Time is Starting to Move Faster

Some days don't seem like there is anything interesting to write about and then the next day explodes with excitement.

Wednesday was a fairly quiet day in the office with no meetings and Aban, Donnacha and I working on our projects. Toward the end of the day we met to come up with a timeline for the rest of our required meetings and the time frame we needed to work in to meet all of our deliverable. Things got really real at this point.

Besides working on our projects with our host organizations all 13 of us are working on our community service assignment which takes place this coming Saturday and Sunday. We are all taking place in leading a three hour workshop for women and people with disabilities who have SMEs (small and medium enterprises/businesses). Our sub-team is presenting on success stories of others who have small businesses. During the evening before dinner we met to create our plan and decide which stories we are going to share.

Thursday ended up being a really neat day for me. Our STP team had to split up because of conflicting obligations. Donnacha and Aban stayed at the STP office because we had a meeting that really needed to take place and had been rescheduled several times.

We also had a tenant, who lives an hour away, to visit. So, while the guys stayed at the office I went with Candra and three STP employees from the incubator to visit a tenant who has created a natural, water-based wood finishing product.

Besides making the wood finishing product he has a batik business. The batik is different than any other batik we have seen because it is natural made. All the dyes are made from plant materials that he grows on his property and are hand painted..

Most batik is stamped onto one side of the material and is made with chemical based dyes. The batik was beautiful and quite expensive compared to most batik. The owner was very gracious and gave me a DEEPLY discounted price on a lovely piece of batik that is over 3 meters long. I'm still trying to decide what to do with it.

The tour of the facility was very interesting, the owner and production manager were very warm and welcoming and the drive was good, too. It was a good time to talk to one of the employees of the incubator and pick his brain about some things, I also saw some interesting things while riding in the car. I saw a memorial for war veterans from the was of independence from the Dutch in the 1940s, a cemetery, lots of lush greenery and fruits and two goats being transported by scooter.

I must say the guys were quite jealous when I returned with my batik - especially since the meeting was delayed enough that they could have gone along.

After our evening team meeting a few of us just had a really good time at 11 12 Beer Garden. It was about a 20 minute ride for our hotel. They had a good selection of beer and a live cover band.

#IBMCSC #CSCIndo8 #IBMIndo

Solo Techno Park

I decided not to post yesterday because we were in the office and meetings most of the day - which doesn't make for an interesting blog. Today was more of the same.

The most exciting part of the week so far is that we got the Head of Solo Techno Park to sign off on our revised scope of work (SOW)! My sub-team came up with the revised SOW late Friday afternoon. We presented it to our host yesterday and he informally agreed to it. Today we typed it up in the official SOW form and both parties signed the agreement. We've already been working on discovery for our deliverables, but there is something assuring about having the SOW approved and signed off on.

"Solo Technopark is an integrated area that combines information technology and innovation for business and industry needs. It is a Local Public Service Agency which is part of the Regional Work Unit formed to serve the community by providing certain products and/or services on a nonprofit basis. It centers its activities on the principles of efficiency and productivity."

Essentially, STP is a government supported non-profit organization that trains students for work in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. It also has a business incubator to assist new tenants develop, create and market new products. Their goal is to bring benefit to the community through training, job placement and new business development.

My sub-team consists of Aban (from India), Donnacha (from Ireland) and me. Additionally, we have our project assistant/translator Candra and another translator, Bayu, from STP. From the beginning of the work we essentially have three to three and a half weeks to do discovery, revise the original scope of work delivered to us, deliver on what has been agreed upon in the newly approved SOW, present this to the client and finally give a presentation to all the stakeholders involved in CSC for Indonesia 8 (the team I am on).

Our sub-team is acting as consultants to assist STP in further developing their database, recommending best practices for the incubator, reviewing and possibly making suggestions for updates to their training program and providing information on how to find outside financing to assist with incubator projects.

It feels a little overwhelming, but we'll make it!

#IBMCSC #CSCIndo8 #IBMIndo

Sunday Funday

Across Indonesia Sundays are called Car Free Days. From 6-9am some of the main thoroughfares are blocked off and the streets are only open to pedestrians. Lots of vendors (more than usual is probably a better way to explain it) are along the road selling food, toys and many other things. I didn't get outside until just a few minutes before the road opened. I still walked around for a bit and it was fun to see all that was going on.

This picture is a view from my hotel room of the road blocked off for Car Free Day. The train passes by a few times a day and is mostly used for commuting.

While we were out walking around Donnacha, Chandra and I went to McDonald's to get a Coke and visit. Sitting across from us was a family with a five year old girl. We hadn't noticed them as the three of us were talking about a variety of things. However, the father spoke to Candra and complimented her on her English saying that he would like his daughter to learn English as well. That turned into an interesting conversation as we learned about where the parents work, where they live and came from and other small things about their lives. They appeared to be fairly well off. McDonald's is actually a luxury for eating out. When I did the conversion the prices seemed pretty close to what you would pay in America - which is quite a bit of money for the average Indonesian. I really enjoy it when we go out in smaller groups and get to be a part of the Solo City community.

Later in the morning we did some Batik shopping and went to a convenience store to stock up on some things for the hotel room. Our PA, Chandra, was with us through all of this and was such a big help to us. I was really surprised at how long the checkout lines were at the convenience store. We probably waited in line over 30 minutes. No one seemed to mind and I thought about how frustrated we become in American if we have to wait in line more than 5-10 minutes to check out. Perspective is always interesting.

The rest of Sunday was really a relaxing day for most of us. Monday we hit the ground running and will have a busy week in the office.

#IBMCSC #CSCIndo8 #IBMIndo

S A T U R D A Y...Night (and Day)!

Saturday was the fullest day we have had so far - not counting the long days of travel. We left the hotel by van at 6:30am and were driven a couple of hours southwest to Yogyakarta. Yogyakarta is a city in Indonesia, but is also a special region of Indonesia that still has its own Sultan. One thing I am learning more the longer I am here is how much fascinating and complicated history there is to this region of the world.Near Yogyakarta are two important temples in the world's religions. We visited both of them.


Our first stop was the Prambanan temple. It is a Hindu temple built in the 9th century BC. My first view of the temple as we entered the grounds took my breath away. I actually got chills and was overwhelmed by the beauty and enormity of it.




The second stop was the Borobudur temple. It is the world's largest Buddhist temple. It was also built in the 9th century and was "lost" for several centuries until it was rediscovered in 1814 and renovations began.

Both temples are UNESCO World Heritage sites.

There are so many photos I would like to share and so much information I could share about each temple that I would fill up screens of this blog. For the sake if time and sanity, if you want to see more photos and read a little more about each temple in the comments of each photo you may visit my Facebook photo album here.

The highlight of the day was the children we encountered at Prambanan. There were several hundred of them from several difference schools and all dressed in their cute Batik school uniforms. Many of them were there doing "tourist hunting." This activity involves approaching tourist who speak English and asking them a set of questions - What is your name? favorite color? favorite food? What do you think of Indonesia? - things like that. When speaking to me one girl would ask the questions, reading them from the notebook where she had written out the questions in English and a second student would write the answers in her notebook. While only two students were actively involved in the activity there were always several more gathered around. At one point I asked a girl what she liked about America and she said she like the music - that everyone in America can sing. I told her I was a singer and sang a short line from "Light My Candle" from Rent. Their faces lit up so brightly it was heart-warming. 

Lots of photos were taken with these students and with many students all around the temple. Photos were also, however, taken with me by adults. Several of us in our group encountered this. However, no one more than Yemisi who is from Nigeria. It was almost like we were celebrities just because we look so different than they do. Photos were taken with groups, couples, individual men and women. I've heard of this happening to others (like my very fair skinned, blonde haired sister while in Japan), but this was my first time to experience it.

The rest of the day was a whirlwind of driving, visits to palaces and markets and a late night stop at the Indian Ocean. We go back to the hotel at 12:45am totally exhausted, but full of warm hearts and tales to tell.

#IBMCSC #CSCIndo8 #IBMIndo

All in a Good Week's Work

Friday arrived! At the beginning of the week we had such a large task looming over us that I thought the week was going to feel very long. However, it ended up going by quickly and the work days have been full of many new and fun experiences. Prior to our beginning the work we are doing I had a difficult time fully explaining to people what Corporate Service Corps is. Now, I get it. While we have a Scope of Work to focus on, in a lot of ways we are being used as consultants and new sets of eyes to look at issues our host organizations have been struggling with. We may not be experts in the fields we are working in during our assignment, but we all have skills we have learned in our careers at IBM (and before IBM) that have given us knowledge and best practices to share.

I am happy to see how comfortable we are all becoming with each other - both at the sub-team level and as an overall team. At the sub-team level we have good relationships with our PA and our additional translator. For lunch today Donnacha rode on the back of Bayou's motorbike to help him pick up lunch and rode home on the back of it holding drinks in one hand and hanging on for dear life with his other. Have any of us ever gone to lunch before with a co-worker in that fashion? I've not come close. I went to dinner with a smaller group - just four of us - and we visited for three hours. I'm really enjoying the more intimate times when it's easier to talk and really get to know someone.

My cultural experience for the day was that I had my laundry done by a local woman in her own home. The place is located near our office.

Yesterday morning we dropped off our clothes in bags and this afternoon we picked them up. All my clothes were washed, dried, ironed and folded (even my undies) and the cost to me for 4kgs was $2.54 IN USD. I am in awe of this for many reasons - the fact we trust someone enough to leave our clothes with a perfect stranger (no receipt, no phone number, nothing), the fact that someone earns her living by doing laundry out of her own home, the level of care that went into cleaning my clothes...

But the main thing I am coming to terms with (and really not even close to coming to terms with it) is the standard of living and the cost of living here. Being in the city I am not seeing many painful, visible signs of poverty like I have seen in many other areas of the world I have visited. However, when I think about how much it costs me to have my laundry done or buy a nice dinner or take a taxi somewhere it's a stark realization on how little people have in a monetary sense to exist here. The city doesn't look poor, but I have a hard time thinking that this is just what I am seeing on the surface and below this is a whole lot of pain and ugliness that people simply don't want to have to look at.

#IBMCSC #CSCIndo8 #IBMIndo

Welding, Diving and Candra

Today we toured the workshops at STP. The most interesting part for me was getting to see the underwater welders practicing their skills.It's a bit hard to see in the picture, but there is a student diver in the water standing on a platform and welding a piece of metal. A career as an underwater welder has sometimes been of interest to me. Not that I would ever really do it, but looks exciting and pays incredibly well. However, it is also very dangerous.




Our team spoke to the students following their dive and of course, we took photos. I got to hold the special welding diving helmet. It was very heavy.



In this blog and my Facebook photo album I've mentioned our project assistant a few time - Candra. She serves as our translator, schedules interviews and arranges for things we need throughout the project, takes notes, helps us find lunch and generally takes great care of us. We would be lost without her.

Candra is an excellent translator. I'm amazed at this skill - it's a talent, really. She spends a large portion of her day translating our questions to the locals we are speaking with, listening to their response and then translating it back to us. I have to imagine it is exhausting work to use your brain muscles for this and there have been days we've needed her to translate for 6+ hours.

She has also helped us with very basic things. This morning she went with us as we dropped off our laundry. She spoke with the woman who runs the laundromat and gave us information on pricing and when things would be ready.

I knew we would have a translator working with us on our project, but I did not expect such a dynamic person who can do such a great job translating and a great job at truly being our project assistant.

There have been many nights she has worked long and late hours to translate documents for us. Sometimes it seems she's a step ahead of us and by the time we ask her to do something she has already taken care of it. I just can't say enough good things about her.

#IBMCSC #CSCIndo8 #IBMIndo, 

Important Update

It took two days, but the hotel found Diet Coke for me!

That is all.

#IBMCSC #CSCIndo8 #IBMIndo