The Asian way…

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Bali-Singapore, 27^th November 2014

Doing business in Asia, even after all these years, remains interesting to say the least. Yesterday, on my way from the airport to site, which is not far from the airport in Kuta, the driver had to make a U-turn as his regular route was blocked off by a road block guarded by uniformed police. I did not take much notice until this morning when I found out the reason. By blocking of that road all traffic coming out of the airport has to pass via a new luxury shop recently opened further down. The owner of that shop according to what I understand is some very, very high ranked official in Bali! Wouldn’t you know! Then not far from the airport we are about to commission a new hotel. I enquired why it was still not opened and why the signage was still covered. The reason appears to be that the operations licence has not been granted yet. Why, I asked, since they got the building approval years ago? I was made to understand that this tactic (holding back on issuing the operational licence) was to possibly extract some extra’s; with the building being finished with proper approvals and ready to operate I leave to your imagination what that could be…The same uneasy feeling comes to you when you want to get in or out of Bali’s new airport, there is no way in or out without having to make a big meandering detour through duty free shopping…but I guess that is a tactic employed by practically every new airport design nowadays…

Anyhow we completed our testing last night and managed to determine what lights to be used where in terms of light output, beam spreads and locations, including related fixing and installation details. But even in the lighting supply we end up with this uneasy feeling that we are now tied up with the awarded supplier and suddenly some fittings are not exactly as anticipated in terms of performance (though the quality is ok) with some of the key fixtures not available for testing…I don’t want to be in a position where I have to approve “alternatives” because of time constraints. This card is being played often where your selected light fitting (generally the more expensive ones with little margins for the supplier) suddenly seems to have delivery problems and an alternative (assumingly with much better margins) is being offered to resolve the deadline problem. It won’t work with me…I know this Asian way of doing things!

Light Watch 5-202: Last night’s testing in pictures; note these are mobile phone snapshots so not very representative of the actual visual result…