Upon hearing fluent Bahasa Indonesia conversation emerging from other members of the Data Conversion and DBA teams, Ravi Kumar decided to pick up Bahasa himself. He quickly evolved his own approach to mastering it. Basing his approach on the principle that foriegners can understand English if you speak it to them slowly and loudly, he soon mastered his own style of Bahasa: English spoken slowly at three times normal volume. This gained him widespread fame (if not love) among the Indonesian community. It also worked quite well, expect on the rare occasions that the target of his speeches actually spoke no English.
Ravi has been self-described as a cheerful person with a heart of gold, ever willing to do his utmost to help other friends, and deeply grieved when his friends do not do the same for him. He's a man who's always ready to join with the crowd, whose calm and friendly demeanour has made him a household name in Indonesia.
His easy good cheer and ability to put others at ease was displayed quite early on in the Indonesia days, when he worked with the Branch Parts Manager, Rudy. Rudy, being an affable soul, had volunteered to pick several of us up in the morning, and drive us to work. At 7:30 sharp each morning, he drove in, picked up the team and drove in to work. As the Manager, he was responsible for the prompt functioning of the Branch system, and he took that responsibility very seriously. Too seriously for Ravi, who realized that all this work would increase Rudy's blood pressure to dangerous levels, and set out to do something about it. The second morning, when Rudy walked in, he was greeted by the fascinating sight of Ravindra Kumar in flowing striped pajamas, with a toothbrush in his hand.
"Stick around, Rudy, have a cup of tea !" smiled the ever-cheerful Ravi. "We are not late, are we ?!"
Rudy was struck dumb, and remained silent for a while.
"Come on, come on, there's always time for tea !" chortled Ravi. "Then I'll have a bath and we can go"
Rudy continued to resemble a statue in appearance.
"Maybe some breakfast ? This boy cooks good toast !" smiled the hospitable Ravi.
Rudy appeared to be controlling strong emotions; his face was held tightly in control. His hands were clenched tightly into fists at his side.
"Poor fellow", thought Ravi, "he must not be used to such courteous hosts ! Well, well, we must make him at home."
The decisive Abinov intervened at that point, preventing us from watching the sight of a Branch Parts Manager having an apoplectic fit.
"We're going now, Ravi ! You can follow us by taxi !"
"What ?!" exclaimed the stunned Ravi "but wait, I'll only take a few minutes to have a bath; and then breakfast, and a spot of tea, and I'll dress up, and we can all go together ! Just wait a bit !"
"No, we're leaving now" said Abinov curtly, "See you later"
Rudy quickly departed the house with Abinov before the status could change; and well, if he displayed a tendency to hold down the accelerator a bit too hard, perhaps it was justifiable at the time.
Ravi, despairing of meeting an Indonesian who could properly accept his hospitality, gave up, and decided not to waste his precious time on such people. If they could not appreciate him, there was no reason for him to be so polite !
* * * In Indonesia's paternalistic work-culture, an order from a superior is an absolute command that must be obeyed without thinking twice (or as often seen, even once). One incident of this was noted the day when Ravi Kumar requested more people to assist him in data-conversion. "If I do not get more people immediately, I shall stop all data conversion work at once", said Ravi politely (in his Bahasa, of course).
Linda Lim, the UT Project Manager, is a lady who is rarely, if ever, at a loss. She stepped out into the corridor, noted the first man she saw over there, and congratulated him upon his promotion to Data Conversion specialist. This happened to be Andre, a six-and-a-half foot giant, whose sole prior specialization happened to be PC hardware repairs, and whose only concept of a data-conversion tool was a screwdriver. Being sensible enough not to say no to his boss, Andre accepted his new post, and was swiftly shipped off to Padang, where Ravi Kumar anxiously awaited his new Data Conversion expert.
The new Data Conversion expert took one look at the Sun workstations, fiddled around with a couple of UNIX commands, submitted to a quick Bahasa lecture from Ravi and made up his mind. He walked over to a pair of nearby malfunctioning PC's, dug his trusty screwdriver out of his pocket, disassembled them, and was soon happily absorbed in his repair tasks. Alas, Ravi found his new specialist at this task five minutes later, and gently explained to him (in Bahasa, of course) that he should be converting data. Andre couldn't explain to Ravi that his screwdriver wouldn't fit a SUN workstation, so he didn't bother; he just called another of Ravi's team, and passed Ravi on to him. Alas, Ravi failed to understand why Andre could not follow his simple Bahasa, and made another attempt at conversation, this time increasing the volume to a factor of five times normal, so as to facilitate communication. Strangely enough, Andre didn't respond to even this.
"What we have here is an evident failure to communicate." Ravi made another attempt to communicate, this time succeeding in making contact with the Branch Manager, who was three hundred feet away and puzzled at the growing volume of the conversation. Only Andre's immense size saved him from a physical assault.
"I swear, if I were not such a gentle soul, I would have hit him", glowered Ravi. "These people don't understand even when you explain it to them calmly and slowly !" Eventually, he gave up, and the slack left by Andre was taken up by the rest of the Conversion team. Padang, however, did manage to get all their PC's repaired during that Data Conversion visit.
That's enough travel ... now let's head back home