Archive | September, 2008

letting the old go

29 Sep

I carry two phones. Not to show off, but simply because right now it’s practical. Both phones are very old, and very tired.

One of them, the one I can’t let go off, I’ve had since around June 2003. It’s a Sony CMD-J70. It’s O.L.D, and each ring, sms, and call is an earnest plea for leave.

Here’s the reason why I can’t let go of it. It’s got about 700 phone numbers. 200 on simcard, and 500 on phone. I have no way of transferring the numbers unless I manually write them down somewhere, a task I have started and failed countless times.

During my first leave in 7 years (last year), I bought another phone, because I needed to be contacted without have clients stress me during my month of bliss. I bought a simple Nokia 1100.

Fast forward one year later, the Nokia 1100 is also running out of space, with about 400 numbers on both phone and simcard.

So what’s the deal?

(more…)

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lazy days

28 Sep

Today was one of those totally pass you by days. I woke up at 3:30pm! Well, granted, I slept at 4am, but it felt good to just take a chill pill for a lazy sunday.

Design Kingdom is finally up, for all you designers. I’m currently maintaining it as well, posting almost twice a day, but hopefully, someone will be kind enough to take the reigns.

Towards evening, I went to meet the people I talked about yesterday, we pretty much agreed to take it on. Tomorrow I’ll be taking them to see the venue, and to discuss a bit more with the owner.

Tomorrow is make or break. We’ll see how it goes.

—

Offtopic:

“Don’t lower your expectations to meet your performance.
Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations.”

– Ralph Marston

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restaurant deal is almost done

27 Sep

Yesterday’s meeting with the valedictorian owner of the hotel went well. He’s a pretty decent chap, not too presumptious like I initially thought he would be. He was very casual, in manner and dressing; jeans and stuff, and has a background in Computer Science and some finance, so we kind of connected.

We ironed out most of the issues from both sides amicably, although a couple of things came up that I need to re-evaluate and see if they work for me, seeing as they would impact my bottom line, which, for the first few months is going to be nothing short of miserable.

The hotel is currently 3 Star, but he believes a very decent restaurant will raise him to 4 star with time. A 5 star is out of the question because they don’t have facilities like a pool and gym. So you can imagine the weight on these lanky shoulders.

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exciting new business opportunity

26 Sep

I’ve been given an amazing opportunity to run a restaurant in some hotel in town. The circumstances under which I landed the deal are nothing short of miraculous. The restaurant is a pretty sweet deal actually, nice gardens, ample space for parking, nice ambience, plus guaranteed revenues off each hotel client (when they’re there).

Only issue is it’s a little out of town, so I’ll have to hustle the marketing side, to get good people such as yourselves to at least visit the place… plus I need some major dimes to get rolling!

I’ve been in talks with the manager and I’m heading out tomorrow to finalize the negotiations with the owner (an Indian dude with one of those very nice valedictorian accents that make people sound seriously professional on phone).

So far I’ve managed to bring them down from 3,000,000/= (yes, that’s three painful Ugandan millions) monthly rent down to two million. (more…)

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it pays to take that first small step

24 Sep

I have a friend, we’ll call him Jimmy.

I got to know Jimmy through my former business partner, with whom I had started NVGOR8, a multimedia and design firm. NVGOR8 didn’t work out as we expected, another post, another day.

Jimmy was a very sleek man, always looking sharp and crisp, with nice custom made suits. He’d make random visits to our very humble 3rd floor office at the Post Office every once in a while.

The first time I saw Jimmy, I thought he was a powerful business executive, his talk, demeanour and attitude were that good.

Imagine my shock when I was told Jimmy was actually job-hunting, and he wore the suits to impress pretty much anyone, but more or less, to impress potential employers. I was impressed.

Jimmy was a graduate, fresh out of campus, marketing or some other business related field. We offered him a free lance position to help us market our stuff while he was job-hunting, we needed all the help we could get, and besides, dude looked sharp.

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You tread on my dreams

23 Sep

At what point does the pursuit of excellence become an obession?

Today was a beautifully ugly day.

Early in the morning, I recieved a message from a very irate client, who was not satisfied with the final product we had delivered.

Halfway during the day, I got another call from a client who asked me to call him because “he is not happy”.

Early afternoon, I got seriously told off by a potential client for being five minutes late.

Late evening, I made a presentation for a personal project I was doing that was well received, but the payment, which I was counting on for a major deposit on something, did not come through.

And in between all that, there are small things that happened that just made me wonder what was wrong with the day.

When I look back at what happened in each one of those occasions, I realized that I actually put in everything I possibly could to meet the clients’ requests, to the extent of not sleeping a couple of days. As in I seriously did my best. And not to brag, but my best is not a shabby affair…

So again, I ask; At what point does the pursuit of excellence become an obsession? Or is it simply a lofty ideal goal we set for ourselves so that we can always have something higher to look up to?

—

Offtopic:

“Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with the golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams…“

W.B. Yeats

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