Padang

Last week I went on a trip to Padang in West Sumatra. It was a semi-compulsory tour-guide trip, and everybody knows the worst kind of trip is the tour-guide trip where you are trapped in a bus dominated by souvenir-shopping, pocket-camera-wielding, bus-karaoke-singers. For 12 hours.

Of course, I am not without fault.

Fault No. 1: I forgot to bring my iPod. And ear plugs.
Fault No. 2: I forgot to bring a good book to read. The kind that makes you forget where you physically are.

However I also did a few things right, and deserve a little credit, if I may.

Credit No. 1: I brought my camera.
Credit No. 2: I brought a sense of humor and a big appetite.

Allow me to make sense of the miniscule results above, starting from the top moving left to right:

• The view from our hotel at Bukittinggi – local boys on their way to the mosque
• Juicy succulent satay Padang – crispy prawn fritters from sidewalk vendors
• Warm fragrant coconut pancakes called "bika bakar" – … and its amazing kitchen!
• Martabak Mesir (Egyptian pancakes, which have nothing to do with Egypt) filled to the brim with delicious beef rendang – hot steamed peanuts on a warm night
• Durian, durian – … ooh and more alcoholic durian! :)

Umm… Okay so they’re mostly food.

Those tour-guides do nasty things to your appetite.

Incentivity Complex

When I worked for the government, a lot of people would call in and I would say “how can I help you?” because I was educated to be helpful. Even if the job randomly entailed disgraceful things like drafting somebody’s recommendation letter for their school applications for my boss to sign. I liked to think that if we were helpful to others, our office would gain good reputation for being professional, which is an image the government could use more of. Then again whenever I needed help all I needed to say were the six magic words, “Hi this is the President’s office”, and the person on the other end of the phone line would be pleasantly obliging.

So that was then. Now, early on in my current job I called up a government department to ask clarification on a particular license procedure. The officer said:

“Which company is this?”
“Oh I’m a consultant ma’am, we are representing a client”
“Oh I see. Well it’s like this. I thought smart consultants should already know these things. Besides, you’re the one who gets paid in dollars, right? I should be getting some of those dollars for answering your question, right?”

I ignored this.

I said, “Well ma’am you see, the regulations are not very clear on this issue. It would be good if we could know how it is actually practiced in the ministry, or if you could point me to a specific regulation I may have missed.”

She said, “It’s all in the regulations, you can read it yourself.”

She practically rendered me speechless in disgust. Being an underpaid civil servant is hardly a justification for being unprofessional. To be fair some government institutions are very helpful and professional, such as the Capital Investment Supervisory Body and the tax directorate at the Ministry of Finance.

Steven D. Levitt, author of Freakonomics emphasized how any particular societal behaviour is fueled by a particular pin-pointable incentive. I wonder what could be the incentive for a professionalist culture? Remember those boring catchphrases they used to teach us in elementary school during the Old Order regime? “Let us develop a society that is flourishing with hard-working, money-saving people, who do not glorify short-cut methods of achieving goals.”

Well apparently the catchphrases didn’t work. In retrospect, I think what I should have told her was “Look, I happen to know your minister. Would you prefer I ask her instead?”