Officespace Indonesia

This is my third day at the office, and things are finally settling down a bit. I moved from the hotel to the office Monday morning, but I cannot spend so much time in one place (morning, day, and night in the same building is too much!) so I found a low-cost guest house nearby with a nice room/fan/shower so I can have some of my own space.

The office is a really nice place, set up in a small house on a quiet street. There is an air-conditioned computer room, a meeting room where everyone hangs out (but don’t think board room – the table is about a foot off the ground, so everyone sits on mats around the table), a kitchen, guest room, living room, and storage room for equipment. Team members arrive at around 8 or 9 am, have coffee, and then start working – but work is mixed with talk and play and fun all day long. The coffee in Indonesia deserves a sentence or two. It is excellent coffee (and super-cheap – about $2/lb) and people mix the grounds with hot water and sugar and drink. A bit odd at first to have coffee grounds in the bottom of my cup, but the taste is excellent so I don’t complain.

Power goes out here on a regular basis, every day or two. The office owns a generator so it is not a problem for us, but it seems bad that such a big city (I think Pontianak is around 600,000 people) has constant problems with supplying electricity to its residents. The blackouts have impeded my visa process – tomorrow I must return to the immigration office for a third time because without power the office couldn’t print my documents yesterday.

We also found out yesterday that Lisa will not be coming to Indonesia this week – she was due to arrive on Thursday, but do to time and cost restraints she decided not to make the trip. So I’m flying solo, which should be okay but the language barrier makes things a bit difficult. Trying to explain the concept of ecosystem services is difficult enough to do in English!

Gotta go pack my stuff for the move to the guest house…