small world versus Big World

The mating call of the ex-pat can be confused with two words learnt in all languages... "Two beers, dos cervezas, zwei biers....". We are ex-pats in thirst of wisdom but in the meantime alcohol will do. Ex-pats travelling the globe and drawn to the Church of those Lost abroad - The Irish Pub -The Cradle of Globalisation and the Grave of the Liver. Welcome to Expat world. And like any half decent theme park, rollercoasters dizziness is provided after 3 or more beers, and the water rides comes equipped with a Dyson hand-dryer

Today in Ex-pat World, a surprise face is twinned with a known face in a city of strangers. Surprised faces, my face has joined his in that double-take deja vous. We have been drawn by the mythical star of St Patrick to laydown ones' mobile and take sustenance called Guiness. We are like fleas drawn to the dim moody light, oversized screen and the fake signposts to Kilkarry East.

Today I stare at a memory without a label, he stares at me in a battle with amnesia. There we stare. A stare of recollection turning to recognition, the state of knowing something familiar and unfamiliar at the same point. Two worlds colliding - the past and present combusting ever so slightly that a brain is thrown off keel, until a smile, perhaps a finger point and a "How are you?", a handshake. I am in a "moment", as an analyst, poet or 'time and motion' study man may say. I am stress testing the Pryce synapses ~ Can I remember a name. I know the face from somewhere. He says his name and there is a God, he retreats a hand. He is now catalogued from a different time, a different city, a different country, same continent this time and we are well down the path of "well I never"s.

Tonight in Ex-pat World, another ex-pat mating game, the meeting of older faces is a timetabled via E-mails and mobiles. Its an eventual dividend - "the return" on the annual Christmas card to "the let's touch base" crowd, the networking, an old friend, an old colleague. A planned recognition. We are destined to meet, because we have arranged to meet, because we are in the same "of all the cities in all the world we had to..." - a reunion. A meeting place. A time is set. A beer fest in its foetal beginnings may be on the cards, if we have not matured from when we were friend, acquaintances and drunkards some god-forsaken years ago.

Tonight we blind date. Distant looks on the railway concourse and where in Heaven is he? and why is that old fella walking towards me ... Hiya. Surprise. Fifteen... or is it twenty years and I am surprised he's changed. Where was I when God was passing round the stupid gene .... front of the queue, my friend. He looks older, que sorpresa.

Home turf on the away leg is reached - Irish pub bonhomie. And quickly after a rush of news, a dialogue dedicatedto forgotten friends and enemies, a mutual shared interview without job prospect, and the conversation trickles into a flow as if we had nodded goodbye at the local last Saturday. Return of the drunkards.

And in all this, the moral is that this and every friendship is needed in this cruel world. I have learnt that friends are dearly needed, not only for solace, not only for laughs, not only for grounding the ego, not only for benchmarking the success. They are needed when the hand of the "Man" decides you are to be crushed; these fellows, these "citizens of world" provide hospice, provides a helping hand to raise you when you have been knocked down, to look away from your shame-faced tears with a tissue in their fingertips when the redundancy notice has been served, to massage an ego bruised to its shell, to re-categorise success as survival, to teach you success, teach you to survive, to pass on tips.

So where the Mighty Businesses eventually cares little for its greatest asset, once declared as a Pluralistic You on a Company Website as in "You are our greatest asset". It never cared for the individual you and even your perhaps brilliance recorded in the annual appraisal was recorded without a first or second care. When times are hard, times are hard. Times change, times are dynamic and when economic crisis are two a penny with a bottom line decidely red, it is a time to ready the CV.

Times are hard. The backside kicking is tried and weathered. Then the backstabbing is pursued, as survival of the inner circle of trust is a must ~ Survival of the Dirtiest, if you like ~and the outer circle is a sad place for Freelances to reside. The Company resorts, sometimes slides to outsourcing, downsizing, firing. Being good is sometimes not good enough.

A Company takes a shine to another way forward, a CEO-driven top-down panacea , as recommended by analysts' Pandora's box, lions lead by donkeys on a merry-go-round that invites backsides to be bitten or kissed. It is their "it's not personal view" of Corporate Mission Statements, that did not include the dude on the third floor with the up-to-date paperwork who's there at 8 in the morning to 8 at night. The dude must go.

He must go home to his family to explain. Then he must join the Sad Dude society. He joins the virtual re-hab of friends, acquaintances, recommended friends of friends' help for they know it could be them in this fickle freelance world. The life that was falling apart is re-built and there is costs, it means moving on in the big world, exciting as it once was, and still can be, each and every 'this time', it comes a little bit harder. The Humpty Dumpty "ego-built" egg shell is glued together and it may not be so pretty, but the cracks show "been there, done it, made it" through with a little help of my Christmas Card friends, the surprised friends and the real friends

Now new friends to be made, new offices to arrive early in and leave late. More Christmas cards to write.

The Pryce we pay in the Modern world. Time for a Guiness or three