It's been two months since I started working, and a whopping 4 months since I'm back in Indonesia. And this is what I've learnt so far.
1. Good luck with your secrets!
I don't have too many secrets. If you ask me things, I will let you know. Many times, even in circumstances when I'm not that close to you. And there are some things that are personal to a lot of people, yet it doesn't feel that way to me. I have learnt it the hard way that being too open will bring me some miseries. Leaving some mysteries for others to solve will keep me safe, and keeping some comments to myself will keep relationships civil. I like trusting people with my stories, but stories travel, especially in Indonesia, just like how viruses spread quicker in the equator region. We can blame the humidity in both cases. I'm starting to understand more about working life. In college, your friends won't really tell on you to your professors and we all felt like friends. In the office, friends take a different form as the work environment introduces you to your "colleagues" instead. Even in social events, those that seem nice and harmless, I learn to put some guards up, to watch my mouth, and know my boundaries. Just like what they say in the Avengers, "their secrets have secrets".
2. Extreme level of patience
Even in companies with big names and a reputation to hold, many times, here in Indonesia, we cannot expect professionalism. Once I went to a internationally renown bank, and I had such a terrible service. Many of customer service personnel moved slowly even for simple mundane things like opening a bank account and getting your card; it was so ridiculous. I was looking around for a laboratory that could do some water testing. I was so frustrated with a particular company because I was bounced around to about 3 people. Three of them said that they will send me a price quote and none of them did so. Finally, I got to a more responsible person that gave me the quote 3 days after my contact with her. By that time, of course, I had gotten a price quote from a different company. It makes me wonder if they were really serious in finding customers because I felt like I had to work hard to give THEM a business. My mom made a cabinet for my room. First, they said that it would be done in a week. It was not done until 4 weeks after that, and that was after calling them every 2-3 days or so. When the cabinet came, it was not exactly as it was first designed. On top of that, one of the drawer had the wrong key and therefore cannot be opened. So, my mom and I had to dig deep and scrape off whatever patience we had left to not pull our heads off. Bottom line is, don't be afraid to nag; in fact, nagging is an important survival skill here, and in all circumstances breath deeply.
3. Being nice is not enough
This is something I had heard in a seminar talk when I was in Cornell. The speaker was a social worker who had the chance to go to Aceh during the post-tsunami period and handled many cases of trauma. The one thing she kept on emphasizing was "being nice is not enough". What she had meant by that was you can have the best intention in life and have the dream of being useful by helping people out, and still you change not one thing. If you were unlucky, you can even make things worse! When I heard that, I disagreed. I thought that if I were compassionate enough, and I put my very best intentions, I'm so much more than half way there. There are so many smart people, experts, qualified workers, and yet without being passionate and compassionate, they will not last long.
Only here do I start to understand what that speaker meant. I didn't understand before that there is something called "bureaucracy", that cannot be handled with merely being nice. It takes much more than that to maneuver through it. It takes experience, expertise, and certain level of toughness that I have to learn over time. It needs certain planning, knowledge, and confidence to tackle. But most of all, this is what a friend commented about bureaucracy in the United Nations system, a place where you come in naively thinking that you are making a change in the world: you need prayer. Because it's a wall that you cannot break alone, and it can break your will before you break it.
This is something I had heard in a seminar talk when I was in Cornell. The speaker was a social worker who had the chance to go to Aceh during the post-tsunami period and handled many cases of trauma. The one thing she kept on emphasizing was "being nice is not enough". What she had meant by that was you can have the best intention in life and have the dream of being useful by helping people out, and still you change not one thing. If you were unlucky, you can even make things worse! When I heard that, I disagreed. I thought that if I were compassionate enough, and I put my very best intentions, I'm so much more than half way there. There are so many smart people, experts, qualified workers, and yet without being passionate and compassionate, they will not last long.
Only here do I start to understand what that speaker meant. I didn't understand before that there is something called "bureaucracy", that cannot be handled with merely being nice. It takes much more than that to maneuver through it. It takes experience, expertise, and certain level of toughness that I have to learn over time. It needs certain planning, knowledge, and confidence to tackle. But most of all, this is what a friend commented about bureaucracy in the United Nations system, a place where you come in naively thinking that you are making a change in the world: you need prayer. Because it's a wall that you cannot break alone, and it can break your will before you break it.
4. Being chipped
My friends were quite surprise when they know that all this time I've been away, I followed news on Indonesia. The serious ones, but also the hottest gossips about new artists or new scandals. I also know the new songs. Now that I'm here, I very rarely watch TV except for a few hours on the weekend. I no longer browse articles on Indonesia or watch documentaries about some social issues related to Indonesia. In short, I was more aware when I was away compared to when I'm here. The first week that I got back, outside a fruit store I saw a small girl, about 4 years old, scraping through durian skins trying to consume what's left. I thought that it's an injustice that I cannot simply let go. Now, I simply pass things like that as a norm. I complain more rather than trying to be part of the solution. My ideals are slowly being chipped away.
But, I know why this is happening. Have you ever thought, before you sleep at night, that tomorrow morning, I will wake up at 6, do some jogging, bathe, have a healthy breakfast, do some reading, and then go to the office? And for weeks, it never happened; not even once. You fail to do it the next morning, yet at night you think that tomorrow is the day you'll do it? Now, this is somewhat like that. In the US, it's pretty easy to feel passionate and thought that when I'm back I will do this and that, I will not succumb to bribing people, I will be involved in organizations, and so on and so forth. When the time finally comes and I'm already here, it's another story. Thinking is not hard, doing is because you feel how tiring things get, how emotionally draining they become, and how invisible your efforts are in the sea of apathy.
Those are 4 things I've learnt so far. I'm on a learning curve, I'm trying hard not to be too naive, not to be disappointed at others and at myself, but to strive forward in optimism. Things have gotten pretty interesting these past 2 months or so both at work and in my personal life :) Things are going to get even more exciting as I build up on my teaspoon of confidence and learn more everyday.
That's it for now, me signing off from the corner sofa of Coffee Bean shop somewhere in the margin of Jakarta.
My friends were quite surprise when they know that all this time I've been away, I followed news on Indonesia. The serious ones, but also the hottest gossips about new artists or new scandals. I also know the new songs. Now that I'm here, I very rarely watch TV except for a few hours on the weekend. I no longer browse articles on Indonesia or watch documentaries about some social issues related to Indonesia. In short, I was more aware when I was away compared to when I'm here. The first week that I got back, outside a fruit store I saw a small girl, about 4 years old, scraping through durian skins trying to consume what's left. I thought that it's an injustice that I cannot simply let go. Now, I simply pass things like that as a norm. I complain more rather than trying to be part of the solution. My ideals are slowly being chipped away.
But, I know why this is happening. Have you ever thought, before you sleep at night, that tomorrow morning, I will wake up at 6, do some jogging, bathe, have a healthy breakfast, do some reading, and then go to the office? And for weeks, it never happened; not even once. You fail to do it the next morning, yet at night you think that tomorrow is the day you'll do it? Now, this is somewhat like that. In the US, it's pretty easy to feel passionate and thought that when I'm back I will do this and that, I will not succumb to bribing people, I will be involved in organizations, and so on and so forth. When the time finally comes and I'm already here, it's another story. Thinking is not hard, doing is because you feel how tiring things get, how emotionally draining they become, and how invisible your efforts are in the sea of apathy.
Those are 4 things I've learnt so far. I'm on a learning curve, I'm trying hard not to be too naive, not to be disappointed at others and at myself, but to strive forward in optimism. Things have gotten pretty interesting these past 2 months or so both at work and in my personal life :) Things are going to get even more exciting as I build up on my teaspoon of confidence and learn more everyday.
That's it for now, me signing off from the corner sofa of Coffee Bean shop somewhere in the margin of Jakarta.
1 comment:
I enjoyed reading it :) I learned so much thhings from your stories too :)
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