Kick off/Farewell Meeting/Outing

I don’t know about other organisations, but here in our bureau it becomes almost a tradition to hold a farewell for our colleagues who retire.

This year the farewell was designed to be coincided with our annual kick off meeting/outing. However, this time around the majority decided against having it at a hotel, saying that it was boring and they wanted something different.

So, off we went to Sapu Lidi which is located in the West Java Province – approximately two and a half hour drive from Jakarta.

To be honest I had no idea what Sapu Lidi was. My colleague who was assigned to be in charge of a scout team said that it’s a village and warned me to be prepared. Naturally, I was quite alarmed.

I’m a city girl. I hate all the inconveniences that could be found in most of our villages. With horror I asked about the one at the bottom of my hate list : the mud. He assured me that there’ll be no mud. The road isn’t paved but it’s decent enough.

I provide some pictures here so you could make your own judgement.

Sapu Lidi is a good alternative if you’re looking for something different. But if you’re planning to come with a big party please note that the village is quite small. We had the whole village for ourselves as it only has 25 huts.

Talk Shop

The new year means that it’s almost two years since I moved to this Bureau. It still feels like it was yesterday that I was being offered the job. How time flies!

It never crossed my mind that I would ever do what I do now. Not because I’m not equipped to do it, for I’m. But somehow, it just never occurred to me that I’d end up here, as I tried my hardest to avoid anything to do with accounting.

I’m an accountant by the way.

Yeah, the horror. It’s the most boring job in the world. Who would love to count money that doesn’t even belong to you and get the headache when you miss a cent?

Call me shallow, but the reason I chose to be an accountant all those years ago was because we didn’t have that many accountants here – and I think we still don’t – hence, I considered it as a rather prestigious profession.

Now, I’m heading an accounting department responsible for making financial reports of all the funding allocated to our Ministry.

The problem is some of the funds are being allocated to various entities all over the country. Most of them doesn’t have a clue about accounting, let alone how to make a financial report!

Despite the headache and frustration, I’ve got to say that I feel quite grateful to be entrusted and given the chance to do this job.

I loved my previous job which enabled me to travel all around the world and making full use of my language abilities, but this new job is giving me a chance to enrich my knowledge about public accounting to a quite different level.

The target for this year is to getting the unqualified opinion. I might have to bully and haggle with a lot of people and do as many overtimes as last year, but as long as we could get that unqualified opinion……