Our trip to Indonesia was wonderful. We have a terrific team here, led by Wahyu Jatmiko, who has grown it from just him to an office of over 20 people in just a few years. We got to meet them all, to visit our warehouse, to feel the energy and the trademark LP “Passion for Excellence”.  That is something that is evident in ALL of our offices, and as I have said before, is a key to our success.

Yesterday, Wahyu and Saifadin, our operation manager, and Melania, our Human Resource leader, took us on a trip to a working tea plantation that also doubles as a park. We went horseback riding as women picked tea leaves, tried to do some paragliding off the top of the mountain (but the line was too long) and went on a very neat safari.

On the way back to Jakarta, we were stuck in a never-ending bumper to bumper traffic jam, and late for a meeting we had hastily set up (more business, yay! :) when Wahyu had the driver turn off the main road and approach a couple of kids sitting outside a small shop.

After a few quick words of negotiations, these kids instantly hopped onto their scooter and began to lead us down some winding back roads, alleys, paths, out of the way beyond belief, and in 10 minutes, signaling the occasional car or scooter or pedestrian along the way to slow down and let us squeeze by, helped us avoid 30 minutes of traffic and led us right to the entrance of the toll road.

Nothing like local knowledge : ).

Even though Wahyu has a global blackberry with GPS, we joked that sometimes the local knowledge actually trumps all the technological wizardry. I said that we still used GPS–Get People to Show us : ).

Amazing how well that works.

Onward!