While working in Singapore I was always one of the first people down for breakfast at the hotel and the first one to arrive at the Singapore Institute of Management. I spent the first hour getting my training room ready for the managers in my workshops. I tried to make it an interesting place to learn.  When satisfied I would go to the cafe for a cup of coffee and think about the day ahead.

         One day I was joined by a stranger who asked to sit with me. He introduced himself as Jamin Djuang, the owner of L.D.I Training in Jakarta. He asked if I would consider working for him in Indonesia. I told him I was not interested.

         Later he wrote to me and asked if I would run a workshop for him at the Hilton Hotel in Jakarta following one of my Singapore workshops. I reconsidered.  Joyce and I thought we would like to take a look at Jakarta.

         Just before we departed from Singapore for Jakarta the workshop was canceled. We had tickets so we went ahead with our visit. When we arrived we had no idea where to stay. We decided to spend the first night at the Hilton Hotel and then look for cheaper accommodation.

         At the Hilton, we were made most welcome. We were told we were expected and our accommodation was fully paid for by a company called LDI Training.

         At that time the Hilton Hotel had a fourteen-acre beautiful garden. It was an oasis in the heart the city.

         Jamin made a car and a driver available for us to see the sights of Jakarta.

         I agreed to fly back later in the year to run a workshop on the topic,  “Managing for Tomorrow” and to train some trainers in my teaching techniques. LDI Training also wanted the rights to translate our book “The Trainers Handbook” into Indonesian.  I had no trouble with that.

         That workshop was most unusual as only six attended. The six were the two directors of the MBA programmes for the Indonesian Institute of Management, the Manager of Human Resources for Prudential Insurance, The Vice-President of Bank Utama, The Director of LDI Training, and the Project Manager Supervisor from Shell Oil, Brunei.

         I was asked to extend my normal Singapore three-day workshop into a five-day one.

         My problem was keeping up with the participants. Because of the small number,  their intelligence and their ability they finished the assignments set very rapidly. I would set an assignment, and while they were working on that,  I was busy making up the next one.

         One of my exercises was to demonstrate how ineffective the lecture was as a teaching tool. I normally found poor recall by participants but this time I discovered a member in our group had a hundred per cent recall – amazing!

         This Jakarta workshop was the most professional I had worked in.  My book “Managing for Tomorrow” had been translated into Indonesian and was presented to the participants. A very efficient assistant sat outside the door and was available for any training needs. The food was outstanding.  We had our own German chef cooking whatever we fancied for lunch in a small intimate restaurant.

         It’s hard for a New Zealander to get Indonesia in perspective. According to the World Bank, it had a population(in 2020) of over 273.5 million people. New Zealand and Singapore each have about five million.

          It’s made up of over 17,000 islands with 300 ethnic groups speaking some 360 dialects. A county of great poverty, great wealth, and a great diversity of cultures.

         My first visit was in 1993 to attend a meeting held at the Bali Hyatt Hotel as guests of the Indonesian Eisenhower Fellows. It was a stimulating experience. Each evening we would find a gift on our bed, such as a dressing gown, some ceramics, or Indonesian clothes.

         One of our eminent speakers summed up our meeting with these words. “The Mediterranean is the ocean of the past, The Atlantic is the ocean of the present and the Pacific is the ocean of the future.” It looks as if he might be right.

         At the end of this meeting, I witnessed a local businessman pulls out a chequebook and write a cheque for US$40,000 to help cover the deficit in conference expenses.

         We then went on a post-conference tour to Central Java and Borababadur. As an Eisenhower Fellow owned the tour company, and we had two distinguished Cabinet Ministers in the group, we were treated like royalty.

         In all the countries I have run training workshops, the two I have had the most job satisfaction have been this training in Indonesia and the one I ran in North Vietnam. In both cases, the participants were hungry for new information and were keen to learn and to please. I had preconceived ideas about both these countries. One should never prejudge the integrity of a person or a country.

         As my old grandmother used to say, “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”  But as a publisher, we know it does help to sell them.

Geoffrey Moss(mossassociates.co.nz)