The story begins in Bintan, Indonesia in 2005, during our third and final time there. Those of you reading this journal and not familiar with my Bintan adventure, here is the link to my Bintan BLOG: http://omnikron.typepad.com/bintan/
We were in Bintan in our Villa for 10 days. During one of those ten days I invited the general Manager of the golf course (Mr. Rully) and the VP of Operations of the resort, Mildred Stephens, for dinner. I can assume it was a gesture they rarely receive and really appreciated, and we bonded. It was an investment on my part in relationship building and expression of our appreciation given how special they both personally as well their staff made us feel during all our stays at Bintan.
Fast forward to beginning of this year. I get a message from Mildred, she is now running a Westin in Shanghai, and wanted me to join her friends group of her Facebook. I am not part of the Facebook demographics. I did not even have a Facebook profile. So I created a Facebook profile and joined her friends group.
About a month before I left for my trip to India I contacted Mildred (expecting that she would have contact in the hospitality industry) wanting to know if she knew anyone in Bali that I may be able to contact if I needed any assistance in hotel, car rental etc. She put me in touch with the General Manager of one of the hotels in Bali. Fast forward, I’m in Calcutta a few days before I return to Singapore. My original plan was for Cedric, my friend from Singapore, and I to go to China, possibly Shenzhen to play golf for a few days before returning to LA. Even though I wanted to go to China for golf, right from the beginning I had a premonition that we may not be able to pull off the China trip. So I had Bali in my mind as a back up plan. As it turned out, at the last minute, Cedric was having pulling all the pieces together for the trip and he ended up getting sick a couple of days before my arrival back to Singapore from Kolkata. As a result my China trip looked vey shaky. While I was still in Kolkata, about four or five days before my return to Singapore, one day I was looking at Mildred’s Facebook friend’s list, and I recognized a name – it’s one of the front desk managers at the Bintan Golf Club, her name is Yuli Sandra. Somewhat unusual (Christian) name in predominantly Muslim Indonesia. That’s why I remembered her name. I wanted to say hello to her. So I sent her a message to say hello and asking if she remembered me. She had immediately responded saying of course she remembered me and also told me in that first e-mail that she had since left Bintan and now was working for a luxury villa rental company in Bali. If I want to visit Bali I should contact her and she would be happy to help me anyway she can. I thought my goodness what a coincidence. She told me one more thing in that initial e-mail if I remembered “Mah-day” the asst manger at he golf club he is now in Bali. I remembered “Mah-day” very well. The name is actually spelled “Made”, however it is pronounced “Mah-day”. I have used the phonetic spelling “Mah-day” in this journal. Not only did “Mah-day” and I play golf together regularly while I vacationed in Bintan, we even e-mailed each other for a while after I came back to LA. However, after he left Bintan, we lost touch with each other. So if I go to Bali, it would be great to reconnect with my golfing buddy “Mah-day”
I immediately responded to her letting her know that I was indeed planning a trip to Bali and would appreciate any help she can help me in organizing my trip including hotel, car rental, driver etc. I also told her that I’d like her to put me in touch with “Mah-day”, I’d very much like to reconnect with “Mah-day”. So this is the complete background of Yuli and “Mah-day”.
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