expiration date 

i woke up super early this morning (which was about 8 in the morning), because i had to go to the court to get my drivers licensed back after gotten pulled over by cops. i almost got the date wrong. i kept thinking that i was supposed to go there on Wednesday, when it’s actually on Tuesday.

anyways, i asked my dad to go with me, cause i was too scared to go by myself… and he was the one who came up with the idea to go to court to begin with, instead of bribing the police. so, i demanded his responsibility. fortunately, it didn’t take much effort to get him to come along.

and turned out that it didn’t take much effort either to get the drivers license back. it’s so easy that we could even get to the courthouse without knowing the exact address… heh. we looked for a building where there are many people, who we called Calo, hang around. Calo is a person who offer their help/service in return for money. they would do all the work — wait in line, taking care of your paperwork, etc etc — as long as you pay them. and they usually know “someone from the inside”, so their service not only convinient but also faster.

and there were soooo many of them around the building. and they would chase our car as it enters the parking lot, offering their service, trying to win the customer from the other calos.

we already decided not to use calo. after we shooed them away, we entered the courthouse, and asked the frontdesk guy where the traffic fine collection department thing. the guy pointed to the end of the hall, to a room where on the window there is a HUGE sign saying: TILANG (STNK atau SIM), which means FINE (Registration Card or Driver’s License). we went in, gave the woman on the desk my pink slip. next to her, there were bookshelf where each of shelf contains about 3-4 piles of driver’s license and car registration card. my dad and i were amused with the amount of the stuff there. and, more amusing, she found my driver’s licence within only two minutes. we paid 50,000 rupiahs, and off we went…

done.

soooooo easy! it’s interesting that on the other side of the room, there is an open window facing the driveway of the courthouse. there, all the calos are waiting on the line. it looks like calos have their own entrance and line.

i’m thankful that we didn’t pay a calo. they have line, we don’t. and the whole process took less us than 5 minutes, where according to what people told me, i would have to go to court and wait for over 3 hours to get my license back. maybe it was the old way… now, i think the whole bureaucracy has been cut down and simplified. hurrah!