Yes, I'm back in Bali (on the way back to the UK).  Last week I was telling you about our time in China and some of the new family businesses we are forging relationships there. 

If you missed it you can catch up with our new friends here. 

Tomas took himself off to Beijing to visit the Great Wall of China for a couple of days and agreed to meet me in Bali later. But huge storms across China, delayed and cancelled swathes of flights, and it turned into a bit of a drama just getting from China to Denpasar, Bali.  I missed a connection and had to spend an extra day in a Guangzhou airport hotel. Tomas came down from Beijing on a seriously delayed flight and somehow we ended up on the same flight - even sat together. After a very bumpy flight, we arrived in Bali at midnight yesterday.  The storms followed us in and I didn't get any sleep (it seemed) because of biblical crashing thunder and epic electric lightning which seemed to be zapping my particular hotel room...

The next morning bleary-eyed we headed to the AW-Advantage beach office to discover our electric supply had been zapped by the storm...  

Our Frangipani warehouse is not far away and has a small office for Ringo and his admin team and a sample room/meeting room. Not much space.. but somehow tables and chairs were found and all 16 people from the beach office packed up laptops and computers and (no drama) relocated to the warehouse office.. crammed cheek to jowl.. we found them cheerfully getting on with it. Ringo's team graciously relocated to the warehouse sitting on boxes.

Raul (the IT wizard) and Peter (the SEO wizard) from Slovakia are already here ahead of us. So because it is already one year since we launched AW-Advantage... It is time for staff reviews and renewal of contracts. 

Our second day in Bali improved, a good night's sleep,  the stormy weather passed, the sun came out, electricity was restored and we were able to get back to the beach office. 

So today we have been doing staff reviews, the system is very different in Indonesia. How it works is staff are given an annual contract, at the end of which some robust negotiations take place. Someone who feels they have contributed well over the year might ask for a hefty increase, or if someone has performed badly they might not be renewed at all. In our case, we are very happy to keep everyone and we are looking to expand at least another three people - we don't want to lose anyone.  So far as I'm writing negotiations are continuing and nobody seems to want to move on... looking good!