What follows is the second of two encounters in which I realize I’m now a wealthy man.
The Mosquito Killer
I hate few things more than mosquitos. First, I seem to have an allergic reaction that increases the swelling, itching, and duration of the reaction to the bite. Second, my bites get infected easily. I slather myself in DEET to prevent bites whenever I leave the house. If DEET gives me some sort of cancer, at least I chose the manner of my demise. Of all the created order, I cannot fathom why mosquitos ever made it out the gate.
So it is that I ended up at Ace Hardware. I approached the greeter and asked, “Ada lampu untuk nyamuk (Is there a lamp for mosquitos)?” The greeter replied, “Oh, yah!”
I must digress. I cannot overstate my pride at this moment. Not only did I get it right on the first try, but he understood me perfectly! My sentence construction was probably unwieldy and unconventional. Little children certainly speak faster than I did. Regardless, I just made an intelligible request. Small victories feed one’s endurance. End digression.
The greeter beckoned an employee over and explained to him, “..... [unintelligible unintelligible] ......nyamuk killer!” The young, uniformed man gestured to the Nyamuk Killer section and bade me follow. The irony that my perfectly-understood request in Bahasa Indonesia was corrected by an adopted English word was not lost on me.*
Cultural Near-Collision
The young man leads me through several twists and turns into the Nyamuk Killer section. Mosquito lamps of various sizes line the shelves. One shelf has every model turned on so one can witness them in black-lit glory. I naturally look for the one with the most corpses inside them. The display model with the most insect corpses in and around it is naturally also the biggest, brightest and most expensive light available.
I am THAT foreigner. I take the biggest, brightest, most expensive one off the shelf, priced at roughly $50 USD. I am about to walk off with it, but the employee asks, “Do you wan.....test?” His English is indicative of how I’ve managed to get around. My Bahasa is insufficient to navigate myself out of a hole. Everyone else speaks sufficient enough English.
.....”Test?”.....
“Ya.”
....”Ok!”.... (I had no idea what this meant at the time. I find that blindly agreeing to things I don’t understand usually turns out for the better).
The employee takes out a box cutter and carefully cuts open the top. We take out the light, plug it in, and turn it on. No problems. He asks me, “Pas (acceptable)?” I agree, and we put it back in the box. He takes out the warranty guarantee and has me fill out the information then and there. He took it, asked me where I was staying, told me that I had a 6-month guarantee, then showed me all the addresses I could send it to should it break within that time period. The employee proceeds to pick up the box and we go to the front of the store.
He asks me another question that I don’t understand as we walk. I, of course, take out my most polished phrase:
“Maaf? Bisa ulangi lagi? (Sorry, can you please repeat again?)”
“Do you wan.....pay now?”**
“Ya?.....Ya.... now.”
We walk up to the front. A young, female cashier takes my box and spends five minutes taping my box back together and then making a handle for the box. My inner environmentalist decried this use of plastic, but I was far too impressed with the engineering and service to listen to it overlong. I give them my credit card, they charge it, and I walk out carrying my light panel by its newly minted handle with its fully-filled warranty guarantee in my pocket. That was deeply satisfying service. US stores, take note.
I reflected on the employee’s last question as I sat waiting for Dana. It seemed that the options were pay up front or in installments. His question left me slightly baffled. I’m sure the employee saw my bafflement, though I hope he attributed it to language issues.
My question was why someone would pay for the mosquito killer in installments. The price was too trivial to pay in 12-month or 24-month installments. Then I realized that: (a) $50 USD is 1/3 - 1/2 of a month’s salary for a large chunk of the Indonesian population; (b) I had easily and decisively spent it. I am THAT foreigner.
Notes
*My receipt does in fact say, “Nyamuk Killer”.
** I realized later he was asking if I wanted to keep shopping or not. In the US, the emphasis is on the shopping, i.e. “Would you like to keep looking around?” Here, the emphasis is on finishing shopping i.e. “Would you like to pay now?”