Leisure @ Work

Working for a research company, in my case is working for a qualitative team in a research company comes with two sides of a story. Knowledge and Fun



I can say that time is flexible, I mean really flexible. One day we could go home on time with a big grin on our face, the other day we go home like nearly pass midnite, yawning every five seconds and sleepy eyes not too mention if the project lasts for another 3 or couple of days more we have to be at the office first thing in the morning and prepare everything (read: FGD / IDI) like you've had a "sleep like a baby" sleep a night before. Another day we would have a project that requires us to travel to places from the city to the most rural areas. Most of the time we also go to places which are also tourists destination (in this case working days in the other part of Indonesia usually becomes oh so beautiful)



I left my hubby and daughter quite often especially if we got a bit popular among our clients. I do feel sad that I have to leave them but most of the time I am eager to go as I could go back with a lot of stories and tons of plans to take Cica and hubby there.



During a normal FGD/ IDI (normal means that we do the project in Jakarta and in our office or somewhere in Jakarta) you usually find a lot of interesting things mostly about your respondents who come from various social classes and your clients.



From the respondents I usually get things like finding out their hopes, observe the way they see and perceive things and the way they see life, each can be a lot different, then out of not so normal projects (means out of town) you will find a lot more interesting things, wider diversity and perceptions either for daily things or for life which most of the times give me a slight nudge to the heart. It gives you a chance to look at yourself and to see how you perceive your life. Lessons for life. From the clients, apart from absorbing some intelligence thoughts you can also find and in my acse ask more about their products and services. Which most of the times help me decide which to buy and not to buy (I am a customer too u know), hence another lessons for life.



The fun bits come from travelling either in and out of the city. Well okay not so much in the city (I lied) apart that you have to experience hopping from one place to another around Jakarta. It usually feels like I give myself voluntarily to taste Jakarta's traffic where most people try to run away from it. What can I say, sometimes we have to go from one end to the other end like from BSD straight to somewhere in Kelapa Gading. Yes don't imagine that, you'd get stress out. There are a lot of things you can do in the office car (if you are successfully booked one or in a taxi if luck was not on your side at that moment) like munching on some "gorengan" (or other things) or sleeping like crazy. But that's about it.



The most glorious feeling comes if you (or most of the time is your Project Director or your Associate Director) aced an out of town project, all of a sudden everybody in the team are willing to travel. So far I feel like I am lucky.



Apart that work is work we always try to squeeze in sometimes in between to do a little exploring. We often forget how tired we are, in attempt to find out about the place especially if we never popped over to the place.



I have been to many places around Indonesia because of my work.

I was stranded in Palembang's scary train station (where thugs were all over the place), tried to catch the only train that goes from Lubuk Linggau to Prabumulih. Slept through my next stop and got carried over to the next stop and tried to catch a travel back to Prabumulih

I got to see Gorontalo in Ramadhan which means no food stall open during daytime and got lucky because one of the respondent brought us some Binde Biluhuta soup, that tasted sooo good I finished one whole tin container.

I went to Padang and accidentaly experienced one of the biggest earth quake in my life that required me to run off to the runway and pray like I never pray before in my whole life.

I went to Nganjuk where the nicest hotel felt like a dorm.

We went overland from Semarang to Purwokerto to Yogyakarta then flied off to Surabaya then continued our journey to Malang overland.

We have stayed in Semarang for nearly a month cummulatively until the Novotel staffs recognize our face as if we were the VIP customers. (or maybe because we always took some Dilmah tea back to our room hihihihi)



I went to a lot of places and I love it even if it means that before we got a chance to had that squeezed time I had to run two or three groups which usually include talking to people for 2.5 hours straight each FGD (so please multiply that 3 hours by 2 or 3)



the couple of last projects were even finer. We got a chance to go to the magnificent Borobudur and Prambanan (in fact a couple of times a day and stayed there like you were one of the ticketing officer and the next day felt like you were the guard of the statues) (The last time I was there for a project which was a week ago, I lost the appetite to take pictures as we already took tons of them during our earlier project).



We also got a chance to taste Bali for a week, chasing around tourists like we were their fans. The next day we sat around in Discovery mall to chase another tourists (Poor tourists, they must have thought that we were lunatic Indonesian girls). I got a chance to test my bike riding skills after five years not riding a bike (as I proudly confessed that I am the passenger now) slithering Kuta narrow streets (Too exagerating) okay Kuta Streets like a pro with Matya or Jule on the back. Feeding our eyes with beautiful merchandises beautifully displayed on stores which we could only passed (as the work hasn't yet finished) and starred at.





I am looking forward for the next out of town projects.




You could see my work travel photos in my facebook. I would post some here if I had time