Its very easy to sleep during the day in Jakarta. Most people seem to do it, the librarian at the UN section of the National Library who is looking for a journal for me has just now apologised because she hasn't found the book yet and she is going off to have her after lunch nap!
The last week I have been living almost on a nocturnal basis. Its quite strange, but once in the rythym is kind of addictive somehow. My body clock now operates pretty well on the following hours +/- an hour or so:
0900 hrs - 1100 hrs: Wake up, Mandy, cooked b/fast, Internet / meetings.
1500 hrs - 1700 hrs: Return to Memories Hotel, Mandy, sleep, maybe read.
1900 hrs - 2000 hrs: Wake up, Mandy, cooked dinner, beers.
0200 hrs - 0400 hrs: Farewells, Makanan time with the Memories Hotel 'family', Mandy, sleep.
Repeat.
The hard part about this schedule is that a large portion of the waking hours are not standard business hours. In fact for a large portion of the waking hours there is not a lot to do other than sit, talk, drink beer, eat peanuts or maybe go dancing. Networking is not a huge option because lets face it, not many people want to talk about their work at 2am in the morning!
I have found therefore that the time between 1000 hrs and 1500 hrs is critical. I must get something done or else I feel like I'm stagnating. This is a very Bule way of looking at the world it seems, which is a consistent theme for white people no matter where they are in the world. We seem to be always looking for something.
It took me a week to work that out. Therefore I'm happy to report that i've had some good meetings this week. Ririn from PwC Jakarta was extremeley helpful and put me onto two organisations that she deals with in her CSR role - Mitra Dhu'afa and the Indonesia Solar Lending Program run by Khaula Foundation.
Mitra Dhu'afa are a Grameen supported Micro-finance initiative that is assisting poor women in Jakarta. They are working with PwC to develop a PwC Village in Jakarta for the women to build their enterprises and learn about financial literacy and how to be better entreprenuers.
Indonesia Solar Lending Program is attempting to achieve a very similar outcome as the Mercy Corp, Moris Rasik and Good Returns Energy 4 All Project that I will be working on in Timor Leste. They install small Solar Home Systems into rural villages in Indonesia. They are currently implementing a pilot program in Kalimantan.
Links to all these organisations and more have now been added to the side-bar.
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