Archive for August, 2009

My husband and I went to Vietnam recently for a long weekend. We had an amazing time, experiencing the vast difference between bustling city life of Hanoi and the peaceful quietness of the ocean at Ha Long Bay.

Hanoi

We spent a couple of days in Hanoi, which as the capital of Vietnam is a thriving city, having experienced a rapid boom in industrial production since the 1990’s. It is made up of small buildings that seem to have been built on top of and around each other in a type of shanty town style. The streets are absolutely bustling, and you have to be careful when you walk not to get run over by bicycles, motorbike, cars, trucks, vans – actually any means of transportation – you name it, it’s on the streets of Hanoi. There are hardly any pavements to walk on, and where there are pavements they are packed with goods being sold or parked motorbikes, or places to eat.

 Talking of places to eat, I think you have to be brave. If you have been to Asia, you will know that a lot of their food is sold Hawker style – open-air complexes that sell a variety of inexpensive food. Vietnam is similar in that a lot of the food is cooked and sold on the side of the street, or by vendors moving around the streets. This makes for interesting food, but you have to brave how you may feel the next morning when eating food on the side of the street. Saying that there is a whole host of restaurants to choose from, and my husband, ever the one for some good reviews on a place, selected a couple from tripadvisor. Now what the reviews say, and what you get may not be the same. We had a good experience and a bad one.

We selected Highway4 for a dinner, which came with some great reviews. The restaurant is on several levels, almost amongst the rafters of the rooftop; you are seated on cushions on the floor, and eat off low tables, creating a great ambience. Very cool, except when the unexpected guests – cockroaches – appeared, roaming the floor. The floor being your seat!! Not appetising. I must admit, the food appeared nice, and tasted good, but I kind of lost my appetite after that.

We went to the Koto restaurant for lunch one day, and this was a far cry from the dinner experience we had. The food was great, and seated at tables, we were less likely to get attacked by floor guests – not that we saw any. Koto is a dynamic restaurant, recognised for its development project that aims to break the cycle of poverty amongst street and disadvantaged youth in Vietnam. The concept of Koto is to give disadvantaged youths the ability to learn a trade and better themselves. A more pricey lunch, but the food was great, and you can’t beat a good cause.

Hanoi Elegance Hotel

You will find an array of hotels hidden in between the buildings catering to the tourist market, but they are well priced, and very friendly. These little hotels have an elaborately French style, and are often very narrow fitting into the buildings around them. This makes them very cosy, and you feel like you are in a unique place.

We stayed at the Hanoi Elegance Hotel III (there are 4 of them in Hanoi), and the service was excellent. And the breakfast was pretty good too.

 We walked around Hanoi a lot, and although we didn’t do very much in the way of museums or cultural sites (the Ho Chi Minh Museum closes between 11.30am and 2pm), we got to take in what Hanoi was like as a city. We did go to the Temple of Literature, which is a temple of Confucius. The Temple of Literature, or as it is known in Vietnamese: Văn Miếu, was known as “pagode des Corbeaux” during the period of French colonisation. This is where the first University was in 1076. The main feature is the Turtle Steeles which bear the names of those successful at the imperial exams.

Junk Boat

We moved on to Ha Long Bay, where we boarded a Junk Boat to cruise the small Islands of Ha Long Bay. We used Huong Hai Junks, and the people were great. We joined the boat at midday, and set off into the Ocean. We started the tour with food. Lots of it – and all really good stuff too! We stopped off at Sung Sot Grotto , or the cave of surprises. It is a grotto with vast arrays of stalactites with numerous forms and shapes. You can find a phallic symbol in anything!! Next we climbed to the top of one of the islands and got a panoramic view of the area – absolutely breathtaking. Then it was back to the boat for a swim in the sea and dinner – more great food.

 We spent most of the next day kayaking into some of the hidden grottos and lagoons, allowing us to experience the bays up close and personal – It was very tiring in the heat, but well worth the peace and tranquillity of the hidden areas. Absolutely amazing! We anchored the boat near the Luon Cave where we swam with the breathtaking views all around us. We even ventured into the cave that evening to take a look.

A leisurely cruise took us back to the harbour, and another holiday came to an end.

Next week on Friday 21th August, the Czech Republic will remember a sad anniversary. In 1968, the back then Czechoslovakia was invaded. The impossible became reality. It was a shock of such a dimension that many could not believe it. The country was being occupied by its liberator!

At the end of the World War II, Prague was liberated by the Soviets, although some other parts of the Czechoslovakia were liberated by the Americans. People were grateful. The Soviet Union, therefore, became a close friend of Czechoslovakia and soon afterwards Czechs had found themselves under the control of the USSR.

Prague Spring

In the late sixties, however, there was a worldwide feeling that the conflict between the Soviets and Americans was easing, generally known as the time of “détente”. In the Czechoslovakia, this feeling led to a slight change in government, electing Alexander Dubcek as a leader of the Communist Party in January 1968. What had followed is now being called Prague Spring because of its origins in spring months.

Dubcek was a man, who wanted to reform the communist system. Many reforms had been introduced since January 1968. Among the most significant, the increased freedom of the press and more democratic multi-party government.

It is to say, however, that Dubcek never planned to change the government into democratic one. He only wanted to reform the unpopular system and turn it into “Socialism with human face”. But people wanted more reforms, asking for further liberalization and democratization of the system. Moscow was watching all this with a great fear.

Invasion

In order not to permit Czechoslovakia to step out of the eastern block and fuel other nations to follow, the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies (except for Romania) invaded the country. People in the Czechoslovakia woke up on August 21, 1968, and could not believe their eyes. Their celebrated liberator and “friend forever” came to crush the liberalizing reforms with 200,000 troops and 5,000 tanks. There was a tank in almost every street. How can you fight this back?

Under these circumstances, with no one who would help, there was nothing else to do but to give up all the reforms which were adopted during the Prague Spring. All politicians involved in Prague Spring were put aside, but not only politicians. Many people fled the country.

The Czech nation had to wait for its true liberalization until 1989.

Some background: many years ago Adobe launched Acrobat 6 and shortly after, the Creative Suite. At the time I was working for a systems integrator and some clever colleagues had developed an application designed to enable the concurrent collaboration of a PDF document by multiple users. The idea was you could open a pdf and use Acrobat’s built in commenting tools to review the document, it was possible for several people to simultaneously review the same document and see each other’s comments. We thought we were very clever and since we were launching a special training deal for the Creative Suite at Coventry University, we decided to show it (not fully developed) to a wider audience.

Much preparation ensued and by the time we gathered in a large auditorium, we were ready to go. The morning session was to last about four hours and started with a demonstration of the Creative Suite by an Adobe guy called Chris, who just happened to be the UK’s leading expert. Now Chris was and is a very talented and engaging speaker, he also knew the products inside out and was actually last seen heading off to San Jose to head up the product in the USA. The audience sat there mesmerised as Chris ran through clever things with Photoshop, funky things with InDesign and truly amazing things with Illustrator. During this he also made the wonderful comment “I was at a demonstration last week and the poor guys laptop broke, all he could do was say to the audience, try to imagine this”.

A coffee break later and I took the stage and started running through the ins and outs of Adobe Acrobat, which even then did far more than most people realised. Then came the pièce de résistance having shown the audience how you could mark up a pdf document with post-it notes, highlight text, use drawing tools etc. I then said “now wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could do all this and at the same time other people could be doing it and you could see what they were writing and vice versa”.

As you have probably guessed that’s the exact point where my PC decided that if I insisted on connecting it up to a projector so 150 people could watch it do tricks, the best trick of all is the “blue screen of death”. This left me with the opportunity to say the immortal words “now I’d like you to try and imagine this”.

What can we learn from this? well when you are faced with disaster during a demo, don’t panic, other people have survived similar problems, a sense of humour helps and if something can go wrong, sooner or later it will.

Now a last thought – if I had been using YuuGuu and performing this demonstration over the web, from my office, would my computer still have died? The obvious answer is yes, but I could grabbed a colleagues PC and carried on, almost as if nothing had happened, all whilst not leaving the comfort of Richmond.

Whilst our Customers are spending their days on the phone conference calling, the other guys in Sales and I spend our days chasing down new business.
We have a great business model and you would have thought it was an easy thing to sell. Well it is and it isn’t, we come up against a lot of resistance when we are trying to find the head honcho (the decision maker for conference calling), but then this is only half the battle.

When we finally find who the decision maker and talk to him we then have to convince him that moving over to Powwownow is going to be financially beneficial for his organisation. But when you manage to convince someone to move over to the Premium Access service and they send in the subscription form I get a feeling of real achievement.
However we are getting better and better and we are beginning to get larger and larger organisations, so the future for Powwownow is looking good.
However I think we are all getting better at identifying genuine prospects and at selling the Services. As a result of this, we are now landing larger and larger companies which is great for me and great for the business.
If anyone would like a run down on our recent successes please come over and ask.

If you are using Powwownow there’s a good chance that you’re doing so because we offer a quality service at  low cost – a great money saving move in these credit crunching times.

My boyfriend has recently put me on what can only be described as a ‘money diet’, he feels I spend too much on rubbish, for the purpose of this posting I’ll leave out my feelings on his opinion!

Here are my five top recessionista tips:

Refer a friend at Headmasters – genius!

If you refer a new client to Headmasters you and your referred buddy get 50% off your next cut. With a cut costing £40 I think this is a great saving.  You also receive a further 10% off your next appointment (colour included) if you book before leaving.  Guilt free, beautiful hair

2-4-1 at Tootises – yummy!

Until the 28th of August there is a two for one offer on all main courses at Tootsies.  May I suggest that you go on the day of a hangover, this way you won’t be tempted to buy any alcohol and will feel the true ‘cheap as chips’ factor that comes with eating half price.

Run past Starbucks – sniff sniff!

When I was first put on the ‘money diet’ we worked out that I spent £1248 a year on Starbucks, now I run past it of a morning.  I love their soy lattes though and treat myself to one on a Saturday (with skinny lemon and poppy seed muffin) cutting out the other 5 trips a week has saved me £1040

Buy your wine at Majestic – glug glug!

Whilst at dinner with friends a few months ago they suggested we visit Majestic where I have found we can buy boxes of wine at a discount rate PLUS there is a lovely lady there who knows the ins and outs of wine.  This doesn’t only mean we save money but we also look like we know what we’re doing when we have friends to dinner (and that in itself has to add some value)

Drive at 50mph on the motorway – beep beep!

Ok, I can’t say I have tried and tested this BUT several people have told me this tip (one being my Dad – who probably doesn’t want me to drive fast) apparently it is an optimum speed for fuel consumption, so there!

Please feel free to add any money saving tips of your own, I am happy to give anything a go (once)

I do love web developing, but at times it can be a very lonely experience; a work request comes in by email, you tap away at your keyboard for any time from 5 minutes to weeks, you close off the work request by email, then another work request comes in by email, you tap away at your keyboard for any time from 5 minutes to weeks, you close off the work request by email, then another work request comes in by email… you get the idea.

On many occasions the only time you have any feedback are one of two scenarios; 1: The person who created the brief has realised what they asked for is not actually what they want. 2: Your code is full of bugs and needs fixing ASAP.

At Powwownow, to ensure the appreciation of our work is heard as widely as possible; me and my fellow web developing colleagues are becoming very excited about a new potential addition to our internet ‘tool-kit’; The Gong.

We have been spending hours (lunch breaks and after work hours obviously) scouring ebay for a suitable gong to ring every time we complete a task. Of course such a device will require rules and regulations to ensure it is used in an appropriate manner; a gongable task must be of substantial size, completed within a reasonable time limit and to a high standard, and most importantly to ensure maximum jealousy, only technical staff are allowed to dong the gong. (Of course the maximum penalty will be imposed for this offence).

On Monday we made our first bid, an “Interesting Brass Gong Wooden Frame, 12 Inch”. We gathered round in excitement to watch the auction end (going, going, gong…) and in our disbelief we were outbid by literally pence. But now I have my eye on the ‘Authentic Bronze Buddhist Temple Gong 60″ Huge‘, but at $3,995 dollars, largely due to the current exchange rate, it is slightly over our £10 budget.

We are fully aware the novelty of the gong may quickly wear off, but as long as it irritates the sales and marketing departments for months on end we feel it is a job well done; in-fact a highly gongable job well done.

Here at Powwownow we work with a number of our competitors in the USA, supplying them with European telephone numbers for there conference call businesses.

Whilst most of the business with the USA is done using our Web and Conference Calling solutions, we need to travel to the USA once a year for a conference in Las Vegas when we get to meet all our customers over 3/4 days.

The conference normally means landing in Las Vegas on the Friday before the conference on the Monday so we can get over our jet-lag, giving us 2 days do do some different whist we are there.

On our last trip Paul Lees and I decided that Dune Buggies was going to be our weekend experience.

So 10am on Sunday morning we head off into the Desert to Sun Buggy who were our chosen supplier for a MINI BAJA ADVENTURE.

After the mandatory safety video, and the 10 page legal disclaimer signed, we grabbed our gloves, goggles and helmet and boarded a bus to head further into the dessert to collect our Buggies.

Once on board and Strapped in our Instructor head-out out in to the dessert at a slow pace giving us the chance to get to grips with the handling of our new toys.

Within 30 minutes we were climbing 45 degrees slopes at over 30mph, and the drop offs were more like 75 degrees and a great deal faster. Once you get the hang of these buggies they are great fun, and you can really throw them around, the only real rules are:-

1 Try not to get stuck
2 Dont get lost as theres a lot of sand out there

and as the brochuire said “In 90 minutes you will travel somewhere between 10 and 35 miles over what is described as very aggressive and challenging terrain” and Sunbuggy delivered on our expectations.

I think both Paul and I agreed this was one of the most fun things we’ve ever done for 90 minutes, I would highly recommend Sunbuggy if you’re ever in Las Vegas and fancy doing something totally different.

Andy