A customer report on the Kia Sportage 2011

I've been driving my Kia Sportage 2011 for about two weeks now. I thought o recording my first impressions of the vehicle before it grows on me and I take the new features for granted.

Amazingly I put my money down without test driving. So you can say it was a love at first sight over it's looks. Peter Schreyer's new design had won a customer who didn't bother to see how the vehicle drives before ordering it. But I did do my research and while I was not expecting a sports car, I expected it to drive well.

And I am happy to say that the Sportage didn't dissapoint me. It packs a nifty 2.0l engine (yes this part of the world gets a 2l instead of the 2.4l that America gets) under the hood which gives enough punch for driving and overtaking in the city. Most of my travels are within the city and they tend to be pretty short ones averaging around 4-5 kms per trip. The in-city performance of the sportage is satisfying and stress free. It didn't appear underpowered to face any condition that I faced so far. Even with a load of 5 adults it performed effortlessly on the city roads.

One of the things that attracted me to the Sportage were the amount of features that it offered as standard. Even though I went for the lower spec edition with FWD it packs all the creature comforts that are required. And I am in love with the Blake interior and am happy that I held my ground when the agent tried his best to push a gray interior. Black with the red interior lighting is a nice combination.

The other thing that I am really happy about is the roominess of the interior. Even with the front seats pushed fully back, there is plenty I leg room fo the rear passengers. In fact at times there appears to be too much of room at the back as therenks room or the kids to stand at the back even when someone is sitting.

The only thing that was a surprise in a negative manner was the fuel consumption on my first tank full. My calculation tell me it has done abou 4.2 km's per litre which works upto about 19 MPG. But I was expecting it to doaround 7km's per litre. But I guess all the traffic during the wesak on the road was probably the culprit. In my second tankfull, it seems to be doing better having done over a 100km's with the meter still above the FULL mark. (I think this time the pump attendant pumped atleast 15 litres after the indicator reached the FULL mark and the pump lock automatically disengaged. If it does anywhere around 7kms or above for a litre would make me a happy driver.

Oh and I live the fact that it is a triptronic and a 6 speed one at that. One of the reasons that I was forced to sell my previous car was the fact that it was a manual and my wife cannot drive a stick shift. But I personally live the stick shift. With this we both get our own preferences. Of course a triptronic is not a pure stick shift. It still doesnt shift up when I want to. But at least it gives some control over the shifting.

It suffices to say that I am happy with my choice. I am glad I went for the Sportage instead of a car. Only thing I would like to have in it are the rear spoiler and a reverse camera. Other than that and a tint I would keep the rest stock.

Next is to see how it ages and how reliable it is over time. In Sri Lanka we dont get the legendary 7 year Kia warranty. Instead we get a 3 year/60000km warranty. But I am planning to stuck with the vehicle for a minimum of 5 years as my lease runs that long. So the reliability is to be seen.

PS: if anyone wants to get a sportage in Sri Lanka and doesn't want to wait for 4 months as the agents suggest drop me a line. I will let you in on a secret to get your hands on one within 4-5 weeks. I only waited 5 weeks from ordering to delivery.

Some relief, finally.

There is some relief, finally. My client is getting a small payment and he is going to make a partial payment to us as well. This is some relief. As we get towards the end of the month, one day at a time, my tension also goes up! The pay day is the last Friday of the month and that means I need to have money in the bank.

Apart from the salaries, there are other pending bills to pay. Starting from June, there is going to be a new monthly payment on the company account for an asset we acquired on a lease. And I don’t plan on falling behind on the salary or the lease.

I had one card up my sleeve. One card that would have allowed me to make the salary payment and the lease payment only. But that would still leave a couple of more payments past due. Some of them are payments that I cannot drag on for so long. For example Internet and electricity both get disconnected when the bills are not paid on time. And I cannot run the company without either of them.

I have already started some cost cutting measures. One of the biggest areas that I can save costs is on the electricity bill. I am asking my guys to conserve as much as possible. One is to make sure to switch off the computers at the end of the day. The next is to not to leave any un-necessary electrical appliances running, including lights and AC’s. I am going on without my AC most of the time. Everything else is more or less of a fixed cost for us.

Personal improvements

Professionally I have improved myself over the years. From the start of my career to where I am now, I’ve come a long way. It’s not a journey of sitting tight and hoping for things to improve. It is more a story of taking risks and branching out, looking out for the next opportunity and taking some with open arms.

But as a person, I am not sure whether I have made such vast strides. While I have been pretty interested in personal development and had been reading up quite a bit, the application of those things that I have learned into my personal self has been pretty inconsistent. While I may have tried and practiced certain things, looking back, I cannot recall internalizing anything into my life fully. I think I am basically the same person I was then, just with a certain level of maturity gained with age. Sometimes I wonder whether I read for the sake of reading these personal development books, rather than to actually gain something personally.

I have never really planned my life in detail. This is a point that often drives my wife crazy. She likes to plan things out and live life according to a plan. I am more of a come as they may I will spend my day kind of a person. While the hours I bill are guided by the requirements and work on the projects and I do spend sometime thinking about improvements to my company, I don’t think such planning is done, on my own, on my personal life.

While living spontaneously has its thrills, I find that at times my holidays are spent aimlessly. Such aimlessness is sometimes required to recharge our batteries to face the work life with vigor again, I wonder whether it does justice to my family. As it is now, I spend most of my waking ours at work, and spend very little time (comparatively) with them, and if I spend most of the family time also recharging myself for work, where does that leave them?

One of the key reasons that I got back into freelancing was to find a balance between work and ‘life’ but I find myself again at a point where ‘work’ has become ‘life’!  Having taken the decision to transition my freelancing career to the next level by starting a company, I find doing more and more everyday! Being a start up we are understaffed and over worked. We have too many things on our plates and are running tight deadlines. I work during my day and spend my evenings in meetings with my clients. I generally clock in about 12 hours of billable hours a day! That’s a lot more than I used to clock when I was working for others!

This is one area that I need to spend my effort on. Improving the ‘life’ aspects of my life! And maybe its time to dig up those books once again and time to put into practice what I read.

Running out of cash!

My (sole) client tells me that the next 30 to 45 days are going to be bad, he has run into a cash crunch and he probably cant make the payments.

And I am not in a position to do anything about it because more than a client we are partners (in business) and I’ve seen this coming since a mile back. I have two and half month of invoices pending. I have pending electricity and telephone bills for the past two months. The only utility bill I’ve paid last month was for the Internet, and that too was because my ISP is prompt in disconnecting when the due date is passed.

I was behind on the rent for 2 weeks and just paid it. I am behind by a month on payments for the ETF and EPF for the staff. I’ve bought tea and coffee for the office out of my personal credit card and I haven’t settled it!

Every entrepreneur runs into a cash flow issue at some point or the other. If you have met someone who has not, then (s)he’s one of the very few lucky ones. I’ve had it pretty good for the last two years and I am facing probably the worst cash crunch of my career and my company now. To make matters worse, I have staff, making me responsible for their salaries.

In Sri Lankan law you cannot lay-off people as easily and simply as in the US, which seems to be the first thing they do when run out of money. We have tougher labor laws and even if they were lenient, it’s the last thing I would ever consider doing. Laying staff off will bring about a dark cloud and a negative psyche to the company which will be very difficult to lift off. And I personally feel responsible for the careers of my team as I lured them away from jobs that they would have had still, had I not lured them.

On paper, my company is currently profitable. My profit and loss statement shows a healthy profit. But my bank account is near zero. At which ever point that I get paid my bank account will be pretty decently rich.

One thing I’ve managed to do all this time is to shield the cash flow issues from the staff. I do not want burden them with such worries and bring about doubt and worry to their minds. I don’t want anything affecting their work as we are running pretty tight deadlines on our projects. And I need them to concentrate on the deliveries 100%.

I am also trying to keep as much of the worry away from my family as well. I do not want to bring about undue worry on my wife. But it is becoming pretty hard as this is the start of a new school term and that means fees for school and extra curricular activities of my kids are now due. I’m putting them all off for next month but putting them off beyond that is not an option.

I am keeping my options open and doing my best to manage the situation for the next 30-45 days until the cashflow improves. By the looks of it I can probably survive another 30 days and beyond that it is not going to be an option. Unless some windfall comes my way!

Improving quality through refactoring

The human existence is all about progress. Companies, governments and societies and people spend countless hours, effort and money in a bid to find better ways to do the things that we do now.

As individuals, we too always strive to do things better, with less effort with time. Sometimes it’s called experience. Having done something before, having made the mistakes and having learned the lessons, we become good at what we do. This is normal for our day to day activities including our work.

But how many of us make a conscious effort to better ourselves. Experience come as part and parcel of our daily activities. But how many of us, actually challenge our comfort zones and attempt to come up with better ways of doing things?

Now I come from a back ground of programming. When writing a piece of software, for the first time in a new language or a platform, there are tons of things to figure out. You have to figure them out in order to get your program to work. So you figure them out and get the thing to work. Usually a software project lasts a while. And during the life cycle of the project, your knowledge of the new tools and technologies that you used improves. How many times do we actually go back and try to improve what we have done in the beginning?

I have had instances where I have gone back to previous projects I have done, specially after a few more projects and mastering the tools and technologies better, and become quite embarrassed by the work I have done. Now with the experience I know better and more robust and advanced ways of doing things and suddenly the previous ways I have done things seems pretty primitive. I would love to refactor, if the time and priorities allow it.

The basic rule of thumb I use is if it is a project that we will build and maintain, during maintenance it is worthwhile to spend time refactoring, as it will improve the maintainability of the project in the long run. But what if it was a one off project that you did? What if the project was already completed and handed over to the customer and you are not contracted to maintain it? In such cases, no matter how much it affects my programmers pride, I have to let it be, as it doesn’t make sense in a monetarily to spend the effort to refactor.

But the best way to improve the quality of a project is when you can afford the time and the effort during the life cycle of the project to refactor. But not many projects can afford this luxury. Most projects run on very tight deadlines and very tight budgets. Most project owners are interested in cramming more functionality on to the project rather than improving the quality of the internal workings. They assume that the quality of coding should be inherent in the first go itself. There is really no room for continuous improvement. Just a thought!

Getting stuck and losing steam

I am not as good a finisher as a starter! That’s a fact!

I have three projects that I have started, all of which have progressed and currently at different levels and here I am dreaming up yet some more solutions rather than finishing these ‘in-progress’ ones. Sometimes I amaze myself! If ideas were worth anything I think I would be pretty rich. But with ‘ideas worth nothing and execution worth every penny’ I am not a rich man, until I sort out my execution shortcomings.

I manage to stay pretty exited and and spend sleepless nights in the ‘exploration’ stage of a project. I am good at running things through iterations of planning and exploring and zooming in on the features. Then I spend the time in sorting out the technical challenges of implementation. I would start coding and immediately move on to the challenging areas and concentrate on getting elaborate and elegant solutions rather than settling on crude ‘tied together with glue tape’ solutions that may still work. So ‘test early and test often’ becomes distant as I get buried under the technical elegance.

Once these challenges are sorted out, I lose steam! I think I am more of a dreamer than a doer. But yet, I still insist on doing everything myself, well at least now because my team is busy on client projects. And somehow whenever I seem to get the energy to work on my own projects, some urgent ‘we have to get this done today’ task falls onto my lap, so I end up spending that energy on the emergency project.

I think it’s long enough that I have been putting my pet projects off. It’s time to get cracking. Get cracking some code!