Long time no blog

so where have I been? How come no posting for so long? nothing to report? Lazy?

Well, truth is to keep this blog relevant. To make sure it is not just casual chit chat, I have to keep thinking of new ideas and new way of looking at current issues.

I have just been back from a long trip to California, Vancouver and Calgary. Since being back, I have our country manager from Myanmar, my partner Than Win is here in Singapore, making the rounds with our clients and keeping them updated on the manning situation in Myanmar, reviewing our operations etc.

There is no end to the shortage of crew in sight. Other companies, desperate for crew, keep chasing the wages up. Monsoon, we refuse to be the one to offer the highest, we will keep faith with our crew and our customers - we think long term - so no big plans for increasing our business and stretch our resources, we deal decisively with the current challenges, the biggest of which is of course the crew shortage and quality issue.

Cost of business is really running up while the US Dollars are down, so we are being hit from all sides - our rental are going to go up more than double if we choose to remain in our current office, our lease expires July. So you cannot blame me for quietly hoping for a downturn which is silly really because in a downturn, all business will surely be more seriously affected? including ours?

Fortunately, I now have our new GM Capt Lee almost fully running the day to day operations. He is going to fini his masters study end of this month and then he can full concentrate on our business while I shall take care of the other aspect such as projects.

My current project is to upgrade and revamp our Monsoon website - I must say I am pretty pleased with myself. I thought it was going to be a difficult job but it was almost a breeze, great fun. What I did was to go to our public libraries and borrow a hugh stack of books on dreamweaver and CS3 - and then browse through it and work along - the technology is really amazing. I manage to get the major changes and updates done within one or two days by working through the nights.

Monsoon website is of course very much a work in progress. Do make a visit and let me have your comment and suggestions. I have make a closer link between Monsoon website and this blog and hope to make an even tighter integration later. You can see the old website when you choose the flash version. The No Flash version is the "temporary" updated site with a new masthead. Look for our new organisation chart, I like the concept but the photoes of our staff and me need some improvement. I appear too dark in the chart, I surely look better in person :-) Click here to go.

I hope to make our website simplier, more interesting and ... relevant. Relevant - that's my favourite key word.