Another All nighter

I am sitting in the edit bay with Saji my brilliant editor. It’s a little frustrating as Im used to doing the editing myself. So I have to verbalize what I need done. Saji doesn’t speak a lot of English, but he understands it well. I think we both respect each other as editors. Manoj was first working on the project but Saji is much faster. So I had to ask Manoj to relinquish the editing chair to Saji. That was a little hard, but we are up against it and need speed. We’ve been cooking ever since. Its 9:30 pm and I don’t think we’ll get done for another couple of hours. Wow what a long week. What feels good is telling Saji to make several changes and then being able to walk away knowing that he’ll get the job done. I’ve had to be so focused today. We have to have the video done by my meeting with the Ministry of Works by 12:00. Then I have my other big client coming it at 3:00. So while Saji was editing away on that project, I was finishing project #2 and all their changes. It seems like with everyone that sees a project wants it changed just a little bit. Psychologically, if they make a minor change they can take ownership over it. Like, I was responsible for this little part. By taking ownership of the little part, they convince themselves they are responsible for the whole part. Its human nature I think. Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Thus when I go into a meeting with 8 people around the conference room, I know I’ll get 8 different opinions. It’s the nature of what I do.

So even though I’ve had these time crunches. It’s been a great day. I enjoy being at the office even. The only thing I really regret is that I’ve been working so many hours that I haven’t had a chance to exercise that much. I had a little disappointment today. The young kid I wanted to hire for my sales position, wasn’t able to come on board. We were all disappointed. His old company is holding his Visa and not letting him out of it. He can’t just leave because he is afraid his father, who also works at his former company might have some adversity come upon him for retribution for his son leaving the company. That is pretty standard out here. Companies don’t pay very much but they strongly discourage people moving to better opportunities. They do this through pressure and intimidation. I often talk about how great I think this country is, but it has its share of black eyes like most any place does.

I just gave Saji an instruction to cut -2 d.b. off the music soundtrack. That sounds very technical and it is. I like being a director. I like being a General Manger. It seems like my whole life I’ve tried to delegate to get out of work. Now Im actually getting paid for it. What started out as laziness has turned into a job qualification. How cool is that? Im a good delegator. But I have to stay on top of my staff. While the cat is away the mice will play is almost written in the employee manual here. At least it is figuratively. Khalifa and I have long talks about how to handle the staff. Many of the employees are very loyal to him. Ahmad the driver has been with Khalifa for more than 25 years. What is amazing about that, is that Ahmad is one of our lowest paid employees but the most loyal. When Khalifa was sick in the hospital and I went to visit, it was Ahmad by his side. The loyalty is really quite beautiful if you think about it. Most of the employees have been with Khalifa for over 5 years. I really like this about this company. It really is like a family. I have grown especially close to many of the employees here since I don’t have my own family out here with me. Well its almost 10 and we have some more work to do. So I better get to it.

By the way, we just passed over 15,000 hits on this blog since I started tracking in January. Im quite humbled and proud at the same time. I’m always open to comments/suggestions/advice so feel free to leave a comment or email me directly. I actually thrive off constructive criticism as it helps me improve as a person. We just finished the picture re-re-re-re-edit now Saji has to do a music mix and color correction. Almost there. My perfect deadline record is going to stay in tact. But we are pushing it.