Day By Day At Duty Station : How to enjoy the routine days

DAY BY DAY AT DUTY STATION: how to enjoy the routine days
January 16, 2007.
Finally, I and my supervisor met governor of West Papuaafter a long process of lobbing. I thought, the governor would meet us for some minutes. However the meeting took almost 2 hours.
At the first time, we only wanted to meet Deputy of Governor after getting deal with his assistant. However, the deputy facilitated us to meet the governor. When the governor knew my supervisor can speak Dutch, he welcomed to speak the same language. I was surprised when the governor spoke Dutch fluently. We used bahasa Indonesia, Dutch and English to talk about anything in the meeting, especially existence of the program in Papua Barat to support government and civil society in capacity building and fund for developing the province.
Everything becomes easy after the meeting. The different situation I got before. As I knew that is the riel situation in my lovely country, especially in eastern Indonesia. Paternalistic system is still very strong that make everything has to pass by boss first. If the boss has been okay, anything will be okay too.
Actually I am getting stress here because of slow process of the program implementation. Besides negative influence of the Bug to the head of Bappeda, I saw the others also don’t have initiatives to do something better. They only wait for commands from their boss. It seems they have been satisfied on their position as government officers. Some of them even play badminton or make gossips only on the office hours. They don’t have official activities to do. On upper level, they are always busy with travel to somewhere, especially to Jakarta. They spent most of the time to work at out site.
January 26 – February 5, 2007.
I got annual leave for 10 days. Actually I only have 6 work days for that. But I took them close to weekend days so I took 10 days totally. I left Manokwari at the afternoon on January 25 used Batavia Air. When I arrived in Jakarta, I decided to stay one night at hotel to enjoy myself with pleasure. I stayed at Twin Plaza Hotel.
I did not do something special in Jakarta. I only took care moving and my business (Warung Ceker) with my partner. We spent time together sometimes in Starbuck or JCO with serious discussion about business or only talked gossips. I also did shopping and went to premiere movie at Senayan City to refresh and eliminate work stress that I got in Manokwari. I have been being 4 days in Jakarta when flood disaster hit the city. Fortunately I have already moved to a new house to make my staff are safe from the flood. However I could not be back to Manokwari on February 4 as I planned because of no flight on the date and the day after that. The options were February 2 or 6. I decided to take 6 February for flying back to Manokwari. I called Jayapura office to tell the situation. The officer told me she will advance my annual leave to cover my 2 days leave in advance. To anticipate problem on road from home to the airport, I decided to stay one night at a hotel nearby the airport. After got information form some hotels, I decided to stay in Ibis Slipi where I could take exercise, sauna and whir pool in Santika Hotel.
I am leaving Jakarta on February 6 in light rain in the morning. I arrived in Manokwari around 4pm because of flight delaying in Makassar 2 times since one of the airplane wheels have problem. I was afraid with the condition. However, I arrived in Manokwari finally. No one picked me up so I took an airport taxi to drop me at home. When I arrived at home, I only met the house lord’s daughter who told me her mom and dad went to pick me up at the airport. Her parent came back 30 minutes later. They told me their route to the airport has been blocked by carnivals to celebrate the first Injil enlightenment in Papua which was started at island of Mansinam (a small island lies in front of town of Manokwari).
February 18, 2007.
I went to the Petrus Amban church like usual. I always try to go to the church every Sunday. I don’t know why I am more religious than before. When I was in Jakarta I only visit church sometimes if I remembered to do or I wanted to request or prayed for something special.
Anyway, I spent almost 2 hours in the church today because of many singer groups donated their voice of honor to God. I counted 7 singer groups sung variety of songs. I was surprised with their gold voice. I thought some of them will be able to become stars for Indonesian Idol if they want to go into the selection. I also thought about organized them with other gold voices in eastern Indonesiato perform them to national to international stages. The first I thought was starting by eastern region selection to select them by some professional agencies. Finally I knew those are imagination only. They are not realistic to apply because of facility limitations.
Well, that is another side of my lovely country. There is a big gab between western and eastern. Western part of the country has many well facilities than eastern, even for public use. Western always has better than eastern. More eastern is worst, even though the central government always state to speed up development in eastern I knew those are only statement without riel action until now. On the other side the officers in the eastern are more corrupt. They spent a lot of development fund to pleasure their self in western, especially big cities in Java or Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Europe or America.