Anyway, the first place I was detailed to work in was one of his apartment buildings in Slipi. I had to work there purely as a liaison clerk to start with and my task was to just to make sure the tenants were relatively happy.
I had to act as a sort of go-between for them and the various departments of the building management. For example, the building had a security system and employed an outside firm on a contract basis. It was my responsibility to make sure the security firm were happy with the precautions and systems in place (fire alarms, id checks, emergency escapes, sprinkler systems, etc.) while not intruding on tenants’ privacy. I had to also liaise with the tenants’ organisation which was supposed to meet monthly and would air complaints or feedback on a manner of things ranging from rent payments to parking spaces to noise complaints. I also dealt with the rents collection agency to ensure that tenants were paying up on time, and then there was the repairs maintenance department to handle, the shop tenants who took up space in the basement of the building, the small restaurant that provided limited room service and a thousand other jobs and responsibilities that lay outside the direct remit of any of these departments.
I found the work to be a lot more demanding, and to be truthful, a lot more satisfying than working in the club. I had so much more to do and I found myself exhausted at the end of each day, but I also had much more of a sense of achievement because I felt that I was actually earning the exorbitant amount I was being paid in contrast to feeling a bit of a fraud when I worked in the club.
I didn’t really have an office that I worked out of – instead I was stationed mainly on the front desk of the lobby. This enabled me to act as a kind of receptionist as well as my other jobs. This suited me fine because I was able to get to know most of the residents this way.
There was quite a wide mix of people who were staying in the five-story, sixty-apartment building, with some being local middle aged families, some young single people, some old and retired couples, and even some expatriates, or bules as we call them.
I hadn’t really met that many bules when I had been working in the club, except for Pak Neil, of course. Endy had told me that they sometimes came in but usually preferred the clubs in the Blok M area of the city or the restaurants and bars in Kemang. Both of these areas were just a little more upmarket than we were and perhaps that’s why they preferred them.
I got to know a few of them in the apartment, though, and found them to be reasonably friendly. Some were a little quiet and didn’t stop for a chat too often, but some others were very talkative and liked to spend time talking with me. This was great for me because it gave me the chance to practice my English which I hadn’t really used that much since leaving school.
These bules were in Jakarta for a short time only, usually a year or two years, and so were keen on having a good time. They almost always were single people or else friends sharing, and they often had parties or brought back girls to their apartments. This was no problem as long as they didn’t stay too long or cause any trouble. It did lead to one or two awkward situations, though.
I remember Pak Neil used to call round sometimes and this was the first time that I really got to speak to him on a regular basis. He would sometimes turn up late at night, either alone or with a young lady in tow, a ‘naughty girl’, usually, and then disappear upstairs to ‘his’ apartment.
On the nights that Neil came round on his own, he and I would sometimes get the chance to ‘shoot the breeze’, as he put it. He would just accompany me in the reception area of the apartment and he seemed content to put his feet up and get away from the stress of running his businesses. He told me these nights gave him the opportunity to ‘escape from it for a while’ and although I wasn’t really sure as to what he was alluding, I was happy to hang out with him and chat away. Most of these chats we had were really rather inconsequential and consisted of not much more than passing the time together. I was mindful of what Endy had implied about asking too many questions, and also of Heri’s warnings to ‘be careful’, so I took steps to ensure our conversations didn’t stray into dangerous waters.
Over time, though, I told Pak Neil more about my background and family, and also about my reasons for coming to Jakarta along with my hopes and aspirations, and Pak seemed to listen attentively. He would rarely interrupt but would prefer to let me talk and he’d interject only when he wanted to clarify something or help me out with my still-poor English. He seemed genuinely interested in me and my life and whatever pearls of wisdom I was trying to impart, but one thing about him that never changed was the fact he was always very guarded and hardly ever
spoke about his own private life.
What little information he did let slip was just fairly routine stuff. He told me, for example, that he had been born and raised in the UK and had come
