Me. For some reason the “‘When I die, I want my ashes to be spread on Gili Trawangan,’ Matt says.” sees extremely dark as the opening line for a human interest piece but whatever. They cut out the funny stuff about Ducks in Chinatown and Fireworks on Chinese New Year. This is my second brush with fame. The first was about 11 years ago. I think Im gunna stick with IT services.
Tag Archive: Westwind Indonesia
Ok, so I promise I wont make this into a work blog but I do want to share something that Ive started working on.
I gave up application programming in 2005 in favor of focusing on Business Intelligence and Analytics implementations. I spent 7 years trying to create websites and Business Intelligence applications from scratch and found it highly unsatisfying. Mostly because of my lack of talent. I would spend months working on a component or website tool and upon completing a mediocre version of whatever it was that I was working on I would typically find some free version or example of what I did that was far-and-away better than what I had created. I found using the tools that others had created to customize or enhance its usage was much more effective and satisfying.
One of the things that has worried me about selling Business Intelligence solutions in a 3rd world country has been software licensing cost. Indonesia is still an industrialized nation and many companies havent realized the value in large investments in technology. Trying to sell the average company millions of dollars in hardware and software is a daunting task. Those companies that are willing to invest that money are typically government-owned, which are the most corrupt sector of the market, not to mention, require an extensive vetting process for any potential vendor.
With this I am testing out a new tool set released by Google called Google Visualization API which makes use of the Google Chart Tools. The API is based on JavaScript. You can build great looking charts from line, bar, gauge and motion charts. Additionally, you can manually build your data in JavaScrirpt, link to Google Documents or write your own data source connections to live databases. The API is simple to start but has the depth to be a very robust tool and Im really excited about code-diving with it.
So here is my Developing Asia Google Visualization, the data is from the International Monetary Fund, it took about 4 hours of reading and practice to create this but now that Ive got it down, as long as I have the data in the appropriate format I can turn these out in a matter of minutes. Click around and change the options, its quite amazing how interactive this tool is. Im going to continue working with this and Ill post some other examples I come up with in the future.
Beautiful day today. Did a little work on the company profile. Design will be the death of me. Spent two days on the cover slide. Finally asked Lida to help and she created an awesome layout in about an hour while I slept (“yeah that’s right woman, and then iron my cloths”).
Did 5km on the treadmill and a weights routine. Gone almost 3 week without missing a workout (save for a 4 day stretch last weekend). Now I realize why rich people always look cut and are so incredibly stupid. When you have nothing to do but work out and wax intellectual without doing anything tangible your body gets hard and your mind gets soft.
Spent a perfect hour or two with my girl by the pool followed by kabab wraps and Bintang. So much for the work out. Screw it, you can’t buy happiness but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come at a price (read:big fat hairy belly). Lida is taking the lead on learning and teaching me Bahasa. Saya Matt, diri America. Give me a break I’m a slow learner.
So Iwan showed me this great site for stock photos and was searching for images for my presentation template (im sure everyone else has known about this since the late 90s, but like I said Im late to every trend).
< sarcasm>Using the amazingly original and creative motto of Westwind Indonesia, Discover. Define. Deliver. </sarcasm>, I was searching for images to use and came across this gem for “Discover”. I was particularly confused by the keywords associated to it:
- adventure
- destination
- fun
- vacation
Some keywords Id like to associate to it:
- trapped
- neglect
- push
- WTF
So the internet went down 2 days ago. Still can’t get it working. Tech has been here 2 hours and still no progress. Looks like I’m going to switch service this weekend. Besides a massive loss of productivity (that’s a joke) I’m pretty sure my fantasy hockey team is taking a nose dive at the most critical point of the season.
Described Business Intelligence to a mechanical engineer last night and he still didn’t get it. Looks like I’m going to have to write Business Intelligence for Dummys to convey basic business concepts. Only problem is I’m having no good or original ideas.
The Fear has set in and I’m starting to have anxiety attacks and asking myself the proverbial “what the hell am I doing?” questions. Even though I prepared myself and told everyone that I didn’t anticipate making any money for 6 months, the reality of it is much more difficult to handle.
Gloduk on Chinese New Year
So Ive been in Jakarta now for 3 weeks. Heres a summation:
- Stayed with Iwan for 4 days until we found an apartment, conveniently in the same building as him
- 2 Bedroom/1 Bath, fully furnished in Jakarta Pusat (central) on the 30th floor of an apartment high-rise for $450/month
- Chinese New Year (Gong Xi Fa Chai sounds like a Starbucks drink) 12 year olds setting off professional grade fireworks in the parking lot below my balcony. Watching 20 of them gather around while one would light it and then scatter like rats from water was pretty entertaining
Chinese New Year Parade at a local Meda-Mall
- Ate street food on the second week. Iwan said we couldnt do it until we had our own bathroom
- Took my first Ojek ride, taken for a metaphorical ride and double charged me
- Traffic is unreal, plan to get one or two things done a day if I go out
- 60 minute full body massage $7.50 (no, not the “happy ending” kind), gotta love 3rd world labor expense
- Laptop computers are over priced and I cant find any used but you can buy $25,000 SQL Server 2008 Enterprise software for $5 at the mall
Ooooh-bama
- Malls are like little cities unto them selves. Grand Indonesia has 9 floors and an East and West wing
- Im being so frugal I make my coffee in a sauce pan and my toast in a frying pan. Resisted the urge to buy a 5 dollar bottle of A1 sauce last night
- Released Westwind website (and yes I called up 1998 and borrowed his menu bar)
- Made my first business connection by pimping out my girlfriend at the pool
- Internet connection is slower than a 1 legged retard in a potato sack race
Jakarta Garbage Barge
Tolong Tolol!!! 