Jingle Bells

When folks go around selling door-to-door here they each have a distinctive sound.  This guy sells sate (or satay).  Its meat on a skewer and he grills it while you wait.  In his case VERY little meat but you get 10 sticks for 50 cents.  Not too shabby.

At any rate when he comes around he jingles these bells.  It sounds like Santa Claus is coming to town.  We actually were at a friend's house on Christmas night and the bells were ringing and the mom said, "I hear Santa!"  Which caused her kids to get almost frantic so she said, "Oh no. its just the sate guy.  Sorry." 

The funny thing was that we didn't have a sate guy in our neighborhood until about a week ago, then this guy bought a cart.  We were debating dinner on a Sunday evening when we heard him and so we had chicken-on-a-stick that night.  Then each night following he would come, bells aringing, and stand outside our door until we would go and say, "Not tonight, thanks!"

The interesting thing about sate is that the guy stands and fans his hardwood charcoal (yeah, Sam) the entire time.  I am not sure if the incredibly hot temperature does something besides get him on the road faster or not.

Finally in a real side note of what sellers are like here.  The first time we bought 20 sticks of meat. The guy kept asking, "Is that enough?" in an effort to sell us more.  The second time we bought 50 sticks and the whole time he was saying, "Wow, thats an awful lot."  Oddly, people want to sell but they don't want to sell too much and then not be able to work.  Even if they sold all they had. Some how its better to make your money over a longer period from more people but I haven't figured that out yet :-)