Living in Indonesia | A day at the embassy

在印尼|在大使馆工作的一天

A-Profile of Rafael Teck

Rafael Teck comes from Cologne, Germany. Currently in charge of development and cooperation in the German Embassy of Indonesia, he is involved in a wide range of fields, including environmental protection, renewable energy, economic cooperation, social security and etc. During the summer of 2017, he brought his family to Indonesia for work-related reasons. He is married and has three lovely children. Previously, he lived in Togo, Africa, where he had also worked for three whole years.

(Below is a picture, Rafael is the person third from the left)

(Image courtesy of Rafael, second from the left and Dr. Peter Schoof, German Ambassador to Indonesia, fifth from the left)

My first meeting with Rafael

The first time I met him, Rafael was a very warm-hearted person, almost as if he was Spanish. I was able to visit him at his home once and during the visit, he was a very hospitable person. The fact that his ability to speak was fluent in many languages, such as French, Spanish and English made him seem like a very talented person. I think he is quite a passionate person for sports and social services, which he tends to combine into a strange yet thoughtful hobby. He often puts a lot of attention and effort into playing soccer. In fact, he even played in the Jakarta German Plus football team, proving to be a very important player in the team. He often talks about it and tells me that he  sometimes organizes parties for his teammates.

(The picture below shows the Jakarta German Plus football team, which has been around since 1964 when German players had modest bellies and fashionable caps)

(This picture shows Rafael and his friend Andrea with famous player Lothar Matthäus at the German embassy in Indonesia. Lothar is a former German national footballer who once led Germany to victory in the World. Back then, he was nicknamed the ‘European Footballer of the Year’ and even the first World Player of the Year.)

Whether it’s because of how much he laughs, Rafael is much younger than he seems. This year, he is only aged 41 years old. Apart from work, he and his wife also take time to take care of their three children by themselves. While I was calling him one day, he was even accompanying his children during their e-learning courses. His work also involves business trips and he occasionally has to go to Sumatra, Sulawesi and other areas of Indonesia. Most of the time, he is required to attend meetings and deal with various embassy projects. Rafael’s day in life usually goes like this:

At 7:30 in the morning, he arrives at the office before the traffic jams and reads his emails first, prioritizing his emergencies. Then, there are endless meetings and projects that he has to be part of. Luckily, he doesn’t have a fixed schedule. He breaks his to-do list down in the morning and organizes what he has to do, which determines what he needs to do afterward. When it comes to important matters, such as government cooperation, he puts phone calls and emails aside to focus on such issues.

He usually strives to go home before 6:00 because he wants to have dinner together with his family. After dinner, he will usually accompany his family members to play and generally, he will not face the computer while playing with his children. Instead, he is sure to give his children all the attention they need. On Saturdays, he also takes his kids to play soccer and also makes a point of applying their skin with mosquito repellent before actually playing. When educating children, Rafael firmly believes that instead of telling children what to do, a parent must actually try to do what they’re teaching the children. This way children are able to imitate and interact with the parent more easily and will eventually be able to mature into a person more and more like the parent. I personally think that a job at the embassy is quite busy. However, he says that as long as there is proper organization and a plan to finish the work, it is not much of a big deal. 

(A picture of Rafael below)

Rafael is quite talkative, loud and a very quick-to-talk kind of person. When I went to his house with his friends, he cooked up a barbeque for everyone, which he had done all by himself. He barbecued his own meat while we ate and although I think German food is not exactly the best food in the world, his barbeque and sausages were delicious.

Rafael’s life in Indonesia

Rafael sends his children to a German school here in Jakarta and he thinks that the school’s education system is fairly great. In fact, he is even part of the Parent Support Group which helps the school in running events and other activities. His multilingual ability actually surprised me. He said that when he arrives in a new country he is unfamiliar with, he first learns the basic knowledge of the local language online by himself and then asks a teacher to formally guide him in the language. Most of the time, being multilingual is very useful. Rafael himself believes that being able to speak different languages is a door to other countries and cultures. He also likes to constantly learn new things. As mentioned before, he loves to talk and laugh and is a very active person. It is no wonder that he finds it easy to work with his Indonesian colleagues. He says that Indonesian colleagues are open-minded, disciplined, highly educated and highly motivated to work. Since he had the ‘communication’ part down, he definitely finds the other things that he has to do not that difficult.

Of course, life in Indonesia is not perfect and Jakarta’s public facilities and outdoor spaces are notoriously limited. According to Rafael, when he works, he tries to invite people to the embassy instead of traveling more than twice a day by car. I definitely think that it is not worth spending 4 hours a day simply to travel in Jakarta. Why not use a motorcycle? Rafael clearly doesn’t like this option either, as he said that it’s really hot to wear a suit and ride a motorcycle simultaneously.

(Rafael, who is very far below in the picture)

I used to think that the gap between the rich and the poor in Indonesia was huge but when Rafael told me that Togo’s gap was even larger and that poverty was worse, it was quite eye-opening. Reducing poverty in Indonesia was also what he had to do as part of his job and to him, he says that the country is developing very quickly and that everything seems to move in a very positive direction. He thinks that the COVID-19 virus will not have much of an impact on Indonesia’s foreign trade compared to Indonesia’s domestic market but he believes that they will be able to weather the storm. On the other hand, China is a large country with a crucial role in foreign trade and COVID-19 has had a negative impact on China’s ability to participate in this trade. He has never been to China and he hopes to go to Beijing one day. He also thinks that Chinese history and culture are too rich and plentiful to read in just two weeks. When I asked him if he had any contact with Chinese diplomats, he said that he had played table tennis with them in Togo. Although he had won a table tennis competition during his school years, he still lost to the Chinese people he met there.

(A picture showing Rafael on the far right)

I asked him if there were any secrets going on in the embassy and he laughed wholesomely. He told me that information from the German embassy was very open and transparent, while some of the projects themselves were closed as confidential information when they were done. However, any German can write an email to the German embassy asking for what they were doing and the German projects going on in the local area and the German embassy is required to reply and provide documents. Every German taxpayer provides a capital basis for German public services, meaning it is only fair that the government provides the necessary information to people of the country.

When the new COVID-19 virus arrived, the German embassy organized charter flights to transport thousands of European citizens back to their home countries. The ticket price for each person was just one economy-class ticket from Indonesia to Europe and the reservation price for such tickets was a hundred Euros. Other than his work-related things, he also enjoys Indonesia’s scenery. He says that Western Papua and the Flores islands are beautiful and that he has visited them both at work and with his family. 

(A picture of the beaches in Western Papua, Indonesia)

(A picture of the Flores Islands, Indonesia)

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Of course, Rafael has his own touch of humor and he hasn’t forgotten how to shamelessly ‘advertise’ German men. He directly told me how handsome and good-looking German men are and how gentlemanly they are. I laughed.

If a single woman catches her eye on one of the guys in the picture, just show me his face and I’ll ask Rafael for his phone number. Of course, as long as the sexual orientation is the same, any men out there can also choose as well. 

(This artical has a Chinese version, The pictures here in the article are all from the Internet )

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