Archive for June, 2007

EU bans all Indonesian airlines from its airspace

All Indonesian airlines including national carrier Garuda will be banned from flying to the European Union within a week, the European Commission said on Thursday, updating a “blacklist” of carriers deemed unsafe.

We should’ve seen it coming, should we? Safety has never been a priority in this country’s transportation history and framework, be it air transportation, or ground transportation. We have seen histories of accidents, with no serious investigation whatsoever to prevent the same incidents happen again in the future. Public has never been assured that public transportation in Indonesia is safe.

When series of airlines incidents happened last year, a friend told me that flying on Indonesian airlines is like being involved in a lottery, lottery of death. You never know which airlines will get the incident next. And we Indonesian tends to be permissive and accepting. In the end of the day, it’s always “God’s will”. Not that I disagree with that, but God’s will should only be accounted for, when you have done anything within your power to prevent an incident from happen, and that’s not the case in Indonesia’s transportation. We all know that air transportation is risky business, but we never seem to take its incidents to a serious business.

Here’s some comments of Indonesia’s government and airlines officials regarding the issue.

Oh well..

Powered by ScribeFire.

I have never been good at mentoring in workplace. I’m not very good at assisting people to learn how to do their work, talk about their difficulties, or motivate them in their work.

Lately I’ve had one staff assigned to report to me, and it’s my responsibility to mentor him, as he is a fresh graduate. Apparently, after nearly 3 months of work, he hasn’t shown a promising progress, and there has been topics in the view of some senior officers that we shouldn’t extend his probation.

Now here’s the problem. As he’s reporting to me, I’m not sure whether I have been a good mentor to him. To my way of thinking, I always expect people to be self-learning, motivating himself, knowledge-hungry, and ask when they don’t know about things. That’s the way I work also. I’m a self-learner myself, and I expect people to be one as well. In the initial discussion when this fresh guy start to work, I’ve described to him how I think. I’ve given the outline of what he’s going to do, give him bunches of docs and stuffs to read, and told him to ask me anytime, if he had any questions.

The problem then, is that I guess I didn’t monitor him well. I didn’t notice his progress, didn’t know how far he has gotten. Even worse, he never talked, never discussed his problems, never asked me for anything, and suddenly 3 months passed, and he’s being evaluated as no progress.

I do understand my contribution to his situation, that I decided maybe it’s my wrongdoing. Still, I can’t understand, how is it that one comes to the office everyday, don’t know or confused about what’s he’s going to do, and not saying a thing? What’s so difficult in asking questions anyway?

Yet I do feel like I haven’t been a good mentor, that I decided to ask the management to give him more time, while I watch his progress. Because maybe, I haven’t advised him well. I have never fired anyone before, and I feel that it’s imperative that I have every reason if I want to do so.

So, what do you think it takes to be a good mentor???

Powered by ScribeFire.