A quick reflection after completing my first 3 weeks as an office manager

This is my quick an unedited reflection after completing my first 3 weeks as an office manager.  

Previously, I was a Research Fellow. Though I technically managed a research project, the nature of the work and the volume of work is different.

After being in this position for three weeks, I realize that are several things that need to be noted when you get into this position for the first time.

1. Knowing how you work

2. Knowing the work

3. Knowing how your company work: immediate company culture & bigger company culture

The immediate company culture also involves knowing how people around you work.

As the order suggest, once you have a clear picture of number 1, you are already controlling a third of the work. You will be able to manage the 2 others.

You will be in better position if you are promoted upward. So at least you have number 3 and some portion of number 2 familiar with. You just have to adjust yourself with the new responsibilities.

In my case, I still keep learning on number 1, while number 2 is only 10% known. Perhaps I know more and I just don't realize it. While for number 3, I probably know half of the company culture. I only need to know the immediate culture.

One plus point for me: Im lucky to share an office with a very positive person. 

I should be able to thrive in this position. And in all likelihood, getting promoted soon. 😊

Wish me luck. 🤘🏻✌🏻

Apakah Ritual Membebani Perempuan Bali?

Tulisan ini dimuat di kolom opini Denpost, Bulan November 2016

Beberapa bulan yang lalu saya membaca artikel blog dari Ibu Sonia Piscayanti yang menurut saya cukup provokatif. Artikel tersebut mengulas lemahnya posisi wanita dalam adat Bali. Kiranya bukan hanya saya yang tergelitik dengan artikel tersebut. Banyak pihak lain yang juga tergelitik. Artikel tersebut berseliweran di newsfeed Facebook saya selama beberapa minggu. Ada pihak yang mengamini, ada pihak yang dengan keras menolak isi nya. Ada banyak dimensi yang tersentuh dalam artikel tersebut, namun untuk kali ini saya ingin menyoroti dua hal saja: tuntutan bagi wanita Bali untuk terlibat dalam ritual dan mapan secara finansial.

Beberapa waktu lalu saya menemukan sebuat tulisan ilmiah: “Ritual as ‘work’ The invisibility of women’s socio-economic and religious roles in a changing Balinese society” (Ritual sebagai ‘kerja’ Tak terlihatnya peran serta sosial ekonomi dan keagamaan wanita dalam masyarakat Bali yang sedang mengalami perubahan) oleh Ayami Nakatani. Tulisan ini termuat sebagai Bab dalam buku “Inequality, Crisis and Social Change in Indonesia” (Ketidaksamarataan, Krisis dan Perubahan Sosial di Indonesia) oleh Thomas Anton Reuter, 2003.

Dalam tulisannya, Nakatani memuat hasil penelitiannya mengenai ketidakseimbangan beban kerja dalam bidang ritual antara wanita dan pria di sebuah desa di Kabupaten Karangasem. Ditemukan bahwa dalam periode sebelas bulan (Desember 1991 – November 1992), wanita lebih lama dan lebih sering menghabiskan waktu untuk ritual dibandingkan dengan kaum prianya. Wanita menghabiskan waktu lebih dari empat kali lipat lebih lama dan hampir dua kali lipat lebih sering untuk ritual dan dibandingkan prianya.

Apa sebenarnya masalahnya jika wanita Bali lebih sibuk dalam ritual dibandingkan para lelakinya? Jika kita mengacu pada tatanan “kodrat” wanita sebagai “ibu rumah tangga” – yang berarti bertanggung jawab untuk urusan domestik termasuk ritual – dan pria sebagai pencari nafkah di luar rumah, seharusnya tidak ada masalah.

Masalahnya adalah, saat ini wanita Bali bukan “cuma” Ibu rumah tangga. Menurut data Biro Pusat Statistik (http://bali.bps.go.id/linkTabelStatis/view/id/150), di tahun 2014 sekitar 66% dari wanita usia produktif di Bali bekerja. Hanya 21% dari wanita usia produktif yang mengurus rumah tangga. Dengan asumsi bahwa data BPS ini valid, inilah kenyataan Bali saat ini. Sebagian besar wanita Bali bekerja. Jadi, kita tidak bisa lagi mengacu pada tatanan “kodrat” wanita sebagai “ibu rumah tangga” dan pria sebagai pencari nafkah di luar rumah karena sudah tidak sesuai dengan kenyataan.

Kiranya jika keseimbangan menjadi esensi dari sistem sosial kemasyarakatan Bali; yang menjadi pertanyaan adalah, apa yang bisa dilakukan oleh masyarakat Bali untuk menyikapi situasi ini?

Kiranya ada tiga informasi empiris yang masih perlu kita kumpulkan sebelum memutuskan langkah dalam menyikapi situasi ini. Langkah pertama adalah konfirmasi bahwa situasi ini berlaku secara general di Bali, dan bukan hanya di desa tempat Nakatani melakukan penelitiannya. Perlu kiranya ada penelitian serupa dengan yang dilakukan oleh Nakatani di desa – desa lain di Bali: catat jangka waktu dan frekuensi keterlibatan wanita dan pria dalam hal ritual di desa. Kedua, dalam artikelnya Nakatani mencatat bahwa beban finansial untuk ritual ditanggung sebagian besar oleh para wanita. Pencatatan serupa kiranya perlu dilakukan di desa – desa lain. Lebih detailnya, perlu dicatat berapa biaya untuk ritual dan siapa yang menanggung, apakah pihak wanita atau pria? Dan berapa porsi pembiayaan masing – masing pihak. Ketiga, Nakatani juga mencatat bagaimana wanita di desa tempat penelitiannya mengeluh karena keterlibatan ritual mengurangi waktu produktif mereka untuk bekerja. Kiranya sentimen yang sama, jika ada, perlu dicatat dan didokumentasikan dari desa – desa lain. Dengan demikian kita memiliki bukti empiris apakah ketidakseimbangan beban kerja dan tanggungan biaya ritual berlaku general di Bali, dan apakah ada pihak yang merasa “sengsara” akibatnya.

Artikel Ibu Sonia Piscayanti dan balasan – balasannya sangatlah menarik untuk membuat kita tersadar akan potensi lemahnya posisi wanita Bali. Sekarang saatnya kita mengumpulkan bukti agar kita tahu secara nyata. Perlu usaha – usaha kecil dari banyak pihak untuk mengumpulkan data – data seperti yang saya sebut di atas, lalu usaha lebih besar untuk merangkumnya. Telisik diri, menilai berdasarkan bukti dan bukan hanya adu opini.

Phenomenon

A phenomenon is an entity by itself with its intricacy and subtlety
Any attempt on classifying a series or a group of phenomenon is prone to disregard the intricacy and subtlety of each of the phenomenon
Thus, somehow can be regarded as an attempt to simplify the fact and observation

The paradox lies in the need for human for a story
And how human understood the world by classifying things in the world
Relates one thing to another
Making a phenomenon meaningful, seek for similarities and differences
Finding structures, organizations or rules out of irregularities
Put them in the pocket for future replications

:)

About Dreams, Hopes, Plans and Works

Most of the time, I feel that I cannot differentiate dreams, hopes, plans and the actual works. I feel that I keep spending my time in the land of my dreams and hopes. There were times when I plan about something and then suddenly I was overwhelmed by my dreams and hopes. Often it happened because I put too much emotion in my plan. Then it grew, grew, and grew big and bigger until it overwhelmed me and I could not handle it, let alone start to work on it. Oh my, oh my. I understand that I am being too emotional with my plan until it stops me from actually making it come true by working on it and just perform the act.
It is funny that people do actually dream and hope about things that they cannot make come true, while I dream and hope about things that is actually going to happen. It's only after I dreamed about it and hoped too too much about it, it grew into too big until I could not handle it, too big and too perfect to be fail, in short too much emotional investment.
That's me, that's the stress, that what stops me from start to work on my plan. The strange thing is that I can immediately work on my plans if I am in a deadline. I am sure that I will get a kind of "head injury" after that probably because of pushing my brain to work too much, but at least I get the job done. My emotion is eating my brain.

Questions that I need to ask myself:
1. What will happen if I fail: nothing, I'll just make another plan and execute it, the only thing is that I should learn from my previous failure.
2. What will happen if I succeed: I will achieve something. But, the same cycle will happen that I have to make another plan and execute it again, the only thing is that I do not have to repeat the same process as if I fail to achieve it.

From the two questions and answers I realize that life is ever-changing, ever-planning and ever-working. I can and normally should dream and hope about things that seem too far to be reached. Then I must control myself not to dream on things that I should execute. I should remind myself that the disappointment is coming from dreams and hopes that I put (too much) in my plan, and not the result of the failure. My dreams and hopes are wild, crazy, silly, powerful, and they are the ones taking me here, to my present. Now, I have to talk to them again, peacefully, because they are powerful. I need to consolidate, letting them know that I am indeed living in my past dreams, the wild dreams and the silent hopes that I used to have. Then, making them realize that they should help me to create other wilder, crazier, sillier and more powerful dreams and hopes. Leap higher, Ratih!!! :)

The Intricacy of Gossiping, social bonding and friendship

Being a person who really love to gossip
I realize, this social activity is not merely talking about people, things, etc
There are a sort of recipient design and also a social obligation as a response of being addressed as the recipient of the gossip
There are also secrecy, trust, intricate detail and agreement or common ground

Somehow when you are given a gossip
It is meant to be somehow a secret
A hidden news in which you are being given a trust to receive it, to listen to it and to keep it

Thus, when someone gossips about something and gives their personal judgement as to why this piece of news carry such an importance, they somehow expect you to believe, expect you to agree upon their view
Try to reach you, make you and that person to have a common ground in which the opinion about this piece of information
And also, bond with you perhaps with the hatred or negative feeling with this sort of news

Gossiping about a celebrity and then give a harsh judgement on the behavior, though what the celebrity's been doing is not really a serious deviant in a social norm
So, you can think of why should you participate in condemning the celebrity??
When you are in a group, talking about that, judging about that and the group also judge about that...in conformity
You... are simply "forced" to adopt the group judgement or else you are merely an outsider

It's just a gossip
It's none of my business
It's not a serious matter

But when it comes about relation and bonding
We may have to rethink about how to verbally act in gossiping sequence as it is not merely as saying, telling and discussing gossip, unclear and perhaps secret new that can't be trusted
It is what's in the discussion, the moves in discussion
Be very careful, there are moves there that can secure or separate you from the relation and bonding with the people you are gossiping with

No wonder I love to gossip with my closest friends... :)

My Emotion and Memory

I remember one reading (forgot what) mentioning about how we actually memorize something and recall it based on emotional tag
The more "emotionally marked" will be easier to be recalled
While the less one will be just less memorable


I realize other thing too
That memory can involve so many things, if not all
It includes audio, visual, olfactory (smell), concept and of course the emotion, the feeling
I realize this as I listened to Katy Perry's song "Hot and Cold" and I suddenly smell gum tree in the air
It is so... funny? amazing? surprising? don't know what to call it


But then I recall
I used to listen to this song while walking between my class and bus stop in my previous campus
The Uni was full of gum trees
It was the beginning of summer, quite hot but not humid
And the smell of gum trees is so so strong in the air
At least for my nose that was not accustomed with that


Love it
Miss it


Realizing how my brain works with that memory makes me wanna just sit down and enjoy every dimension of it
The song, the smell, sounds of the parrots & how they flap their wings
The smell of my sandwich, lunch from Mellanie... ha ha ha won't forget it... with two cherry tomatoes in the bag
The shades of the trees
My footsteps on those sneakers
My fail hair style, it was so stiff and awkward
Nice friends, nice people, the bus driver, my survival mode
And the most important of all, my feeling
Tassy the dog, scratching cat and his sofa, so so so funny
I was really happy to be there, to have opportunity to learn again
In a new place, place that I never imagined before


I guess, that is how my brain works.... :)

The Meaning of Life is Living

Often we are forced to see things based on a certain framework
In order to judge, whether it is right or wrong, good or bad, beautiful or not, etc
But sometimes, maybe most of the time, things are just not meant to be judged

The more we see
The more we live
The more we learn
The more frameworks we have in our mind
Only by realizing the complexity we can understand that things are just what they are
Whatever judgement that we may cast on them

The danger is that
The more we think that we have seen
The longer that we think that we have lived
The more frameworks that we have learnt
We feel like we have seen them all

Well, I truly understand, that in living, it is better to adopt a certain framework in seeing our live
I truly also understand that lacking of that may result in....
can't say the word, can't really pinpoint what's going to happen
but people have this kind of urge to cling on something and,
feel like after settling down, choosing or clinging on something that things will be better
It might be true, it might be wrong
It is just that life is living, it is not about right or wrong
Or it is???


I'll leave it here
Life is for living
I guess things are just meant to be seen as what they are, with their complexity