Time to breathe... finally!

For many weeks now, I've been running on edge, deadline after deadline, presentation after another.

Today, I crossed a milestone with the last presentation on my to do list.

The content hasn't changed much from the previous sessions, but the look in their eyes, rapt with attention, the questions, the comments, make the experience very new and very fresh.

the rush didn't end till six hours later, and as I drive home, l begin to feel the fatigue.

It's been a long week, but The look in their eyes and their final handshakes inspire me to continue. I'm filling their minds with new perspectives, and know 20 people in that room today now have new thoughts in their minds.

I know today I've changed the world. There nothing other than this realization to inspire me to continue and make things better.

The problem of Free

whenever I travel or visit places, I'm always aghast at the prices for services and amenities. However, recently I found a place in which recreation activities are provided free of charge.

This place is a resort where canoeing, archery, basketball and beach volleyball are provided free of charge. I chose the place specifically because of the free as I remembered once before we had so much fun canoeing and doing archery.

To my dismay, I found that the 2 person canoe were out of commission. Only the one man canoe was available, but the fun was in joyriding with the kids. We`couldn't swim coz someone just got stung by jelly fish and the red flags were up.

We decided to do archery, but the arm guard had seen better days and and the arrows had lost their little guide feathers (believe me, they expected us to use the arrows without the feathers) and finger taps were not avalable.

The target? it was in shreds. Since we weren't competing, we didn't care too much about it.

In the end we paid RM16 bucks for two rounds of shooting practice with a paintball gun. At RM8 for 10 pellets, I guess I'm kinda glad the gun worked.

At the end of it, you may say that I shouldn't be complaining about the equipment 'coz its free, but in all honesty, the hotel isnt that cheap and I do believe that included in my rates would be the cost of maintaining these equipment.

Throwing these as free does increase the image of the hotel, for people who travel with kids of varied interests, but when they don't meet the expectation of free, then the idea of short term, profit hungry multinational company comes to mind.

Definitely, in my family's eyes, we're not likely to patronize this hotel chain ever.

when I first moved here, there was only my beat up Wira, my battle scarred Unser, my neighbor's Kenari and Jazz.

today l still have my trusty cars, but the parking lot's changed. Over a year my parking lot is something like a luxury car showroom. There's a whole row of gleaming Beemer, a Mini, an Alphwd an an X5. All surrounding my Wira that' missing a piece of the front spoiler.

Sometimes when I wake in the morning and step into the parking lot to go off to work, my car is immediately noticeable.

The latest addition right now is a prancing horse, and I guess upgrading my ride isn't a good idea as it will make my car less noticeable. I should offer my neighbor my services to take care of his pet, the prancing horse, and maybe take it out for a run once a week.

Tranquility

There's something about this place that I like.

Just beyond the Batu Dam, nestled between the trees, is a little Eco Resort.

Its an old one really, but it was recently taken over by new management. There's just something about the sound of water rushing by in a rocky stream covered by thick foliage on the sides.

We had put together a module and this place was selected.

Our program was an indoor one and it was conducted in a hot house of a hall. Thick mudbrick walls and zinc roof. As the sun reaches up we begin to bake. Despite all the fans running at full speed, we were sweating away at our curriculum.

I must congratulate my group for sticking through the program in the searing heat.

However, despite all the discomfort, it is all forgotten when I see the eyes following me intently; faces nodding, or lost in thought processing all the information.

And of the end of the day, the heat is all but forgotten when I stand on the river bank, the shade under the trees providing cool confort, the water swirling around the rocks with a continuous rush.

More excellent service..

My wife had to run around a bit the other day one of those days where when someone delays then everything else gets pushed back.

In her rush, she went off to settle stuff with some government agencies. Finishing with one, she went off to another. It wasn't till she got home that she realized she'd left her file with all her documents behind.

She had planned to go the first thing next morning, but, weary after a long day, she didn't. I came home during lunch to find her all dressed and ready to go out. It turned out that the office where she left the file found her file, found her phone number and called her to say that they have her file and that she could come by and pick it up.

This is a government agency, I must remind you. I had already given up the file as lost when my wife didn't pick it up that morning.

Isn't that a nice surprise? Do you have a similar experience?

Sevice Excellence

There is a particular Mamak Restaurant that's been around for quite a while and has quite a following. The food was quite good then it opened and l became quite a fan of it. As the place grew, I stopped going there regularly as I found the place rather crowded and parking was a nightmare. Though not as regularly, I would still stop by once in a way. But service weren't so good anymore blue to the large crowds.

I soon moved to a new neighborhood. By then, the same store had opened a branch (yeah, mamak shops had branches, too!) in the vicinity. l started to frequent the shop again but again kept being let down by the service. The final straw came when I had bad service over three visits in the same week. This time, a table after mine got served their food first while mine didn't. l chose to walk out and as we passed the manager, my wife took the opportunity to tell him why are were leaving. He apologized profusely but we explained that it was our third consecutive bad visit.

That was about two weeks ago. Today for some reason, we decided to stop there again, expecting the same crappy service. We recieved our orders almost immediately, and the manager came by to ask if everything was ok and to tell us that he had improved his production. I told him that I was pleasantly surprised and that, yes, things are much better this time around. He came by again asking if I needed to 'tambah' my roti canai, which I politely declined.

It was nice to know that things improved and that the manager took the trouble to tell me that I'm important enough for him to want my patronage. I don't go there as often as some people.

But here's the clincher in service excellence that not many people get: its about making every single customer important and making him know that his needs are attended to. Simple common sense, no MBA required.

The Buzz

Amongst all the projects I carry out, this particular one has got to be the most arduous. It was a cross functional project that was thrust to us about two years ago. Work commitments and lack of time ("the mind is infinitely creative at not doing what it does not want to do - Tony Buzan) to really think through the problem, resulted in the project not progressing beyond the initial proposal.
In the intervening two years, the rules changed and got tightened; we found an e-mail in our inboxes requesting a status update. We put our heads together and decided that if at all we were to make progress, we would need to look for a better project.
Fully prepared for the worst, we presented our case to resubmit for a new proposal. Surprisingly, the new topic was well received; there seemed to be a buzz of excitement from the committee and we are on our way.
In all honesty, this is not a project we can afford to ignore. Like it or not, to drop out of this program just because we don't want to do a project would be folly on our part. The only thing is to just get it done. So I guess the only thing to do is to chip away at it, 15 minutes at a time, until the block of granite is smoothed into a sculpture, just like Michelangelo's David, or de Milo's Venus.
What else is there?