June 1996 - Live from Indonesia

SWIMMING in Indonesia!

The work that Kim is involved in with the APDN is in providing and transferring intellectual property and training in relation to an international benchmarking project in Indonesia. The APDN is working in cooperation with an organisation in Indonesia called the Yayasan Palapa Nusantara (YPN) - the Archipelago Palapa Institute (Palapa being a plant of historical significance in relation to uniting the archipelago - we have heard about 3 different stories as to why - the Indonesian satellite is called Palapa). Pak Hidayat is the Indonesian coordinator for implementation of the benchmarking project. Hidayat's credentials extend to his being an international adviser on APEC and, therefore, lends some kudos to the project. He has extensive networks which as Kim has discovered are essential ingredients for doing business in Indonesia.

The aim of the benchmarking project is to strengthen the international competitiveness of Indonesia's Corporate and Business sectors in the global environment, through benchmarking inhouse training in each of the participating organisations. This project marks the opportunity to make a difference in large corporations, and ultimately their small enterprise suppliers and distributors, in anticipation of the competitive pressures arising from AFTA in 2003, and APEC in 2010-2020.

In the initial stages of the project APN will develop and document the processes of benchmarking in the 10 largest Indonesian corporations - 5 private and 5 State owned business enterprises. These corporations include Pertamina, the state owned oil monopoly; Indocement, cement manufacture; Banking and Finance Industry corporations and Matahari, a department store chain. These corporations will be involved in a cascade effect so that ultimately, 750 small enterprises and co-operatives, 200 medium enterprises and 50 large scale enterprises in the private corporate sector and state owned enterprises will be involved over the life of the project (30 months)

After a crash course on benchmarking, Kim found herself presenting a seminar on Corporate Self Assessment before an audience of some 70 people from the Matahari Group (a retailing giant in Indonesia - the equivalent of Grace Brothers perhaps). The seminar went quite well, even if it was slow (for Kim) in that everything had to be translated into Bahasa (Indonesian).

Working here certainly has its challenges (read frustrations) though. By way of example, Kim has been trying to set up a Steering committee comprising two people - the chairperson and vice chairperson of each benchmarking team - for each of the 10 participating corporations on the Benchmarking project. The day after Kim had sent out the agenda and details she was advised that the venue had changed from the head office of Pertamina (the state oil monopoly) to the national training complex (whose building the Benchmarking Secretariat and Kim's office are in). Kim then set about changing the details of the venue and resending the changes by fax to each of the corporations. No sooner had she done that than she was informed that not only the venue, but the day and the time had now been changed. So she had to redraft and refax to each of the corporations and then telephone each of them to confirm the details (and probably restore some confidence)! Mind you, Kim thinks this is probably her western way of thinking as no one else seemed very perturbed (all par for the course perhaps). She would have preferred the previous time and was sure the other participants would too given that participants had to come from all parts of Jakarta (and a couple from Sumatra) and with the way the traffic is in Jakarta, it's quite likely that they would have had to leave by 5 am to attend the meeting. The picture is complicated by the fact that in many parts of Jakarta there is a 3 in 1 rule (i.e. there must be at least 3 people in the vehicle) between 6.30am and 10.00am. Teenage boys line the roads at this time and are picked up by drivers wishing to have the requisite number to allow transport in the most direct route. These boys are paid 1000 rupiah each (around 1800 to the AUS dollar at the moment). This by way of an aside is to let you know a little of the problems that negotiating Jakarta's traffic entails. One of the first words Kim learnt here was ``matchet'' (meaning traffic jam - unsure of spelling, as it doesn't appear in our dictionary!) and Kim regularly finds herself in one. The Indonesian partner of the benchmarking project initially picked Kim up and brought her home in a van (like a Transit van) but given that our hotel is in the ``3 in 1 rule'' area, this was proving difficult. So the organisation have awarded Kim with taxi fare money for the mornings and is driven back in the van in the afternoon. Even this has its variabilities, the driver is often late, and the van has broken down twice on which occasions she's had to go by taxi anyway!

Anyway, to return, Kim can now thankfully report that the first steering committee meeting went ahead successfully last week. A second Steering Committee meeting went ahead last Friday. The only change here was one change of venue!

Kim is still following up on a few of the corporations involved to get the names of their Benchmarking team to her. It is becoming of paramount importance as the APDN and the YPN will be conducting national internal benchmarking training for each of the corporations involved i.e. 100 people next week (3-7 June 1996) at the Jakarta Convention Centre. This is an impressive venue and has been well used for the likes of UN meetings etc. Given that this is a national Benchmarking project the media will be in attendance to take photos etc.

In the meantime, what is Rus doing?

After spending less than two weeks in Jakarta, Rus took off to Japan, where he had prearranged work commitments. The first was the Tsukuba High Energy Physics Research Facility, just out of Tokyo, helping an Australian professor get her data back to Australia from her experiments there. This involved many long days and nights in front of a computer getting the data onto tape and checking every time that the data could be reread. But it was certainly an interesting experience, as there is nothing like this sort of facility in Australia, where the experimental equipment is measured in kilometres.

The second stop was to visit Russell's Uncle and Aunt, Derek and Joan and 2 kids Geraldine and Grace, at Takarazuka (Osaka area). He had not seen his uncle for 18 years, and this was the first time for meeting the rest of the family. He was wined, dined and taken to traditional Japanese baths by them at a local hotel. Derek also took Rus on a tour to Kobe, and kept him entertained with earthquake stories. Takarazuka, where Derek and his family live, is about 18km from the centre of Kobe, and lies on the same fault line that slipped in 1995.

Russell's third stop in Japan was his original reason for going, which was to do a presentation on his work at a major international conference on Artificial Life. This was held at Nara, an ancient capital city of Japan that is now overrun by deer (these are the cute ``Bambi'' style deer with spots and all!). Kim has been pestering Russell for a definitive explanation on what Artificial Life is all about (mostly so as to be able to explain it to others!), but given that noone in the field can really agree about what it is, this has proved difficult to do. As best as he can put it, Rus has explainedthat the concept is about whether we humans can create new sorts of living organisms that may be completely different from the sort of life we know from biology. Most people think that computer programs are the best bet for this, and computer programs have been written that reproduce and evolve within the memory of the computer. Some people even argue that computer viruses are an example of artificial life. Some people consider that physical life is what is important, and so are working on novel forms of robotics. Others, particularly those interested in how life arose in the first place, are trying to mix chemicals together in such a way as bacterium might appear in the test tube. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), we are a long way from that possibility.

Visiting the Thousand Islands

On the way back from the island, we ended up rescuing a boat in distress. One of the propellers had fallen off their boat so we left the crew of that boat to come back to Jakarta with the one remaining propeller and we took about 9 passengers from the other boat on board. And then it was back to reality. Back to the smog and traffic of Jakarta.

Indonesian Revenge

The Classic Inn

Change of Identity

The Climate

Greg's Visit

High Technology