Hello fellow PR
interns, this is my second blog.
To summarise my first
blog entry, I am currently working in a property management company called PT.
Graha Agung Wibawa in Bogor, Indonesia. I have been in charged with organising
exhibitions, participating in meetings, communicating with tenants and
travelling outside of the company to create a competitor analysis brief. In
doing all of these task I’ve repeatedly experienced one thing in common;
cultural shocks.
To briefly introduce
my background, I was born in Jakarta and move to Perth when I was 8. I return
to Jakarta to an International school with international baccalaureate
curriculum for three years of high school, which then continued to my
homecoming to Perth for university. And now I am back to my South East Asia birth
home. Even though I can speak bahasa fluently on a daily basis I have never
truly experience or understood the Indonesian culture. I have never
communicated with someone who is not related or part of the western culture
before. So you could imagine the culture shock I experienced working in a
traditional company located in a small town outside of the city.
Every day seems like a
déjà vu of morning conversations in PR International class!
One of the cultural
shocks I experience is how religion plays a role in time management. The
religion of Islam covered most of the Indonesian population, so Muslim beliefs
and culture plays a role in the calendar of how the company operates. I have to
say during my first week of interning I was behind on some of my tasks due to
adaption problems, and being a university student that I am I keep things on
the last minute. Not knowing that every Friday, male Muslims are obligated to
‘Sholat Jumat’, which requires them to leave the workplace to pray during the
afternoon and offcourse to make it fair, all staff is offered some hours off
during Sholat Jumat. The visual of me alone in the office confusingly looking
for my male colleague to ask some questions on a Friday afternoon is quiet
miserable.
I guess my poor
tolerance of a religion that I am not associated with is acceptable. But
another cultural shock I experience was communicating with tenants with Chinese
background, one culture that I personally share ancestries with. Apparently
Chinese runs in my blood, but not through my tongue. My supervisor mention that
when having face to face meetings with Indonesian-Chinese tenants its easier to
have another Indonesian-Chinese staff. Indonesian-Chinese people believe that
another person that shares their background would be more understanding of
their conditions and easier to communicate with as they speak the same
language. I’m not talking about mandarin, I’m talking about
Bogor-Mandarin-Bahasa, a mash up of the three languages that Indonesian-Chinese
people use on a daily basis to communicate. They have a whole different word
for numbers and emotions. Which in this case I urgently had to call my
colleague to help me. Again.
The last cultural
differences I would like to mention are transportation and traffic. If anyone
believes the stereotype of how Asians could not drive, then they have not been
to Indonesia. The road is probably filled with Michael Schumachers driving
inches away from each other adding to hundreds of motorcycles speeding and
squizzing themself between moving cars. It takes me an hour to get home every
day. I found that the major difference as a university student and an intern is
the stamina, the 8 hours work time compared to 3 hours classes and the 15
minute drive compared to the one hour sitting in the backseat while a personal
driver drives you to work (personal driver is not something posh, almost
everyone has one).
Despite all of these
cultural shocks I’ve been having a great time in Bogor, and learning along the
way of new languages and religions.
So that’s all from me
today. Hope to see you in my next blog!
Levia Kwee
15617178
Curtin Bentley
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