Name Games

The Banjar in my area of South Sanur--Banjar translating to something like Balinese neighborhood association--has decided that it will be fun, culturally relevant, and also required, to change the name of my little street from Blok A to something more descriptive, more exotic, more Balinese and, in my mind anyway, more trouble than it is worth, for this is bound to further confound our already confounded postal system and mail carriers. As it is, the streets of Sanur defy any logic of pattern, scrawled as they are across the terrain like a 5-year-old's finger painting project--and an incompetent 5-year-old at that. And now you want to give him new paint?

A number of street names have been suggested, which I am sure would be lovely were they pronounceable, and the residents of the street have also been invited to submit their own suggestions. 

I think that Blok Goblok would be fitting. 

That's a joke, by the way, because Goblok is Indonesian slang for stupid.

Furthermore, the Banjar decided last month that they would begin requiring a monthly fee from every household in their jurisdiction. The amount of the fee, as outlined in the proclamation they sent around to each house, depends upon the type of residence and the category that best describes the residents. You may be a single person in a single dwelling, or you may be a family, you may be renting by the month, or you may be renting longer term under contract. Each category has a different fee. 

The fee for a single person living in a single dwelling was stated as 10,000 rupiah per month. This comes to about 61 cents USD. Not bad. 

However, the rules proved not so simple as written on their own paper when the Banjar representative came to collect. We argued back and forth for the longest time, I continually pointing at the pertinent paragraph regarding single occupancy, and he pointing everywhere else. Finally, it occurred to the pleasant though persistent official that he could not win an argument against his own document. So he compromised, and changed the document. 

Oh sorry, sorry, he said. That's a mistake. Haha. It is supposed to say 20,000, not 10,000.

Upon which he withdrew a pen from his pocket and substituted a 2 for the 1 in 10,000. Presto, 20,000. See how that works? 

Ah well, it's still next to nothing. But it's the principle of the thing, man! The principle!