Chistmas time

Christmas time for the middle aged executive - a time to relax, to take in the achievements of another stressful year, based on the primary achievement of surviving on this planet in roughly the same location and roughly with the same family members more-or-less in tact. Whilst avoiding the work excessives of an economic downturn that may still soon be coming home to roost, faster than the turkey that will be sort of soon be coming to dinner. Hears to success measured in retaining the same address and the kids still calling me Dad.

But hang on a flippin' cotton pickin' moment, I want more than the warm glow of a job well done.........where is the excitement of my richly deserved Christmas present. Where my survival reward to myself after heavy hints to family members that think a pair of socks should suffice.......where is my iPod dupluxe XXL mini Gega-byte to-infinity-and-beyond thingymajig-come hifi-TV system and all in a small box .......

Thankyou family ...but hang on a..... .and more importantly where is the on-off switch.

This Christmas dinner may be taking place in the New Year at this rate, there is no IT minions to crack this nut . A Turkey can rest easy or at least frozen.

There is technology to be conquered.

Plan X

Plan B has become Plan A and priorities have changed as niggly issues become emergencies or there will be something big to pay. A boss has called not wishing me a happy weekend, called is a misnomer he has more instructed on pain of something big... I am the one to solve the mystery why a client does not like us anymore.

My "05:35 taxi - 06:00 airport- 06:30 VIP lounge- 07:oo flight-o7:37 boarding flight delay to some ridiculous hour in a different time-zone day" is now a 9 to 5....well 8:30 to 6:30 ...ish...maybe. I am having a chance to learn what its like to be on the normal side of seeing the children in the evening.

I am needed to field and organise the back office in front office sort of way. I am to be the face behind the video-conference camera, the voice behind the phone, the finger behind the keyboard. I am going digital, I am going electronic.

I am a man at a desk with a laptop for a chum. God save me from the coffee-machine, some call it coffee, some call it warm water with gravy browning. Where is my business class china coffee-cup brought with a tender smile.

This office work is thirsty work for lack of hydrating sustenance.

I am fighting losing battles over video phones - telecoms and e-mail.

A Losing a battle is not the war, I'll put sugar in the coffee. Roll on Plan C.

VIP Lounge is Closed

Like some un-cute child with an obsessive compulsive disorder that an unfavourite aunt demands should be demonstrated at a each and every family gathering - a supertalent must have an audience and is shown in all its glory......a stamp collection slideshow.... a poetry reading of teenage angst......a burping version of a well known pop classic. Today I am not happy, I have a skill, I collect air miles, I have a coloured card to prove it.

Today my ticket-colour card combo is refused by a fresh faced oficionado who fails to recognise my superiority in the food chain. He indeed embarasses this executive seeking entry to his vip kingdom and in a "not in my VIP lounge" sort of exclamative way. I am cast out from amongst my peers. I must buy a tepid coffeee, pay for a lumpy cake. This is not life as we know it.

I am losing my roots, I am a spoilt child stamping a foot, licking a wound and sobbing in all my gory.

A Day in the Life Part 1 Clause 3 subsection 4.a

Late night and early mornings, both without alcohol......sometimes 9 to 5 appears more appealing than a mathematics calculation involving caffeine intake versus brain capacity function degradation or something like that. But a path has been chosen to lose bags on an airport conveyor belt in the chase to arrive at some not too indecent hour, at some far flung city and fot this I find alternate bags under my eyes. Life's rich tapestry is getting frayed.

Evening meals of local cuisine that sometimes melts in a mouth and sometimes leaps into a toilet faster than a speeding bullet. Conversations over a dinner is part of the working day, a duty to perform and remember the facts, the figures , and that a joke can be easily misplaced in a second tongue... still, business is business.

Taxis take me to places slowly to offices bright and shiny, in a traffic system that deserves a congestion charge. Taxis take me to remote restaurants that expect a tip or two that does not involve a recommendation on the benefits of fish and chips and vinegar. Taxis take me for a ride as foreign prices are willingly parted with... we know nothing.

A laptop feeds a Powerpoint presentation with a commentary, practiced to"au natural" in an early morning hotel room, being natural does not come easy with a laser pointer in hand, it has to be learnt.

Sleep is rejected in favour of practice makes near perfect in an inperfect world.

I feel I am complaining where others might wish upon a star that 9 to 5 may not be a day in a life. Grass is greener and all that. Today I am tired.

Man in a Shiny Suit has new Toy

The lounge is my second home. I am here again and I am proud today to show my fellow business strangers that I can send wi-fi messages with the best and worst and damn middling business exec's of them.

I am here with my incredibly shrinking laptop, that has passed through the X-ray machine with hardly a beep. And it had its own basket through the X-ray machines and sometimes it gets a wipe as a terrorist bomb in disguise. Today it is let through as an innocent presumed innocent. As a I, a seasoned traveller, would have waited patiently for the security personnel to be assured that I nor my box of tricks are terrorists.

Today the box is smaller now , it is new, it has been reduced, updated, revamped, moderned.. I know "to modern" is not a verb....yet.

But and double but...but but, if some smart alec advertising whizz can call a mobile a blackberry and not upset a pie or two; or the ceo can clarify to us ~ grown men ~ and without blushing that his mission statement is not-nowhere-near mission impossible, but it is, he accepts, a challenge; and if I am sacked, fired, dumped, they ~ the HR personnel I will meet twice in a career ~ say I am part of a downsizing.......then I can say to modern and pretend it will get into a dictionary eventually.

So my computer is downsized in the pc world, so that I can now avoid serious muscle pulls to carry around this wee thing.

I am a boy with a new toy in the VIP playground of the airport executive lounge ~ "look at me" posturing, hardly does justice to my out-there, put that spotlight on me thang. I am a man in a shiny suit with a shiny brand spanking new computer thingy to show the world.

Now where is the on-off button. Darn it...its been down sized too.

Doing the Ex-pat

I feel a need for re-hab, I am Bass Pryce, I am an ex-pat.

I can feel the sympathy from the VIP lounge in the airport. I am in the gratis zone. I escape the masses in the burger shops and fake Irish pubs-u-like We are here reading an internatioanl newspaper with a noose around my neck called a tie and a red wine to dullen the brain cells. Others play at working 50+ hours a week on laptops palmtops, thumbtops. They call it evolution....survival of the smallest gadget that can still do a Power point presentation with animation without a hard-drive accessory. Mobile phones are being ditched for blackberrys as we keep up with the Jobs/ Gates equivalent of this world. And whilst I am awaiting the strawberrys to arrive I think I will have a free apple ~ a real free apple.

The working class execs are going awol, on the free gorging of whisky, gin, red wine and peanuts.

Whilst the steadier, more chubby middle-class execs look down, look away, look old; as they throw eyes in the air and noses to waft over their one evening glass of wine. A wine glass rolled to find its translucent wine texture on the glass ~ new money connoisseurs. These execs have been there and now they pretend not, for it is their turn to look snide for want of being superior.

And the upper class execs get annoyed by it all, but especially the fact they cannot leave a tokenly significant tip to the waitress. Its free.

I drink my wine without smelling. I am awaiting to travel to internatioanal business seminars to prove I am green, we are environmentally friendly and they are greener than a fool in April. My carbon footprint will go into overdrive tonight.

I am leaving behind the 9-5 for the 24/7 with air miles. I am not a tourist I am an ex-pat, ex-patting. I am an addict needing my free peanuts.

Holiday

Vacation is upon us, this means lifestylie re-adjustment, re-focusing relaxing with a good book, a lazy days spying the on the cloudes, re-connecting with the kiddie....teenagers , it means the Blackberry will be switched off without an order from an air stewardess, emphasising that when she says "sir" its only for politeness and when she repeats "siR", its for want of giving me a well-deserved back hander.

No ...no, I am an executive. I will be lost without being umbilically linked to something technologically advanced and virtual. I fear for this butterfly wing causing storms in Europe. This may be the trigger that causes economic meltdown in Greece, contagion in Portugal and damn nasty case of counting Euro pennies in Italy.

Pass me the battery charger, there is a crisis to avoid, the family fun filled theme park will have to damn wait.

Gravity

I am losing the battle of the bulge as middle aged spread is defining gravity instead of defying it and by darn accepting gravity as I grow outwards and downwards simultaneously. Where is the new Einstein when an apple is about to fall from a tree to re-define a theory. Probably looking at his mate - a chubby falla called Newton surrounded by dozen apple cores ...

I refuse to accept two chins are better than one, except for dinner for two and the calorie count can face the exercise bike tomorrow.

The Executive gym was advertised, was displayed in full glare of a website and when tomorrow comes the bicycle strap is broken, the whattismacall creaks more than my aged bones, friction resistance is guaranteed by rust. This time the carbohydate burn is going only slightly warm as blood boils. Fitness will have to wait.

Pass me the salad with all its little local germs. Pass me the toilet papaer as the biological meltdown of the stomach intestinal traffic goes supersonic. Gravity appears to work here too.

Bleedin' Eda

Oh its like a trap. They speak good english, they understood "cognisant" by damn. We had a beer, we are having a chat which may evolve to banter, banter demands homely sayings, its banter, its characters, its sayings, its fun, its ~ my wonderful real-time, had to be there, situational comedy at its the apex of top comedy-joke equation, .......and here it is about as understood as 5 day cricket match ending in a draw. Cricket a Commonwealth joke but a damn sight more international than baseball.

Bleedin' Eda and other such sayings. My homour cuts conversations like a knife. Enjoy the silence is the only option for the deaf and we the multi-culti business execs on the wrong side of a mother tongue and an adopted son.

I am back

So much for falling off the edge of the world like a true medieaval believer. I am a twenty first century Galilieo turning catholic for the sake of living. In my case its earning a living so that I can pay taxes in hopefully one country and hoping the health insurance will cover mossie bites that go nasty.

I am back in the airport lounge with the other addicts. I attend the nth sermon to the neck cricking God of departure times like any other addict I am back, I need some respite in ex-pat anonymous "I am an ex-pat I have not travelled for two months but I have lapsed."

I have my silver card that allows me to read a free paper or two, indulge in a little alcohol to a background sound of three or for languages counting down to Pryce needs to hurry.

The keen ones tap into a lap top or pehaps are surfing the net. Its time to go wi-fi