A Trip to Balikpapan

My sister got married so I had to go to my hometown to prepare the event. So, on the 16^th of March 2011 I had a flight to Balikpapan, where my hometown is, and had to check-in around 4 pm. The first thing happened was that when I got in line of the check in queue, there were some people already and they were carrying their baggage, which were too many I thought. Majority the passengers, after I realized in the plane, were Javanese and Banjarnese who had planned to travel to Balikpapan or Samarinda through Balikpapan.

The queue was a mess. Some of the passengers ‘savagely’ took my line in front of me, so I abruptly let them stood in front of me. I actually felt really annoyed then I realized that they were one family, others more likely from into groups rather than a family, with the ‘leader’ in front of them carrying their tickets. When it was my turn, I did the check-in as fast as I could and then I headed to the second floor. After buying two books at the nearest bookstore, I continued walking to the waiting room. Half of the room was seated by some plane-waiting passengers. I chose the corner of the room for reading my book. The waiting room was getting full and there came again a family who had same characteristics as in the queue mess but with different faces. After sit on the bench near me, the family was so noisy, the worst part was when a child was so excited to see some planes. I couldn’t concentrate to read my book, so I decided to listen to my iPod while reading the book. Still, my annoyed feeling couldn’t get away. I tried to ignore them by just scanning the book until the passengers were called to take another queue lines for getting outside the terminal and heading to the plane. The same thing happened again. This time I already prepared for the queue stealer. The people were in rush with rigid faces. I actually became the same mood as them though it wasn’t so pleasant. I walked as fast as I could to the plane until I entered inside the iron bird through the back door.

In the plane, the journey was continued. I tried to find my seat and it was 28F. After struggling to reach the 28^th row, someone was already in the 28F! I reported to a nearby flight attendant, she asked it is okay if I sit on the available sit which was 28A. Because the plane was getting more and more crowded and the 28F-man was showing innocent face (he was ignoring my complaint I think), so I decided to sit on the 28A and the problem was solved; solved with grumbling face. After that, a man beside me was so fascinated (I think), when I turned on the reading light. I smirked and expecting the take-off by read one of the new books.

Why the majority of passengers do acted so unruly? After some research and interviewing some of my friends, I tend to understand that the native Indonesians are lack in written knowledge. The written rules, in this case in the airplane and the airport, are mostly come from the western civilization, and usually taught from books. The Indonesian culture is mostly about norms and tradition which passed to a younger generation through lectures or stories (speeches). I assume that this also has some effect to the attitude of the people themselves. Their attitudes became tend to be hurried and hasty because they don’t really put attention to the written rules, so they want to be more flexible to achieve something. This contrasts to their own culture, when all things controlled by their own cultural rules and tradition, the native people tend to be calmer.