A (Quite) Productive Day

I arrived at office 15 minutes earlier today. Impressive enough, since I got out of my room the same time as usual. God bless the traffic.

09.00 AM. My boss asked me to accompany him into (he said) a meeting. In fact, it was a research presentation from Bapak Irwan Taufiq Ritonga. Never meet the person, and felt surprised that he is a lecturer in Faculty of Economics and Business, Universitas Gadjah Mada, where I took my undergraduate degree. Pak Irwan is an advance Accounting class lecturer, so it's hardly to meet him in class since I took Economics as my major.

Pak Irwan is now taking his doctoral degree at Victoria University, Melbourne and writing a desertation on Developing a Model to Assess Financial Condition of Local Government in Indonesia. His reserach background is that the fiscal decentralization in Indonesia in last ten years causes financial conditions among local governments vary, while financial statements of Local Government (LG) do not adequately inform users about LG financial conditions (financial health or distress). Unlike the business sector in which financial assessments of firms are clearly defines, research assessing the financial conditions of LG is relatively new.

Now, Pak Irwan is developing a measure of the financial condition of LG based on the government financial reporting framework considering dimensions of financial condition: service level solvency, budgetary solvency, short term solvency, long term solvency, long term solvency, financial independence, and financial flexibility. One interesting finding during his presentation is that I found that Garut, where I was born, is on the lowest 10 of financial condition index of district LG in Java from 2007 to 2010. Sad! I wish I could contribute more to the city.

Actually, I planned to do my home assignment from my "Creative Thinking" course on PPM Manajemen after lunch. I wrote an answer draft but, unfortunately, checking some news, mailing lists, and emails distracted me a lot. I promised my self to finish the task at home tonight. So, I should back home soon. Adios amigos!