Unlikely Opportunities

Prior to working for Plus PM Consultant, I spent 5 years working in Jakarta, Indonesia. In term of weather and culture, it is not much different from my home country of Malaysia, which is part of South-East Asia and Malay archipelago and which I can easily adapt to.

However and similar to most of developing countries in South-East Asia, Jakarta is notorious for its bad traffic congestion mainly caused by inflow of migrant from rural area seeking better opportunity in the capital city and also because of the non-existence of good public transport network system. An usual 30 minutes trip without traffic congestion can take up to 3 hours in worst condition. It makes it difficult to predict the time of arrival to certain destination and every trip has to be planned much earlier.

A lot of common people (like me) will be frowning and blaming the other (and government) whenever we are trapped in traffic jam. However, there are some with more entrepreneurial capability, out-of-ordinary people would think of way to make money even out of this worst condition. I remembered on my way to airport to catch a flight but was stuck in very bad traffic jam (not moving) and would definitely have missed my flight. But lining up by the road are individuals offering motorcycle ride to the airport. I managed to take the ride, which cost about RM15 for 2KM ride which is considered quite expensive but still manage to reach on time for my flight instead of wasting RM400 to buy another air ticket. Similarly other entrepreneurs are coming up with motorcycle ride sharing apps such as “Gojek” and “Grab bike”, which offer ride services and other services such as buying meals or delivering parcels to and for you.

All of this stems from desperation and being push to the limit. The migrant workers might not be earning enough and there might be not enough job opportunity in the city. Therefore, they are being pushed to think of other way to make money to support their family. Therefore, I believe that to bring the best from our self, we must push our self to the limit (but not over limit) to tap our hidden and fullest ability and potential. Without being pushed, we might have been still in our comfort zone and doing our routine and regular work without knowing our best and unlikely potential.

Currently I am accepting anything that the company is throwing at me, be it at scope of work or at size and numbers of projects that I can handle to test my best potential. Once I know my best potential, I would be ready to accept new challenges to move forward. Thank you!