Hotel Kempinski, Jakarta

Checked in late last night. Newly renovated hotel with polite staff, but they have so much more to get right! Different clocks in the same room are set to different time zones somehow, the operator is unable to relay the correct luggage tag number to the bell desk, the taxi counter guy makes nice small talk but takes ages to actually do his job of finding a taxi ... the list goes on! Still much better than the Hotel Mulia, notorious for its thin walls and for what goes on within them ;)...they have way more things to get right!

But then, the world itself has so much more to get right, doesn't it, or at least my part of the world, i.e. Asia, does. I just read two side-by-side articles that talked about how India has topped the list for retail shrinkage levels (retail industry jargon for theft) and that the insurance sector is so under-developed there. Similar stories abound here in Indonesia. The world has faced and solved these and other problems many times before, yet there is so much work to do to apply, customize and implement the solutions for our countries. Easier said than done!  The fact is, these large developing countries are essentially work-in-progress, and there is so, so much work and relatively sluggish progress.

The task for my generation in Asia is clearly cut out: we need to invest our life time to erase the "third world" label from our dear countries, so that our kids have the same quality of governance, infrastructure, services and opportunities as their counterparts in the West! Will I do my bit? One look at my little Yash (my two-year old son) or rather at his picture which is my wallpaper, and my answer is, "Hell, Yes!"

And so I get off to start another day ... off to the gym now!

Chandan