Playing catchup

Well... been back at work two days and playing catchup. Pete [my co-leader of the team] is off in another country in the Middle East. So I guess I am holding the baby again too.

Paula, our new administrator, has started and I spent Monday morning working with her to try to sort out some of the recurring charges and other admin issues we need to deal with [and delegate to her]. Actually already I am seeing how she will make a difference. She is noticing things that have been falling behind for some time and looking at ways of making them work.

In the afternoon I spent time with Phyo, our trainee programmer/designer catching up with what he has been doing and helping set his next priorities. The sort out a couple of technical things - one with a printer Pete had been having problems with while I was away and another with one of the radio streams that had stopped working because one of our partners had removed a file from the server...

Today... well... one thing we have been bad at is fund raising, but I have an invitation to the USA to meet some potential funders there. I have been sent a 28 page document to fill in, and today I have been wading through it. Some questions are easy, many need quite a lot of looking at. For instance a percentage break down of how we use our funds. We don't have those figures at our fingertips [maybe in a years time when Paula sorts us all out we will, but not now!]

Miracle of miracles the Internet banking is now working [started while I was away] so that has reduced the workload for our book-keeper somewhat. However, I dare not tell you the ongoing saga of the banking problems... this with our UK bank this time which has sucessfully forgotten to reply to my FAXes, failed to send out a bank card, failed to send it a second time, then sent two bank cards to a third wrong address... one day [maybe] all our banking facilities will work... including hopefully the Internet banking on our UK account.

Of course, although the Cyprus Internet banking is now working , the Bank of Cyprus did have to show how inefficient they were as well, by sending us a new Euro bank book for an account that is now closed!