cristinafrank

[cristinafrank]

When in Bali… 

If you’re looking for a fun night out in Seminyak, The Potato Head Beach Club is a popular choice. While it’s not my favorite music (house), it’s an amazing spot – infinity pool over the beach, expansive lawn behind the bar, large dance floor and lounge seating. Despite our 8am pickup tomorrow, we stayed out and enjoyed our first night in Bali. 

Let the Bali adventures continue!

[cristinafrank]

Our First Beautiful Sunset. 

Once we arrived in Bali and bartered for our taxi, we managed to get all five of us and our luggage into a taxi for four passengers. We checked into our hotel and learned we should never let the guys pick where we stay… the rooms were small, the bugs were roaming around and the smells left something to be desired… but, we’re in Bali!! 

We headed to the beach for some drinks, snacks and sunset and we weren’t disappointed! 

What a perfect way to kick-off the week!

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Goodbye Jakarta, Hello Bali! 

While it’s not easy to leave Jakarta, I’m excited to be continuing the adventure with new friends in Bali! Gui (Sao Paulo), Laura (Milan), Leo (Rio), Tom (UK) and I are heading straight to Bali and Andy (Guadalajara) , Julia (Guadalajara) and Melody (Mexico City) will meet us in a few days. 

We managed to squeeze into our cabs and get all of our luggage on the plane. We flew from the local airport on a notoriously unreliable airline, Lion Air, (found out after we booked) so there were no announcements to tell us that the gate changed or that the plane was boarding (the screens didn’t even have the correct information) but we managed to get on the plane. As to not disrupt the other passengers, we volunteered to take our own rows in the back of the plane and had an easy trip to Bali. 

Here’s to a great week in the sun!

[cristinafrank]

A Bittersweet Goodbye! 

I got a few hours of sleep during my last night in Jakarta – it’s hard to believe this amazing adventure is coming to an end. 

I’m very grateful for this opportunity and proud of what our teams accomplished but still feel like we can do more together. We plan on staying connected to our clients and friends in Indonesia and hope that we can continue to provide support from afar and maybe return in the future for another assignment. 

Until next time!

[cristinafrank]

Final Photo of 15! 

We took one final team photo (with multiple phones/cameras of course) as we sent Mary off. Then we headed to our final team dinner (Brazilian BBQ) and back to the hotel to pack. I’m not sure how I managed to squeeze everything into my suitcases but by some miracle they zipped. 

I’m not quite ready to leave but I’m excited for Bali!

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I think this says it all (and thanks to Kameron for filming)!

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Time flies! 

How is it already our last night together as a team of 15? We certainly made the most of it! We went to Flow Jakarta for some food, drinks and of course dancing (embarrassingly enough there may have been a conga line, or two). We made friends with the band (Folks!) so they serenaded Tom for his birthday and invited Melody and Andy to sing Despacito with them. There was lots of laughter and maybe just a few tears… 

I’m not ready to say goodbye!

[cristinafrank]

A Great Excuse for a Party! 

While we plan on celebrating Tom’s birthday in Bali, not everyone will be with us so we decided to attempt a surprise celebration in Jakarta. While I’m pretty sure he knew something was brewing, in the moment we caught Tom by surprise! Leo was so convincing that Tom arrived in our team room with his laptop for what he thought was a ‘final meeting with Anim’ and was very confused by the fact that the lights were off. 

Since we’re a global team, we decided to throw a global celebration with traditions and songs from around the world! There was lots of ear pulling/flicking (Italy, Hungary and Brazil), a little butt kicking (India), confetti (Mexico), a red shirt (Taiwan) and the Happy Birthday song backwards (Mary’s family tradition from the US). We decided to forego the raw egg tradition of Indonesia… maybe next time. 

Thanks for being such a good sport Tom!

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Saying goodbye to our friend Sigit was very hard to do!

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Our Completion Dance!

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Final Presentation to the Minister of Manpower. 

Each group was given 3 – 5 minutes to present the highlights from our recommendations to the Minister and other stakeholders within the Ministry. I speak quickly enough that time limits are usually no problem for me, but in this case without translations, I had to really slow it down (fighting every instinct of the New Yorker in me). 

I represented Kemnaker Team 3 Team focusing on Job Placement Analysis. I started by restating our objectives and giving a high-level overview of what we achieved together during our four-week project, then covered the process recommendations, insights from research and strategic recommendations as well as high-level technical roadmap elements. Hopefully it was well received! 

After the meeting the Minister seemed pleased with all that we’ve collectively accomplished and coordinated another selfie! We were invited to a pre-break fast ceremony with the team before our departure. 

It’s very bittersweet to be leaving – we’re so proud of the partnership we’ve formed and the work we’ve accomplished together but sad that time flew by so quickly!

[cristinafrank]

Our Final Team Presentation! 

How are we already at the end of our project? It feels like just yesterday we were in our first week of discovery! 

Our final presentation date and attendees became a moving target, further challenged by the two holidays in the week. We spent the Tuesday holiday working hard at the hotel and continued on Wednesday with a late evening visit from one of our clients. Thursday morning we presented our detailed findings to the core team and they were well received. We shared overarching recommendations for the job placement process, technical discovery findings and opportunities for process improvements. We hope the team will be able to refine the roadmap to begin implementing some recommendations, continuing to test and optimize as they go! 

We’re off to see the Minister!

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Giving it a Go Solo!

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A ride with Melody… why not?

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Dinner and a Duck Ride! 

Another night another mall. We checked out Pacific Place which had both a Mexican restaurant (Super Loco), and a fancy movie theater (beds and blankets included). We hit the typical traffic on the way to the mall and then just stopped moving at a point where we were too far to turn around (a few cars of people just got out and walked back to the hotel). Half of the team actually made it and we enjoyed a Mexican dinner with our Mexican ladies who were missing some of the flavors from home. 

Those of us who didn’t want to go to Deadpool 2 (Melody, Kameron and I) opted to walk around for a little bit before heading back (hoping that the traffic would die down). Kameron found the ‘go-jek for malls’ and convinced us to go for a ride (we decided we were on a duck/horse). I think we were the entertainment for many mall goers and we certainly had a good laugh. 

Maybe next time we’ll try the real thing!

[cristinafrank]

Design Thinking 

We kicked-off our final week with a Design Thinking Workshop to further ideate around some ideas generated from research, while providing our Kemnaker partners with exposure to the methodology. 

We had a productive workshop with a representative team from across different groups within Kemnaker. It was great to see the cross-functional collaboration and openness to new ways of working! 

We hope the team will continue working through the additional recommendations together!

[cristinafrank]

Last Supper with the Full Team. 

As a thank you for all of the hard work Anim and our Project Assistance have put into our program, we wanted to take them out for a special dinner. Since it is Ramadan, we planned a proper break fast with all of the local Java specialties. According with tradition, we started the meal with something sweet and cold and then enjoyed course after course from fish to beef to soup and salad, with steamed white rice of course. 

Thanks to our wonderful Pyxera team – your dedication to our program has made it a success!