A mix of Indian music and gypsy jazz and lots of fun to listen to when you're NOT trying to sleep. A few minutes in, we saw the Australians from downstairs poke their heads out over the balcony, and then the little girl from downstairs, Moko's daughter Tasha, clambered up with them and pointed excitedly at the band as the Australians danced their hands in the air for her. Very nice. We cheered the band as they left and waved at them until the disappeared down the street, lugging the amps and guitars all the way. Muy cool.

Now it's off to bed, for the biggest day EVER tomorrow - visit to the NZ embassy, more V-Day net dating interviews, the Australian Ambassador's farewell dinner, from which I will sneak out early to go to DEFTONES! HELLS YEAH!

Until then comrades, keep your balalaikas warm (ask the Beatles).

LESSONS LEARNT 39:

- Jakarta still has some surprises left for us, with one week left. I'll miss you, you heaving, polluted beast

- Gypsies. All kinds of cool.

- Internet dating is depressing! From the ten minutes I've tried of it, anyway.

- Ojek drivers need to shower, and also not try and rip off bules. I hates it!

- Emily is awesome! I am getting published in her Slightly Grimm zine and I'm really excited about it!