Posted 1:00 AM by Andy
With the thawing out of winter and the immiment onset of spring, I will pen a quick entry to capture recent memories.

Work. In late January my body broke down. I was battling a recurring cold and dealing with a startup's responsibilities exacerbated the breakdown. We had finished our revenue model and I started pitching angels and VCs for investment. To my dismay, KPCB turned us down. I had been somewhat antsy prior to this since development took eons and the developers weren't exactly social butterflies. The other annoyance was the firm was located in a remote part of Zhangjiang, far removed from my social circle. I sat down with the founder and discussed my frustrations. We parted amiably but it was still sad to realize my entreprenurial dreams flamed out so quickly. A couple days later after I left the venture, I was contacted by the same headhunter that had introduced me to English First. Turns out the position of senior product manager I had declined last fall was still open. I met with a few more directors and the president of Smart School over the ensuing weeks and quickly accepted their offer to join the team. I am completing my first week here managing the fastest growing product in their language training portfolio. I have been assigned 8 projects with the pipeline filled to November. My main colleague Eric is a friendly Canadian who is showing me the ropes. I'm slowly meeting the team and understanding the operation. Having taken a month-long break, it's good to be on the grind again. Bonus is I'm back downtown at People's Square.

Extracurricular Life. Wednesday night cell group has stabilized thanks largely to Corine's planning efforts. We now have a quarterly roadmap of what we are studying. We have also decided to shed our renegade status and officially join the Hengshan network of small groups. It's been good to have some new regulars join us like Joey, Zoie, Esther, and Katina. I'm still playing bball every Saturday afternoon at Shimao. I'm not a franchise player, but more of a glue guy (see Scottie Pippen, Andre Iguodala, et al.) After being uneven in my poker performances, I started analyzing my hands after each session to remediate my game. Last week I had a big win, which is comforting.

The weekend is almost here. I'll join a English First networking event after work today and then meet up with a few of the boys for dinner and pool at Xintiandi and try to forget that my tax bill to Uncle Sam is close to 5 figures.