Singapore – Hyderabad – Singapore – Weekend 12-13 December 2015
It’s been a long year…
This will be my last blog of the year…I still have another week to go before jetting off to Australia for my Xmas and New Year holidays together with my family and friends. I have been traveling long and hard this year and some quality time off with my loved ones is something I dearly crave…writing my blog on my first day of holiday is therefore unlikely to happen… :). I could not have imagined at the beginning of the year that I would be travelling so much, so frequently and so far. Europe to the West and Tahiti to the East (or further West if you want). At this point I can but thank my team for their relentless and unwavering support throughout this year. Each and every member of my team have made remarkable progress in becoming better and better and with that maintaining and improving the service delivery to our dear clients with the professional attitude expected from our practice. Thank you all for that! There are always comings and goings in a company, with some pursuing other career interests, but the key to all is a tight and happy family who have each-others back and love the work they do. I am therefore pleased to welcome Bruce to our team, who no doubt will help us grow to become even better. Welcome to the family! On a sad note we suffered the unexpected loss of Navin Krishen, our business partner in India, who died of cancer after a short but brave battle a few months ago. His parting is a great loss to our team but also to the greater lighting community in general. He was highly respected by his peers…our thoughts are with his wife Lillian who has now taken upon her to keep the business going…we wish you well.
The year that was…
All in all we had a good year of consolidation, many new and interesting projects, mainly centred around hospitality as our mainstream project constant, but thankfully supplemented with projects in heritage, corporate, retail, F&B, entertainment, residential, landscape and urban redevelopment applications. I have always been a strong believer that a good lighting designer needs to cross-fertilise him or herself with the experience from varying and different lighting applications to avoid tunnel vision in designing specific projects. Experience and knowledge we acquire in other applications help create stronger lighting concepts in general. Several projects were proudly commissioned this year which we reported on through publications and social media. It was also the year that we have launched ourselves into social networking with active reporting through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram finding a new audience of followers. Public appearances at lighting related events have also been a constant feature of my personal activities, educating and sharing my knowledge and expertise in the process. This is a very gratifying part of our activities that is set to continue in the new year without slowing down…Of course my blog (now weekly) and publicized articles have been a regular item on this years menu…I have and still find it extremely gratifying to work on projects (by the grace of our appreciative clients), blog about and write about my experiences in doing so and educating the general community through my public speaking engagements. It is specifically the acknowledgements and positive feedbacks received that makes it all worth doing. Thank you all!
Hyderabad
And oh yes…I did travel this week…to Hyderabad in India, of which I just returned this morning. A client who had been remarkably patience with us as they has asked us to come to site since October already! It’s just that my schedule was so full that I simply could not reasonably fit it in…so much for insisting that I wanted to be present at this kick-off meeting! But it was worth the waiting for all…For us it allowed us to get really well prepared for the visit with a comprehensive presentation on the proposed lighting approach, something really needed considering none of the consultants team members had ever worked with a professional lighting designer before, so being able to explain our role and share our vision on the lighting and the proposed lighting concept opened the eyes for all present. Not surprisingly we had a very eager and complete team hanging on to every word of our presentation and appreciating the typical lighting design issues being explained and clarified to them. The site team and ourselves in the time leading up to the visit had ample time to smooth out communication and other project matters resulting in both teams being prepared for the meeting which as a result was very fruitful and left everyone in great spirits and happy they had appointed a lighting designer…great way to end this year! Below some impressions of the site, the meeting and old Hyderabad city at night…
To each and every one of you, thanks for following my blog, thanks for your valuable feedbacks and encouragements (which have kept me going for 6 years now!) it means a lot to me. Looking forward to catching up in the New Year!
Have a great weekend, a merry Xmas and Happy New Year…take care!
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