Monday, February 23, 2009

Monday, February 15th, 2009-“Jon Scares Grameen Employees… and the new Intern Arrives”

Hello everyone, today was a pretty uneventful day, other than me striking fear into the hearts of the NSCAP employees and the new Intern arriving.  First things first.  I had mentioned that I had done a cost analysis, well the cost analysis that I preformed was based on a program that Grameen offers.  Without getting into details, in about 10 years this program could be costing NSCAP a lot of money (based on some assumptions, obviously).  The Grameen employees told me later that this scared them, much in line with any work I have done in the United States.  It was a good day and I think they liked the discussion we had, but there is still some discussion that needs to be made and some conclusions to be reached (as I said before, we have some time to work with, but the sooner the better).

Before I left everyone’s heart palpitating, I met the new intern with Grameen, Julian.  He is from Australia and is 18 years old.  He just finished his high school education and was going on to try to attend university in the United States… pending acceptance.  He is extremely smart, but also extremely tired.  He had stayed in the Manila Airport Hotel and agreed with me that he would have been better off just staying in the airport itself, because he didn’t get a wink of sleep.  He has been up for two days straight and, even at 18 that can wear on someone.  He definitely has energy about learning micro-finance and offering various insights into the program.  He has read quite a bit about micro-finance and I look forward to learning from him, and hope I can teach him a few things… but, as he is probably smarter than me, that may be minimal.

Julian and I attended my favorite local hot-spot and conversed about many things, including the intricacies of cricket.  As I may have mentioned, I watch cricket quite a bit on the TV, but didn’t really know the rules.  I was enlightened.  All in all a good day, but I can’t wait for tomorrow when we make the trek to Lavezares and the islands of Biri… more to come!

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