The bus would then leave the terminal at a healthy lick, and gradually get faster and faster throughout the journey. The doors would be wedged open, meaning those standing at the front and back of the vehicle would be holding on for dear life. (I’m not joking either, as on more than one occasion I saw people lose their grip and go flying off the bus as it rounded a corner too fast.) On every journey, approximately ten minutes after leaving the terminal, a conductor would come round to take the fare. How, you might wonder, could anyone possibly make their way through such a solid mass of humanity and collect money. Well, amazingly, it somehow proved possible each time. The conductor was usually a small and lithe guy who would slide between passengers, past them, by them, over them, under them and seemingly through them and manage to collect his fares before the bus reached the city and passengers started to disembark.
Back to my job, and even in the private sector, teaching was really pretty simple and straightforward as long as adequate preparation was done, although the hours were long. I usually left home early in the morning and didn’t get back until late at night. This meant I was usually in a state of permanent exhaustion, and to tell the truth I soon found I could lie down and go to sleep at any point of the day, given the chance. That couldn’t have been too good for my health.
Still, no major problem there. I was still young, just turned twenty-seven, and together Yossy and I were busy saving like crazy. Our immediate plan was to have enough money to buy a car to help with the tiredness factor so I wouldn’t need to travel everywhere by public transport.
We lived in Sidoarjo, a small hamlet about fifteen miles or so outside of Surabaya city. Our home was a simple three-bedroomed, one-storey place that we were renting while we tried to save up for a mortgage. It was in a clean and tidy housing complex, and although most of the neighbours couldn’t speak English, I was welcomed into the neighbourhood.
Although the norm in Indonesia is for even the most average of middle-class families to hire a full-time maid, or housekeeper, Yossy and I didn’t bother. We were both out working most of the day and so the house didn’t really get untidy, and we would send our clothes to the laundry and do any cleaning at the weekend.
All of this enabled us to live very self-contained lives together and some people might have ventured that we lived too much in each other’s pockets. Neither one of us really had any close friends, although I was probably guiltier of this than she was. Neither Sidoarjo nor even Surabaya had anything of an expatriate community to speak of, and so the only people I came into contact with were those I met through my work. I didn’t mind, though, as most of the time I was working, travelling to work or trying to get what rest I could.
We would normally try and leave the house together at around 6 am and travel into work in Surabaya by public transport. Now, as I said, this was not an experience for the faint-hearted, but once we had negotiated it our day would begin in earnest. Yossy would disembark from the bus on the slip road that led to the airport, and I would continue on into Surabaya proper, arriving at the so-called Secretary Academy in time for a 7:30 start. The early morning starts were no real issue for me as I’d been used to waking up early back in the dark days of working in England, but what I never really got used to was the heat. Even that early in the day I found myself sweating profusely after the slightest exertion, and so I learnt to wear light clothes to work and to change into more formal teaching attire once I arrived.
At the academy – I use that word loosely – I would invariably only have a couple of lessons in the morning and then I would be free to go off chasing the big(ger) bucks. I would normally hang around at the school for a while and take advantage of the air-conditioning for as long as possible (not to mention the photocopying facilities for the materials I needed for my private lessons) and then head out into the midday sun for the journey to the first in a succession of short hops around the city. I mainly taught in offices, but also had some work to do in people’s houses and even in other schools. This last scenario was a bit risky, as I was only supposed to teach in one school as per immigration rules and regulations, so I didn’t make a habit of it.
After work I would normally leave Surabaya around 9pm and make my way back to Sidoarjo, arriving home around an hour or so later. Sometimes, though, and these really were the best of times, Yossy would come to wherever my final lesson of the day was and pick me up when I finished.
Typically on days such as these I’d be teaching after hours in an office and when I’d finished I would find Yossy in the reception waiting for me. On those days I was so proud of her, and so proud to introduce her to people as my wife. I was always delighted to see her and to be given the chance to show her off to my students. Although not conventionally beautiful, Yoss had a way about her, you see. She
