Working in the Team Room with Interpreter & Lovely Dinner at New Dinar

March 29, 2012 Ruth Dela Cruz

A blog series about my in-country assignment to Makassar for IBM Corporate Service Corp.
Follow along https://www-146.ibm.com/corporateservicecorps/

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I thought we would finally get the chance to visit the hospital again but no, we were not allowed to go out of the hotel because of the same reason. Some of my teammates got to visit and meet with their clients. For Cheryl (USA) and I, we had to stay in the hotel and work on our presentations.

Our interpreter got a call from the hospital and advised that the director will send a memo to the hospital’s “executive” team to meet with us tomorrow morning. We spent the day working on our decks and we are so glad that our interpreter, Lia is so nice to help us with our deck’s translation to Bahasa Indonesia. What is amazing about her is that she just did not translate the texts but also created a new Powerpoint presentation complete with animation. I should be ashamed of the presentation that I did – especially that I claimed that I can make fireworks with it.

I, Cheryl and Lia in our Team Room

(we got another room in the hotel to serve as our common room)

See how many Powerpoint presentations opened in my ThinkPad

To know how my day went yesterday, click Read More..

We are so lucky to be working with Lia. We felt that she knows how to connect with our clients (who are mostly women) and we thought it is such a good thing. She said that she loves working with people from different countries because she is learning – and little did she know is that I am learning from her too. She is so passionate about her country and education. She reads a lot of books and she is even planning to take another course (Accountancy). She is planning to take doctorate and open a book cafe where she can share her book collection. Now, there is a reason to come back to Makassar and visit her place. What is even sweeter was when she sent a message last week, advising us to stay in the hotel for our safety.

We had lunch at.. (you guessed it right, Pizza Hut!). It was actually funny that on our way to the mall, we heard a car honking, and it was actually the Hospital Director on her way to another hotel for conference! Talk about Law of Attraction (as Lia said).

Back to Pizza Hut, Cheryl and I are addicted about the salad! Lia said that Pizza Hut is not a usual dining place for Indonesians. We thought she was upset that we took her to the place, but we are glad that they have something for her – rice meals!

Coffee with Jelly

I miss having cold coffee!

Tuna Melt Pizza

The lunch meals specials run from 11AM to 2PM, we got there at 1:45PM and we almost missed the free salad. Glad that Lia was there to explain what we wanted.

Back to the hotel and team room, we worked on presentations again. Wondering how our team room looks like? Here’s a quick tour..

Yeah, we got a mini-ref!

The boys usually have Bintang – a local beer.

But I think they had bought and finished all the bottles in the supermarket..

That Bear Brand milk drink reminds me of my childhood.

Tom (USA) got Starbucks and that Carnation milk!

I wonder if anyone of us ever used this safety box?

Rolls of paper we used for team meetings and brainstorming activities

Serated Knife (?!)

There’s 10 of us and we really need it!

The room was actually first assigned to me. When I got my key and opened the door, I got my camera ready to take a pic of my room – but I was surprised that there is no bed in the room! I asked the housekeeping if it is normal for rooms to not have beds (?), but then we found out that that room would be our team room. So, that’s the story of the team room.

Taken during one of the team meetings

Pic taken by Sabine (Austria)

Later in the afternoon, we had our team meeting (again) and Javier (Mexico) received a dinner invitation from Dyan (?) – one of the nice girls from the Coral Reef Team we were with last weekend – and most of the team joined. We went to this place called New Dinar.

Choose a fish or seafood and they will cook it.

Reminds me of the place we call Dampa in the Philippines.

They say you use the bowl to wash your hands, but we want to drink it. 😉

Who were present at dinner?

I just took one picture of the dish because everyone was so hungry and excited to try the food

Javier (Mexico) is really amazing and amusing!

He asked Ulel (Coral Reef Boy) to teach him how to eat with hands.

You can see, he is a fast learner.

Beautiful interior with Japanese style of dining

Looks like a hotel reception area

Indoor “sort-of” garden

After dinner, we played jokes and tricks – and I did my favorite – the broken thumb trick. Nitu (India) was actually very surprised, but she learned the trick quickly. It was funny when we saw a group of waitresses doing the broken thumb trick!

It was a good and productive day. The others went to Karaoke but I decided to go back to the hotel. Now, time for team picture.