Lingering cold, Immigration, and the Perfect Mess

The cold I have has lingered longer than I had hoped. Yes, you can just catch a simple cold in Indonesia. It isn’t SARS, or Dengue Fever, or any of the other exotic variations available in this tropical environment. I don’t have a fever, or a head ache, or a body ache – just a very stuffy nose and a mild cough. So, I did what any normal, rational human with an acute upper respiratory infection would do - I spent 30 minutes in the gym.

It better be gone when I awake in the morning, though. Tomorrow night we are doing a team building event and I am kicking off the whole occasion with my “what does it mean to work for me” presentation. I need to be able to speak for the presentation, and have the energy to help my team win at bowling.

Sunday was much like Saturday, only I spent more time awake. There is an expat grocery store nearby, and I took the brief walk to see if I could find some familiar medicine that wouldn’t put me to sleep. I didn’t find any medicine at the grocery store. I did find Kellogg’s cereal, Jiff Peanut Butter, fresh fruit, and juice. I only bought the fruit and juice as I wasn’t sure where I would find a bowl or where I could store the milk for cereal.

Above the grocery store was a pharmacy. Nobody spoke English, so I bought medicine based on the picture and waited until today to confirm with my colleagues that it was worth taking. Glad I waited. The one that would have treated my symptoms had expired. I had lunch at a pizza restaurant and went back to the hotel for a four hour nap, then woke up, watched a little TV, and went to bed for the night.

I forgot to mention that on Thursday last week I went to the immigration department. I had to sign and initial about 15 different documents – none of which I could read – and have my picture and fingerprints taken. The place was a zoo. We couldn’t park in the parking lot and the inside of the building reminded me both of the trading floor on Wall Street after they announce the crop reports, and a Central American police station in a movie from the 1970’s starring Nick Nolte as a photo-journalist covering rebel insurgencies. Luckily, my company is thoroughly prepared for the expat experience at immigration. They made an appointment for me, so when I arrived, I walked right up to the counter to sign the documents, walked right over to take my picture and fingerprints, and walked right out. Total time at immigration was about 15 minutes. Some people looked like they had been there for days.

Also, I’m reading a fascinating book that I think should be required reading for anyone in management – especially those charged with process improvement, process control, records management, or any other profession where fastidiousness is encouraged. The book, “A Perfect Mess”, posits, quite cogently, that the cost of cleanliness often outweighs the benefits and, moreover, the benefits of messiness often are incalculable. For example, we never would have found penicillin if Fleming’s lab had been as meticulous and sterilized as today’s research environments.

To put the argument in perspective, the best analogy is that of a deck of cards. I give two people a deck of cards and inform them I will be timing how fast they are able to find four cards I name at random. One of them, in preparation, sorts the deck numerically by suit. The other does nothing. I name four cards. The person who sorted the deck can find those cards significantly faster than the person who didn’t – 6 seconds vs. 16 seconds, on average. When I advise them to put the cards back, the ordered person puts them back exactly where they would be in his defined sort, while the unordered person puts them back on the bottom of the pile – 6 seconds vs. 0 seconds. So, the act of finding and replacing four cards is 12 seconds vs. 16 seconds. On the surface, it would seem that order is preferred. Of course, if you add in the 90 seconds, on average, it takes to order the deck, it took 106 seconds for the ordered person, and 16 for the second person. At what point does the benefit of order surpass the cost? Well, assuming that order is consistently maintained – which, in reality, it seldom is – it requires 23 repetitions before adding the order is cost effective.

If that were the end of the analogy, the meticulous, fastidious and OCD crowd would walk away crowing. Unfortunately for them, the real question is – how often do you need an ordered deck? When you want to use a deck of cards, what, typically is the first action you take? You shuffle it, to create disorder and a useful randomness. So, an ordered deck really has no utility. This analogy applies to many other aspects of life. Quite a fascinating book.

One week into my stay I finally upgraded to the club level. My frugality extends to my role as a consumer of company funds. As I mentioned in an early post, I wagered that the $45 daily rate would be cheaper than eating elsewhere. I avoided the hotel restaurants and instead visited their buffet. Breakfast buffet was $19, dinner buffet was $35 - $54 total. Internet in the room is $72/week. Dry cleaning is expensive - like $5 per item. By agreeing to pay $45 a night, I get breakfast, dinner, free Internet and two items pressed each day as part of the fee. Plus, I get unlimited drinks (when I'm not sick). I think of it as the "all-inclusive" plan.

Side note - the spell check on my blog engine doesn't recognize contractions. Very odd.