I officially closed 2020 with UMBRA’s M&A and Restructuring PG Annual Dinner on 19 December. Thanks to the superb dinner set from @august_jkt (which is simply the best private dining organizer in Indonesia for me to date), we had a very enjoyable evening. 

Given the hassle of running any gathering (testing every participants, setting the open air place, enforcing the safety protocol, you name it), it was the only event that I could have with my kids in 2020 since the start of our WFH in mid March 2020. Indeed, it was also the first time for me to physically see some of my new recruits during the pandemic. So I am glad that despite the herculean efforts, it could still be done 🥵🥵🥵.

I have to admit that running the whole firm from home is a new experience, it’s unprecedented for a law firm even in all of my personal collection of general and law firm management books (what, you think you can manage a big business only by intuition without learning the materials? I take my job seriously). While I've always envisioned a flexible working arrangement where lawyers can work from any place and any time (the last part is probably frightening for some people), prior to the pandemic there was always a big question mark on three issues: (i) how can we ensure that people will actually work at home, (ii) how can we do proper quality control, and (iii) how can we convince the client to avoid physical meetings?

Luckily, when everyone is forced to work from home, it becomes clear that there are ways to do things more efficiently. Without the hassle of rumbling traffic and waiting for late people, we could manage to perform additional tasks and have more meetings in a single day. I thought I was damn busy in 2019, but 2020 showed that I was wrong. 

Of course, physical gathering would still be important, especially to build trust among peers and clients. Had we started UMBRA during a pandemic, the results would probably be ugly for us. It is precisely because we had the chance to make our presence known to the clients prior to the pandemic that we could turn the challenges to become opportunities. And I am extremely grateful for having the right timing. I know that hard work is essential, but you can’t deny the role of chance and luck in doing a business. Understanding this iron law would help you to have a realistic and pragmatist perspective, for each optimism, one must always be cautious. And while planning does not always yield successful results, we plan to fail when we fail to plan.

Yes, not be able to going anywhere and meeting anyone freely still sucks. I miss Japan and all the chefs there. I miss the United States and my beloved family and law school there. But at the same time, I am still grateful that I have a firm with resilient and hard working people, managed to close super interesting and historical deals for my clients, won multiple prestigious awards for the firm, had the time to read and do more research for my planned book, was able to actually finish FF VII Remake (and got Platinum Trophy), One Piece Pirate Warriors 4, and The Last of Us 2 (only 3 games this year (4 if I counted Hades, but it's still ongoing), but hey, given my workload, I call that an achievement 😊), had the chance to improve my cooking skills, and finally, after waiting for more than 10 years, being officially admitted as an indoor disciple of Wu Tang school of martial arts (what a joy!!!). 

Now, if only I could cure my blocked nose that has haunted me for the past 8 months, I would give 2020 a perfect score! Let’s make new history in 2021! Bismillah.