Got a hundred and fifty mil. lying around?

OK…I might have overdone it a bit last night.  We had our first deadline.  I have to lead by example, so Manu (the young animator wiz) stayed til we got the project to an acceptable form, then called it a night at 2a.  It was the first almost all nighter I’ve had in awhile.  It was Manu’s first professional all-nighter…after many in college.  He was so excited about being his first all nighter.  His enthusiasm was infectious.  We both very much enjoy our work so neither one of us felt like we were working at all. 

I had a meeting this morning with Walter, the Brazilian professional basketball coach.  We might be doing some consulting work in the future.  Then for lunch…at the mall I ran into these three extremely tall black guys.  They were distinctly American, and you just don’t see Saudi’s this tall…so I could tell they were imported.  It turns out there is a professional basketball league here…Who knew?    I got a call from Tanya at lunch saying the DVD’s that she was supposed to sell weren’t ready…and she had to leave in 5 minutes.  I got really mad.  Manu and I stayed up so late to make sure those DVD’s were ready, and someone dropped the ball in the duplication department.  What was more frustrating…is the guys that were supposed to do it…just left for lunch.  That is sometimes the mentality here.  If they can’t get it done…they just ignore it and hope it will go away or someone else does it.  I got pretty mad.  Before, I only got mad when some sort of injustice happened.  Now that im a manager with responsibilities, I get made when we come close and almost miss a deadline.  I have never missed a deadline in my professional career and don’t want to start now.  So I called an emergency staff meeting and taught them all about the word “proactive”  That’s a concept that is a little bit new to them.  I assured them that they were all going to learn to be pro-active. 

I swung by Nader’s bank to go over some business with him.  I wanted to show him the demo reels that Saji and I had done.  He was quite impressed (ill post them tomorrow.)  but he was also quite busy.  You see the economic collapse in the U.S. has ripples that affect the rest of the world.  Specifically the banking industry, which is huge here.  It was funny at the Palm banquet last Friday, everyone in their black tuxedos, kept looking at their blackberries, and iphones under the table…and kept blurting out expletives as Citicorp took a nose dive.  So the banking collapse in the U.S. has created a global crisis.  Nader has been very very busy and concerned with his bank.  I offered to help…and his reply…unless you got 150 million in the bank…you’re not going to be much help.  So let throw that out to you.  If any of you has around hundred or two million lying around and want to help out a bank..i can hook you up…lol.

I was just about to get my VISA today, when our passport guy, Ali returned my passport to me.  Even as an American, I have to do things by the book.  It turns out, I’ve been traveling quite a bit over the last five years.  I ran out of passport pages.  So I have to run to the American Embassy tomorrow morning and get some pages added to the passport. 

Reji popped his head into my office and said he found a four square church we can try on Friday.  He said…good news…I saw the pictures on their website..and there are white people.  I cheered…he laughed.  Now don’t get me wrong…im the furthest thing from a racist you are ever going to find.  Its just that I think congregations should be mixed…not the all or nothing mentality.  That’s why I appreciated Lakewood so much, it was almost perfectly divided under Black, White, Hispanic grounds.  That’s the way Heaven will look like…shouldn’t we also have it in church?