I have been very busy nowadays, around 14 hours per day in the office. I am equipped with VPN token so I can work from home but I deliberately choose not to do so, because I’ve had enough in the office and when I am at home, I just don’t have desire to continue my work. As I work hard during weekdays, I play hard during weekend, so it’s fair enough. So somehow I lost desire to write in my blog recently. Just regain it few minutes ago.
Although I spend around 70 hours a week, I am content with it. I work with nice people, smart people, and importantly I love my work. I work with different people from different background and this is my first time working with the Africans (including the Egyptians and the guys from Mauritius!). It is a new experience for me because my African counterparts speak terrible English due to their fluency in French. Oh, the pay is also good.
We’re working to establish the whole operation, and as there’re just few people around yet, we do all those things. I, and my bosses, are typical Corporate & Investment Bankers. We are familiar with corporate credit, industry analysis, financial forecast, and relationship management. But now we are preparing to handle UAT (it means we’re testing our own core banking system selbverstandig !), dealing with Central Bank, understanding how Retail Banking works, advising Public Relations stuffs, even translating documents from English to Bahasa (later I found out that my Bahasa is actually worse than my German and English. I speak Jakarta’s prokem and Batak language better!). Nevertheless, these bring valuable experience for me and this is what I expect.
I am not the only one who work around 70 hours per week, some people work more than 70 hours per week. In fact, everybody is in the same boat. Because of this mutual feeling, our sense of togetherness is strong. Oh, they are goddamn funny too! So far everything goes as planned and we hope we can meet our target. Our Big Boss is coming to town this week, so I expect busier week. Not to mention that our Big Big Big Big Boss is planning to visit us in August.
By the way, I had a lunch with my friend today at Marche (nice place for taking photos). We discussed about many things as we haven’t seen each other for few months. Two days ago was her birthday so I intended to give her a good time today. She told me that she just met my ex-girlfriend yesterday. That’s a news for me because since I broke up (around 5 years ago) with her, I’ve never seen her again. Now she has married for 2 years and lives in Kelapa Gading, actually not far from my house. Back home, I visited Facebook and found her profile there. I added her but I bet she won’t approve my request hehe..
But the most interesting is not that thing. This month is unique because this month I meet so many people from my past via Facebook; from my schoolmates to my ex-girlfriends. I am so excited to see them again through Facebook. We’re planning to set a reunion with those who reside in Jakarta. Can’t wait to see them next month 
On my way back from Marche, my friend showed me her recent passion for some recycled Mandarin songs. Aside from Teresa Teng’s songs, she showed me a recycled song. I’ve always liked this song but I didn’t bother to find out the meaning. As she speaks Mandarin (and other dialects), she translated the song per rhyme and I found out this song is totally Gombal hahahaha…
