An Interesting Day In Court

This morning I had to attend a court session together with 3 other employees of my company at the SOUTHERN SUMATERA HIGH COURT in Palembang City. We had to testify as witnesses for last year's fertilizer adulteration case where one of our transporters had used our fertilizer bags to store "fake" fertilizers and sent them to our customers.

This was our first time going to court. After waiting for almost 1.5 hours, the judge came into the court room which was open aired (but they had a fan and an air-con which was not turned on).

I was surprised to see a Christian holy water container (without any holy water) attached on the left side of the room's wall. On the right side of the wall, they had 2 pictures of the Taoist Goddess of Mercy and a small joss-stick holder with 6 unlit joss-sticks inside!

Finally when the main judge came into the room, he took his "hammer" and banged on the table and said, "court started" in Indonesian. Then he looked around and asked whether all the witnesses and accused parties have arrived. One of the accused person was still not in the court room yet so we had to wait for another minute. After the guy came into the court room, the main judge had to repeat the "hammering" process all over again.

After my 3 Muslim colleagues took their oaths with someone holding the Quran above their heads, it was my turn. The judge took out a bible and asked me to put my left hand on it and raise my right hand. I was told to do a "V" (peace) sign with my right hand!

I was totally confused, so I looked around. The judge quickly consulted his assistants and corrected me saying, " Sorry, for Christians you have to put 3 fingers up, not 2!". Then he showed me how to do a scout's sign with my right hand!

I could not understand why we can't just do it like how the people do it on TV?? (See Obama's picture).

After that I had to follow his words in Indonesian to swear that I will tell only the truth (or something like that). The 4 of us had to squash ourselves into a 2m long wooden bench throughout the process.

Can you believe all of these happened at the HIGH COURT of Southern Sumatera??

3 Photos of The Week - HAIR, PEMPEK & TRAINS

HAIR: Kids love to immitate adults especially in the activities that adults perform like cooking, driving, building houses etc. It reflects in the games that they play everyday too.



Somehow my son likes to comb my wife's hair. He could comb it for a long long time. Maybe it is a sign of affection and also "doing things to help" the parents?



Of course my hair is a bit to short for him to continuously comb. However, seems like mama does not mind having being pampered!

PEMPEK: One day I took my son to PTC Mall to do grocery shopping. His mom did not come along, so we had a father and son outing. I asked him whether he wanted to have some "perkedels" (fried mashed potatoes) and he nodded. However, halfway eating the perkedels he felt that they are a bit spicy, so I suggested him to go have some "pempeks" (fish cakes).

Straight away his face lit up. Now I know why Palembang people like to eat pempeks! Because they eat it from young. Not many people like these floury fish cakes but it is rather famous in Palembang and majority of the Palembang people love pempeks. So from these photos, you can tell whether my boy is a Palembang boy or not!!...;)


TRAINS: My son also loves trains. His english and chinese characters on his white board is always "TRAIN" and "HUO CE" (mandarin for train). I have taught him many chinese characters but he would only write his favourite one.

Sharing

Sharing things is something rather difficult to teach kids. We have told our toddler son many times before we visit friends houses how to behave and he was rather receptive except for the SHARING part.

It is normal that he is possessive with his own toys but sometimes even when visiting other friends' houses, he tries to OWN toys that belong to others.

However, it was strange to find that he was willing to SHARE this toy car with his friend and play in harmony. Look at this loving photo. Hope he has learnt the art of sharing and REMEMBERS to share in his upcoming visits!

Water in Palembang

Since yesterday, we had dirty water coming our from our house taps. We checked the water storage tank and discovered that the whole tank is filled with brownish water. Normally we can see straight to the bottom of the water storage tank but not today.

In Palembang, most of the houses in the housing areas have a water storage tank. I believe we could store 1,000 m3 of water in the tank. It is located underground in our garden. The walls of the tank is laid with ceramics. We used to clean the tank once every 6 months. It takes 2 guys 6 hours to empty the whole tank, scrub the tiles/creamics and get rid of all the sediments inside the tank.

Looking at the situation whereby the affected houses are only our immediate neighbours, we concluded that it was due to burst pipes from the water department. We have lodged a report but still have not heard back from them yet.

Plans: tomorrow we are getting our driver and one of his friends to clean the water storage tank and fill it with clean water (from water storage trucks). As for later this evening, we might go for a swim in the Novotel swimming pool and take a shower there.

Last year we used to have water supply problems at our housing area until we need to order in fresh water from water storage trucks. Hopefully the suspected burst pipe problem does not last long.

Maid Dilemma

Every household in our housing area seemed to have at least one maid to help out with their chores. Most of the maids here are PP (pulang-pergi) - meaning come in and leave (do not stay in).

Recently, we employed a maid that we need to pick her up on the way when I go to work and also send her back when I get picked up from work. I believe this is the best arrangement any PP maid would ever have. Normally they arrange for their own transport.

Due to the fact that we were maidless for more than 3 months, we had to "succumb" to this situation in order to get someone in to help out in the house.

This maid is 17 years old. She has stopped schooling and her parents encouraged her to start working. Her father is a becak-man (trishaw peddler) and her mom works in a school as a cleaner. She has 2 younger siblings. They all live in a wooden house not far away from my work place.

My wife had to teach her from scratch since she does not have any prior working experience. Every little thing that she does, my wife had to "supervise" and make sure that she does not make any mistakes. After a week, she is still not performing up to par (keeps forgetting to do the things that we have told her to do, does not do a thorough cleaning job and does her work very slowly).

I could understand how frustrating it is having to tell someone repeatedly about their mistakes and spoon-feed them every little thing that needs to be done. We tried to treat her nicely but sometimes she just gets on our nerves. Our previous maid has more initiative to do things and cleans very thoroughlly. She even had time to study after completing all her tasks. However this one lacks initiative and we don't know whether she is really that slow or just pretends to be slow so that she does less work?

Anyway, it is a true dilemma for us to decide whether we should sack her or not. Where do we draw the line? I have to put into consideration how hard it is to find maids (that are thorough and trustworthy). She is our 3rd maid that managed to work more than 1 week.