William

It was 9 am when I was informed by the Product Manager that he will have another meeting with our Big Boss, and my presence is requested. 

I won’t say I am dread to see my Boss. Fact is, no one inform me anything and you have absolutely no idea what the agenda of the meeting is. If you are not used to pressure, you will crack. Yet if you look from my Boss’s perspective, it will keep his lieutenants on their toes.

Do Your Work. Present To Me Anytime. Refine Any Flaw If Any. Resign If You Still Don’t Get It!

The entire progress is actually, quite reasonable. But that doesn’t stop your balls from shrinking!So we sat in the conference room, waiting for him. I can almost hear the clock ticking.. Basically, I was told the very same thing as what he had informed me via a informal meeting we had a month ago. He is going to put me in charge of Training Department. He need a system in place. He need more trainers to train and he wants me to coordinate.

Deja vu.. the whole entire meeting / conversation was exactly the same thing he told me a month ago. Am I not doing my job? Is this a reminder? Despite my mind is running wild but I cannot feel the pressure. I would love to sweat, cos it makes me feel more human, if not, normal.  But I can’t.

Not because I have swelling balls. It is the freaking Air Con which was blowing full-strength @ 16.

So I took it quite well. Especially when he kept saying “William, so no problem ah? No problem, you know what I want.” So after 10 mins of meeting, I have to rush a system up and do presentation to him in a week time. 

The thing is.. Did I just get promoted, to the same position again?  

It has been 2 months (26th May – 26th July) since I started my job here, working as a Training Manager for a fast-expanding Apple Premium Reseller store (Infinite Asia). Work so far is stressful, but I like it this way.

I had moved up to be the Head of Training Department. To my opinion, they are the same. Since I am already the Manager, being the HOD is just another term. It means work increment, not monetary. I felt bad to demand for higher salary because a lot are well provided for. My apartment will be the first on my gratitude list.Take note that I used the word: “Well Provided For”.

My Boss is a thrifty person. Not stingy, but thrifty. Which means he only spend on things that are necessary. The Office may not be in the prime area, and may not be in the best condition. However, whatever you need are all inside. Tables, Chairs, Internet, Maids, Conference Room, Guards, Parking.. etc.

If you think that he own only a small firm and therefore he do not require a posh building in a city area, you are very much mistaken. Just because his HQ Office is located in a relatively old building, does not truly reflect the scale of his businesses.
Many friends had asked me about living here. Is the condition good? Any night life?

Ah, night life here is very happening. If you can stand going out to clubs and go clubbing all the way to 3-4am in the morning, you can do so. Night life is everyday. However, if not necessary, I rather stay away for two obvious reasons:

1. I don’t drink. In fact, I can’t drink. I enjoy going to KTV to sing. However if more than 2 glasses (even with 90% orange juice) goes into my blood veins, I will really go coma.

2. My work starts at 8:30am. If you know what I mean. I stayed in Jakarta. Traffic Jams like hell. Which means I have to leave home around 7 to 7:15 am.

The lifestyle here is indeed colorful. However, entertainment remains a luxury for people who are positioned above middle class. Why do I say so?

Take watching movie for example. A ticket here can easily cost you 50 000 rp (About 7.5 Sing dollars). Premium class ticket cost 100 000 rp (S$14). Velvet class is 250 000 rp (S$38)for two persons (its a bed, so it must be a pair of ticket).

Quite okay? That’s because you are earning S$1600 and above, you dick-head! The standard wage here (Indonesia-Jakarta) is only 1 Million rp (S$150). If a sales person do well, he may be smiling when he get near 3 millions rp (S$450)a month. A personal driver only earn 1.5 millions rp (S$230) a month.

A night @ KTV will cost you about 1.3 millions rp per pax. A steamboat dinner at a Posh mall will cost you 400 000 rp for two pax. And a decent dinner at a 3 stars coffee lounge is about 120 000 rp min.

A taxi ride can cost you 25 000 rp and a trip to Airport can cost you easily 100 000 rp. Airport Tax is another 100 000 rp, regardless if you are local, native or anything. And if you are Indonesian, you have to pay another 1 million rp to the government for flying overseas.

Laptops here can easily fetch 10 millions rp. And not necessay the latest model. You may be surprised to see that Ebay has the latest and cheaper computers to offer, than most electronics retail stores here.

So luxury items and spendings, are not for the middle class or below, which unfortunately is the 80% of the total population here.

Street children are almost everywhere. Government is doing nothing to help. So much had been said during election but nothing had been done. Government schools are found guilty of increasing school fees / imposing illegal fees on students. They have problem understanding that “Education is THE answer to Poverty”.

It is not really a week, just Monday and Tuesday, nevertheless, the experience is good enough to last me a life time.

It is not as big as Maris Stella. This I agreed. However, it is still very tiring. Everyone did their part, and hope we absorbed this lesson, move on and be more prepared the next time.

We are glad to have the Apple Education Team (Engineers) to conduct the training. I was so sick. Lost my voice, sore throat, down with flu and slight fever.

I still remembered I went straight home and slept from Tues 9pm to Wed 7am.. And still very tired.

The teachers are going thru basic Mac training with Junior. It is very refreshing to sit in the training and know how well and how far you are.

Man, this is real hard work.. We are not behind time but we faced a few problems:

1. Lack of Firewire Cables.

2. Server take whole day to create Netinstall images (to the extend that we gave up on Neinstall deployment).

3. Lack of Power plugs/sockets.

4. Lack of experiences on doing cloning and restoring (Many of the guys are new to this).

5. And lack of communications.

Apparently, we have a good start with completing 15 sets (with 3 firewire cables which I bought from Singapore). However, the communication part on the system image was horrifying. There are changes but nobody said anything. Until I made a few calls back to Spore to clarify.

And it is very hard to get firewire cable in Indonesia. I told them that in Spore, we are stepping on and throwing firewire cables everywhere. They laughed at me, dismissing it as a joke. But I am very serious! You want to work in Mac business, you better have at least 2 firewire cables with you.

We sort out the rest on the very next day. We are cloning 6 MacBooks at a time and things start to move fast. Below are a few pictures we took..

Fierce  eh?