John Linton .....perhaps reflecting the bleak communications market conditions.
It's a miserable wet and windy day in this part of Sydney which disinclines even the most cheerful of people from 'looking on the bright side of life'. I can't even take comfort from the fact "it's Friday" as my working week is seldom if ever a five day proposition with 'week ends' something from a barely remembered past. We have a couple of meetings today with suppliers - something that we are doing much more frequently than at any other time I can remember - to try and make sense of their current changed offerings - which I cannot see any sense in having looked at them several times. Perhaps its my failing mental acuity but I'm more inclined to think it's the failure of the provider's concerned to express their lack of 'real offers' lucidly.
We still haven't come up with anything sensible in terms of a revision to the 'naked' ADSL plans with the best version so far being including a VoIP service with the plan and a $5.00 inclusion of calls to ensure it is actually used. I have little confidence in that particular idea but it is the 'best' we have come up with so far. The major problem is that 'naked' now costs so little less than an ADSL service with a 'bundled' working telephone line it is a pointless offering - well done Telstra. It is just making it even clearer that a wireless broadband service for an increasing number of people is the only way to go.
I don't envy any provider the task of framing offers that make sense to anyone (wholesalers or retail buyers) in the current environment and I'm wondering what more 'madness' will transpire in the 'festive season' run up to Christmas. This coming weekend is usually the earliest time such offers begin to appear as the various 'marketing' people involved take an ever more wider view on what constitutes the 12 days of Christmas which, presumably based on observation, includes a fair amount of November these days. The first 'Christmas drinks gatherings' were held this week without my attendance as I can never see the point of such things and I have received more than a dozen Christmas cards which is very 'icky'....there can be absolutely NO excuse for sending Christmas cards in November.
So perhaps its the strangely unseasonal cold and gloomy weather or more likely the ongoing 'grind' of dealing with ever more 'impossible' situations but I feel unusually reluctant to begin my working day this morning. The more I think about the fact that the end of the calendar year is so close the more I find it difficult to think of anything very useful or positive I have done or contributed to over the past almost eleven months......and the thought of starting another year of such lack of progress in the immediate future doesn't give me any sense of 'new beginnings' - new year - new adventures.
I see that I have now meandered along in such a dilatory fashion complaining about life in general that I am running late for my first meeting. If you've bothered reading this I apologise. My thought processes, such as they are this morning, have been disrupted by trying to work out what I am going to say in a few minutes time on the 'early morning' teleconference arranged to progress something quite important.....I hate teleconferencing at the best of times and never seem to get much from such 'events'.
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