J_40 & 41: Diplomatic dances, internet dating, moshing and final interviews!

Salamat malam nintendo ninjas!

It's been a hectic two days, I tell you what, and I am tired OUT. Let me elaborate.

Yesterday I got up early to head straight to the New Zealand embassy, having been invited by the ambassador to see exactly what our embassy was like due to the programme doggedly ignoring the fact that New Zealand is not Australia. The three Kiwis arrived just in time, and we had all slept badly the night before, so pounced at the opportunity of coffee and drank it as if our lives depended on it, while being introduced to the ambassador's assistant guy (a technical term), the head of immigration and the head of military in Jakarta. I've said before that I quite like the ambassador, and I still do - he's an honest sort of a diplomat, and he seems pretty genuine about his job. What was interesting was watching the journalists ask the tough questions diplomatically, and the diplomats slide their way around them. I had to ask my questions several times in several different ways before I got them answered, and they really did NOT like my questions about the Free Trade agreement NZ wants Jakarta to ratify, probably because I couched it in terms of globilisation being the new colonialism. Anyway after much wriggling we got down to the bare bones, which was that NZ was trying to reap Jakarta's benefits for all it was worth while reimbursing a bare minimum, and all the grand talk of no barriers to trade was really for NZ's benefit, and to Jakarta's harm. However, I'm not really sure if levies etc are any good either, since NZ would STILL use them to our advantage, and we have a wee bit of power being a (supposedly) developed country. At any rate it was a very interesting talk! The military guy (who, incidentally, was Maori himself) was a bit of a tool, who decided that everyone on the benefit was a bludging Maori (nice to see our diplomatic service are so up with the times), but unfortunately that attitude is quite common in some ex-pats - perhaps it's the olde worlde, colonial feel to the richer contingent of Jakarta.

After ascertaining that we COULD take sanctuary in the embassy's floor of the apartment complex it was located in should we get in trouble with the police, but that it wouldn't do any good (the ambassador looked thoughtful when I asked and said "Well, we could TRY locking the doors." Not reassuring, but hilarious), we headed off back to work - promptly we thought, since it took us about 15 minutes to get there. An hour later we arrived frazzled and furious, our driver having missed our exit, driven in a massive loop and then taken the busiest road possible to get back. We all swore copiously and he looked fairly nervous by the end of it - it was the one taxi driver any of us had not thanked so far.

Back at work, I grabbed some lunch and then interviewed one of our LOs who does online dating and kindly agreed to SAVE our feature. She had some hilarious stories, like the time she had trusted a man she was talking to enough to turn on her webcam: "And guess what I saw!" [Points below her waist]. It's hilariously tongue in cheek, and I had a great time writing it with Sarah, and am quite proud of the end result.

After that, the LO told me to try chat on this net dating site I joined, as she said this was a really easy way to get quotes from people. Naively I thought this would be a great idea - OH CRUEL FATE! For noobs like me out there, NEVER, EVER, do internet chat, particularly if you are desperately serious about getting an end result, like useable quotes for a newspaper. I got bombarded with private messages, one of which went as follows, except with appalling spelling and punctuation which I can't bring myself to replicate:

James: Hi

Alex: Hi, are you interested in answering some questions about internet dating for an article?

James: That's weird, okay.

Alex: *Various questions*

James: Um I don't use net dating, look at my picture, do you think I can't get a girl? That was a dumb question.

Alex: Cool. [WHY ARE YOU ON HERE THEN YOU IDIOT?!]

JameS: Are you really a journalist?

Alex: Yarp

James: Yarp?

Alex: = yes

James: Are you a virgin?

Alex: *Block*

Le sigh. Of course I should have expected something like this, and one girl was quite helpful, but alas not an Indonesian, and also was called 'Mintykins' (?!) Another one asked me every five seconds for the entire time I was online if I was "fine dear? Dear? Dear? Are you fine? Dear?" Creepy.

Anyway I signed off ten minutes later feeling dirty and had a moan to Sarah. Then I put out an alarm call, and my fellow JPPers came to my rescue by getting THEIR Indonesian friends to contact us, so the story was saved! After that, it was time to run home with Sarah to get ready for the Australian ambassador's farewell, and then jump on an ojek to get there in time. The ojek drivers were CRAZY, but considering we had 15 minutes to get there in rush hour traffic, this was pretty awesome - envision motorbikes roaring along narrow, cracked pavements beside a row of stand-still traffic, and suddenly braking to avoid the huge pothole/drop into the sewers that litter the pavements here in Indonesia. Terrifyingly fun!

The Australian ambassador's house was, as we imagined, opulent and MASSIVE. I signed in and picked up a name badge that sported the legend "Mr Alexandra Walls" (sigh) before heading in to see all the ACICIS students decked out in their best gear drinking free wine and eating hors d'oeuvres (didn't even have to look that spelling up, booyah!) Then at 8pm I snuck out to flag down a taxi and urge them to drive as quickly as possible to the DEFTONES!

At 8:15 (they started at 8), we pulled up at a concert-looking place, and I thanked the driver repeatedly and ran inside, only to find Janet Jackson posters being pulled down, and lounging ushers. Um? They read my ticket, laughed at me copiously, and then pointed in the other direction - outside. I turned to see my taxi driver waving, and worked out via charades that he'd taken me to the wrong place. We jumped in, he drove to ANOTHER empty stadium, before getting it right and dropping me off outside the right place. I ran in, hearing Feiticeira as I did - curses! Luckily, I was only about 30 minutes late and I think I missed that one song. Also lucky was the fact that Jakarta mosh pits are exceedingly tame - I could survive in the circle pit which is impossible when I try in NZ - so I made it to two from the front by the time the next song, Shut up (and Drive) had finished. Soon after, and in quick succession, I lost both my shoes, my phone, my necklace and my atm card. Also in quick succession, I found one shoe, my phone and my card - booyah! Maybe it was because I was the only female for about 10 people deep, but people here are really cool about giving you some room between songs when you're looking for stuff - or maybe it was because heaps of people were fainting and threatening to throw up, I don't know. I also managed to head butt two guys completely by accident when I was head banging and they got a little too close. Casualties of rock, my friends.

Anyways for the fans out there, they played Passenger, Digital Bath, Change (in the house of flies), Elite, Minerva and Diamond Eyes, but I was pretty disappointed they didn't pull out My Own Summer and Back to School. Still, I was stoked with Digital Bath (my 'I'm so 17 right now' song and actually quite a sweet piece of music) and the fact that my preview picked most of the songs they played and EXACTLY what the band would do onstage, despite never having seen them before. BAM! Rock reviewer? I think so.

I'm FAIRLY sure Steve Carpenter (guitarist) smiled at me, particularly when I mimed worshipping him for his FLUORESCENT YELLOW guitar. Chino won the crowd's heart by ripping out a can of the local beer (Bintang) and saying "Yeahhhhh, BINTANG!"

By the end of the set I was on the barrier (oh yeah) and hung around for a bit afterwards to chat with some teenaged guys about how not playing Back to School was a cardinal sin (direct quote) and how awesome Change was. One of the guys had lost his iPhone, but was still too stoked to care ("It was worth it man! How could they not play the Mini Maggit version?!") and his friend raved for a while before saying "Hey you've only got one shoe!" I explained I'd lost it in the mosh, and he said he'd seen someone pick it up and toss it to the back - "Maybe look at the back of the stadium, you'll find it!" I thanked them, said goodbye and sure enough, found the offending footwear, battered but still useable. Apparently, people got pickpocketed and bag slashed, but all I found at the Deftones was camaraderie. Oh, and an AMAZING TIME that I will remember forever.

I ojeked home, still slightly tipsy on wine and exhilaration, and headed to bed, waking up several times, before getting up late this morning to start writing a diary of my time at the Globe, for my final interview this afternoon. That's right, readers, I've got two more days at the Globe, and three more in Jakarta. How time flies!

I headed into work to print the diary, photocopy my features and check in with Sarah about the Valentine's Day article before her interview. I wrote approximately half of it, forwarded it to her, and then headed down to meet the head of our course. I was a bit nervous, since my last journalistic review was CRAP, but needn't have been - she said she was happy with my progress and the only thing my mentor thought needed work was that I was reserved in a professional context. She was very surprised at that ("I've always found you very open socially!") and considering I got 'over-enthusiastic' in a school report once, I can't blame her. I think I get polite and quiet when I'm in a new, formal context, which is never a BAD thing - ah well. She also mentioned the intro to one of my features, which had been changed by the subs into something quite questionable that I wasn't happy with, so it was nice to be able to tell her that they weren't my original words, or even close. Blasted. Subs.

Then it was back to the office to finish writing the story with Sarah, which was HEAPS of fun and produced many a giggle. I had to explain to Sarah what a '+10 to charisma' reference meant (oh the shame) and she had to carefully edit my work which was of a much poorer quality than hers. Then the remainder of my time was spent starting to write my special section feature which HAS to be mostly finished by tomorrow at 5pm because we have drinks at the NZ embassy.

So after a dinner of pasta and Lego's tomato sauce (yum), and after snaffling some chocolate off my Candy dealer, Helena, who has decided to buy a trench coat and tape different forms of sweets to the inside, I shall head to bed and cross my fingers this feature comes off.

Adios, mi amigos!

LESSONS LEARNT 40 & 41:

- I can write a feature in about 3 hours, provided I know the topic well and have some useful quotes

- Deftones are pretty darn good live

- Nothing beats seeing a favourite band live

- Internet dating is AWFUL

- Free wine is the best kind of wine! But NZ wine still beats Australian wine into the ground

- Puns are the best. They're so...punny? (Ouch)