toasted dine, fruitless find

After going our seperate ways, Tommy and I decided to re-enact our own version of the Amazing Race. Our first pit-stop of the day, a t-shirt printer based in Jelutong. This guy is a popular source of t-shirts among school societies and clubs, so hopefully he will be of help.

The address given turned out to be the one to a single story house, smack in the middle of a housing estate. The porch area was tacked high with loads of t-shirts and cloth. Unfortunately the quantity of shirts there did not match the number of staff around. The only living human was an Indonesian maid, who promptly informed us that everyone else was at the 'office'. When asked on where exactly is the 'office', she could only give us a sheepish smile and a shrug of the shoulders.

Faced with this road block, we took the only option open to us. We called one of the numbers on the business card, which incidently bore only the name of the company, not even the name of the owner/proprietor/whatever. After speaking to the guy on the other end of the line, we still couldn't get the address of the other 'office'. No matter, since he promised to swing by the house in 10 minutes time. So, for all aspiring entrepreneurs out there, when in doubt, phone.

Having resigned ourselves to waiting outside the gates until the owner arrives, we were pleasantly surprised when the maid ushered us in. The owner kept his word too, and we didn't have to wait long. Right off the bat, we enquired about the availability of polyester as a material for our jersey and singlet, only to be told that they make only t-shirts. There goes item number 1 on our list then. We proceeded to thrash out details about the pricing and material of the t-shirts before leaving for our next stop.

Actually, there was no next stop, since the only other card we have states the address of the company as somewhere in Bukit Mertajam. So again we did the increasingly common next best thing, call. As per standard business procedure, Tommy addressed the other person in English. What followed had us in stitches. The lady obviously wasn't proficient in English, and she was only too eager when Tommy finally offered to use Chinese. But it was probably a no deal though, since the minimum size of an order for this company is too big for us.

The Amazing Race for a T-shirt over, Tommy had to fulfill his other obligations to his college mates. Off we were then to TAR college. After dropping two of them off at the jetty, it was time for me to complete the final part of today's task, checking out whether there were any t-shirt making businesses based in Gurney Plaza. It was ultimately a futile search, and I had to abandon it due to the arctic air-conditioning.

With stomach rumbling and cellphone ringing( from mum), I trudged back home.

Toasted Dine, Over Time

For the moment, all core members of Sautern Enterprise have to juggle between not only between demanding clients and overly-protective families; with the beginning of the tertiary education season, school work has to be thrown into the pot of caustic soup too.

Which was where I found myself spending the after-hours of a brutal Form 6 session, doing whatever I am suppose to do – odd jobs.

Tommy treated us to a sumptuous lunch at a local medium-high class restaurant – where I finally ordered a meal whose name took longer to comprehend than to eat.

What the bloody hell does “beef schnitzel” mean?

After the meal, which we incidentally used to reaffirm and redefine some company goals, we divided into two teams; Chong Yang and I went over to Palma to fix some nasty software issues, while Tommy and Peter went hunting for tailors who could produce sports-worthy attires.

Which left the unglamorous and rather unappreciated debugging work to us.

It seems there were some residual pools of toxic leaks in a database software created by a freelance member of our team who has recently departed to a place beside the sea.

Its pretty hard trying to communicate with a departed person... Or rather the Creator of the program.

Yes, the programmer of our database software has left us mere mortals to sort out any kinks with the mostly-functionable software. The debugging process is greatly hampered by the lack of access to the source code, which as any self-respecting geek would know, is vital to any software debugging process.

After slogging it out for what seemed like an eternity, only one of the many glaring problems was solved. It's a pity our company doesn't have more capable programmers (which currently number only one) to write these software.

After running overtime reorganizing some data for the employees of Palma Housing, we went into extra time for a important discussion regarding the creation of a website for the said client.

Details will be disclosed in due time.

A long awaited return

This blog has not been updated for quite some time, and for that I am truly sorry. The intervening period between the last post and this one has been a little unstable in terms of Sautern activities. True, there have been some happenings, but since I wasn't personally present at said happenings, I cannot post on Sautern's behalf.

However, I am glad to say we did have a meeting today, which coincides with the return of our stalwart Ju Ping from National Service, complete with shiny NS belt buckle and shaven head. Unfortunately, he couldn't personally attend the meeting in the school canteen due to a lack of notification, so to speak. In actual fact, Tommy did try to get through to him, but the SMS bounced back. Just another feather in our local telcos' cap of screwing people over.

Today's get together was basically to update Ju Ping on Sautern, but since he couldn't make it, Tommy, Chong Yang and I got on with our discussions anyway. The first agenda was about how to solve some software problems. It's a vague description, I know, but we can't just divulge confidential information without the permission of our clients. Well, that and the fact that I don't know much about the software part of our business.

After that, we had a discussion on our prospective clients, specifically an upcoming meeting to be attended by Chong Yang. Overall, there was an optimistic air. With that being said, we moved on to a more nascent part of Sautern, our clothing line. Yes, you heard that right, a clothing line. We are looking into making a line to appeal to the youth. It still in the planning stage though. Nevertheless, we plan on making a limited run in time for the Penang Bridge Run. It's nothing official of course, just to get our name out there. So if any of you out there who is planning to take part in the run and is interested to wear our stuff, please feel free to send an email or leave a comment here.

The sky may be overcast, but Sautern's future is anything but. If anything, I am feeling positively sanguine. That's it for now. Till next time, have fun and enjoy the World Cup.