Feb 26 - Feb 27

We ate lunch on the club level of the Ritz and one of our Indonesian colleagues joined us. We had a nice lunch and spent a few hours discussing our project after we had finished. As expected, there were some surprises on both sides we had to talk through and resolve. We also established our agenda for the first week in Jakarta.

After our meeting, I took the first-timers to the mall nearby the hotel to purchase the cheap DVD's. The selection did not seem as good to me this time around as it did my first trip, so I only ended up buying 9 DVDs instead of the 30+ I did in August. We returned to the hotel, ate dinner, and then all crashed for the night around 8 PM local time.

I slept fitfully throughout the night as my body tried to adjust to the new time zone. I woke up for about 45 minutes around 1:30 and then for good shortly before my 6 AM alarm. I quickly dressed and hit the gym for stretching and a 30 minute run before joining my colleagues for breakfast.

Having been here before, the trip to the office was uneventful for me, but it was entertaining listening to my colleagues shriek and express shock as we merge into traffic with no lanes and no traffic lights. There first experience was similar to my own.

Once at the office, we checked our email from Phoenix and responded where necessary. At 10 AM, we had a project kick-off meeting and met the rest of the team. I was relieved to finally have a fully staffed project with actual names for resources instead of commitments for head count. Knowing who the resources are, as fundamental as that sounds, is something I've lacked on this project from the very first day so it was nice to finally cross that off the list.

During the meeting, the technical lead dropped an unexpected disclosure on me. I entered into the project, and the design phase of our project, with the understanding that we were simply modifying an existing system to prepare it for global deployment, then deploying to all our locations. In the project kickoff, our technical lead informed me that he had decided it was more effective to rewrite the entire application from scratch. This lead to about an hour of debate as we reviewed the merits of this approach, discussed the pitfalls of the decision, and reviewed the completeness of requirements to achieve a deliverable solution by starting from scratch. As my original requirements were a list of gaps, and not an inclusive list of functionality, I expressed my concerns that attempting a rewrite by using what we had document would surely result in an omission of key requirements. I provided specific examples of what was missing - ie, searching for data. The lead indicated he would discuss with the Business Analyst as he was under the impression that the design document he was working from included both existing functionality and the requested changes. We agreed to table the discussion until he had time to review.

We broke for lunch after the meeting and, due to conflicting evening schedules (the lead had his final practice for a pool tournament he is in on the weekend), we decided to go somewhere nice for lunch. He took us to a traditional Indonesian restaurant a few miles from the office. Due to my food allergies, I tend towards conservatism rather than adventurism when it comes to gastronomical opportunities. On this occasion, however, I partook in the opportunity to be as adventurous as I can be and ordered fried oxtail.

Since I'm on the topic of food, I'll share what I've come to recognize as the true difference between Americans and the rest of the world and it comes down to one, single word - girth. When I received my fried oxtail, it was obvious why you just don't see obese people in Jakarta - they don't eat much. I'm sure the poverty contributes, but serving size has a lot to do with it. My main course here would have been the appetizer at a traditional American restaurant. After lunch we returned to the office and I finished out the day working with the tech lead and resource manager on project schedule and deliverables.

We returned to the hotel around 6:30 and had dinner at 7. I had to go with a strictly vegetarian dinner because the club level was serving seafood tonight. After dinner, I was able to sneak in for a 1 hour massage ($38 - NICE!) before returning to my room.

Tomorrow we'll be reviewing the project design in great detail, so I'm sure I'll have a spinning head by the end of the day.