Sacrifices for the job, starvation and cold

Along came a competition for young entrepreneurs, the HSBC Young Entrepeuneur Awards. Since we are young entrepeuneurs it should be right up our alley. And so the wheels are set in motion, in a quest that will hopefully only end next March somewhere in Hong Kong.

Since Sautern has 5 current members, but with Song Han, being the good and very hardworking top scorer that he is, choosing to study during the holidays, it will send 2 teams of 2. Of course this is just to facilitate the rules, as we are one team in anything but name. Perhaps in this case, divide and conquer is the way to go.

There is one minor con to being two teams though. Obviously, we will need to come up with two different ideas. Correction, two good, sensible AND original ideas. Believe me you, it is not as simple as sitting down in Starbucks for two hours and fart out a random business plan.

Thankfully though, Jupes is an environment freak. It was no time at all before the green haze inspired him to an environmentally friendly idea, complete with graphs, charts and numerous figures quoted from NGOs. Basically, things that will make the average Joe glaze his eyes and go into a mind numbing stupor.

As for my team, Tommy did come out with a plan. But after about two weeks of discussion, we were still stuck at the discussion stage. So we did the best thing for this type of writer's block, invade Starbucks for a few hours and generate a very good business plan. Even though we are kind of breaking out of the typical mould for Malaysian youth, we still try to adopt our Malaysian values whenever we can, in this case the Starbucks jaunt was scheduled for yesterday, which is the last day of submittion for the contest.

Being the typical workaholic, Tommy was already SMS-ing me at about 7.30 even though I was still very much in dreamland. After sending a few SMSes of my own in a hazy state, we established 10am as the time of meeting. Location was as planned, the WiFi hazen of Starbucks. Having bought the obligatory cuppa, we sat down to brainstorm. To recap, Tommy actually sent me an idea to flesh out a couple of days earlier, and we were going to send that in. Jupes had other opinions though, and he managed to convince us that it was too simple. A short check on the database of past entries also confirmed that it is also lacking in the originality department.

Unfortunately, that means that we will have to do a complete rewrite. So much for good Malaysian values, as we now only have a few hours to complete the job. With our backs to the wall, we fell back on Tommy's original idea. A few short minutes spent on finetuning it later, Jupes and me were ready to slug it out with the sands of time. This does not mean that the other idea will be abandoned. Due to its simplicity, we might implement it in the future.

When we go about brainstorming, it is usually in a very charged-up atmosphere, since we are very passionate about our ideas. However, we were feeling decidedly frigid after an hour or so in. The reason? We were seated under an air-cond vent, an uncovered one at that. It seemed bad form to move though, so we just stuck it in. How long could it take to write a fewer than 1000word essay right? I mean, Jupes and me regularly crank out blogs that long. Well, we were wrong on all counts. Temporary writer's block seemed to appear every now and then, and that's already with Jupes doing most of the typing.

Anyway, we did manage to complete the essay. Now all that's left is to send in both entries. Amid constant hunger pangs, we sent in Tommy and my effort in first, amid constant hunger pangs. Aside from the really long list of particulars to fill in, it went without a cinch. Jupes entry though, was an entirely different matter. The WiFi seemed to freeze the moment we clicked 'send', and then there was a wait. A long wait. Basically you have three ravenous teenagers staring at a blank webpage on a laptop waiting for it to load. Time just outshone room temperature in the freezing department.

A few frantic clicks on 'refresh' managed to coax the confirmation page to load, along with a collective sigh of relief from us. By then, we have just about hung on for the short escalator ride down to the basement cafetaria. Despite not having our intended foodstalls open, we were just too hungry to care. Equation of the day - food>(starvation + cold)