John Linton Our brief one and a half day r and r ends later today when we head out to the airport to begin the journey home. Meanwhile I am making the most of this last day by having a not so early morning cup of tea while catching up on the world's news sitting at the conveniently located desk in the hotel room looking over the hotel gardens ad then to the main river which is constantly busy with heavy barge and taxi-boat traffic. It is very relaxing having two mornings where you can actually take time out to let your mind wander for an hour or so.
If you are at all interested in the remarkable aspects on life on this planet you could do worse than than take a few minutes of your time to visit these two sites and discover just how incredible the toughness of spirit of other living things humanity shares the planet with:
http://www.swt.org.uk/wildlife/webcams/loch-of-lowes/
and
http://blogs.swt.org.uk/osprey/
An incredible near extinct bird who has, with a little help from some male birds along the way, contributed around 25% of the current Osprey population(200) in Scotland. An example of another living creature that has made a massive impact on the well being of her species at the time of its greatest need - infinitely more important than a Gandhi or a Mandella did for theirs.
Getting back to 'work' tomorrow morning in North Sydney will be a little difficult after having spent a week in the tropics and associating with people to very different attitudes to life than the people with whom I associate in Australia - the benefit of traveling to other countries and involving yourself the the people of those countries as opposed to being a tourist and, not unnaturally, participating in 'tourist activities'. The 'new' Exetel in Columbo is a very different place to the 'old' Exetel in North Sydney and, in some ways, I miss the days when the 'old' Exetel was still 'new'. I obviously can't "turn back time" but I need to do something to reinvigorate the attitudes towards working life and the beliefs that appear to have eroded when I wasn't paying enough attention.
There is so much to do in this, admittedly very difficult, 'phase' of moving a company's emphasis from one set of services and marketplaces to another but, for all the boring reasons I have constantly alluded to over the past three years , we have to do that. I thought it would be exciting and incredibly challenging but that doesn't seem to be the case for some of our people and I don't know why that would be the case. Clearly I don't understand the 'culture' that needs to be generated for that to be the case. When I think back over my commercial life perhaps I am the wrong person to manage an 'established' company - I have always been good at 'building' enterprises but have never had much interest in 'maintaining' them. However a company turning over less than $A60 million a year and with less than 120 employees can hardly be described as established.
Such melancholy thoughts do not fit the lovely morning and beautiful views so I will get away from keyboards and enjoy the last few hours in these beautiful surroundings.
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