01 - Pushing the Pudding again
06.11.2009 (Siem Reap)
After 2 weeks of travelling in India and Nepal, M and me arrived at Siem Reap about 2 weeks ago. Formally the Garden Shuttle has improved tremendously during the last months. Since August we (TAMN) are officially registered with the Cambodian Ministry of Commerce as "The Garden Shuttle Co., Ltd.". I don't want to speak about this too openly, but be sure, that the costs of the registration significantly contributed to the Cambodian Gross National Product. Or at least they would have contributed, if they had ever appeared in any kind of official statistics. Never mind.
Besides, with Ts help, we now have a new logo, which looks much nicer and more colourful than the old one. I am very happy. For a totally uncreative person like me it has - after months of trying - become quite annoying to constantly crash into my own limitations. Luckily, I asked T, a professional designer, for help and afterwards this aspect of life has become much more enjoyable. Initially I had a simpler and more sincere logo in my mind, but the colourful and happy layout seems to meet the Cambodian taste much better. By the way: The three Cambodian words on top of the logo mean "natural", "fresh" and "healthy". Since three weeks we are trying to learn how to pronounce these words. The revenge for our Cambodian friends is the German word "Kurzschwanzspitzmaus". We all have a great laugh whenever they try to say it, but our Khmer sounds just as funny.
After discussing many experiences and ideas for a while, we started to work systematically on the development of our professional skills a few days ago. It is still about time to generate an income of some substantial size. The major problem is, that business success is mainly expresses in numbers, and mathematical skills are insufficient at present. In others words: we need to work on accounting and business planning - a job that we are not always able to accomplish perfectly serious...
Then again, this job is sometimes much more difficult than one would expect. Firstly, there is the language problem: we communicate in English, but for both of us this is a foreign language. More important however is the cultural gap. When trying to explain things, it it difficult to assess the prior knowledge of the other. Sometimes, you start to explain things and after a while you realize, that you have to start again from a different point, because some aspects you expected to be known were unfamiliar. An the contrary is sometimes true too: sometimes you explain things and a after a while you realize, that they are already perfectly known. This whole procedure is quite time consuming and a bit like pushing a pudding: If you push too soft, the pudding gets deformed but doesn't move at all. If you push too hard, you break into the pudding, but the pudding doesn't move neither. So you always have to be very careful, to push with the right force at the right point. Exhausting and difficult - but possible.
The idea behind all that is, to generate tools that help to plan our activities and that generate regular feedback about business results. With this kind of navigation we will try to determine our position and the course that we want to take on the huge ocean of profit opportunities and financial despair.
After 2 weeks of travelling in India and Nepal, M and me arrived at Siem Reap about 2 weeks ago. Formally the Garden Shuttle has improved tremendously during the last months. Since August we (TAMN) are officially registered with the Cambodian Ministry of Commerce as "The Garden Shuttle Co., Ltd.". I don't want to speak about this too openly, but be sure, that the costs of the registration significantly contributed to the Cambodian Gross National Product. Or at least they would have contributed, if they had ever appeared in any kind of official statistics. Never mind.
Besides, with Ts help, we now have a new logo, which looks much nicer and more colourful than the old one. I am very happy. For a totally uncreative person like me it has - after months of trying - become quite annoying to constantly crash into my own limitations. Luckily, I asked T, a professional designer, for help and afterwards this aspect of life has become much more enjoyable. Initially I had a simpler and more sincere logo in my mind, but the colourful and happy layout seems to meet the Cambodian taste much better. By the way: The three Cambodian words on top of the logo mean "natural", "fresh" and "healthy". Since three weeks we are trying to learn how to pronounce these words. The revenge for our Cambodian friends is the German word "Kurzschwanzspitzmaus". We all have a great laugh whenever they try to say it, but our Khmer sounds just as funny.
After discussing many experiences and ideas for a while, we started to work systematically on the development of our professional skills a few days ago. It is still about time to generate an income of some substantial size. The major problem is, that business success is mainly expresses in numbers, and mathematical skills are insufficient at present. In others words: we need to work on accounting and business planning - a job that we are not always able to accomplish perfectly serious...Then again, this job is sometimes much more difficult than one would expect. Firstly, there is the language problem: we communicate in English, but for both of us this is a foreign language. More important however is the cultural gap. When trying to explain things, it it difficult to assess the prior knowledge of the other. Sometimes, you start to explain things and after a while you realize, that you have to start again from a different point, because some aspects you expected to be known were unfamiliar. An the contrary is sometimes true too: sometimes you explain things and a after a while you realize, that they are already perfectly known. This whole procedure is quite time consuming and a bit like pushing a pudding: If you push too soft, the pudding gets deformed but doesn't move at all. If you push too hard, you break into the pudding, but the pudding doesn't move neither. So you always have to be very careful, to push with the right force at the right point. Exhausting and difficult - but possible.
The idea behind all that is, to generate tools that help to plan our activities and that generate regular feedback about business results. With this kind of navigation we will try to determine our position and the course that we want to take on the huge ocean of profit opportunities and financial despair.
posted by Nihilissimus at 6:43 AM
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