I
joined our office in Jakarta, and started working. I will not bother you with
the details of work, simply because, the technical terms would not matter to
you, or interest you. And with some differences, work is more or less same
across all the IT companies. I’ll tell you about people, places around Jakarta.
My
company has few clients in Indonesia, and hence they have opened an office
there. This office has a mix of local Indonesians, some relocated Indians, and
some people like me for a short duration. The client also has office in the
same building. Now one strange thing about the buildings here is the floor
numbers. People here are superstitious about numbers. They don’t have floor
number 13 in building. After 12th floor, you reach directly to 14th
floor. :D And in my office building 4th floor was written as 3A.
Like
I said in the previous post, Indonesians are a pleasant lot. They keep chatting
and laughing dramatically loud, in a day you are bound to hear all these and
some funny noises you cannot make out what they express with that. Most of
people I came across were friendly, from my colleagues to taxi drivers, from
receptionists to bank security guards, were friendly, respectful and happy to
help. Yes there were few exceptions, but rare. And not just because we appear
foreigners, I observed that they behaved that way with each other’s also.
People
are crazy about Football, and so were my Indian colleagues, so I heard a lot of
excited and heated discussions about the game. FIFA was approaching so each one
was getting vocal about the team he supports, and discussions used to heat up.
Many of them placed bets also on who would reach finals, who would win the
world cup. On my last day of the office, we had a futsal game as project event,
a small version of football in every aspect, smaller indoor stadium, and
shorter time. We had fun there. Being an IT professional, everyone was
satisfied by merely being able to run and play for that long.
There
is a Friday Street Market near my office, like Indian weekly bazaars in many
cities and villages, this is only on Friday. My colleague Bibhu, took me there,
and the craziness about football reflected here as well, as the two of the
biggest crowd attracting stalls were having football jerseys and accessories. Apart
from that there were variety of stalls having tools, kids cloths, electronics,
dvds etc.
On
my first day in office, around tea time, I was working on my laptop and
suddenly people started running, and made a big noise, and gathered around a
desk in corner. I was surprised by that noise first, but saw everyone was
laughing, and those who were sitting also were making running noise with their
feet on the floor. When the crowd around that desk scattered I noticed
everybody had some fruits or chocolate in their hands, and then I understood it
was all for the evening snacks. Twice a day, some chocolate or some snacks is
served on the floor along with some fruits. And these people turned this into a
game; the first to reach gets the fruits, none for the last.
When
there is little or no work, or in break time they even play computer games like
counter strike in office. Once for some reason I went to the client’s office to
meet some person there, and they were playing a game on their workstation with
the gaming console. Well, this is common in many cool companies, but in India
many companies ban social media, and don’t even have card games in the work
station. I wished we had such freedom in our office too, but I doubt if we’d
work at all if this was allowed.
I
learnt some bits of local language i.e. Bahasa. (similar to Sanskrit word
Bhasha for language). Thank you is “terima kasih”. Milk is called as Susu
(urine in Hindi :D). Indonesians address each other as Mas or Pak to show
respect, like Mr., or Sir, and they use it often in mails or in conversations.
As
the first weekend was getting closer, I was eager to visit places around
Jakarta. But the problem was I had no company. I was the last to go to Jakarta
from my office, so everybody else had already visited most of the places there.
For some of them, it was their second or nth trip to Jakarta. I was not able to
decide on the place to go first.
We
had to stay late in office on Friday, so I was sleeping till late on Saturday.
Half of the day was wasted due to sleep and rains. In the evening, I had no
company so I took my camera and went out to have a walk around in Kuningan, the
area where I was living.
Click here for the pictures I clicked during my walk around.
I
returned, and met one guy from office in the hotel lift. We didn’t know each
other by name, but recognized each other. Just to take a chance I asked him if
he was interested in visiting some place tomorrow. He said yes, and I got
company for Sunday. We exchanged names, and phone numbers quickly as we had reached my floor, and I came
to my room with a plan for tomorrow. J
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