Well, here it is at last. Another blog post from the trip, this time being written offline from the six-hour train journey from Medan for later uploading. Rather a lot to catch up on since previous posting from Singapore.
We all made it from Singapore to Jakarta fine last Saturday,
meeting up with more colleagues on arrival, and the main event of our first
stop in Jakarta was to have a celebratory dinner with everyone from the office
on Saturday evening. Our staff did an excellent job of organising the event,
and we had the hotel ballroom booked out and decorated, along with traditional
dancers, two members of staff dressed in traditional costume doing MC’ing,
speeches before dinner, and lots of photos (the least said about the 360
video/photos of me and a couple of colleagues now doing the rounds on Tiktok
the better). I was called on stage to hand out prizes for the logo competition
(!) after dinner and then, having thought I’d dodged them, to make a speech of
my own.
Up and out on Sunday to fly to East Kalimantan and an
opportunity for the other directors to visit our regional office there before
the long journey on Monday by a combination of road and sea to the very eastern
tip of East Kalimantan where huge changes had taken place since my last visit
which was pre pandemic. Because of this, we were catching up with official
openings of new facilities, all operational at this stage, as clubhouse remains
a building site for now. Not my turn to do ribbon cutting, but it was nice to
see my gold pen signature turned into permanent chiselling at our regional
office.
More celebratory parties and more speeches on our last night
(in hastily constructed marquee due to lack of clubhouse), before our return
trip to Jakarta with early start to get to boat (thankfully millpond-like),
followed by car and plane – with car journey running well enough to time that
we were able to take our first flight option. Total door-to-door still around
12 hours, so we sensibly decided against trying to wedge in any time in the
office and decamped straight to the hotel and after a brief rest gathered for
dinner in their teppanyaki restaurant, sadly minus P who wasn’t feeling too
good.
And so to the office on Friday morning for meetings and
presentations, still without P, left to recuperate in the hotel, and gradually
during the day some members of the group peeled off for their respective onward
journeys, some to KL and some for the return trip to London. L and I saw it
through to the end of the day and headed out to our favourite Jakarta Indian
restaurant with R, before the journey to Medan on Saturday morning, where we
settled in in time for watching the Coronation. Understandably, it was only L
and I who were particularly bothered about it, and R & G went out in Medan
for dinner whilst L & I ordered in some room service whilst we watched
London in the rain.
And that brings us pretty much up to date. Up and away this
morning to get the 8am train. Station only a few minutes from the hotel, but
the powers that be decided to make it briefly interesting by closing most of
the roads around the station, so making for a fairly mega taxi detour, but we
still made it with plenty of time. Passed the time on the train by finishing
book four of the trip (already mentioned two in previous post, but also read
Richard Osman book 2 and a Harlan Coben), and finally catching up on some
emails.
Throughout this update, it’s all been a bit factual hasn’t
it. I haven’t mentioned that I’ve spoken to Nicky every day. I haven’t
mentioned that being away doesn’t get any easier. I haven’t mentioned that I
miss her hideously, so much so that I don’t know what to do about it at times.
She sent me a link to a special song, and I listened to it this morning in the
hotel whilst I was packing. I think I’m going to stop now, and go and listen to
it again.