had some good laughs yesterday when i went to get some visa photos done here in the village. first of all i needed a white collared button down shirt....standard dress for both men and women, so i borrowed one from the owner of the resort. then i was told that i should tell the man that my face has to be 80% of the picture. and thirdly, so as not to fall in the tourist trap, i clarified how much people usually pay for passport photos...equipped with all of that i walked down the tree lined little road from the sea to the main road of the village, where i had noticed on one of my former walks a store front that said "photo"...and hoped they would also do passport ones...
as i walked along, suddenly a car stopped and the woman rolled down the window and asked if i am american, because she and her american husband are moving in to a new home today and she is looking for friends....i laughed and said yes i am, but i am on my way to the shop and maybe will meet another time. she was balinese and had been living in new jersey, and they had now built a little house on the path past the temple...so that was the address...just go to the end of the path and you will see a house that isn't finished yet and it is ours...i haven't met many americans here....mainly germans and dutch, so that was nice to know.
when i got to the shop there was a sign in balinese, which uses latin letters so i can read but not understand, and it looked like "pas phot" or something, so with sign language i managed to get my message across and they told me to sit down. when the photographer entered, again with sign language and numbers on paper i told him what i wanted, he pointed to a little enclosed space the size of a shower and with curtains for 2 walls, and i assumed that is where he is going to photograph me. but when he walked away after having closed the curtain on me, i noticed there was a mirror on the wall and a pink comb that was black from use, and a nail on the wall with a dirty collared white short sleeve shirt...aha! the changing room so that i can comb my hair and put on "the" shirt that everyone has to wear against the red backdrop.
when i was ready with my collar buttoned down looking like a prim school teacher he showed me into a typical space that photographers use in the back room, took out his Polaroid and i smiled and he clicked, he looked at it and didn't seem happy so he asked me to pose again, but this time without a smile, which i did. then he showed me the second result with a sound of approval, and wanted my consent...but i wanted to see the one with me smiling! yes, that's the one i want. he asked about 3 times, showing me again and again the serious one, trying to encourage me to realize that a serious expression is more appropriate, but i am so used to seeing smiling faces in photos as "nice", that i stuck to my choice and he shrugged his shoulders a but bewildered why someone would want it...(because of my teeth? of because it means i am not serious? who knows?).
when i had first communicated with him i also asked the price in advance...an important action which saves unpleasantness when paying later. he told me the price, which i mistakenly thought was too high (there are so many zeros in the numbers here! 20,000 rupias equals $2!) . i told him that in the big city of Singaraja which is an hour away, it is cheaper, so he crossed out the numbers he wrote and gave me a 20% discount...thank you!
at one point he invited me to the computer to see the results...i had told him my head needs to be 80% of the photo...but he was showing me results that were not at all the right proportions, and as i tried to explain what 80% meant, he just kept changing the borders but not the head size...so i picked up a piece of paper from the ground and drew a smiling face which was more or less 80% of the inside of the rectangle and showed it to him...ah..."zoom?" yes! and then he got it.
while i sat waiting for the photos to be ready, which he said would take 10 minutes, i decided to count out my money and have it ready. earlier in my room i had divided it all the money i have left so that i wouldn't suddenly find myself in amman jordan without enough money to take the cab to the border. so i had carefully counted out how much i needed for the photos and took a little extra. and now, when i began to count i realized that i didn't have enough money with me! oh gosh, now what?! i would have to explain to him somehow that i need to walk back to the resort and get more money...how embarrassing...and how to explain that? in sign language?! i started pulling out dollar bills too, thinking maybe he would agree that i pay with them...we are talking about the city of tejakula which consists of a main road with a few little tiny storefronts that sell necessities...no banks here! no ATM machine, no post office, etc...just little tejakula....
i could feel how confused i was and suddenly he was there in front of me with the photos ready i needed to pay. i had laid out all the bills i had on a little table after having counted them again and again hoping they would suddenly turn into more money that they were when i counted the last time...and as i started to explain in sign language that there is a mistake and i don't have money and maybe he will take $ and and...he just stood there looking at me shaking his head no...oh gosh...he doesn't agree....and his stern face of disapproval made me even more uncomfortable and confused and how stupid i was not to take more money with me just in case! and then he picked up 21,000 out of the 200,000 that i had scattered there in all kinds of denominations...and waved it in my face and laughed and i suddenly realized that the price he had told me was with one less zero than i thought. i started laughing so hard, at the sudden change in circumstances and then they all began to laugh at me laughing so hard and as i gathered all the bills up and put them back in my wallet, i thanked him profusely and he laughed and said: Tejakula is cheaper than Singaraja!
and he actually took even less than the lower price he had told me after our bargaining...so funny....a big $2 for 8 passport photos... at the famous tejakula photo shop!
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