It has been a very busy week for me as I had to do my monthly business trip to Yangon and then travel to Bangkok for the annual microfinance conference till early Friday, before heading home to prepare the Chinese New Year (CNY) eve reunion dinner.
The week started with an early morning Monday flight to Yangon followed by a packed day of meetings that lasted till after 6 pm. We wind down the day with a nice bottle of vino and Italian food. The day had been an interesting one which was highlighted by a potentially errant intern situation which was still developing.
Another meeting in the office on Tuesday morning before we headed to the airport for our flight to Bangkok. There were 4 of us who were attending the annual AFIF (Asian Financial Institution Forum https://www.afiforum.com/ ). This was the 2nd year which the conference was held in Asia for microfinance related companies. We attended the 1st one last year and had 19 back to back meetings which resulted in a very fruitful year for our company as we were able to close quite a number of financial deals due to the contacts we met there.
Like the year before, we booked a nice meeting room for our one on one meetings that had been arranged prior to the start of the forum. In total, we had 23 meetings over the next 2 days. Our Treasury Manager has a number of follow up leads to continue discussions after this. The last few meetings also had very interesting developments which could result in exciting developments for our company in 2020.
The shopping area where we were staying in Bangkok was vibrant with tourists and shoppers as many from China as they were there for their long CNY holidays. The current coronavirus scare is a worry as more cases are identified and the death toll continues to rise. Memories of the SARS epidemic more than 17 years ago remain fresh in our minds.
My colleague and I had an early morning Friday flight home as it was the eve of CNY. I managed to reach home just after noon time to start the preparation of our annual steamboat reunion dinner with our immediate family members. It was a long and tiring day and week as well as I crashed out that night after a few drinks and a lovely dinner with our loved ones to cherish the significance of the reunion meal.
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