"Excuse me, do you have time for an interview?"

I've been helping Marcus with his research on finding out the difference of perception of students at Universitas Gadjah Mada (Yogyakarta) and people in Bantul (South Yogyakarta) about the use of Internet. You can visit his blog to know more about the research. If you're interested in using Internet, you'll also be interested in knowing more of the research.

Anyways, I, with other 2 friends, Vera and Wisnu, went to Bantul to look for people around the age of 18-30 to interview. It wasn't easy..


Pundong, Bantul, Yogyakarta

We took a taxi and got off in Pundong, a district in Bantul. As soon as we got off, we spread out. Vera went to a stall selling phone credits locally known as pulsa, Wisnu went to.. somewhere. He's just gone! Marcus went to a photocopy making more copies of the interview forms. At the end, I went to a slightly bigger pulsa stall.

It's not easy to pursuade someone to be involved in an interview when he/she is busy. Lot of things can happen during an interview. In my case, I had to pause for a couple times due to people coming buying pulsa at the stall. The main problem was when it came to the recording section. so, the interview was divided by two sections; questions with multiple choices and recorded interview. When I was recording the interview, a lot of times people came to buy pulsa which caused a delay. As I was going to say, the recording could not be paused. Otherwise it'd cause a confusion when transcribing the recordings. They have to be in a good order in order to easily match the written interview with the recorded one.

Anyways, Marcus came with more copies and we all continued working. We did have a lunch break at Warung Padang. Wisnu wasn't there. None of three of us had seen him since we got off the taxi. Strange! We tried calling and texting him before having the lunch. It took too long so we decided to have lunch without him. He finally showed up.. while me and Vera were interviewing. We ate quite slowly so he was so late!

It was okay. Marcus accompanied him eating while me and Vera interviewed two people in a barber shop. We didn't interview the barber but the customers. So, we thanked him a lot.

Vera had another interview at a small store not far from the barber shop, while me and others went closer to the local market expecting to get more people. Wisnu got one. I was still looking. I walked further and further.. and found two at once! God! They were a girl and a guy. The girl worked at the store and the guy was just there hanging around. They were quite cooperative answering my questions even though the guy was refusing when I asked him if he had time for the interview. I was happy I got two easily. Not far from there I got another one, a guy, working as a tailor in his own small company. He was also cooperative so we had a quite long interview on the recording section. Badly.. when Marcus checked my interview with him, it wasn't in the folder.. :( it's lost.

We moved on, and at the end of the day, again, Wisnu was no where. We all had finished and were waiting for him. We'd called the taxi to pick us up back to Prawirotaman where we all first met and took a taxi to Bantul. We were worried Wisnu would not be there when the taxi arrived. While waiting for the taxi and Wisnu, I bought us some fried tofu. They were very nice and crispy. Loved them! Marcus then bought us some more. Again, Wisnu missed the food. Well.. almost. He finally showed up at the last minute we were finishing the tofu.

The taxi arrived. We then went taking our motorbikes that we parked at a hotel where Marcus is staying on Prawirotaman road to head back home. I got so sweaty and dusty from the long tiring day. A long shower and a big glass of tea really freshed me up! But now I'm so sleepy....