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What was I doing a year ago today?
Friday,
"Brace yourself..." I met the love of my life last week. His name is Jack, and we decided on the spur of the moment to tie the knot in Las Vegas. So that's where I have been this whole time and yeah... I'm married!
Just kidding, lol. On the contrary, I have been in front of my laptop non-stop since Sunday evening either at home or at Starbucks, installing Quicken 2002 Home and Office, getting all of of my accounts organized like a woman gone MAD, closing myself off from the rest of the world less emails/calls of a more urgent nature with an occasional social dinner when unavoidable, and getting in a decent workout just about every day all the while. Yesterday was the true feat in which I woke up at 9 a.m. and didn't get to bed until 6 a.m. the following evening/morning, working on my financials all day and night sans after-dinner coffee in Palo Alto with Vivian and her friend Sherry. Not quite done yet, but guess what. I am in love with Quicken.
Something about living in Truth be told...
My initial motivation for putting all of my finances in order is to see if I really CAN afford to live in the city at this point in time and if so, for how long and to what de- But now that I've got it all set up, this is what I have to say about Quicken: Quicken has changed my life. I am so convinced of its power that I am going to get all of my friends to convert, ESPECIALLY those who are living in Asia and who are starting or running their own small businesses and/or still have investment and bank assets in the U.S.
Here goes my sales pitch... This software allows one to enter and manage MULTI-CURRENCY accounts! I can now manage all of my accounts both here and abroad, my credit card and investment portfolio accounts, (I even included promissory notes!) and so forth, all in one system! This took me awhile to figure out but WOW is this ever a nice feature! Further, I can download my latest transactions from ALL of the above as most (if not all) U.S. financial institutions accomodate to Quicken! At the click of a button I know immediately where I stand and thus can plan and make decisions with confidence. For me, that includes:
For small business owners, Quicken Home and Business of course provides your standard project and income/expense categorization functions, such that once you enter all of your past business transactions into the system, you can run all kinds of charts and reports to see what happened to your money and thus how to plan going forward. Entering every single transaction for ORIENTED.COM since the beginning of the year while learning how to use the software along the way took me FOREVER, but now that that's done, I finally know how much money we have spent on the Happy Hours versus that spent on start-up expenses for the business. That I managed to keep excellent documentation of company expenses to date including expense and project code categorization, in a banking environment that does NOT utilize individual check-writing (Taipei), AND that I somehow managed to pack and lug all of that paperwork with me across the Pacific -- all recklessly stuffed in between clothes and shoes and toiletries and socks and underwear of my two suitcases -- AND that I managed to lose only ONE receipt... It's all quite shocking. I think just locating and organizing the paperwork took me one entire business day. MOST of all -- and this is a feature I've yet to use because I'm not quite done -- I can pay my bills and transfer money from one account to another or from a bank account to a credit card account directly through Quicken!
While I realize that I must sound like I have lost my MIND -- I am certain that I have -- fact is that it became very clear to me pretty quickly how important this exercise is for myself and for the business -- call it smart, long-term planning -- and to get it all done *before* commercial activities begin. Which brings me to my next topic... I was just told by our developers that test launch begins next TUESDAY. For the very first time since I started working on the b-plan for ORIENTED more than two years ago, I will finally get to see the site live on the Net, and yeah... ... I'm kind of nervous. This weekend is going to be one of the toughest ones for me yet, as I need to provide the developers with the bulk of what is referred to as "web copy" -- the various content of the site, directing users from one page to the next, etc. -- by my time Sunday evening, in order for us to meet Tuesday's test launch date. I'm kind of nervous about that too! God help me... These next two months is perhaps the most crucial period for ORIENTED.COM as we prepare for the Big Bang, so to my friends out there who have been trying to get a hold of me, please forgive me if I haven't responded to emails/calls (and it probably won't happen for awhile) but know that under normal circumstances I do try to get back to people within 24 hours. Will try to update this journal more regularly now that I've crawled out of my hole. I conclude today's journal entry with two statements:
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