A day in the life ......

Been to the local modern market, bought some chicken and my wife bought a load of green stuff, then home, swept away a well eaten dead rat (very stinky), washed the drive down in the hope of getting rid of any bits of dead rat I'd missed, worked some more, had lunch, worked some more, had tea (martabak - very nice with a spicy sauce - I'll be going back to that stall more than once), now working.
Between working I've been monitoring the forum for naughty posts.
I may go to bed early this evening.

Wow, It sounds delicious what you were eating, So lucky to find indian there. Multi-tasking has never been my forte bur I can still write to my friends on FB but have to stop watching youtube to do it. Can only do one thing at a time, hat off to you,

I'm engaged in a project at the moment that's taking up time; you know what it's like when you have to research like crazy to get started.
Still bunged up so tablets, breakfast, and work.

I had five cameras on Monday, but only three now.
I've been meaning to get around to selling the two I never use for ages, and I finally managed to care enough to get on with it.
2 happy customers, and a bunch of people moaning they missed out because they weren't quick enough.
Drrr, dudes, if you wanted the things, you should have gone to an ATM and tossed cash at me, not moan when it's way too late and the folding stuff is already in my wallet.
People can be very annoying at times.
Seriously, I had people nagging and complaining to me because they were too late - silly twits.

The numbers don't include the two action cans I use as a dash cam and a messing around at work camera.

What will you spend the money on from sales of the two cameras? Buy more tech stuff or put it in the bank for a rainy day?

No plan so just leave it in the bank

Wednesday at four in the morning and I'm loading my jalopy for a road trip, this time into Java for a little wander and some potential business.
The traffic on the toll road was fine until I moved from linkar luar to the Java toll, then the hell of traffic really started.
The road south of Bekasi is usually terrible, but it was horrific at best when I got there, and it was only going to get worse as the day went on. That stuffed an extra hour or two onto my trip but, as soon as I cleared the road works (at about KM 50), things got better.
Not much at all after that so smooth  was the order of the day.
Got to the target town, looked up the first destination on Google maps, and that was that - a very promising visit,
The long journey was a bit of a killer so we went from there to a hotel and checked in. Not a bad place, clean and tidy, but the breakfast left something to be desired.
SS restaurant for dinner (Is there another restaurant when there's an SS branch in town?) then beddy bye byes for me.
The next day saw us visiting the second location, but that turned out to be a bit duff so we're forgetting that one, sticking to the first and intended place.
The trip back wasn't too bad, but the traffic on some bits of the toll were rough, especially around South Jakarta.
Home, din dins, watched a film on my nice little scree (about 2 M wide), now a quick wander around the forum so see who's naughty and nice, then time to push some zeds.

I'm seriously sick of the place I'm at so it's time to disappear, preferably doing something interesting and, as a real bonus, helpful.
I'll worry about what and where later as I have enough to live on for a while so no rush.
I fancy a road trip or two so I can see other parts of this lovely country, so I might take a break from working for a year or two.

Traveling and losing yourself is great but I hope you will still find time to pop back into expat.com from time to time to tell us about what is going on in your life journey.

Take the year off, best thing anyone can do, I took 15 months off and We traveled around Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, China a little of Indonesia and then came back here with the Mrs about 12 weeks before our son was born ( and a trip back to the uk)  totally recharged my interest in anything and everything China and Thailand in my opinion the most stunning places on the planet,
I’m planning on doing it all again in several years and taking my son at an age he’ll understand what’s happening and experience something away from his back garden
Good luck you’ll not regret it

Yes, heed Gwneath's advice. It will pay dividends in the long run.

Mind you, I took forty years off to go live and work overseas. The secret is to keep changing country every few years or so and life never gets boring.

I like Indonesia too much to want to move, but there are countries I'd like to visit.
China is high on the list, as is Iran, but I don't think I'll get to either - pity.
There are still a million places I want to see in Indonesia so, apart from the odd trip, I'll explore here more first.

The few places I have visited in Indonesia I have enjoyed and they are quite a few more places I want to visit here also
I’ve accumulated lots of leave so we’ll probably do 6 weeks to a few places here later in the year, I’m not in to the tourist places so to speak more in to the authentic side of things when I visit places

A new martabak stand opened a few weeks ago but I hadn't got around to trying it - but I'm glad I did.
The place s clean, the food is nice, and the sauce is a killer.
It's amazing, a sweet but very spicy squirt of heaven flies over the food when you open the little plastic bag, then into my mouth it goes, carrying a little bit of happiness wit every bite.
I think that's four times in about ten days. Yummy Yummy.

Perhaps I should do a food tour of Indonesia.

worked in China for five years at a north east gold mine in Jilin province.   - awesome place and a tough language to learn.  Put on your drinking hat as the Chinese love to drink with a meal.  Baijo and piejo (beer).  Oh the memories. Great history and marvels of technology to be seen.  Terrific country - once in a lifetime experience. Go there if you get a chance.... from the ice sculptures to the terracotta warriors to all the great walls..

I could easily be persuaded to take a wander around bits of China, that trip starting with a temple known for fighting monks.

Yes did the Terracotta Army amongst other well known attractions (rice terraces, the giant Buddha, the wall and the lake that changes colour throughout the day no idea how to spell it or pronounce it begins with a J ) fantastic place and will return without a doubt

Meixi in Changsha I think with the light show. Don't forget the pandas,  400kph train and mega cities 😀 and central Beijing inside the inner ring.  Wow factor.  Fred will be druelling 😂

Shaolin Monastery for the fighting monks.

We used a guide several times for the places of the beaten track that I would recommend to use especially for translations etc and very reasonably priced, cities no real need as subways taxis etc are reasonable and easy to use, but helpful if you have a few things written in Chinese from hotels
Would love to spend several months in China 1 wasn’t enough

Just spent a load of time updating this thread
https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.p … 05#1827233

Some can't be done at the moment as I'm way out of date on immigration rules.
Those posts will be replaced with links to immigration sites.

I've just spent another couple of hours updating the advice thread so it's pretty much back up to date.

I just want to say that you are a credit to this site. The amount of work that you put into making the site better is appreciated by all of us I am sure. Probably most of us couldn't be arsed to make any such effort, but that's the difference between us newbies to Indonesia and people such as yourself who have lived here probably for a very long time.

Thank you, I try.
Sadly, as I had the honour and pleasure of becoming an Indonesian citizen a year or so ago, I'm quickly getting out of touch with many expat issues, that meaning my usefulness as an adviser on such matters is limited.
I requested Luke be given the expert position as he's far more knowledgeable than I am on most subjects.
My thanks to him for the help he gives to so many people.

Who is Luke? Is that someone that expat.com transferred from another country to take over your duties? I do hope this fella has your wit and humour as this is what this site needs.

Two great moments today:

I finally got my KTP
I managed to find a pair of shoes that actually fit

That's great news. I know the feeling of being unable to find shoes that fit. Did you buy them in Bata?

Thanks Fred I am trying. Currently seem to be working 12 hours a day everyday so my time is limited but I will start up again soon glorifying my home and my travels around Jakarta and what I find.

Try the Payless stores that are dotted about in malls. I have found all size UK and bigger there and the quality is pretty good.

You could always try the Disney store as I know some of them sell shoes. I'm not talking about Donald Duck slippers but real shoes. Or just have them custom made by shoe makers. Lots of local shoe makers in Indonesia and I am sure you could find some who are affordable. I also have the same kind of problem in find large enough shoes, but mine is more about length than girth.

I am totally, completely, utterly and really very miffed at windows 10.
The thing was designed to work as windows, not designed for normal users and, worst of all, they pointless twits that came up with forced updates seem to have absolutely no clue people want to use computers when they want to use computers, not have to wait for a forced update you don;t want in the first place.
All I want is an operating system that'll run some basic software and work without messing around, not all the rubbish windows put in for geeks without a girlfriend.
Today really bugged me, I'm trying to do a presentation when the idiotic windows announced it was shutting down and updating - the fact I was in the middle of some work seemingly of no interest to the mindless prats of Microsoft.
Apart from that, the tech team at Microsoft seem unaware many people don't have fast, unlimited internet so loads of people complain all their data gets burnt up by updates.

It's really about time the windows lot actually too time to listen to their customers and stop producing software that suits a few geeks and no real day to day users of their now improved to useless software.

I'm looking for an alternative that'll run
Powerpoint
an internet browser that isn't Microsoft's pointless attempt
A drawing program that's something like coreldraw
a video editing program (doesn't have to be fancy)

Suggestions are welcome

Visme / vizme is used by a few colleagues who have cremated / buried PowerPoint
Emaze Is another
never used them myself so can’t comment, I keep meaning to give them a go

Free office but you have to install things.

Gdocs are great once you get the hang of them and they can be worked on offline and online. I use them all the time.

You can stop Win 10 from Updating but its not easy. You need to uninstall the Win10 assistant. This link explains but it looks too hard.

https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/ho … 10-update/

Or try to down grade your win 10 to 8 which is more friendly.

My laptop is still running Win7 and thats enough for me for now.

I'm assured I can't change the laptop to another system, even windows 8.
I'm not even close to sure enough about the ins and outs of windows to dare remove components - Perhaps an expert would do it for me in exchange for some cash.

My preferred option would be the massive twits who write the damned software allow users to choose not to upgrade because the users are the customers, not Microsoft the dictators.