On a highway but ...

I read Nik's blog and had an urge to rant further on a statement that she made - "on a 110kmh highway, but going at 50kmh"

I can't help but wonder if that is the case for almost everything in Malaysia. I do have a point in saying so, and here are my thoughts to it:-

MSC - MSC status but when it comes to ecommerce facilities we are still lacking. Our internet is constantly down in the office - and it happens at least once if not twice in a week. When being queried at the appropriate department - the same reply was always given. "Oh we are doing some maintenance work around your area - it should be up in the next few hours". NEXT few hours?? Well, so here I have a 110kmh highway - but because of their maintenance work, I'm forced to drive at 50kmh or come to a complete halt for the next few hours. Great!

Online banking system - Being an online (ecommerce company) the efficiency of my online banking system is excruciatingly important. I need to constantly check for transfers and etc. Since 10th November till today (mind you, that is exactly 6 days) our online banking system is still down. I've made numerous calls to the bank - but they are constantly reassuring me that its fine - and they are going through a maintenance work (what? Another maintenance work? - What kind of maintenance work takes up to 6 days?)

Meeting - A lot of work can be done through the internet nowadays. I would prefer to get majority of my things to be done via email if possible. However, it is not the case in Malaysia. People simply loves to meet up - spend the whole 2 hours whiling away telling you a quarter of their life history and only 15 minutes listening to the reason for our proposed meeting. And you would assume after that 2 whole hours of bonding, a partnership would be successfully formed and we can proceed with whatever necessary to kick start the whole partnership. This is what went wrong after the 2 hours meeting. You bid your goodbyes, promised to send a recap email to them and will forward them all information they requested for during the meeting. We went back to the office, delighted with the meeting( though can't help to admit it was tiring) and had a good feeling that everything will go as planned. Then we started penning down the email, recapping on everything we discussed and you click that "send" button. Over the next couple of days, we waited for the reply email. Nothing. Another week passed. Nothing. We picked up the phone and make that phone call. Suddenly the person whom we sat down and had the 2 hours of interesting conversation turned out to be unavailable, extremely busy with work that he/she forgot about the email, they had to revert to management about the meeting, and they don't seem to be that friendly anymore!

My point here is - the 2 hours (excluding traveling time) could be saved if only the other party is susceptible to reading our email and try to comprehend what we are looking for from them, rather than insisting on a meeting and not able to give us a positive reply thereafter. On the same note, not all meetings are pointless - there are cases whereby fruitful partnership were formed, serious discussion took place and prompt and straight forward replies given almost immediately if not after a day or two. I recalled this very particular person we met over a year plus ago - he was the most sympathetic and nice guy we thought (at the time of the meeting). He was so enthusiastic about what we were proposing, offered us the most outlandish ideas that he wants to work with us, telling us all sorts of mumbo-jumbo about us being very strong, young entrepreneur and how much he respect that (bollocks!). In short, he offered everything we could ask for from a business meeting. He was positive and the meeting ended very well, with him assuring us on the partnership and how much he look forward to hearing from us again (he requested for a detailed list of what we discussed and new ideas). A day passed after we sent the email - it then turned to 2, 3 ,a week and so forth. Calls were replied but he was always giving us the same unoriginal reply - Oh, I'm so sorry, I've been busy .. will get back to you soon. Weeks turned to months and now, it has turned into almost a cold case.

So here is someone who gave us an opportunity to be driving at 110kmh (during meeting) but because of his inefficiency in responding to us, we were held back at 50kmh - just emailing him, calling him every now and then and waiting for his reply that never came.

So, is a meeting really necessary ? I've formed many business partnership via email, tele-conferencing and phone calls. And these have saved me hours and hours of traveling, meeting time and other mumbo jumbo.

I could seriously go on and on about this but I'm on a 110kmh highway today so I'm ending it abruptly right here.