Coping in Kupang

It's Friday morning (a short working day, we finish at 11a.m.) and at lunchtime I'm off to Kupang for the weekend. This promises to be bit of fun (as well as some work, of course !) - I'm attending a meeting of all the VSO volunteers in East Nusa Tenggara (Nusa Tenggara Timor, NTT) Province. Kupang is the provincial capital and is on West Timor (the island of Timor is split in two, East Timor occupies the other bit).

This is really like a trip to the big smoke - Maumere has a population of about 70,000 as far as I can figure out, whereas Kupang has about 5 times as many citizens. It's also my first time off the island since my quick visa trip to Singapore in June, quite a change for me to go three months without being on a plane,let alone inside a car !

Kupang has some interesting history - it is here that Captain William Bligh ended up in his open boat 41 days after being set adrift by the crew of The Bounty. That was back in 1789. About 150 years later, it was an important refuelling stop for early long haul flights from Europe to Australia.

The agenda for the weekend's meeting has a number of skill sharing sessions which promise to be interesting, and if previous encounters are anything to go by, entertaining. Having come from a business background where everyone was talking the same sort of language, and immersed in the same corporate culture, it's really interesting to spend time with and listen to volunteers from different countries with different working backgrounds and hear their perspective. For instance, one of the presentations is entitled "A graceful shutdown" and focuses on the end of your placement and will be given by two volunteers who will be returning home very shortly. As I feel that my placement hasn't really started properly yet, this should be educational ! I'm presenting a session on performance management which promises to be significantly less interesting.

The last word on the subject goes to Dilbert..