Business trip, Part Uno!

I'm in Bandung right now on a business trip, the day began as usual, I got in the office at the usual time the driver was supposed to come to at 10:00, unsurprisingly he came at 10:30 fair enough since we were planning to leave at 11:00 since there was an extra 30 minutes I had him wait in the parking lot because I still have to wait for our GM to to arrive, I had a little chat with the driver and he told me he hardly goes to Bandung, right then I knew this was going to be a bad day. 10 minutes later the GM arrived at the front office and was ready to go so I called the car again, I still refuse to believe it took 30 minutes to go to the front of the office from the parking lot .

By the time we were all ready to go the driver informed us that the car had an almost empty tank (1/4) despite the fact that we specifically requested for the car to come with a full tank so we have to go and look for a petrol station with a lower grade petrol commonly known here as "solar" oddly enough it doesn't use energy taken from the sun, confused? I am, we were officially ready to go, with a full tank, at 11:45 and we needed to be in Bandung before 14:00.

By the time we got to the toll road heading to Bandung it was around 12:30, I was not happy the GM was not happy and my colleague was asleep. the toll road was empty so I expected the ride to be nice and smooth and maybe even faster than usual, but I guess it had to be one of my unlucky days because the car can't run over 100kph, in an almost empty toll road (or as most people call it, highway), simply because it was one of those older mid 90's Toyota "Kijang" models with a busted aircon in the back seat, so it really felt like a long trip.

We arrived at Bandung at about 13:40, we had 10 minutes left to our first stop, the first thing we did was check the map, the map looked easy, the actual road wasn't. Bandung is perhaps the only city that I have ever been to in the last 15 years that has one of it's main roads blocked by shoe hawkers (the term salesmen is unbefitting for these people) so we had to go by the small roads around it. On the way to our first destination we had to go through at least 4 missed turns and a blocked main road, the traffic itself wasn't the problem here but missing a turn in Bandung isn't a very good way to get somewhere quick we went pass gedung sate twice trying to get to one place..

Eventually we arrived in our first stop at 14:30 and the even organizers weren't very amused. I was supposed to help another colleague based in Bandung for an exhibition but I was informed that the exhibition will finish at 16:00 so it didn't make much sense to go there anyway instead we went to the branch office where I met with the onsite manager. At 16:15 she left to pick up the GM from the hotel he was presenting since he has another activity scheduled at 17:00 so for the next half an hour or so I did what I do back in the home office, I sat behind a table and wait for people to walk in, I never knew an office could be so small I was even more bemused when I was informed the original office was around 1 x 2m square for 2 people so it was only natural for me to ask whether the office was about 6 feet below ground.

By the time the GM arrived we didn't do much until about 17:00 when client began to walk in, despite that we only had 5 people coming in from 17:00 we finished at 19:30 the good news was we got one applicant, bad news was we were all too tired to do anything else so we dropped the GM at the hotel he's staying in while the rest of us had dinner I got back to my hotel at about 21:00. The first thing I did was fill up the tub with hot water and took a nice long and perhaps over extended overdue bath. I set my alarm on 5:30 and went to bed at 00:00

I have yet to take a photo of kebab building (gedung sate).