Time To Call It A Day

Time does really fly. It has been almost a year since I quit teaching to set up an internet cafe with Mr Soon. The lease for our shop unit is due for renewal soon and after much consideration we have decided not to renew it. That means we are not going to continue running the cafe and to call it a day. It was a tough decision. Though we are no entrepreneur, commonsense tells us that it would be senseless to keep on pumping money into a failing venture. Actually things didn't start off as well as expected from the very beginning as not many people know of our existence, in fact not many people even know of the location - Sunshine Plaza. We had tried to promote our products (Snow Ice and Hot Dessert) and services (internet surfing and other computer-related services) but probably due to our inexperience, it wasn't very successful. We had hoped that business would pick up with the opening of NAFA whose campus is situated just across the road. Well, its opening did help and sales did improve but only until the long December holidays when patronage by the students dropped drastically. Somehow sales didn't recover when the new school term started. Most of our regular student-customers had either graduated or gone over to more hip places like TCC which has 3 outlets in the vicinity. We didn't do much to attract the new intake, thinking that it won't work just like the first time. Though SMU with close to 5 000 students (NAFA has only about 3 000 students) will start its school term in August, there is no guarantee that sales will increase enough to recuperate our losses. Thus, to minimise our losses we decided to shift our operation to a new location but good location is hard to come by as such the cafe would have to cease to exist at the end of June until we find a more suitable location. I'm disappointed that it has to end this way. To me the cafe is not only a work place but more importantly it's where I got to know some of my ex-students better. The cafe has actually become sort of a hangout for some of my kids and it has provided us with the opportunity to mingle and to share our sorrows and joys. It's an irony that we didn't get to share as much when we were in school though we see one another almost everyday. The times we spent together were some of the most memorable and fun moments of my life and sad to say all these would become history very soon. So what is going to happen next? Well, first and foremost I need to look for a job to support myself as my savings has already been pumped dry. Talking about that, it's definitely not going to be easy for an old man like me to look for a job. And to add salt to the wound, the only training I have so far is to teach (though I'm still not a very good teacher) and other than that I don't possess any other skill. It's sad but it's also very real and going back to teaching in school is not an option for the moment (Civil servants are not allowed to run a business of their own). I might have to start tutoring again like what I used to do before I became a teacher, so any of you out there who need help with your studies, please don't hesitate to contact me to offer your support. Though I can be quite a nasty tutor I'm confident that I can help to improve your grades.