The days of our lives
With my three months under the belt, my ‘new’ contract has gone in effect, seeing me staying in Chiang Mai for another six months. On my timeline, that’s just slightly less than eternity.
I’m working on interesting stuff, however, deploying a social news network, HealthDev.net around the globe. The bulk of the work will be moving existing users from a legacy system to this new environment. Some 25.000 of them. To get things going, I’m currently planned to go to Uganda in a few weeks time. After that, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Cambodia, Vietnam, India and more might be next.
Maybe six months are going to be manageable.
One of Betsy’s classmates in her Thai class, Khunjamon (well, her real name is Anja), does an internship at Citylife, a local monthly full color English language magazine. A while back, we also visited a lomography exhibition here in Chiang Mai. I saw an opportunity and sowed the seeds for the first Chiang Mai photomarathon.
All went well and, last week, with the director of Citylife, we gave the go ahead to the Chiang Mai photomarathon. Prizes and sponsoring were going to be sourced through Citylife’s business network and were going to be plenty. Then, this week, Canon called Citylife, asking for a one page ad in next month’s magazine, advertising for the ‘Chiang Mai photomarathon’, four weeks before we had ours planned.
Ain’t that a bitch.
What I find most annoying is the fact that the Canon photomarathon isn’t a photomarathon at all. The details are still very sketchy, but Canon’s earlier activities in the region, which were called photomarathons, actually consisted of three tasks or themes over an 8 hour period. Marathon? More like a leisurely walk.
Now, we’re going to wait and see what happens. Most likely, our event will be postponed by a few months.
But every downside has its upside. I’m bloody busy with work as well as a few other clients. Not having to work on the website for the Chiang Mai photomarathon does save me some time.
A funny note
Generally, I’m not impressed by stuff other people forward me through email. I’ve had enough of chain letters, dying children, Microsoft giving away billions and whatnot. Then a colleague of mine sent me this…
With seasonal depression here, we find now that even mental health systems are affected by out sourcing.
I was depressed last night so I called Lifeline.
Got a call center in Pakistan.
I told them I was suicidal.
They got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck.