Hotel Confinement due to Demonstrations

On mid-day Wednesday, we were able to go into the office even though the demonstrations were still happening.  However, some teams were not able to go to the office all week (like the team working with Transportation).  We went to the office all day on Thursday and also went this morning (Friday), but were instructed to get back to the hotel around 2:00 Friday afternoon as the demonstrations were projected to get worse.

Link to a recent article showing a picture in Makassar:  http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/indonesian-parliament-set-to-vote-on-fuel-price-increase/508101

Four of us were planning on going to Bira Beach (5 hours away from Makassar) this weekend, but now will be staying in the hotel - at least for the next 22.5 hours (counting down).  We will see what happens after the vote on whether to increase the fuel prices.  Things could get worse.  April 1st would be the day the prices take effect, so things could be a little questionable next week too.  The other six people were planning on doing a city tour and go to some local (within one hour) attractions.  That is on hold now too.

Demonstrations aside, we did have an excellent day working today.  I'm excited to go back (assuming I'm able to) on Monday and train them in some more on one of the tools.

This picture is of me listening in on part of a seminar.  I only stayed about 20 minutes, but got a good idea of what it was about.  Then, it was off to the library for another 20 minutes to watch a bit of the high school competition.  They didn't do storytelling like the elementary kids, but had a particular topic in which to present.



Here is our lunch from today!  There is so much fresh fish here and it is amazing!  Makassar is known for its excellent fish.  In fact, I learned that much of the fish used/sold in Jakarta comes from Makassar.

After lunch, we went back to the office and worked a little bit on some training.  They are picking it up and like the tool we are suggesting.  I just hope we can actually go to the office next week to complete the training.  On Tuesday, we will be giving a final presentation to our client.  That leaves minimal time for us to get done the things we want to accomplish.

#ibmcsc

Back at the Office!

After two days of being confined to the hotel, Marcelo and I were able to go back to the office on Wednesday.  Although we weren't sure right away.  We planned on going, went down to the lobby only to find that our driver was not able to make it to the hotel due to the demonstrations.  Then we thought it was going to be another long day at the hotel.  But, by mid-morning, we were able to go into the office.  It was nice to be able to work with our clients again and redo our schedule to ensure we get everything done we plan on doing.  We're a little behind on some training, but did quite well with getting our presentations ready (multiple ones needed for training, final report, overall team presentation, etc.) since we were at the hotel for two days.

Marcelo doing some training in the office (Wednesday)

 We went to a nice place by the ocean for a quick lunch on Wednesday.  I think I could have sat there all day as it was gorgeous out!  However, there are only so many days left for us to work, so back to the office we went to finish up for the day.

On Thursday, we were able to spend the whole day working (not in the hotel).  We started by attending part of a storytelling contest sponsored by our main client.  The kids who were in the contest were amazing!  Even though I didn't know the language, you could get an idea of the story by how they told it.

We left the contest early to go to the office and do some catch up work.  I was really pleased at the end of the day as I spent about 1.5 hours or so training a couple of people in on a tool.  They really see the value and were catching on quickly.  I am starting to see what some of the benefits will be to this organization after we leave and it is both exciting and cool!  Sometimes I wish we had more time to implement more, but I guess I can relate that to the saying about housecleaning - there is always more to do!

#ibmcsc

Weekend #1 (yes, this is a very late post)

It seems I got behind on a few blogs after about a week of being in Indonesia.  I did great that first week, but then the whole team got pretty busy and I got behind a bit.  ABV (Australian Business Volunteers), the company that lined up all of our projects, planned a weekend team activity for us the first weekend.  The planned outing was originally a trip to a butterfly park and a waterfall - it was supposed to be a one-day trip.  However, lots of people were telling us that we should visit Tana Taraja.  Tana Taraja was about an 8-hour drive (ended up being more like 9) away from Makassar, but is on the same island as us.  Tana Taraja is an area extremely rich in culture.  The largest attraction is probably the hanging graves, grave caves, and traditional housing.  They have elaborate funeral ceremonies, but typically these are during the June/July time frame.  So, we were able to change our group activity to Tana Taraja.

Here are a few links if you would like to see pictures posted by other people and/or find out more information about the area:

• http://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotos-g1143549-Tana_Toraja_South_Sulawesi_Sulawesi.html
• http://www.lonelyplanet.com/indonesia/sulawesi/tana-toraja

Breakfast room at hotel

Walk through the hotel courtyard (replicas of traditional houses)

Our journey started Friday (March 16th) after work.  The plan was to leave on the bus at 5:00, but it was shortly after 6:00 by the time we actually got loaded and going.  Our trip involved two nights at a hotel (or maybe I should say one and a half as we arrived very very late), all meals, and a tour guide.  We stopped for dinner after about 3.5 hours into the trip.  It was a great view overlooking the ocean, but it was dark at the time.  Then, we continued on our journey, arriving in Tana Taraja at 3:30 a.m.  Breakfast was at 8:00 or 8:30 and we were leaving to go tour the area at 9:00.  The hotel we stayed at was quite nice and had a pool, but no air conditioning.  By the time we got there, I didn't care, I just needed sleep!

The houses in Tana Taraja have a boat-shaped roof.  You can see the replicas that were at our hotel.  Later on, we went to see real ones where people live.  They are boat-shaped because a long time ago, people would arrive in their boat, build their house, and then put their boat on top of their house (giving all of them a boat-shaped appearance).

Even with only a few hours of sleep, I was excited to go tour for the day.  We went to several different sites - all with their own unique culture, customs, and traditions.  I will share a few pictures here and give a brief explanation.  I have many more, so be sure to ask me about the trip!

Hotel courtyard

Hotel courtyard with replicas of the traditional shaped Taraja homes.

My and Nitu's room for the weekend

Two beds and a shower was all we needed for the weekend after the 9+ hour drive down the semi-finished road between Makassar and Tana Taraja!

Pool area - anyone up for yoga?

The pool area, where some people (no names) had a diving contest, and others learned yoga and various ethnic dances!  We wish there was a pool at our hotel in Makassar!  It was nice to come back and go for a swim after a long day of touring.

Ready!

Most of the team ready to go for the day.  Believe this photo is missing two team members who were either shopping, taking pictures somewhere else, or talking!

Rice drying

 Driving through the local areas.  Saw many of these tarps with rice drying along the way, some in yards, and some on the road.









At one of our first villages - I am standing next to a traditional Taraja house.  The horns mounted on the front of the house were how many buffaloes were sacrified for a funeral of someone who had lived there.  The Taraja people basically live and work so they can have an elaborate funeral.  In their minds, the more things sacrificed, the better your chances are (to get to where you want) after death.







So, we were able to go into someone's house (with permission of course).  This is a picture of the lady who died and she is in the coffin behind.  Typically, families will keep the bodies in the house (mummified in a coffin) until they can raise the amount of money they want for the funeral.  This also give them time for preparations like building additional temporary housing for family members who will travel for the funeral.  This woman died about three weeks before we arrived and her funeral is going to be in July.  They told us it is planned to be the largest funeral ceremony to take place to date.




The Taraja believe that your body must reside somewhere between earth and sky after you die.  Therefore, they need to be off of the ground.  This is a picture of a family tomb.  All members of this family will go into the round part on the bottom after they die.  You can see a few of the photos towards the top.










Here is a picture of the suspended coffins up high on the hillside.  These ones are quite old and some have fallen apart.



The Taraja will make effigies of the dead.  This shows what they looked like when they were alive and at the age of their death.  The ones in this photo are behind a locked gate.  The lady with the purple dress on was a more recent death than the others in this picture.




Here is a group of students who wanted a picture with me!








This is a picture of the colored buffalo.  If you look close, you can see that the eyes are a bright blue.  Its eyes were very beautiful.  These buffalo are quite expensive, but are a very important part of the Taraja tradition and culture.





Here is a picture of more effigies up on a wall.  We were able to walk over to the wall and get a closer look (although they were up high).  This is the point where my camera battery went dead.




We did go visit one other site.  It was called the baby tree.  When babies died before they had teeth (either in the womb or at a very young age), their bodies were placed in a tree (inside the trunk).  This was in hopes that the couple would be blessed with another child.  There were various reasons as to why the holes in the tree (which were made to place the babies in) either closed completely or did not close.  This takes at least 60 years, but the tree does grow shut where the hole was made.

This was definitely a tour I will never forget.  The ride to get there was bumpy and long, but if you have the opportunity, you should make it a priority.  If you can go in the summer months, you may be able to see a funeral.  The people were very friendly.

#ibmcsc

You say you don't like doing laundry???

Have you ever complained about doing laundry?  Well, these types of statements likely won't be coming from me anymore.  There is a laundry service at our hotel, but everyone who has used it has had their clothes come back a little bit smaller as they shrink.  Therefore, I decided that I won't use the hotel laundry service.  There are not laundromats like there are in the US or other countries.  That left me with one option - doing laundry by hand.

My friend, Tom - on my team, let me use a bucket and plastic washboard that he bought specifically for doing laundry.  I did bring along a packet of Tide, so had some soap to use.  I started sorting my clothes thinking that I didn't need to wash everything, but I still ended up with a pretty big "dirty" pile.  Then, I realized that I have never done laundry by hand before (other than maybe a hand-wash-only delicate item where all you do is soak it).  I started putting some water and soap in the bucket and was washing my clothes on the plastic washboard, but I wasn't sure if I should do them one-by-one, or put a bunch in all at once, or what.  So, I turned to my trusted source of information, the internet.  I found a great video with lots of hints and tips on how to do your laundry while traveling.  Here is the link:  http://www.ridiculouslyextraordinary.com/15-minutes-clean-clothes-anywhere-in-the-world/

The hard part of this process was finding a spot to dry my clothes.  There is no dresser or anything in the room.  The closet is about 16" wide and not by any airflow (plus I have some good clothes hanging in there).  I have one chair in my room, one sink (free standing), and the shower/toilet room.  I feel like I have clothes draped wherever possible such that hopefully they dry by morning.

The process I used was as follows:

1. Wash as many clothes as possible in the bucket at one time (adding one by one and using washboard for each one)
2. Churn them around in there (like an agitator) for a minute or two
3. Let soak for 10 minutes
4. Wring each one out and put in sink full of water to rinse
5. Start step 1 again with the next "load" to get them soaking
6. Take the ones out of the sink and wring them out
7. Put between two towels (or fold a towel in half on them) to take out as much excess water as possible
8. Find a spot to hang them
9. Wring the second load out and move to sink
10. Repeat

The process took about 2.5 hours for me - I did do a lot of laundry.  This seems to have worked (although clothes are still wet right now) and my room smells very fresh and clean!   I will not complain about having to put laundry in a washer or dryer again.  If you are one of those people, you should try doing it by hand sometime!

#ibmcsc

Demonstrations against rising fuel prices

Well, it's been a different start to the week this week.  Apparently, fuel prices are going to increase on April 1st.  We knew this when we got to Makassar as we saw some small demonstrations that first week here.  However, now that April 1st is fast approaching, the demonstrations are getting larger and IBM Security has advised us to stay at the hotel both Monday and Tuesday.  Fortunately, we were all able to continue on with some portion of our projects since we all work remote from time to time.

The demonstration we saw on the first day here was just a group of scooters/motorcycles grouped together (maybe 100 or so of them) honking their horns, carrying flags and banners, and making noise.  I do not know of any details of demonstrations in Makassar yesterday or today, but did take some pictures of the news (posted below).  I believe there was a big on in Jakarta today which is what most of the pictures are.  We are all hoping to go back to our respective offices tomorrow as we need to continue to make progress on our recommendations and projects.

In Makassar

In Jakarta

In Jakarta

#ibmcsc

Weekend #2

Jess and team at Trans Studio

Friday was a holiday in Indonesia, so we were able to have a long weekend.  Two of our team members books a flight to Java for the weekend to visit temples and do touring on that island.  The remaining eight of us went to a local theme park on Friday called Trans Studio.  It was all indoor, so we didn't have to worry about sunburn or rain (which it rains a lot here), and air conditioned!  I would describe it as a very small version of a Disney park.  There were a handful of rides and a few attractions that you watched (like a show with dancing, a green screen demo, etc.).  Overall, it gave us something to do on Friday.

Later that evening, a few of us wondered around and found a hotel to visit with a great balcony overlooking the ocean!  Wow, what a view!  

Sunset on the ocean!

One of our five project teams is working with a nonprofit organization, YKL, which is a marine conservation group benefiting coastal and marine natural resources.  It just so happened that YKL had a reef check scheduled with about 25 local university students (all part of a dive club).  This was a 2-day, 1-night excursion in which they invited the team to join them.  We left Saturday morning around 8:00 a.m. to go to the dock where the boat was parked.  We loaded the boat and off we went!  The boat ride was actually pretty fun as the students brought along equipment and tools to make coffee (Taraja Coffee - good stuff and I'm not a coffee drinker) on the boat.

Coffee-making team!

The weather started out being gorgeous, but quickly turned into lots of rain.  Needless to say, this put a wrinkle in their plans of doing reef checks.  The original plan was to check many different reefs on two islands the first day and to check three different reefs on another island (the island in which we stayed overnight) the second day.  We ended up just going straight to the last island and docking the boat.  We dumped our stuff at the hostel and took a walking tour of the island.  The island was quite small.  Here is a map of the original itinerary.  We stayed on Barrang Lompo.

The rain did let up and the dive team went and checked the reefs around Barrang Lompo.  A few of us swam out to a reef close by and did some snorkeling there.  I saw some neat things, but nothing like I was going to see the following day.

We stayed at a hostel with the YKL reps, the master divers, and the student divers.  Although I had not stayed at such a place before, it reminded me of college and we had a great time after dinner in the evening.  Someone brought along a guitar and everyone was signing songs (similar to what we would do around a campfire minus the campfire) and teaching cultural dances.  Even though only a few people knew English, it was amazing how we were able to communicate with everyone.  Actually, some of the students knew it quite well.  This was a really fun night!

Accommodation (with Nitu from India)

Of course, when we weren't walking around the island, having dinner, or singing songs, I took the opportunity to walk back out to the dock and just sit there and enjoy the beauty.  I haven't talked about culture and/or religion too much in my blogs and will likely weave that into some of them in the future.  Here is a short video of my surroundings while sitting on the dock.  The "singing" you hear in the background is the "call for prayer" as the island we stayed on was primarily Muslim.  They have this call five times per day in which they go to the mosque and pray.

The next day, we got up, had breakfast, and took off!  It turned out to be an absolutely PERFECT DAY!!!  The sun was out, it was hot, and I was on a boat in the ocean.  We stopped at several reef check locations throughout the day at the remaining two islands.  They had dive teams that took turns doing the checks.  During that time, the rest of us could swim, snorkel, or relax on the boat.  At different times they either had music playing on the speakers, or were playing guitar and singing.  I've never snorkeled so much in one day in my entire life!  The first stop, I probably went for an hour and a half, the same at the next stop.  I saw so many different colors of coral and fish that I hadn't seen at other snorkeling trips/excursions in other parts of the world.  Blues, greens, pinks, purples, yellows and almost any other color you can think of - felt like I was on the Discovery Channel!

At the final stop of the day, I decided to give SCUBA a try and loved it!  Thanks to the help of my friend, Tom, and one of the YKL people, Irham, I was successful.  Sorry in that I don't have any pics of me snorkeling/scubaing, but I'm sure the rest of my team does and I'm looking forward to seeing those pictures!

Part of the dive team after our return.

What a great group of people and a great organization!!!  Thank you for inviting us on this most amazing trip!  I know I definitely learned a lot about the mission and learned many cultural things.  I hope the students enjoyed having us along and got some good laughs out of some things!

End of Work Week 2

After identifying which items are the highest priority on Monday, we were able to make some good progress researching potential options and solutions for our client.  I do feel bad we are not able to help out with all of our recommendations, but that would take a year or more and we only have the four weeks.  The cool thing is that when we are doing the research and learning about tools, I'm learning too - as some of these things I have not used before myself.

The people in our office are very nice and very friendly.  I'm very impressed at their attempts to speak English and as I stated before, it is WAY better than my Indonesian, but I am trying.

Last week on either Thursday or Friday we heard a bunch of drumming, etc. in the morning while we were trying to work.  They told us that it was the Government Band practicing.  This week, we heard the same thing on Thursday, so I asked to go and see them.  Here is a short video for you to listen and watch!

It was fun listening to them and we got a few pictures with them also.   Vivek, a member of our larger 10-person team, came with us to the office on Thursday to see if he had any skills that could help us or any ideas that we hadn't thought of.  It was nice to run through all of our observations and summarize for him as well as to bounce ideas around.

Jess, Marcelo, and Vivek with band

Then, Thursday after work, we had a team meeting for about two hours.  We went around the room and explained what each of our projects were about, challenges, solutions, etc.  This was done because we have a lot of skills on our team and when we were assigned to teams, some of the scopes of work were vague and we want to make sure we are using our "resources" in the best way possible.  This sharing of thoughts, ideas, and projects was a good thing to do and it was good to get input from other teams and give them some of my knowledge too.

I can't believe we are already at the end of week two.  It seems that time is flying by.