John Linton ....and all sorts of other professions, skill sets and abilities that I not only have ever had but none that I coud ever conceive of having.
However, apart from the first four, the other three were desperately needed in large measures today as Annette and I wrestled, largely unsuccessfully, with real estate agents, tax and audit accountants and two different types of lawyers as well as dealing with quite significant language problems.
After getting up at the equivalent of 3 am in the morning and flying for four hours, negotiating the dreadful trip from Colombo's airport to the hotel and then spending the next ten hours in shuttle diplomacy with the aforementioned real estate agents, fit out contractors, lawyers, accountants, government departments and the central Colombo traffic nightmare linking the disparate parties and realising that at least 70% of what was said by any party wasn't really understood by any other party and returning to the hotel to email all parties concerned with what the various meeting might have (if I had understood what was being said correctly) agreed to do to progress the various issues.....I am suffering from terminal mental exhaustion.
Irrespective of the professional shortcomings in the areas of Sri Lankan corporate law and basic legal contract skills the inabilty to either understand what was being said to me or to communicate even the basics of what I wanted to say was truly a major and most distressing problem.This for a person who always thought his ability to fully understand what wasn't being said as well as what was being said is quite crippling.
I also was completely 'defeated' by my total inability to communicate either in words or in writing what it was that I believed needed to happen. As someone who has made a career by being able to commnicate difficult concepts to a wide range of different people of different levels of understanding this was a truly 'bitter blow'.
I can't remember the last time I have felt so inadequate in dealing with commercial situations and the harder I tried the more inadequately I dealt with each issue that arose - and the more frustrated everyone became.
So, after ten very exhausting hours we finally called it a day and headed to the hotel bar for chemical relief.
The worst (weakest) Martini I've ever had failed to put any sort of perspective into the day but two enormous Scotches in a different bar set the world to rights as they usually do. How sad that alcohol plays such a disturbing part in making the world an easier place to reside in and deal with the people in it.
Anyway, Annette and I had a nice, if rushed and short, curry dinner in one of the hotel's restaurants and went back to our room - Annette to crash out after her exhausting last overly demanding 24 hours and and me to quickly scan the financial and industry news and the Exetel daily figures.
I'm sure there are still some people who think business travel is exciting and perhaps there are even still some poor souls who think it's somehow 'glamorous'. If those people could somehow have shared the experience of looking in the hotel's bathroom mirror a few moments ago as I sluiced my face in an attempt to revive myself then perhaps they would form a different view.
Annette has sensibly gone to bed and I'm struggling to finish the day's work by replying to my outstanding emails and dealing with what I see from the latest status reports from our reporting systems.
It's only a little after 8 pm here but getting on for 1 am Tuesday morning in Australia but I'm too tired to make much sense of what I'm seeing. It seems Exetel had a very good order day across several of our product/service offerings (only to be expected after a long weekend) and the financial situation around the world looks as foreboding as ever. I briefly turned on CNN and got the same impression.
Sorry about this even more incoherent effort at writing about the day to day operation of a small Australian communications company - assuming anyone has wasted their time in reading this.