We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Psalm 100:3 | (Success is paradoxical in that it is both destination and journey. - A. R. BERNARD

the beauty of friends

what joy, que alegria..
amidst all the corporate chase, the formalities whatever..

i come home and i see.. are the people i have met, all in my memories.
the once in a while booster phone calls and skype calls.

how beautiful and how wonderful people around me has been.
just real tired now.. and i refused to sleep..

Eu quis te conhecer mas tenho que aceitar
Caberá ao nosso amor o eterno ou "não dá"
Pode ser cruel a eternidade
Eu ando em frente por sentir vontade

Eu quis te convencer mas chega de insistir
Caber� ao nosso amor o que há de vir
Pode ser a eternidade mas
Caminho em frente pra sentir saudade

Moving on

I badly need to move on with life.
I think I am happily and willingly drowning myself with work. After all, this is such a boring, empty and lifeless land (perhaps because everyone is having exams at the moment), there really is nothing for me to look forward to in the weekends.

boo hoo...

Moving on from South America

Amazing, amazing time at Brazil, experiencing earthquake at Santiago, Chile, venturing alone to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Upon return to KL, carried on with a rather hectic and fruitful travel down to Singapore which landed me with an amazing job with an international firm, voted by Times as world's top 100 company to work for. Found a new accommodation within half a day. Everything, all the happened so suddenly, randomly and coincidentally (or God-Incidently I must say).

Up and running on job for more than a week now. Amazing, amazing training, amazing, amazing team and working environment despite the crazy working hours. Back to my cellgroup. Such a departure from the uncertain and yet differently exciting life I have been living for the past 7 months in a shockingly adaptable environment, which I have also came to fall in love for - the beautiful Latin culture.

What shall I say? I am definitely in the right place at the right time at this point of my life.

Again at the end of the day, things fall into place amazingly. So keep trusting, stay confident, live righteously, do not despair, a turn-around moment can come anytime. Anytime.

Gastromotiva-Artemisia

ParaGliding in Brazil

A glimpse into my working life in Brazil

Today was not one of those typical day at work, rather one of the more exciting ones. I just had this thought of blogging it so I can remember what I did here when I am back in Asia or anywhere else, on full-time employment.

To me, today was rather exciting, at least in the realm of social entrepreurship.

I went to work as usual at 9, David, my boss greeted me, came to my desk and asked if I still remember about the Charles Bronfman Prize the one which we have submitted our application in (its a Jewish award for outstanding Jewish individuals around the world). And then he told me to visit the website and boom! I noticed that the application deadline for the prize was on the 15 of Jan and we sent our package in on the same date! I was like, what?? Usually when something like that happens, it is very well understook that you need to make sure that your package reach the destination, in our case, New York by the 15 of Jan and NOT that you take it to the post office on the 15 itself (but strangely, David said that in Brazil, the latter is usual practice. I still find this very strange). But anyway, I suppose those who works for the Charles Bronfman prize were not aware of this cultural difference either and had sent a courtesy email to David’s referral for the award – John Elkington (a renowned man in the field of sustainability and social entrepreneurship, the author of the book “The Power of Unreasonable People”.) about this.

And so, I started my day firefighting with this matter. So I spent the afternoon trying to call and email thpse in the New York office. And, I address the person on the end wrongly. Instead of Ms, I sent in with Mr. Argh!! But anyways, the whole thing was solved anyway. Serendipidity I would say. If this were not to happen, the people in the New York office may not have paid that much attention on us. Well, everything happens for a reason. :)

Later in the afternoon at 2, I went to Berta´s office with my colleague to learn about her usual HR recruitment practices at Hudsons. It was really good and we learnt so much about recruitment, of creating selecting the right people for our company etc. (This year, my company is hoping to start with a new team of professionals who can work well with each other, who could bring us to greater heights). So on Tuesday, we will conduct a group exercise in 3 rounds for around 20 candidates for the position of Communications Trainee. We have such a brilliant idea of doing it! And of course, I do not think I can disclose it here. :) Ask me about it if you´re really interested to know.

We went back to our office again at around 3pm and started preparing for another meeting which David organized. He had this brilliant idea of connecting the past winners and finalists (including himself) of the Social Entrepreneurship award by the Shwab Foundation in conjuction with Brazil´s national newspaper, Folha de São Paulo. It lasted until 8pm. Ok. I did not enjoyed the chit-chat in a group that much. Well, language barriers. Everyone and everything in Brazil revolves around the Portuguese language. And my comprehension is still so-so. But oh well, just picture being in the middle of all these successful social entrepreneurs! That, is thrilling enough.

We had a short cocktail time in the meeting. I love to network and talk to people so it was really great. These success stories in the realm of social entrepreurship ranges from those in the field of dentistry to environmental sustainability and gastronomy. And I just got an invitation to visit Folha de São Paulo, Brazil´s largest newspaper headquarter! Will definitely pay him a visit before I leave!

Ok. So then the meeting ended. Exhanged namecards, chit-chatted and now, the evening looks pretty gloomy and it will probably rain again, just like any other days. The weather in Sao Paulo had been pretty crazy recently by the way. It´s supposed to be summer but it rains so much! Anyway, so I took a bus, reached home in 20-minutes time (I had the privilege of living really near my office), and then cooked (as usual) and talked a lot (as usual) with Martha, my Colombian housemate. We could talk and joke about almost anything, from the cats (we have 2 cats at home) to teasing her name which is apparently the usual maid´s name in Colombia (Martha). If I were to say one other thing which added so much to my experience here, I would say Martha! I had never really shared a room or lived with anyone else, all my University life. I was a little worried at first, you know what if she is dirty bla bla bla. But it turned out so great!! I really enjoyed her company and I am sure she did too! ;))

Anyway, and so afterwards, I went to vaccum our couch because it was infested with fleas. I know, gross! But we will get rid of it real fast! Phew!

Now, maybe I´ll catch a movie or continue reading "Memoirs of Geisha".

Social Business Management - Thought 1.

From the experience which I gather from conversation with colleagues and the entrepreneur so far, this is one conclusion which I am making in the management of a small (social) business:

1. Never undermine the importance of taking the right people on board.

It´s way harder to remove old people off the board than to take new people on board with you

Some problems of the business thus far - of mixing up its social/charity vision with the business vision. Getting possibly unfit people on board and by the time you notice it, it´s too late/difficult to get people truly on board.

For example, take one instance when you have hired someone who may not have received much formal education to handle the finances of (social) business and many others to assume various other positions. At the time when you realise that it is time to grow your (stagnanted) business, to make things more efficient and to move much faster, you then realise you simply do not have the team and resources to do so - the resources to train your people would be way too tedious and time-consuming that it nearly is impossible.

The whole team dynamics itself (when new people come on board) may turn very complicated as well, even when the office may only be comprising of 6-8 full time employees.

Fixing a problem is definitely more difficult than avoiding one, especially not when you need to grow your business.

And right after I have published this post - I bumped into this:

Small businesses also need to focus on People Management

Nov Holiday

Early November

Ihla Grande!
Custo: R$ 250- R$ 300

and
mid-November..

Santos!
Custo: R$ 70- R$ 100

:):):)