19th of February... just crossed the Ecuador

The end of the project is getting close, so we are reassessing our modules to grant the deliverables quality.

We carried on a mid project assessment yesterday at our hotel with SAPDA's head to ensure we are on the same page and went to the office in the afternoon to keep working with the team.

From left to right: SAPDA's CFO Nurul, Program Manager Micko, Rosa from IBM and interpreter Yunyun

SAPDA and IBM teams

Daily life seems to continue as usual, once ash has been mostly cleared up by the rain. People are still cleaning inside shops, offices...

Most of the population uses any kind of mask. There's a growing fancy mask industry in Indonesia!

We are now stuck with the morning traffic. There are hundreds of motorbikes going around. It makes you wonder how differently people rate their needs, when things that would be considered basic in your country seems to be rare here and viceversa.

Vehicles in Java are clearly a top priority and are therefore at the disposal of most of the population.
A small motorbike (50 cc) costs around 900 Euro and a car 12.000 Euro.

Krupuk with home made Nasi with chicken, coconut milk and lots of chili

Typical food made mainly with yucca (boiled or steemed) coconut, sugar (white or brown) and jelly: DELICIOUS!

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17th of February... retaking normal life

The rain helped remove an important part of the ashes yesterday night. Most of the shops, companies... are deep cleaning today to re-take business life tomorrow.

Room views after the rain

It seems there is no longer risk of eruption but the authorities keep the maximum level of alarm as the volcano still throws important quantities of ash.

We have been working at the hotel in our deliverables. As we will have three days less for in-site training we have re-built the content of some workshops we planned to do with SAPDA's staff. We will be covering some important topics: communication and public speaking, marketing, international regulations, Excel, PowerPoint, documentation process and storage.

After our working day we have gone for a walk to Malioboro area.
I have finally tasted real Yogja life, street markets, book markets...

Malioboro street

We have followed the Receptionist suggestion for dinner and went to R&B Grill. We have really enjoyed the atmosphere, a rare combination of grill made food with R&B live music.
The food was great and the performance of the musicians excellent.
We liked very much the decoration and the possibility to cook our meat in the hot stone.

R&B Grill restaurant

R&B Grill restaurant indoors

Antonella, Daniel and Rosa selfie ;)

Rosa's dinner

14th of February... Big Brother continues

Still the same situation, but we are calm.

The high risk status given by the authorities yesterday hasn't still been reversed:

Badan Geologi - link in the links section

Our biggest problem though is a big and very noisy group of students that joined the hotel this afternoon :(

14th of February… Nice Saint Valentine’s! or CSC I5 Big brother

We were gifted by Mount Kelud today with a volcanic eruption. It was about 200 km far away but we found this morning that literally everything was covered by a thick ash layer.

Room views before the eruption

Room views after the eruption

The situation doesn’t seem to be stable yet and alarm was raised to the highest level (5 over 5) but we are fine and safe. The only inconvenience so far is that ash falls are everywhere: we feel it in our eyes, our hair, our throat, …  despite the mandatory masks we wear to breath.

So far we have the standard green surgery masks but we will get the standard N95 tomorrow. 

We are not allowed to go out of the hotel, but there isn’t any crisis or drama situation.

Consider that the Country’s Disaster Management Agency asked thousands of local residents to evacuate and stay outside a 10-kilometer (6-mile) radius, and we are at 200km, so no tragedy for the moment.

We’ll keep informing from Jambuluwuk hotel, Yogja ;)

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10th February 2014… back to work and first proposal to SAPDA

We presented today our first proposal to SAPDA with some recommendations to improve the organization following the information we gathered from them last week.

Our main goal is to take the NGO to the next level, removing the obstacles they have in each department and building the capacity of the staff by sharing our experience and transferring our skills.

They have analized our proposal and have defined a schedule to help us carrying on with the actions. Now it’s time to work hard to accomplish as many goals as we can, although there are so many and we may have to prioritize at some point.

 

Shannon

My colleague Shannon will work with the Media Team as she is really strong in social computing, web tools etc, to improve SAPDA’s web site and the skills of the staff. 

Seth

Seth will collaborate with the Research and Development department as well as with the CFO in the Marketing long term strategy providing contacts, and insight on how this is made in other countries. 





I will work with the Internal Management department improving the organization of the company and with the Finance one easing their reporting and eliminating double workload with regards to reports and bookkeeping.
I will also work with both departments to raise their worksheet skills.

We all three will build capacity on communications and documentation processes with the entire workforce.

Alberto and Daniel in one of our matches

For dinner we went to the Ambarrukma Plaza Yogja, best known as Ambplaz, a beautiful mall with so many restaurants, shops, … And what did we do for team building? Play some games!!! Basketball, Bowling…

Ambplaz Mall

 Group selfie after the basket match

  

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9th of February… (sleepy) weekend sightseeing

We came back to hotel around 10h and slept … 4 hours! The goal was to see the sunrise at the Borobudur temple.

The Borobudur temple was built between the 8^th and 9^th century and is the biggest Buddhist temple in the world. Unlike Prambanan, Borobudur was not born as a praying temple but as a teaching one. In fact it has more than 2.500 panels with the story of Buddha.
 

Needless to say that the sunrise was amazing.

 

Chinese monk praying

 

On top of the panel animals are escaping from fire while a bird in the center is blowing it up with his wings

One tip in case you go: touch one of the Buddha images inside the bells and ask for a wish!

Borobudur temple exit

After enjoying our breakfast (and bargaining with the boys that wanted us to buy souvenirs) ABV had arranged a Jeep trip to the volcano Merapi, which last eruption in 2010 killed more than 300 people and forced to relocate around 350.000. Most of them however went back to the area while the eruptions continued and are still there, due to the emotional linkage and the fact that they lost everything after the eruption. 

Mount Merapi, still smokey

Surroundings of Mount Merapi, where hundreds of columns of smoke are visible

Also Borobudur, was heavily affected by the eruption in early November 2010. Volcanic ash from Mount Merapi fell on the temple complex, which is approximately 28 kilometres (17 mi) west-southwest of the crater. A layer of ash up to 2.5 centimetres (1 in) thick fell on the temple statues during the eruption of 3–5 November, also killing nearby vegetation, with experts fearing that the acidic ash might damage the historic site.

Jay, Claudia and Elisa

One of the current means to the survival of the communities affected are the Jeep trips, the tours around the villages affected and the sale of the local products to the tourists.

Dried Sukun, it tastes french fries!!!

Some of the local products you can find in the area are ape honey and dried sukun. The sukun is officially fruit, but in practical terms (a.k.a. breadfruit) possesses the qualities of both fruit and vegetable, depending on when it's eaten.






  

One of the houses destroyed by Merapi's eruption

Open house with rests of goods damage

 

Remigio, credi che riusciremmo a farne qualcosa???

Currently they are trying to reforest the area although the volcano is still smokey but the poverty and the signs of the tragedy are still everywhere.


 

 

 

 
For the lunch we tried a local restaurant specialized in mushrooms… beautiful and tasty!
 

Indonesian Mushrooms

Our last activity was to visit a factory of Batik. The Batik is  a cloth that is traditionally made using a manual wax-resist dyeing technique. This is done by drawing the canvas with ape wax to then tint the canvas several times to give the desired color to the base. The wax resists without melting, what will create the design in white when it is removed. An extra dipping in further ink can be done to colour as well the white design.

The typical colours are black and brown, although plenty of them and multiple designs are found nowadays. 





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