This is my second trip abroad, the first one being in Germany for 3 months in exchange in Leipzig Graduate school of management.

I was very apprehensive of interning in Indonesia. I had some preconceived notions about Indonesia. I was specially concerned about the alcohol sensitivity considering its the largest Islamic country in the world. But fortunately it is such a liberal society that I was astonished to see such a stark difference in the expected and actual scenario. You can get a beer 24*7 at the nearest Circle K or 7 eleven.

The work in itself has been quite awesome till now. Even though its an education sector and not an FMCG sector, I am getting to learn a lot about the marketing aspects. One of my primary responsibility is to identify the key markets of this university and how we can position to the target group.

I have already made a presentation on the segmentation aspect. My boss has been very encouraging of my work. He is an amazing mentor and I am lucky to have been allocated to him.

In many ways this country seems to be the same as India, specially corruption. If you are caught without helmet or licence, all you have to do is part ways with 5K IDR and you are good to go. Also, there is so much of traffic that it reminds you of a typical metro city in India. The buses are never on time and very unprofessional. However, in general they seem to be hard working.

In a mall, a person got hit by a running kid while he was taking his food and drinks from the KFC counter. The moment coke dropped on the ground, the cleaning officials pounced on the spot with their usual paraphernalia and started cleaning the floor. For a second I felt as if they were waiting for that very incident intently. I had nothing but appreciation for those staff.

Even though this place is near the sea, and even though its supposed to have a high humidity level, it doesn’t feel anywhere as bad as I felt during my internship days in Chennai. That heat was simply unbearable but here there is some sort of pleasantness associated with the daily climate.

I guess when there is not much stress in mind, this is what one feels about the climate irrespective of whether the climate is really bad or not !

This place is obsessed with malls. Some of them are so big that its connected by the bridges and the bridges are also made into the food joints space. Not an inch of real property in such malls are getting wasted.

Having said that let me mention here that the real estate rates are not as high as in Delhi. If I were a man with lot of money, I ‘d have definitely made an investment in the real estate here.