My first ever cocktail party...

I enjoy the company of a nice cold cappucino in the weekend or after a long day in the office, alone for most of the time. The frequency is getting more intense in the past few weeks, considering the fact that I have spent several weekends working on credit applications. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a workaholic (how can I be a workaholic when I'm not even satisfied in my current job?) but more of an unreliable time manager that results into extra effort on the weekend. But, at the very least, I'm there to work on somewhat qualified applications with the accompany of happy rich teens and Jakarta's socialite that were laughing around with their notebooks opened up (which I'm very certain were used to navigate through Facebook, MySpace, and several similar websites).

One thing that I always do (while my laptop is booting) is to grab a few magazines just to warm my self up before I start doing whatever it is that I have to do. Unfortunately not all coffee shop have Business Week, The Economist, or Time magazine in their shelves. Probably, because their target market simply feels those magazines are just too boring for their "precious" leisure time. None the less, I have to adapt to the situation and therefore I pick those magazines that are a "must have" items for a coffee shop to be considered as a coffee shop, namely Indonesian Tatler, Registry, and all the lot. I don't really enjoy the news (if there's anything inside those magazines that can be classified as news) but I like to see that upper side of Jakarta spending their leisure time. It's interesting to see those 16 - 20 years old girls slide their way in a socialite party with no sense of worriness of life in their "heavily done" faces. Can't blame them, they were so luckily borned in a well "financially brought up" family. Of course, the photos are not always about them. I also notice those that have spent most of their life building up a career that they deserve to be proud of. Overall, the photos show ironic differences between the life on the street and life on the hip! but they all have one thing in common, they are all real life real facts of Jakarta. I personally feel that it is always fascinating to see all sides of Jakarta, either its the upper one or the lower one. The irony makes me laugh.

But all the stories of cocktail party and such suddenly came live for me on Tuesday, December 16th 2008. Influenced by all those glamorous photos in those magazines (you know precisely what kind of magazines I mean) and engulfed by the idea that this is my ticket to join the upper society of Jakarta, I jumped to the invitation and prepared myself for the event. I practiced my English, especially for those particular words that would make a man from Bronx look like a Wall Street guy, shaved (I don't regularly do this), prepared my suit, and all other supporting activities that I considered would be beneficial for the lovely event. Long story short, I was there.

Things started to work out when I saw a bar with free flow of beer (Heineken was the brand, my favourite). Intuitively, I went straight over there thinking that even if I can't expand my network tonight, at least I can catch a free flow of beer. Then several people started to gather around (expatriates all of them) in the bar and we started to introduced ourselves. I didn't start with the standard approach greetings such as: "Who do you work for?" or "What kind of business are you in?". Instead, I started by saying "this is my first networking party and I'm just tagging along with my friend". Somehow, I felt that these people had enough of dull conversation with the sales people and wanted simply to talk with an honest person with no business intention. I tried to be that person and we talked about politics (foreign and domestic), economic crisis, Bali, Thailand, and even to sex business. If what I did that night can be classified as an approach technic, then I would say it's quite an effective one for me.

The next question is, do I want to join another party just like this one in the future? I think there will be those occasions that I am obliged to join, but I personally feel that once every one or two months won't harm me at all. So, am I a socialite now? No, I am not a socialite. I don't wear a Raoul shirt with Hermes tie and covered with Giorgio Armani suit. I'm still the same guy that shops only on discount and no more than twice every year. It just happen that I guess I have found a new way to spend my extra time...