A Tiring Day

This is a picture taken of a small party that we prepared for a small of group of abandoned children about three Saturdays ago at a home for abandoned children in Zapallal, a place which is about an hour and a half away from where we live. We used to run free English classes for these kids every Saturday, but we had to stop the project sometime this year because the company that was sponsoring our transport went into some restructuring, and were unable to continue to dedicate funds towards sponsoring transport for social work activities.

All of us are having a bit of a hangover from our consecutive late nights since last Friday, and feeling a little tired today. We usually sleep quite early over here. We have different ways of dealing with fatigue over here in Peru. Delia and Aili's formulas are basically a mix of watching some TV to relax and sleeping early. My formula is a little more sophisticated - I usually go for a 30-minute massage by one of the blind masseurs, and then charge myself up again with either a bottle of red bull or a glass of wine, or a combination of both. Of course, I would also allow myself the luxury of a short nap in the afternoon, as I have a flexible work schedule. Nevertheless the fatigue affected my cooking abilities today as well. I tried cooking seafood fetucinni, but the end result was certainly not something that I am too proud of even though it was edible, compared to my other signature dishes such as the Szechuan chicken wings and gong bao ji ding. I know my cooking is a hit whenever the girls whisker off all the extra food for their lunch the next day without leaving some for me! When I find the food still in the fridge the next day, I know I have missed the mark for the day.

Although we are a little tired, we are also excited because a few professionals have confirmed their attendance for our event this Saturday, and have indicated their interest to help us in our youth project to raise funds for the education of the youths through entrepreneurial means. We hope to extend our young professional network through their involvement in these projects, and we hope to help them take steps towards discovering meaning and significance in their lives.

At a personal level, I am glad to see that my work space in our home office has improved quite significantly in the aspect of organization, with some help and supervision from Aili. It was difficult initially as she would make me clear up and organize my things even when I looked rather tired and wanted to sleep. But I look at some of the visible progress today, and I am glad for the "army-style" training. I have created a filing system for myself based on a system that we used in the first law firm that I worked in when I was in Singapore. I have also finally created a proper accounting system to register the transactions that I have with my clients. I believe that building the proper systems into place is a necessary condition if I want to take my business to new heights in both breadth as well as depth in the year to come. A friend of mine who is the CEO of a 300-staff multinational law firm in Peru has also invited me to visit his firm to see how he runs the firm, and to look at the possibility of sharing some mutual clients in the future. It has been a nice experience, as I am slowly learning the various system aspects of how a multinational firm is managed, as well as the internal aspects of managing and communicating with 300 staff. This is the first time that I am seeing how a mega-size organization functions, as my previous work experience had always been with small and medium-sized companies with less than 30 staff. It is obviously giving me a new perspective into the corporate world, and I look forward to catching up again in the near future with another good friend of mine, the CEO of an energy company in Chile that is embarking on a project to build the largest hydroelectric power station in South America. He has previously offered to share with me his experience with staff management and project management, as he is on the verge of retirement, and he feels that the most meaningful thing he can do is to pass on his experience to the new generation, but I guess I was too busy previously managing other areas of my life to take up his offer.