Indonesian Non Sequitur Number 6

Like most people, I work in an open plan office.

In such offices people use a meeting room to make conference calls so that the noise doesn't distract others.

Not in Indonesia. No sirree.

The noisiest country in the world has no such concerns about disruption. People here just crowd around a desk, pull chairs up and sit there speaking into a phone which talks back at them. A magical phone.

The cacophany of 3 or 4 conference calls happening around you can be quite distracting but I've learnt to block it out. I've even started making my own noisy calls on speaker at my desk: a habit that will ensure I can never work in an organised country again.

Today I witnessed a new variation of this practice in the desk beside me. 4 people were standing around a desk, on speaker phone. They were waiting on hold and the music was quite groovy - Indopop groovy, mind.

All of a sudden people started giggling and dancing around the phone, singing a long. Then someone at another desk about 10 metres away popped up from his desk divider and into view. He too started giggling and broke into an arm waving jig for about 5 seconds before sitting down and getting back to his work.