PLACEMENT REPORT

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PLACEMENT REPORT

THE EMBASSY OF THE REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA

MADRID, SPAIN

by:

Name: Praisel Ester Pua

Student ID: S2643723

Placement Supervisor: Drs. C.A.M. Wagstaff

Supervisor at Placement: Mr. Jopkie Kurniawan

in partial completion of MA International Political Economy University of Groningen

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Introduction

For a duration of 7 weeks, started from 11 November 2019 to the end of December 2019, I was an intern at the Embassy of the Republic Indonesia in Madrid, Spain. I chose to do my internship in the Economic Affairs and Commercial Attaché. I had the opportunity to directly experience to work of diplomats with issues that arises between both countries (in this case, Indonesia and Spain) and I also had the opportunity to analyse issues that were affecting one another heavily.

As an international relations student, having the opportunity to be an intern in an embassy was an eye-opener as I got experience and see the real work of the diplomats, the negotiation process between the two countries and also to put into practice all the theories and knowledge that I studied from classes. It had been a great opportunity to be accepted as an intern and to experience the real working environment of a representative of Indonesia in Spain.

Prior To The Placement

The very first thing that I did prior to the placement was to think where I would like to do my placement at and where it would be. Several days after, I had already made a decision to do my placement in one of the embassies of Indonesia. Afterwards, I consulted several of my friends who had done theirs about their experiences, the job that they had to undertake and their opinion about the whole journey as an intern at an embassy.

After several consultations and thoughts, I, then, chose the location of the embassies that I preferred. At this point, I narrowed down the choices of countries to European countries only. The reason for that was because of several considerations; such as the costs (for the accommodation, tickets, visas, insurance and most importantly the living cost) and the amount of travel time. In addition, I also tried to take into consideration about the overall environment in which country that I would be heading to, its culture and the language used.

After I went through all the thought and planning process, I started to contact them through email. The emailing process started approximately from November 2018 until approximately March 2019. The language that I used for sending the emails to the embassy is Bahasa Indonesia. However, before sending the email, I made sure that the email sent

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4 were all in proper email (in a formal way) to express my request for a placement program. To make sure that I write the email in a proper way, I consult several of my friends who I believe have the ability to write in formal Bahasa Indonesia.

It took several weeks for me to receive any responses. Many of which replied that they did not have any internship program this year. However, there were even more email that I did not received any reply from. It was, without doubt, the very difficult part of the whole process of getting a placement because at this point I was not a hundred percent sure that I would be able to do my placement in 2019.

After several weeks of waiting, I, finally, received two positive responses of my application for a placement. They were from the Embassy of Indonesia in London and the Embassy of Indonesia in Madrid. Considering these were the only positive responses that I got from all the email that I sent, I needed to decide as to which I would reply and agreed to. At this point, I had only five months before the start of my placement.

I did a quick research for both of the embassies, both of the countries, the living situation in both of the countries and the most important thing was the budget for the whole period of the placement. I tried to collect as many information as I could get to helped me make a decision. Considering the travel costs, accommodation and the living cost that I had to bear, I decided that it was best to went for Madrid. As an international student, it was more convenient for me to go to Spain since I had not had to pay any additional cost for the visa.

After I set my heart to do my placement in Madrid, I sent a reply back to the Embassy of Indonesia in Madrid letting them know that I would be doing the placement there. I received several information back as a reply. The email included information regarding fees, accommodation and details about the working hours that the Embassy had. In regards to fees and accommodation, the Embassy of Indonesia in Madrid did not provide any of these, thus, the student should bear all the expenses when the placement took place.

After I confirmed that I would do my placement there, the next step was sending all the documents needed for the application process including the CV and the placement plan. Hereinafter, I prepared several documents to be sent. I had a copy of my CV and a motivation letter and from that I started to edit several things that I thought would be suitable for a placement application. I also did a research on how to write a CV and a motivation letter for a placement purposes to make adjustments to the layout of the documents, the design and the information that needed to be included.

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5 The other document that was needed to be filled before the placement begin was the placement plan. The placement plan was meant to be filled by the student indicating all the activities, tasks and goals of the placement program that would be read by both the placement provider and also the placement supervisor. This was probably one of the most important processes out of all because it showed how much your dedication and the goals that the student would like to gain to nourish his/her skills and knowledge both in academic and also for personal development. I spent quite a lot of time on constructing my placement plan so that it would help me to focus and achieve as much advantage as I could from the program.

I consulted with my placement supervisor, Drs. Wagstaff, about my placement plan on how to constructed it and helped me to be more focus on the goals that I would like to achieve from the placement. She helped with the plan and guided me in during the thought process from the very beginning until we both agreed on it.

After all the documents ready, I sent them all to the placement provider. I also made sure that they were happy with the placement plan so that both of us had the same idea as to how the placement would be and the goals that I wanted to achieve from the placement. Afterwards, I got a positive response from the placement provider indicating that they were happy with all the documents that I sent. They confirmed me that they were okay with the starting date and also with the period of the placement. In addition, they informed me that they were quite flexible with the period of the placement and were open to any changes of starting or end date.

As part of the final process prior to the placement, I, then, sent them the placement contract to be filled. This was the last document that needed to be filled and signed by both the placement provider, the placement coordinator and me. I sent the placement contract to the placement provider for them to filled in all the important information such tasks and activities that would be done during the placement, under which department would I do the placement at, if there were any additional tasks that I would do and also as a statement indicating that they were open with me doing the internship at the Embassy of Indonesia in Madrid.

Later on, after the placement contract was signed by the placement provider, I handed it in to my placement supervisor for her to checked and made sure that everything was filled as required and whether or not the information provided was enough for me to do the placement.

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6 After all the required documents were signed and sent, the next step was for me to plan out my travel to Madrid, searched for accommodation and made an initial planning for the whole trip.

The whole planning was done on roughly less than three months prior to the starting date of my placement. It was quite a short time considering all the things that I had do for the overall journey. I spent quite a lot of time on accommodation site specifically for students and finding houses in Madrid was not as easy as I thought. I had to go through many housing websites to finally found the one that was suitable for my budget.

During the Placement

I started my placement on the second week of November until the end of December 2019. The first day of the placement was basically getting to know the people in the office and meeting the ambassador. During the office tour, I was given a brief description of the overall working environment, on which issue each of the attaché was dealing with at that time and how the office usually run on the day to day basis. There were no tasks carried out on the first day.

Before I started the placement, I was asked by the placement provider as to which Attaché I would be doing my placement in. I personally asked to do the placement in Economics Attaché and in Information, Cultural and Social Attaché primarily because of my study and also my interest in knowing more about the relations that both of Spain and Indonesia have in both economics as well as in promoting cultural values between each other.

There were basically not much happening during the first week of the placement. I carried out several tasks such as reporting a weekly news on economics and tourism news on both Spain and Indonesia sides and translating. I attended one event that was an invitation to the information, cultural and social affairs to accompanied the cultural attaché to attend one event on literature and arts. Because there were not many activities during the first week, I got the chance to explore the city of Madrid specifically the location around the location where I live and also the office. I also had the opportunity to observe the office more and adjusting myself with the pace of work of the people in the office. The first week was also the time whereby I spent a lot of my time trying to adapt with the new routines from being a full-time student to a full-time intern.

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7 Since my placement coordinator from the Embassy was also the first secretary of economic affairs, I got to hear all the day to day activities and also work that him and his team carried out. He explained that for quite a long time the economic attaché focusing its work on doing research on palm oils caused by the tension raised from the banning of imports of palm oils and its related products from Indonesia to European countries which happen due to the action of suppressing the use of palm oil that were rising within the continent.

It was fascinating to experience the work directly from the Embassy about their work on dealing with the issue of palm oil. For many years, I learnt about this topic when during my bachelor and even now in my masters which mainly based only on theories, academic writings and lectures. It was an amazing experience for me to finally got the chance to observe about this specific topic from another perspective with those who were directly in contact with the issue. Especially when I got the chance to see how the negotiation happen between all the parties involved including the Embassy as the representative of Indonesia and the government of Spain, the EU and also with the companies in Spain and also in the EU from the work of all the diplomats in the Embassy.

As for the second week, the activities were pretty much the same, however, the office was quite busy on planning and organising for UNFCCC COP 25. The event was meant to happen in Chile, nevertheless, because of the chaotic event that happened in Chile, Madrid took over the event. Because of that, the Embassy had to re-organise their activities to took part in COP25 and also planned on welcoming all the Indonesian delegations that will later on joined the event.

The following week, I got another task to carried out for the next several weeks. Not only I got to work on the weekly news report and translating, I got an additional task from Trade Attaché to list the importers and exporters based on several commodities that were asked. In order to attained the data needed for the list, I, then, had to access the website of Ministry of Trade of Indonesia.

From this task, I learnt that not only there were many commodities that Indonesia exported to Spain, out of them all, raw palm oil and palm oil based product were still on the top of the export list despite the tension raised from the banned of palm oil based product within the EU.

Within this week as well, the city of Madrid was pretty much crowded with COP 25 related activities. COP 25 advertisements were everywhere in the public areas and climate-related seminars and activities were held in several places in Madrid. It was a busy week.

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8 Several Indonesian delegations had also arrived prior to the starting date of the event. The city was started to be filled with delegations from around the world.

At that time, I was asked to join Attaché of Commerce on attending one of the events held by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food of Spain. The event was on reporting the work of the ministry on promoting fish consumption in Spain, from where the fish were traded from and a report on the accomplishment of the campaign. The event was attended by the Minister, scientists, academician and those from the advertisement sector.

Another event that I attended that week was a steel and metal convention held in one of the convention halls in Madrid, I was brought there by Attaché of Commerce to join such events because as part of their job, they also took part on the opportunity on building connection with several companies within the country to promote the opportunities for investing in Indonesia.

I carried out the same tasks as the previous weeks, reporting a weekly news on economic and tourism and translating, when the office was pretty much hectic because of the preparation for COP 25. Nonetheless, at the very end of that week, I was asked to meet one of the delegations of Indonesia. He was from the Permanent Mission of Indonesia in New York to the UN that would attend COP 25. From this meeting, I got to listen to several agenda of COP 25 as well as all the different kinds of activity that would be held during the two-week conference.

The first week of COP 25, I did not carry out any other tasks other than weekly news report and the export/import list for the Attaché of Commerce. Most of the people in the office was out to attend COP 25 and to accompany the delegations. Since there were quite a lot of delegations from Indonesia came to attend the event, several people from the office had to accompany more than two delegations and had to attend more than one panels within the conference.

Before the end of the first week of COP 25, the office had to made plan for the upcoming event that would be held right after the end of COP 25. The event was called ASEM (Asia – Europe Meeting). The main event was the 14th ASEM Foreign Ministers

Meeting (ASEMFMM14) whereby all the foreign ministers of parties of ASEM gathered together to discuss various different topics such as multilateralism and global issues (UN Sustainable Development Goals, Climate Change and Marine Litter), regional issues and security challenges (terrorism, maritime security and cyber and information and communication technology), gender and empowerment (context of peace, security and

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9 sustainable development issues) and sustainable connectivity (centralised connectivity and tangible areas of connectivity cooperation between ASEM countries).1

Because it was a meeting between foreign ministers, the minister of foreign affairs of Indonesia was planned to attend this event. Therefore, there would be no break after the COP 25 finished. Hence, the first week of COP 25 was also full with the preparation for ASEM meeting to welcome the minister a day before the event and during her visit in Madrid. For the preparation of ASEM, I got the chance to do a research about fishing quota rights for the Ambassador to be used in the event. I was asked to research some basic information on general information of fishing quota rights and also Indonesia’s position on this.

During the second week of COP 25, I was asked to be one of the people representing the Embassy of Indonesia in an event held by the Embassy of Thailand and was chaired by Elcano Riyal Institute, a think-tank which based in Madrid. The theme of the event was ASEAN-EU Partnership: Promoting Connectivity for Sustainability. Within the event, I got to hear the presentation by each of the speaker; the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Thailand, the Ambassador of Indonesia who also as the Chair of the ASEAN Committee in Madrid and the Chairman of Elcano Royal Institute.

Each of the speakers spoke about several different aspects about the integration of EU-ASEAN partnership. Each of them expressed their understanding about ASEAN-EU partnership, the desire in pursuing an integrated partnership and how the partnership will later benefit each member countries through competitiveness. Since it was also held the same time as COP 25, each of the speaker addressed their concern on the issue of climate change and the possibility for further cooperation between ASEAN and EU countries on tackling climate change.

After both of the events finished, there were pretty much no international events held at the end of December. The last two weeks of December were full with writing and filing reports for each of the affairs because each of the affairs had to report their activities as well as expenses spent throughout the year back to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Indonesia.

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Learning Goals and Outcome

Overall, the experience that was way beyond what I expected. It was fascinating to see all the work of the diplomats in the real working environment. I had the chance to see and experience myself their work and met people who are passionate with their work. The placement program helped me a lot in enhancing my researching, writing, communication and professional skills.

Before the start of the placement, I wrote down all the goals that I would like to achieve from the placement.

• An in-depth understanding about the work of the diplomats as the representative of Indonesia abroad. I am very pleased with the results as I get to experience pretty much all the work that they have to carried out as diplomats. This is probably one out of all the lists that I experienced the most. Prior to the start of the placement, I never expected to have this much knowledge and experience of the work of the diplomats. However, they are all kindly allow me to follow them when they are on duty and give me explanation of how to be a diplomat and their work after completing their diplomat studies from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Indonesia. that I am now understood that becoming a diplomat is not an easy task and to be one takes a lot of consideration due to the amount of schools that they have to attend prior to their duty abroad and also all the job that they have to carry out when they are assigned abroad. In addition, since I am planning to apply at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after finishing my study, having the opportunity to do my placement in the Embassy helps me, as previously mentioned above.

• Networking. Another important aspect that I would like to achieve from the placement program is to build networking. Having the chance to do the placement in the Embassy of Indonesia in Madrid allows me to build my network into more of a professional one. I get to meet several people who are expert on their field and are passionate about what they are doing. Most importantly, I have the opportunity to connect with more people outside of the office when I am asked to attend several international events, diplomatic events and have to come to meetings with people from the Spanish governments, organisations and companies.

• Enhance my skills; research, communication and professional skills. From this placement program, I have the chance to improve several skills that can be useful for

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11 my academic life as well as for my future career. All the tasks that carried out have helped with my research skill. Having the tasks to do research on several topics from the economics affairs and commercial attaché helped me to improve my data collection technique, my writing skills and also analysing skill. In addition, all the tasks have helped me with critical thinking and problem solving. Moreover, all the events that I have attend during the placement not only helping me to gain more experience and chances to meet new people, it has helped me to gain more and more information on specific topic from the experts themselves, being critical of certain things and open up my horizons. From all the experience, I have the chance to learn about leadership, project management, conflict resolutions decision making, adaptability, ability to work under pressure, time management and self-motivation. • Gain more experience of a real-working situation. This placement helps me to

experience not just the work of a diplomat but also how the real-work actually is. Since, I have not had any job before starting the master’s program, the placement helps me in getting to know more about job situation and condition. face several difficulties at the beginning of the placement. Hence, I have to make an adjustment so that I can follow their pace of work.

• Explore my career path. As someone who has never been in a job before, having a placement helped me in getting to know more about job experience. The opportunity of being a full-time intern broaden my knowledge about a real-working situation in many ways. I also have the experience to gain more knowledge directly from those who have been working in the Embassy for many years. They are very open to share with me all their stories from being a student to a full-time worker and what have they done when they face challenges and difficulties in previous time. I am very much happy that each of them is very open with their working condition and also allow me to ask questions about work in general. In addition, I am always being one of those students who wonder what is it like to be working abroad, being a diplomat and working in a government. Since I study international relations for both of my bachelor and master’s program, those things are always being discussed. As one of those people who always wonder whether being a diplomat is job that is suitable for me or not, or what is it like to be one of the diplomats, this has helped me a lot as previously mention in the first point.

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Tips

For those who are planning to do their internship in Madrid, there are a lot of things that the city has to offer. The city is, however, not as big as I thought it would be. Nevertheless, there are many sites that you can visit within the city and around the city. The experience that I had during my stay in Madrid is amazing. The city of Madrid is full of attractions that you can visit; including historical attractions. Madrid is known for its historical sites. I have visited several of the sites including the Royal Palace, Temple of Debod, the Atocha Central Station, Plaza Mayor, Prado National Museum, El Retiro Park and its most famous spot is Puerta del Sol. There are also several spots whereby the remnants of the Spanish Civil War still exist.

One thing to consider before visiting Madrid is to learn the language. I expect the people to know at least a little bit of English before I come to Madrid, considering it is the capital city. However, I found out that not that many people understand English and know how to speak English in Madrid. So, it would be easier to speak basic Spanish before coming to Madrid.

The most important thing when you are planning to do your placement in Madrid is to consider your budget. Budgeting is important so that you can control your expenses. Compare to the Netherlands, the cost of living in Madrid is pretty cheap considering it is the capital city of Spain. Nevertheless, out of all expenses that I have to bear for the placement, the accommodation cost is the highest of them all. It is wise to have your research done before starting to find for accommodation in Madrid. I have not done

enough research myself, therefore, I experience several difficulties at the beginning. I have to go through many websites before I finally found the one that can somewhat be trusted. All the websites that I come across does not allow you to do viewings, hence, all the information that you have is from the website and photos that they provide.

Another crucial thing about finding accommodation in Madrid is that each of the accommodation provider has their own quantification when it comes to the length of stay according to their system. For example, one website that I found calculate the stay on a 2-week basis, meanwhile the one that I go for is in a monthly basis. If you are not careful that you might be paying much that you are planning.

Eventually, I had a wonderful experience in Madrid. Madrid has a lot to offer. The city itself is so vibrant and full with cultural experience. It is also a home for quite a lot of international students.

PLACEMENT REPORT