John Linton .....and I feel so much better than I did when I left Australia 8 days ago.
I got up well before dawn today to begin the trip home to Australia. Fortunately the drive from the hotel to the airport was incident free and very quick as there was little to no traffic. Even the entry to the airport was less painful and time consuming than usual and, an unheard of situation, there was no queue to go through immigration. Apart from the fact that the SL Airline lounge 'hostess' told me my flight was delayed (when it wasn't) and I therefore felt the ignominy of having a nice girl come looking for me everything was very pleasant which is by no means a usual experience at Colombo airport. The flight to Bangkok was equally incident free and the aircraft was barely one third full - I must remember to get this flight next time.
I completed the SL quarterly review shortly after lunch yesterday as I expected which gave me some time for some personal shopping without the usual rush and although I didn't manage to buy anything I made some progress on buying next time I am in Sri Lanka. So all is well in this part of the world - as least as far as Exetel activities go for
the time being. I've enjoyed my trip and I think the review has been quite useful in a number of different ways. I decided on the short flight from Colombo to Bangkok that I would discuss some new ideas that came up during the review with the sales personnel in Australia when I get back on Monday which, if they survive the harsh light of Australian cynicism might be useful as we continue to modify the directions we are taking with the Australian company.
I will spend one day and night in Bangkok before taking the flight back to Sydney which will give me some time to reflect on how best to do my part in directing the companies over the coming months as we try to execute some of the 'braver' decisions we have made over the last weeks of December and are now three weeks in to executing. I see no signs, as yet, that our decisions are not working out as planned but it's very early days and not everyone is back fully functioning from their annual holidays yet. February will have to pass before we know the results of some of the changes we have made.
It would be very, very foolish to think that 2011 is actually going to be any better than the truly horrible 2010 as far as Exetel is concerned. However, probably the influences of spending a week in predominantly Buddhist environments, I feel a lot more relaxed and a lot better about Exetel's prospects for the coming year than I did at the same time last year....I very definitely "feel the need" and I haven't had that experience for quite some time now.
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