Hunkered down at the hotel

We're hunkered down for the foreseeable future here at the hotel. My team's project is in a good position as we have already spent a lot of time with our clients and are starting to put together our final recommendations - which we can do here at the hotel if need-be.  We had hoped to hold a seminar on Social Media & Marketing today with our client, but that obviously didn't happen.   We'll reschedule it to sometime next week.  Two of the other teams also had presentations/seminars originally scheduled for today, so they too will be looking to shift things around next week if possible. 

Our team absorbed the situation today and everyone was in good spirits relaxing at the hotel.  IBM security has been keeping in close contact with us and are making sure we have what we need, even though they are far away in Jakarta.  Our hotel provided us with basic facemasks today, and our in country contact Diane went looking for special face masks called N95 masks that are mandated by IBM Security for these situations.  Unfortunately the conditions were very bad outside and several stores were sold out - but we're very lucky that the special masks are supposed to be hand-delivered to us tomorrow all the way from Jakarta.  If all goes well, another IBMer is taking a train into town and should arrive tomorrow.

In the meantime, our hotel has been over-run by a student group arriving on 5 tour buses.  Mid-afternoon we looked at the lobby with 200+ people trying to check in and thought to ourselves "we don't know how long our hotel restaurant can deal with that many people in the hotel."  The facilities are good but the restaurant doesn't seem like it will be able to deal with that large an influx of people.  Just to be on the safe side, my teammate Claudia & I very briefly braved the conditions to walk two blocks to a nearby convenience store - where we proceeded to wipe out their stock of cup-of-noodles and also picked up a bunch of crackers, granola bars, and cookies for the team.  We don't know how long we're going to be stuck in the hotel and we figured it would be better to have too much food for everyone (that we can later donate to local organizations if necessary) than not enough.  In the 85+ degree heat I bundled myself in my easily-washable hiking pants, my Gore-tex jacket, a poncho on top of that, my respirator mask, and sunglasses to protect my eyes.  I must say I am very proud of my outfit as I arrived back home unscathed, but we looked quite comical.

Me & Claudia returning from the convenience store with food for the team

For some reason, our hotel restaurant seemed to be closed for the evening so I have already started eating the noodles.  They have put a sign in the elevator stating that breakfast tomorrow has been moved to the ballroom so hopefully they'll be able to serve a lot more people there than in the restaurant.  At least we know they haven't completely shut down the food service.

Daniel organized a board game night tonight which was a lot of fun.  He also brought some Pálinka for us to try - it's a traditional fruit brandy from his home country of Hungary.  My 1/2 Hungarian roots didn't quite prepare me for it, but it was nice to try (thanks Daniel!)

Jay, Antonella, Daniel & Alberto

That's a lot of snack food!

That's all for tonight.  Let's hope the sky starts to clear a little bit overnight and maybe some rains will come to help get some of the dust out of the air.