Mabuhay from the Philippines and Whale Sharks - First Kabul R&R Destination

Traveling, sightseeing, and adventuring.  The holidays have been great.

For my first trip outside of Kabul, we made a short Asia tour first to Manila and Cebu in the Philippines, then Jakarta, Indonesia, over to Hong Kong, and an unplanned return to Jakarta (will have to explain this one in a future post).  This may seem like a pretty exhausting trip with this much travel to different places over two weeks, but I think we timed our stays in each destination sufficiently so avoid travel burnout.

My wife had a work meeting in the Philippines so we decided to start my first break out of Kabul in Manila so we could have the chance to explore the country and check it off the list.  Manila, in many ways, reminded me of other Southeast Asian countries we've been too in terms of the look and feel.   However, comparing Manila to places like Jakarta and Bangkok, we never felt quite as safe from things like petty crime that we do in other places.  Poverty is extensive and, similar to other SE Asian countries, there are extensive gaps between the rich and the poor.

My favorite sight of Manila was exploring Fort Santiago in the area within Manila called Intramuros.  We were recommended to do a tour with Carlos Celdran and were very glad we did.  When we travel and sight-see, I've come to more and more often hire tour guides as it provides much more context and information than we would have otherwise and they are usually very inexpensive sometimes only requiring a gratuity at the end.  Carlos' commitment to the development of his country was very evident and his passion for a better Philippines was inspiring.  Through his stores and guided tours, he is able to fund his organization's causes (social entrepreneur), which I think, is the ideal method for sustainable NGOs rather than the seeking of donor and grant money like so many others operate.  I learned a lot about a country I previously knew very little about and hope there are many others in the country working toward a better future for their people.

After just a few days in Manila, we headed to a popular resort island of the the Philippines called Cebu.  We stayed at a very nice resort and spent the time relaxing.  The highlight of the stay was a day trip to the Southern Point of the island to swim with whale sharks!  Whale sharks are huge and having the opportunity to swim with them was simply amazing.  There are though some ethical concerns about the local operators continually feeding the whale sharks to attract them for the tourist business but if the sharks are well cared for, I think it's alright as a tourist destination.  We recently springed for a new GoPro camera so we'd finally have the ability to take pictures underwater and I'm glad we did.  Looking back, we've missed so many great photo opportunities from places we've been to without having one.

That concludes part one of the first R&R.  Next up, Jakarta and Hong Kong.

What's in Your Collection?

Purchasing souvenirs, it's the normal things to do when traveling to new places.  Ourselves, we have a penchant for acquiring refrigerator magnets and postcards from many of the places we go.

Inevitably, many people in the Foreign Service will begin to go beyond souvenirs to collecting and investing in different cultural items, furniture, or other such things while living and traveling abroad.  We've taken to several different collections of cultural items that we've found interesting.  Here's a bit of what we've taken an interest in acquiring:

Traditional music instruments and Art

Angklung set from "Saung Angklung Udjo" in Bandung

A "wayang kulit (leather puppet)" of Bhima.
This is from a local artisan in the city of Solo.  We plan to have this framed.

Traditional weapons/tools

Traditional Thai knife from Aranyik village outside Ayutthaya.
Rincong dagger from Banda Aceh.

Marine Security Guard Detachment Challenge Coins (current collection of one!)

Hopefully, the collections will come to together to make some sort of sense years from now as we'd ideally like to avoid a house full of a random assortment of items from all over the world.  But each item makes a nice conversation piece as each item in the collection has a story or adventure in how we went about obtaining it.

What are other people out there collecting?

A Visit to Pyongyang

Yes, that's right.  Took a trip to Pyongyang.  Pyongyang Restaurant that is.

I've been wanting the opportunity to try this restaurant for myself for a while now after hearing many others mention going there.  The Pyongyang Restaurant chain is said to be a North Korean government-run franchise of restaurants offering North Korean cuisine that also serve as North Korea's version of public diplomacy.  Some even rumor that North Korean diplomats work in these restaurants at night as the wait-staff.

I have to admit, if the above is true, it seems effective.  Though I don't believe the wait-staff are "diplomats" in the traditional sense moonlighting at the restaurant, they quite possibly could be diplomats in the sense that they attempt to represent their country in the best light sharing Korean culture.  And if you're going to share your culture, I think the route through food is definitely one of the best approaches!

The waitresses at the Pyongyang Restaurant in Jakarta wear traditional Korean attire and were very friendly and attentive.  They were all ethnically Korean and we assumed to all be from North Korea.  The restaurant was fairly plainly decorated but featured a performance stage in the restaurant center.

The menu featured a small selection of Korean BBQ meats, many vegetables dishes containing mushrooms, and Korean noodles and soups.  Following ordering, they served several free side dishes (banchan) and our beverages while we awaited for our order to come.

Pyongyang Soju!

Famous Cold Noodles

About mid-way into the meal with half our dishes served, the waitresses in the restaurant went to the stage and began performing.  Following the first performance, they would then take turns between performing and continuing serving guests for about the next half hour.  The songs they performed were a mix of Korean, Chinese, and American songs that could probably be found at any karaoke (in fact, it looked like they were singing from a karaoke machine).

At the end of the meal, after paying and preparing to leave, we asked if we could take a picture with the waitresses.  Instead of just taking the picture at our table, they invited us to come to the stage instead to take a big group picture with them!

I was pretty impressed with the whole experience.  A shame none of us spoke Korean as it would be nice to have been able to try to chat a learn more about their story and the country.  Definitely an interesting approach to public diplomacy and rare opportunity to try North Korean cuisine!

Aceh

Aceh, believed to be the area of the spread of Islam in Indonesia, it was also home to the Free Aceh Movement striving for independence.  More recently, it became a location of great international interest following the earthquake and tsunami of 2004 in which an estimated 170,000 people perished. 

Following the tsunami of 2004, Aceh received much assistance from the international community, including from USAID.  The largest investment from USAID was the reconstruction of the Aceh road which links the city with many of their natural resource production areas.  Other investments include the Aceh Polytechnic college which was funded jointly by private-public sector partnership with corporations and USAID.  Today, much of the development assistance has ended with efforts going to other areas.

Islam is very widely practiced in Aceh and the province is occasionally heard in the news as the one province in Indonesia which incorporates Sharia law in legal administration.  The area is sometimes mentioned every so often also for discriminatory or extremist laws or regulations being brought up by local administrations.  However, from just my short time there, life appeared similar to any other smaller town in Indonesia.

I had the opportunity to take my first field trip since joining USAID for a short 3 day trip to Banda Aceh as we accompanied an implementing partner in conducting a survey on banking inclusion and credit access for often under served populations in Indonesia.  For this stage of the survey, we went to banks and credit unions (cooperatives) in the area to interview about their lending practices and the clients whom they serve. 

Banda Aceh's Sultan Iskandar Muda Airport

The interviews were an interesting and daunting exercise of my Indonesian language abilities.  Thankfully, I was with some good Indonesian colleagues that helped with debriefings going over the day's interviews to make sure I was able to capture everything that was discussed.  I also had the chance to discuss project implementation with the implementing partner as a sub-grantee to better understand and learn about the challenges in implementation and develop some ideas and things to consider for the future.

Following this trip, I believe I do need to definitely try to make time to get out to the field more often.  I learned much about this particularly part of the project and developed a lot of understanding on the survey's topic which can greatly help in deciding direction for where this project or future projects should target and consider.  I also learned a lot about how current development projects are implemented and have several ideas on different ways things could be done and some of the problems for how things are implemented today.  And finally, it was nice to be able to see for the first time the results of what our development projects are funding beyond the paperwork.

Below, some pictures of the places we were able to visit and sites we were able to see during the evenings.

This ship was originally used for power generation before the tsunami. The ship was dislocated 3 miles (5 km) from the ocean where it now sits.

This is a displaced fishing boat the landed on a house during the tsunami.

This is the largest mosque in Banda Aceh.

The US-Indonesia Aceh road.

Aceh Polytechnic

Aceh Polytechnic was jointly funded.  Large amounts came from Chevron and USAID.

Trying some famous Aceh coffee.

Catching Up: Work and 2-year Anniversary

Things have been busy these days. Work continues, writing and completing my second annual review (2 years now with USAID!), seeing more and more of Indonesia and Jakarta, and more. 

Working in my office, I've been learning and gaining different experiences that will serve as lessons learned and fundamentals for decisions and judgement calls to be made in the future.  This section of the post will be a bit of a stream of conscious on my impressions with work so far.  Working in the Office of Acquisition and Assistance  has been a very interesting experience and I'm really enjoying it.  There are advantages and disadvantages, of course, when comparing to other different assignments one could have, but I think the former greatly outweigh the latter.

Some particular examples of things I've enjoyed so far:

• Contracting Officers see almost all of the Mission's portfolio of the projects that are being implemented providing a good understanding and knowledge of how everything fits together and what is being accomplished.
• Great involvement in key decisions about how development projects are implemented.  Take any sort of development challenge in any area (health, democracy/human rights, environment, education, etc) and work in a team to determine a method, partner with whom, role of USAID, how to make sustainable, etc.
• Continued involvement throughout the life of the project in its implementation and progress towards results.
• Building a knowledge base and experiences that will be applicable to any project or assignment in the future.  What I mean by this is that many experience/situations and knowledge learned in this position will be applicable in future assignments.  There are an infinite number of "what-if situations" that routinely emerge and these sort of serve as case studies for decision making and problem analysis for others.

Some disadvantages:

• With large portfolios and seeing so many projects, can never have the depth of involvement and understanding that technical officers will have for a particular project.  Technical Officers will focus much of their attention on just a few projects and naturally be much more involved and know a lot more about that particular subject matter.
• Less travel and event attendance.  I wasn't sure whether to categorize this as an advantage or disadvantage because it largely depends on life circumstance and preference.  But Technical Officers spend much more time in the field doing site visits, kick-off events, or accompanying visitors when they want to see projects.  This means much more time spent traveling rather being in the office thus allowing one to see much more of the country on the government's dime, but a lot less time being home.  If you're single, this is most likely a great situation but otherwise, perhaps not as desirable. 
• Less involvement in the strategy of development programming.  In terms of  specifics of a technical area, Contracting Officers may have less to bring forward as we aren't as knowledgeable to the extent on specific areas.  Rather, we involved more in the "how" rather than the "what" in development and international cooperation.

Looking forward to work to come.  Need another 6 months at the Mission before I can become a "real" Contracting Officer which occurs upon being granted a warrant.   What this essentially means is that I will then be able to award contracts or grants on behalf of the US government at that point versus preparing the documentation and the pre-award work for a warranted officer to sign (though going through this process of preparing everything are essential responsibilities and key skills to have!).

In other news, last week noted my second year anniversary since joining USAID and the Foreign Service.  With this anniversary came my second promotion to class 4.  This now means I enter the regular cycle for annual reviews for the future and will compete among other officers at class 4 competitively for future promotions rather than being evaluated for satisfactory performance to class.

Lastly, was able to take my first field visit to Banda Aceh.  More to come on this!

A boat displayed on a house from the 2004 Tsunami in Banda Aceh

Helping Hands

The US Embassy in Jakarta has a group of Americans and FSNs (Indonesian staff) that conducts various community service events.  This organization is called Helping Hands.

Earlier this month, I was able to participate with this group in a trip to the Yayasan Bhakti Luhur orphanage in Jakarta.  This organization runs orphanages for abandoned or disabled children around Indonesia.  For this event, the Helping Hands organization was participating in a holiday party with the children.  The DCM Kristen Bauer and her husband also joined the event.

Activities for the children included face painting, singing carols, dancing, and lunch.  Oh, and also the exchange of presents!

Ms. Bauer giving a speech.

Time for presents!

Batman walking away happy.

Then there was dancing.

Always need a group photo!

Indonesian Weddings

I always enjoy weddings.  They are fun occasions with many happy people celebrating together.

In past month, I've had the opportunity to attend to two Indonesian weddings so far.  The first was a Batak wedding and the second was Sundanese wedding.

The Batak wedding was held in a two level reception area in northern Jakarta. The ethnic group Batak are originally from Northern Sumatra.  My general impression from the wedding was the emphasis on community, as if a village were coming together to all celebrate the marriage.  What was interesting was the separation between guests whom were Batak as opposed to guests whom were not.  When entering the reception venue, there were separate lines and guestbooks for "Tamu Batak" (Batak guests) and "Tamu Nasional" (all other guests).

The bottom floor of the venue also was reserved for Batak guests while other guests went to the top.  The top had a buffet and several stalls for food while the Batak guests ate traditional Batak style.  When the bride and groom entered, family and friends carried sacks off food and supplies for a wedding as if the village coming to support the wedding.

Two story venue.

Flower girls.

Traditional attire.

The community coming to the wedding.

A cow!

The bride and groom.

The Sundanese wedding I attending was very different than the Batak one.  This wedding was held in Bogor, a city just about an hour south of Jakarta.  This was a more modern style wedding with modern attire and held at a golf club.  The food there was fantastic.

Very nicely decorated venue.

There were even a couple ice sculptures in the back.

At the back of the venue, it looked like a beach resort.

North Jakarta: USS Cowpens, Old Town, and Ancol

The Columbus Day weekend was a weekend of exploration and adventure.  The destination this time was North Jakarta. 

In North Jakarta, is the pier and shipping areas.  We visited the area called Sunda Kelapa, an old shipping area in Old Town Jakarta.  Smaller shipping vessels loading what appeared to be construction materials and sand were in this area.  The vessels here definitely were beginning to show their age and the pollution in the waterways was noticeably visible.

Pepto manufacturing

The most interest occurrence while at this pier was a rather odd fellow that trailed behind us attempting to show off card tricks, speak random phrases of English, and sing any song he might know.  He was not at all seeking money and he was harmless; an interesting character perhaps not all there in the head.  Upon departing, he sought to gift me his deck of playing cards which I could not accept.  From our brief hour at the pier, he clutched the cards as his treasure but it was very kind thought.

He was a very odd man.

Next up that weekend was touring a Navy ship.  This was my first experience on a military ship and while we did not have to the opportunity to see everything, we were able to see everything on the deck of the ship and some of the inside.  The sailors were very hospitable for our tour group and we really appreciated their time.

Maybe my HHE is in one of these containers..

Battleship

After touring the ship, we ended the day with a trip to Ancol in North Jakarta.  This is an area where they have Jakarta's theme park, sea world, as well as a couple beaches (not good beaches).  This is also near the area where you can board boats to take you to one of the many "1000 islands" to the north for a nice weekend getaway.  We came for the seafood!

Picking out our crab.

Oh yeah!

Grilled fish.

Trying the snails!