breaking the shadow

What a bad coincidence when I must go to Palembang to attend a gov tender while my lovely girl must go back to spore the day after, for sure it vanished my dream to accompany her to the airport, to spent the time ‘till the last minute. But that’s life; you cannot always get what you want. We already spent a month together, and that’s more than enough for long distance relationship like us.

Btw, in Palembang we win more than US$ 250 K tender, although it’s an open tender we still must prepare some under table money for them. What a corrupt country that I lived in, but for sure we cannot avoid that, otherwise ‘till the judgement day we’ll never ever get the tender. It’s an unspeakable rule, TST (Tahu sama Tahu) in Indonesian terms. Sometimes it’s bothering me loads, but as long as I didn’t take any feedback (money or goods) from them, which I always refused, it can help me breath although punctuated by coughs.

And at the end of the tender I got good news from tender committee, they said according to our new gov policy for the next tender they are pushed to implement an e-auction, which is very good for both of us. I don’t need to spend my valuable time to go to Palembang and also I can breathe easily cause this e-auction will eliminate or at least narrowing the corruption / commission possibilities. It’s really a good will from our gov side, 2 thumbs up for SBY … salute, hope u can continued managed this country well.

I had another funny or should I call ironic thing when I had a dinner there. We go to a quite fancy restaurant to try a Palembang’s famous Pindang Ikan, the wall of the restaurant is full by an Arabic calligraphy but they also serve beer and liqueur. What a contradiction, when we ate they have a live music performance sung a Bimbo’s “Sajadah Panjang Terbentang” while my friend dranks a Bintang Beer. For sure we lived in a gray area, there is no black and white anymore.

palembang
june 15, 2005
joeffry