Life in the fast lane. Surely make you loose your mind

It is a left-hand side of the road driving adventure here. I must say it still feels a bit weird after all these weeks. Actually, the going in a straight line doesn't feel as strange, but the turning thing still feels totally odd. Don't assume that I think that I would be able to drive even in a straight line here. It is a frightening thought. I would cause untold numbers of wrecks if I tried to turn. It would be like a scene from The Blues Brothers. Just without Jake and Elroy.

It reminds me of my Aussie friend, Helen. She lived not to far away from me in my neighborhood in Texas. She would only make right hand turns. No matter where she was going. She planned her route out so she would only have to turn right. I now think that it was partly because she was used to driving on the left hand side of the road and turning left made her uncomfortable. It never dawned on me, before moving here, as to what the reasoning was behind that particular driving decision.

Just like in the US, people walk just like they drive. I go in a mall and walk around and I feel like a salmon swimming up stream. I am walking on the right and dodging people. This makes me look like a massive newbie bule. I have to make a conscious effort to walk on the left. Another issue with this left side of the road thing is with escalators. The up escalator is on the left and down escalator on the right. I go to the wrong one about 80% of the time. This is an improvement as it used to be 100% of the time. Whoo hoo!

Today, I learned a valuable lesson about elevator etiquette. If the doors open, you do not hesitate in any way, shape or form to get on. For if you do, the person in front of you will get on and push the close door button and take off as quick as a bunny. Today, I met hubby for lunch. After our lunch, we walked to the elevator to go from the ninth floor to the ground floor. A man walked up and waited with us. The doors open and being polite, we let him enter first. He apparently stepped in, pushed the floor button, and then proceeded to hold the close door button down with gusto. I step to the narrowing opening and try to get on, but the doors keep advancing. Being a little hesitant to stick a valuable body part in between the rapidly closing doors, I look at him. He stands there with finger joyously pressed on the close door button looking at me as the doors slam shut and leaving us in a proverbial trial of dust. I turned to my husband and said how rude I thought that was. He said he sees this happen a lot. Even if you get part of you in the opening, they won't take their finger off that highly valuable button and the door just continues to crunch you until you are able to get all of you inside. To be such polite people, this really caught me off guard.

Back to the driving topic. Some of the roads here require that you have 3 occupants in your vehicle during certain hours of the day if you want to use them without a fine. There are a couple of ways to attain this goal. One is through the use of a jockey. Jockeys are the people standing all along the sides of these specific roads and ramps on to these roads holding up one, two, or three fingers. They hold up the number of fingers to indicate the number of riders they will provide to help you fulfill the occupancy quota. They vary in age from young to old. Men and women. Women with babies in slings or children on their hip. The babies count as a rider too, so you get a twofer there. If you stop, they will climb in your car and you pay them a few thousand rupiah and off you go. No bothersome "polisi" waving you over if you've got a jockey on your side. My guess is you drop them off when you get to the end of the required occupancy level section and they then cross the street and go back the other way.

I made it absolutely clear to honey bunch that under NO circumstances was he to pick up a jockey. TB is still alive and quite well here. Don't want that kind of trouble. Not to mention that I would not stop to pick up a hitchhiker in the US. Why would I do it here?

The other way to achieve this goal, if it just happens to be you and the driver in the car, is to make sure you have a 50,000.00 rupiah note always at the ready. If you do get waived over, the number of occupants in your vehicle magically increases with the appearance of a blue colored bill with the number 50,000 on it.

So far, we have not tried out either of these methods. But that is how it is done we are told. Life in the fast lane indeed.