Today I needed my Vaccination certificates in order to apply for my third shot. It was not as straightforward as it seemed.
If you live in Indonesia, you probably have a PeduliLindungi account, and have the app installed on your phone. It works for downloading the certificates, but I had to rummage through my phone storage in order to access it.
First attempt using PeduliLindungi
I opened my PeduliLindungi app, and proceeded to download both vaccine certificates. The downloads immediately succeeded, and I was left wondering: how do I access those downloaded files, and where are they stored on my phone?
I did not think to open my Gallery app, and it's not something I like to do, just because it's very slow. Also, the vaccine certificate may very well have been in PDF format, right? I mean, it's not like the government doesn't know that sending pictures over WhatsApp (a very common use case) degrades its quality, right? They are competent, right?
So anyway, I googled for the download location, but instead found links explaining how to download the vaccine certificates without the PeduliLindungi app. Wow, this is great, or so I thought.
Second attempt using WhatsApp
Following the instructions, I messaged +6281110500567 and was greeted with a menu, as described.
So I chose to download my vaccination certificates using the menu, as instructed.
After completing the OTP and ID verification process, it gave me two options: download vaccine certificate 1 or 2.
So I selected 1 and it says:
Berikut sertifikat dari NAME_REDACTED
Ada lagi yang bisa dibantu?
What basically happened was that I completed the whole process, and they promised to send me my vaccine certificate, but I didn't actually get any.
I tried downloading the second vaccine certificate, same results. Not sure if the government is playing a prank on us, or secretly trying to diagnose for insanity among its population.
tip
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Finding the vaccine certificate on my phone
So I opened my trusty Total Commander once again and began looking for the downloaded vaccine certificates, one by one. Finally found it here: sdcard:Pictures/Vaccine-Certificate
Great, the vaccine certificates are right there, in JPEG form. I'm trying to be positive and think that our government is reducing our mobile data burden by serving us JPEG files instead of PNG. Think about all those kids with almost no money hooked on playing mobile games on their phones, with no mobile data quota to spare to download a vaccine certificate. I must applaud the government for setting its priorities straight.
But wait, there's more!
It turns out I also needed to download my third vaccine ticket. It's conveniently missing from the PeduliLindungi app's landing page, and I have to instead open my Account settings, then click on Vaccination History and Tickets to get it.
These folks sure know how to test our patience and intellect!