This is page 16 of my diary archives. The current diary page can be found here whilst other diary entries can be found here, Page 17, Page 15, Page 14, Page 13, Page 12, Page 11, Page 10, Page 9, Page 8, Page 7, Page 6, Page 5, Page 4, Page 3, Page 2 and Page 1, (oldest entry).
Please feel free to comment: I can be contacted at daniel@danploy.com.
She had wished for a puppy but instead had been given a Hush Puppy. And worse still, despite feeding it Odor Eaters, it stank the house out.
This Facile Life
I have a friend. He now lives in Holland and once or twice a week we exchange e-mails. Newsy, argumentative, opinionated e-mails that, when I see one in my in-box, I go and get a mug of coffee to accompany me whilst I read it. And the reason I do that is it usually takes that long to read it, in the same way letters from my father were read again and again when he had been stationed abroad.
I had an ex-colleague who used to sign off his e-mails 'J'. Not John or James or Jeremy, but 'J'. Now I know who the e-mail came from so perhaps this was superfluous, but to me it showed that he didn't really care to write, was not bothered to put in a little effort to even spell out his own name.
I joined Facebook a while ago and have since 'resigned' twice, you may know it is not actually possible to leave Facebook, your record remains there indelibly for future generations. Facebook annoys me immensely so you may wonder why I bother with it. Well Ploy's daughter is on it and she cannot be bothered to write e-mails, (unless she wants something). Harsh I know, but that is the reality. Apart from occasional phone calls if we want to know what she is doing her regular updates on Facebook are the only way we know if everything is OK. And the other 67 'friends' I have on there also seem to be unable to express themselves in any way other than precised, abbreviated, misspelt, hurried communications that seem to have been given little or no thought. My friend in Holland is not on Facebook.
The Internet has no peer review system and this means that all information out there, including that on this site, is to be treated with a very liberal dose of salt. When we used to buy a book titled, 'The Fifty Best Movies of all Time' we knew that was a personal opinion. When we read the Wiki page about Neils Bohr has that page been reviewed. Who wrote it because that information also seems to be missing. Is the author an expert. Yes there are references there that can be followed up but how many do that. Quotations taken out of context, emphasis changed through prejudice - how am I to judge. But if I bought a book of Neil Bohr's biography that would have been peer reviewed and editors will have crawled over it page by page (hopefully) so every possible grammatical and factual item is checked and corrected if need be. On the Internet this is not so. Any Tom, Dick or Samantha can tag a PhD onto their name and plagiarise some article - who are we to know. When I read a movie review in the esteemed Independent newspaper on-line I hope I am getting a review based on experience - this man or woman has likely seen more movies than I will ever see in my lifetime - or want to - and as such his/her experience gives his/her opinion an authority to a still subjective opinion. But you have to be careful because on-line amateurs, i.e. you and me, are allowed to contribute reviews. It is difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I got a phone call the other day, a cold call trying to sell me something to do with investments and retirement planning for ex-pats. He got my name from Linked-In, a sort of Facebook for professionals, except increasingly there are less and less professionals on there but instead, more and more people just trying to sell you something. Unlike Facebook, Linked-In still has some worth, especially amongst the groups, but I guess it is only a matter of time before some 'professional' version of Farmville appears on it. But I digress. The man cold calling me insisted that his was not a cold call because he got my name from Linked-In. But I don't know you or your company, I argued, and I did not ask you to call, so in what way is this not a cold call. Because I got your name on Linked-In, he counters before I put the phone down on him.
What I am trying to say is I find all of this facile. Why reply to some Internet forum via your i_whatever when your are driving/eating/shopping/having sex when a little more thought and consideration might actually mean your reply was worth reading. At what point in your life did you become aware that everyone knowing that the coffee you had for breakfast at your usual Coffee Bean was not up to the usual standard became something so important you you felt you had to message the world. At what point in your evolution did you think it essential that you reply to someone whose shared the news that their bacon butty was especially greasy that morning or that they missed their train to work. Or that they were unable to get a taxi because it was raining when, the world over, it is always impossible to get a taxi when it is raining.
When I have criticised Twitter in the past I have had comments back that say, without this modern homage to cretinism, we wouldn't know what was happening 'on the streets' in Egypt or Libya or Bangkok. And do these people know. Of course not and if by some rare chance the person Twittering happens to be a professor of Middle Eastern history I somehow feel 140 characters may not be enough for him to fully express his opinion. Perhaps we could wait until he got out of the firing line, composed his thoughts, maybe checked a couple of facts, and then thoughtfully composed an article. I agree it is not so instantaneous but spontaneity is not always a good thing.
Maybe I am looking at it from the wrong aspect. It is not the content but the act that has become so important. What is the point of owning a Mercedes Sports if you keep it in the garage. Maybe this is not about the content at all but being seen to clog up the ether with Internet diarrhoea is actually important in today's society. Is that why everyone wears their i-shit around their neck or holds it in their hand as if it is some new transistorised appendage. By itself it is not enough to just hold it, but by being seen to use it it somehow makes a statement - although to me it is not the statement I think, they think, they are making. We all want to be seen as apart from the homogenous soup of today's society and by Tweeting some infantile remark it marks us as out of the ordinary. Except that everyone is doing it.
The really out of the ordinary are actually a much rarer species. They write e-mails that warrant making a mug of coffee before they are read.
Missing Old Blighty
It was the 24th February 2004 that we left the UK for Singapore, almost exactly seven years ago.
Ploy mentioned to me the other day, not for the first time, that she didn't miss anything from Canada, not even our house that we lavished so much time and effort on, or our rather nice car and certainly not the weather or the taxes.
But do I miss anything from the UK after all this time? After nearly three years in Singapore and almost three years in Canada and now 16 months here in Thailand.
Today I read of the Brigadier dying. He was a reminder to me of the golden age of TV, of the Avengers, (the real one with Diana Rigg and Patrick Macnee), and of the Champions, (where a series run would be 30 hour long episodes). I remember watching all of the test matches in the summer, uninterrupted with intelligent commentary from the likes of Jim Laker and Richie Benaud. Or watching Wimbledon with my Mum after I got home from work. But those days are gone. With the increased diversity of channels the quality has inevitably dropped and the discrimination of the viewers has to be called into question when anyone thinks of Big Brother as entertainment. Television in Singapore was appalling, in Canada, aside from one or two home made programs is all ice hockey and re-runs of American series, and although some of these are good, CSI and House come to mind, they are like minute diamonds in a sea of excrement.
So, although television in Thailand rivals Singapore in its lack of quality, the UK is doing it best to slide underneath them.
And then there is radio which again, here and in Singapore, seems pitched at hyperactive teenagers with full frontal lobotomies. I used to try and time my lunch break with Radio 4's lunchtime hour of quiz and comedy programs. Re-runs of Round the Horne or a new series of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue were precious memories that still invoke a chuckle. And you can find tapes of the programs and re-runs on the Internet, particularly on Radio 7, but so many of my favourite broadcasters have now retired. I remember listening to Terry Wogan in the car on the way to work and staying in the company car park for half an hour unable to pull myself away from his amusing banter. But now they have replaced him with Chris Evans, a leading contender in my involuntary euthanasia list which grows longer by the hour.
So if I was to say I miss TV and radio from the UK it would be true, but only those programs that have long since disappeared. Looking at the schedules today I could only be grateful for the ease with which one can now put your foot through the ubiquitous flat screen displays.
Mention of cricket brings about memories of watching Gordon Greenidge batting for Hampshire at Bournemouth, one of my favourite cricket grounds. My only cricket here is found by following text updates on CricInfo. But if I was in the UK now I would have to pay the exorbitant prices to watch test cricket in London or I would have to endure the travesty of cricket that is Twenty20, cricket for the same lobotomised teenagers that listen to the radio in Singapore. I don't think I could bring myself to do it. I was lucky enough to see Malcolm Marshall and Sunil Gavaskar and Clive Lloyd play. I don't think I could warm to the Twittering show ponies that purport to play the game these days.
Thailand has a wonderful cultural heritage that it does its best to hide and obliterate. Museums and art galleries are difficult to find, (although when you do happen upon them they are usually very well done). But I don't know of a Tate Modern or a Science Museum here. But then let me recall my last visit to the Science museum in London when what was a library like calm of genius just a couple of years before was now replaced with interactive exhibits that were to engage the 'minds' of the moronic attendees who seemed unable to grasp the wonder of the scientific achievements placed before us. If it didn't beep or have buttons to press it was clearly an inferior invention. And the result of this interactivity, noise, and lots of it. And that same approach is taken in the libraries, another item I would say I missed from the UK, but at a time before they turned them into loud Internet cafes for cretins who can't read. And the Tate Modern went downhill when it decided that the Rothko murals were better placed in a corridor rather than in the hushed room they previously graced, (and which I am sure means they now do not comply with Rothko's own conditions for their hanging).
Drinking a pint of Adnams Old at the Crown Inn whilst listening to the cry of the seagulls and the crash of the waves at Southwold. Drinking a pint of the Driftwood's own brew whilst listening to the cry of the seagulls and the crash of the waves at St. Agnes. Do these places even exist anymore? Walking along the beach at Portobello or the sea walls at Old Portsmouth. I know from my last trip the Portsmouth council are slowly obliterating the heritage at Old Portsmouth to build more apartments which they can expensively sell to people so they can see where the old heritage used to be (relegated to a plaque outside the apartment in all probability).
Then there were the concerts, at Portsmouth and in London. From opera to Barclay James Harvest. But next week I go to see Santana in Bangkok and today more and more artists are now coming here or Singapore. Last week we had the Eagles, the week before Eric Clapton. Maybe the UK has more of the younger generation of artists, but is there anyone out there under fifty who isn't an over-hyped talentless prick. I went with my Mum to the Royal Opera house in London to see Turandot and Il Travatore. This week at the Royal Opera is a new work on the subject of Anna Nicole Smith - no really. A work I am sure deserves to stand beside Verdi, Puccini and Bellini.
So do I miss anything from the UK? Well maybe two things, Daffodils and Bluebells. I don't know if they would grow here in Thailand but I rather doubt it. I used to live near a Bluebell wood, perhaps one of those the government were going to sell off recently, but aside from those two items the answer is a resounding no, because the best of the UK I have in my memories and there is no point in going back because those things I liked best are no longer there.
A Change in the Weather
We had our first proper rain the other morning after what must be over three months with ne'er a drop or spit. Yesterday we heard the sound of thunder although we had no rain. It is feeling distinctly more humid and warmer now and I had to put the air conditioning on in my workshop for the first time in weeks. The hot season is arriving. Given the extremes that each season seems to now produce - 
the worst floods for 50 years during the rainy season and no rain at all during the dry season - I wonder what the hot season will bring.
It has certainly brought our garden out. Even plants that we thought had died during the building work are starting to thrive. The newly planted Mango and Chompoo trees seem to be sprouting new leaves every day, the former is taller than I am already, (and I am not a circus midget), and our Jack fruit tree is producing the first signs of fruit again. Even the banana tree (I am told that what it is) after weeks of apparent hibernation has suddenly sprouted forth and one plant generously donated by friend that Pinky took a liking too has pluckily produced a solitary flower.
Talking of Pinky, after a short period of calm, she has suddenly taken to gnawing her way through our sofa. After a suitably telling off we left her outside instead of her preferred room on the veranda in which case she then saw fit to rip open the bags of soil we have for our potted plants and spread it liberally over the garden tiles. Do all dogs do this? Do we have another thirteen or so years of these random acts of violence against against our precious belongings? Just when we seem to have got her eating properly again (she had started being picky again, even turning her nose up, literally, at freshly cooked liver, she now starts a vendetta against our furniture. Yesterday I had to quickly run out from my workshop to save a young bird she mistook for a new chew toy: I arrived just in time although the trauma will probably stay with it and it will have nightmares for the rest of its life and have to spend a fortune in seed on some bird psychologist.
Yesterday I delivered the first version of the code to my US customer but within minutes of sending it and sitting back in my chair with huge sigh of relief I got an e-mail from a Taiwan customer saying he might have found a bug with something we sold him last year - bugger. So that is today's job, to try and emulate the conditions of their test and see if I can identify and fix the bug, assuming it is real of course.
Ploy has been busy making noodles. She has a friend who used to drive around the area selling fish balls and the like but borrowed money from Ploy so she could set up a semi-permanent stall. Ploy has decided to contribute her culinary skills and I have been able to contribute by getting her to write down exactly how much all the ingredients are costing and what her income is. At the moment she seems happy to have made a small nett 200 baht profit which is not bad considering she had some setup expenses like pots and pans. However it does not take Ploy long in these ventures before she starts to find fault with her partner, (she is just BBQing her chicken with no marinade or sauce - it tastes of nothing'), so it may not last much longer. Like me, Ploy is no team player.
We still have a load of furniture holed up in a building in Prabhat, just north of here. The owner has given us notice to move from there as she someone interested in clearing the whole area to make to a factory or something. After we were burgled we don't have any particular affection for the place anyway. The thing is we don't really have any need of the furniture but selling it would be akin to giving it away, a shame considering what it cost. So Ploy has asked me to consider, when we get paid, to buying a house almost opposite us. The house can be got very cheaply apparently because someone committed suicide there and Thais are a superstitious lot. In fact when I first started living in this house Ploy was most particular on the placing of the bed because she said she didn't want this persons ghost passing over her when she was asleep. But times change. However even at a discounted price it still seems like wasted money to me. I could knock the whole place out to make a bigger SingMai workshop but that is a little premature at this time I think. I was hoping when we got paid for these orders we could keep the money in the bank for a while.
Next Tuesday we have a Santana concert to go to and I have decided to visit Singapore soon after that to renew my visa and visit my sub-contractor. We should also get paid that week from my Canada customer who unilaterally imposed their own 45 day net payment terms; I am guessing they will not pay by bank transfer either so we will have to wait for a cheque to arrive in the post. Although the visit to Singapore is not essential it has been a draining month so I have decided to go the easy route to renew my visa for a further 3 months. In any case I have noticed I only have two full pages left in my passport even though it has six years left to run. I don't believe they will add pages to a passport so I will have to renew it and rather than carry two passports everywhere I will get my 12 month visa (assuming I do get it) put in my nice shiny passport instead - I will also make sure I get the one with more pages. Passports are no longer processed here in Bangkok as it is deemed far more efficient to centralise the process in Hong Kong so I need to make sure I have a few weeks without trips before I apply. I have just enough space for one more visa and one re-entry permit so I can go to the US too.
Those trips will have to be done without the benefit of my Singapore Air gold card which expires at the end of this month. Amazing that it has been a year since I qualified for it again but in that time have flown almost nowhere and those places I have flown have been paid for by using up my air miles. So no more bypassing the long check in queues or hiding in the business lounges, I am now just part of the general riff-raff again. That is no place for a company director to be!
“The lunatics have escaped and the inspector’s coming!”
“Relax. Go to the Sarah Palin meeting and round up her supporters; he’ll never know.”
A day best forgotten and a year to look forward to
I am supposed to be in the US but I cancelled my trip at the last minute, asserting myself to my customer at the risk of losing the order. And the outcome, well I still have to go and visit but now it it will be on my terms and I can finish the order and invoice for it before I travel. A rather surprised customer called me and the conversation helped to clear the air and allow me to state (restate) the conditions of the order and what exactly we were delivering. To be fair the person I am speaking to now is not the person that placed the order and who I had all the initial conversations with so he was lacking the background. But sometimes it is good to assert yourself a little, especially if you feel you are being trodden on, and it is especially nice to be able to afford to do so without worrying about losing the money for the order. Before we have needed the income and have found ourselves polishing shoes and wiping arses for inconsiderate customers who treat us like some lackey but that is no longer.
I have the PCB designs back from my sub-contractor so our next product will be off for manufacture in the very near future.
My three month non-B visa is up for renewal again and I have to decide whether to fly to Singapore to renew it (3 months again), a painless process, or to try and get the renewal done here and get a 12 month visa. The latter is the obvious choice but I have become aware that Ploy - who does most of the ground work preparing the paperwork - worries about this to the extent she doesn't sleep properly. The issue is only getting sufficient social insurance and tax payments records for me and our company, otherwise it should be straightforward, but to let Ploy rest easier after the trauma of the US order I might go to Singapore one more time.
Ploy is busy in the kitchen making soup for noodles which she is going to sell at the entrance to our housing estate on the stall of a friend, (who cooks BBQ fish and chicken there). This friend asked Ploy if she could help her set the stall up - she previously used to run around the houses selling fish balls and such like - but wanted to set something more permanent up. So the 3000 baht that we lent to the person with no legs who wanted to set up his business selling fish balls to the markets and who had just paid us back after just a few weeks, (out of his profits), was immediately transferred to another business venture for which we will see no return, (although we do get free food whenever we want it which is not a bad return I suppose - that said Ploy always insists on paying her for it anyway). So today Ploy is hopefully off to earn a few baht selling noodles which, as she says, will pay the water bill or maybe even the electric bill - it all helps and also Ploy feels she is contributing. She is always saying now about how hard I work and in hours I suppose I do but the point is that I enjoy it, (mostly).
Especially as yesterday I managed to take a day off. We had planned to go to the local waterfalls but instead I could see in Ploy's eye she already wanted to start preparing for her noodle venture so why she did that I did nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, I cooked a chocolate cake, (a failure, I haven't baked in so long is my excuse), I spent a hour or so practicing my Thai consonants and I cooked myself chicken and chips (fries) for my indulgent dinner whilst watching Top Secret; again. In short, a lovely day.
Days off were an unwritten New Year resolution. The other resolutions are not doing so bad either; it is only mid February after all. I am finding time to set aside to learn Thai, I have been thinking about my novel and have a page of notes already for its re-write although haven't started doing so yet, SingMai has lots of new enquiries (but no new orders yet) and we are booked for that exhibition in June: and the art history book, well that will have to wait a little longer. But then that extra resolution of occasional days off has taken on an extra importance.
Pete had enjoyed the Charles Dickens society Whist drive but was much more enthusiastic about joining the Jane Austen society’s annual orgy.
A week best forgotten and a week to dread
Next week I have to fly to Baltimore to assuage a customer. This is the last custom order we have on the books and it is the last one we will ever take. They always turn out like this with different expectations on each side, minor cracks in the specification that become chasms that we are expected to fill. Meeting the customer does usually help but when they are exactly the other side of the world it is difficult to justify the trip in my mind - but not in their's. So on Wednesday I fly to Los Angeles on Thai Air's executive economy which at least gives me a reasonable sized seat to try and get some sleep. After that it is a wing and prayer to get to Baltimore.
The problem is I don't have a credit card. We are yet to persuade any Thai bank to give either me or Ploy one although we do have VISA debit cards. So far this has not proved much of a hindrance. In the US it is a major obstacle. I need to stay one night at a hotel near LA airport before my flight the next day to Baltimore. However none of the hotels will accept a debit card. So I choose one that has its own restaurant (a rarity now it seems in the US - after a sixteen hour flight all I want to do is grab a bite to eat and try and get some sleep) and contact their booking people to ask if I can book and pay by cash. The answer promptly and very nicely. Yes they accept cash but need a credit card for a $50 deposit. BUT I DON"T HAVE A BLOODY CREDIT CARD! So after a sixteen hour flight I go out into the smog of LA in the hope of findinga hotel that will accept cash and only cash. That only after I travel from one end of the airport to another to book my flight to Baltimore the following morning because I can find no US airline that accepts debit cards and they won't even let me contact them by e-mail. No wonder the US is in the financial state it is, everything is on credit, they probably won't even know what a dollar note looks like. And the temperature in Baltimore, should I ever get there, is -5degC! One week and it will all be over and we can hopefully send the (large) invoice. Never again.
Because I only have a single entry visa still I had to go to Lop Buri to get an re-entry permit. I must be getting the hang of this. Twenty minutes from arriving to leaving with another passport page used up. And Ploy registered me as staying with her as all 'aliens' staying with Thais have to be registered. When I get back from this trip I will have to renew my visa again but we may take the easy option of doing it in Singapore one more time before doing the renewal here in Thailand - I should probably visit my sub-contractor there in any case.
Just as an aside, a note those in Egypt dying to bring about democracy: this is where it can lead you. And here too as the UK obediently follow the US, as always. We were supposed to have moved to California instead of Canada. Little mercies and all that.
The last couple of days have seen me under the weather and Ploy looked like she had gone down with a bad cold last night. The whole week has really been a write off as we have been running around trying to get this trip organised and complete as much work as possible before I fly. Ploy had to drive down to Bangkok to pay for the Thai flights which was strange because I am sure I paid by debit card last time but as I did pay on-line to renew my travel insurance the card seems to work OK. But we have had forty new enquiries from a couple of press releases the last two weeks and although nothing serious has come from them yet if we can just get this blasted order out of the way we can get look forward to brighter rest of the year.
3D or not 3D: that is the question
For film makers it is an opportunity to replace quality scripts and acting with cheap technical tricks and for the consumer electronics manufacturers it means they can tout some new products to an increasingly gullible and stupid buyer. Apart from the glasses 3D adds almost no cost to an existing TV set.
But as I have said before, it doesn't actually work. It is not 3D, moron. If it was the back of your TV would be Angelina Jolie's arse and not a piece of black plastic. So it is a trick which is fun for a while, like the hall of mirrors in a fairground, but after a while you sort of get it and in fact get very bored by it. At least anyone with a brain larger than a pea should think that way.
But I am just a cynic after all, as any regular reader here will attest, and actually think that most new technology is pointless and vacuous.
Today is the start of Chinese New Year and our house is already full with gold and red coloured boxes and Monopoly money to be burnt, plates of fruit and 10kg of sweet deserts which Ploy is handing out to friends and also to the people in the various government departments that helped us get my work permit; to ease the renewal process hopefully - money well spent. For Ploy the Chinese New Year seems to have more significance than the Western or Thai New Year. I remember the celebrations in Singapore when we lived there although there is nothing like around here: not a dragon to be seen, (other than the wife of our least favourite neighbour).
Ploy has been out buying plants for our garden including a rather curious thing that apparently snakes don't like. This was prompted by a neighbour shouting to us the other day that she had just seen a snake slither into our garden. Ploy hates snakes but not in that girly jump-on-a-chair-and-scream-way, but in a find-the-most-lethal-looking-thing-I-can-get-my-hands-on-and-chase-it way. I followed her out of curiosity because, in all my visits and time here, I had never yet seen a snake. But the farmer had been ploughing his fields near us so I guess he had disturbed the wildlife there. Well this snake was obviously not stupid and it had already decided to find another garden after realising it was taking on Ploy so I just got a glimpse of it - a grey and silver snake, about two feet long and as thick as Geoff Capes' thumb - as it slivered its way into the garden of our least favourite neighbour. Dilemma, to call him or not. But his latest annoying act had been to not let our painters into his garden so they could paint our back wall, (they hung down from the roof to do it but had to miss some patches), and as he doesn't have children (which might have created a moral quandary), and only keeps cats, (no quandary there), we decided to let fate play its hand.
So Ploy stopped at this plant market on the way to Lop Buri on a rare day off for me and bought various plants for the garden but also this thing which, as I found out and as Ploy warned me after I screamed out, has nasty spines sticking out from its main stem. Now I can quite see that a snake would not like those spines, they are almost invisible unless you look hard for them but they puncture the skin easily. However I can also see why no creature would like those spines, not me, not Pinky, not dolphins, (we don't get many dolphins in our garden - even during the floods - but the fact remains), and not snakes. I did ask what property of this plant made it especially anathematic to snakes to which Ploy said 'no idea', asked the plant vendor who said (in Thai) 'no idea' who asked someone else on their stand who shrugged, considered the question and then said (in Thai) 'no idea'. But we have this plant and we are drawing lots to see whose hands will be shredded putting it into a pot. Aside from the spines it looks innocent enough and doesn't seem to smell so I will wait to see if it works. Mind you, statistically, and not having seen a snake for over fifteen months of living here, it will be difficult to ascertain how effective it is in the short term unless we are suddenly plagued by snakes in which case we can guess it is having the opposite effect. The plant is also rather small and any snake would actually have to be unfortunate to happen upon it, especially if we put it in a pot which we probably have to do as we have tiled over most of the garden. Its second victim (after me) will almost certainly be Pinky's nose and not an IndoChinese Rat Snake.
I sent a press release out for a new product late last week and I have got twenty enquiries already, from the UK, US, Canada, Germany, China and India. Further evidence for how limiting the the 'eggs all in one basket' approach forced on us by the Hong Kong customer has been. If we can just convert a couple of those to orders that will be great and the product is finished so it is easy to sell. There are seven other products that similarly just need finishing off and hopefully we will get a similar reaction when we advertise them.
We were invited to a birthday party the other day; a man I don't remember seeing before but lives in the next street to us, retired army man, 76 years old but keeps himself healthy and is very fit looking. A bit of a butterfly, according to Ploy, he none-the-less has an adopted daughter that he he has taken care of since she was just seven weeks old and who he proudly watched performing Thai dancing (very well) at the party.
Why we were invited, not knowing him personally, we never knew but now we see him walk past our house on many occasions and we always say 'hi' and indulge in small talk. Yesterday evening he joined us in our garden as Ploy was potting some new purchases and he chatted for several hours. As my wine disappeared he became more animated but his gestures helped my understanding of what he was saying, also helped by Ploy's occasional translation. Unusually, for an army man, he supports the red shirts and he hinted that the army were considering (yet another) coup against Abhisit this time. That may be to do with the silly border dispute with Cambodia; armies always like fighting over land, even land that is little bigger than our garden.
But later he made an extraordinary justification for the red shirt actions. Thailand's land mass is often compared with the shape of an elephant's head, which given the importance of the elephant in Thai history seems appropriate. However it seems another interpretation is possible. He described this in some details whilst taking his best Captain Morgan rum pose. The right leg, he explained is the peninsular that runs down to Malaysia. The left leg is folded up and represents the eastern seaboard running down to Pattaya and beyond. We live in the stomach which is apparently OK. Isaan is the heart and Bangkok, well that is the wobbly bits. Yes, I can see where he is going with this.
I rushed inside to find the Thai for anthropomorphism but felt I was missing out on the action so returned to the conversation. Ploy and he waited for my comments, he still in his best pose. Well, having covered this subject as part of my masters dissertation, albeit for art history, I felt qualified to comment and in any case, talking bullshit is like a red shirt to a bull for me. I commented that man has always sought to find objects where there are none; the constellations being one obvious example. However I have never heard it used to justify killing your own people before. There could be a thousand objects that could be made to fit the shape of Thailand's land mass but none of them actually mean anything: the land mass is the shape it is, the changing shape it is, because of continental shift and to justify actions based on an assumed shape is as much nonsense as astrology justifying predictions based on the moving constellations.
In any case, where in your assumed shape is the head. That would appear to be in China. The idea that Thailand is headless is wholly appropriate in this instance. Also the idea of cutting off your genitalia (severing Bangkok) is disturbing to most men I would have thought. Your attempts to overthrow governments, I quietly explained, just because you don't like the face in charge in ridiculous. Governments don't run countries, the bureaucrats behind them do. That is why countries continue to run even in the face of chaos. Replacing the face is nonsense, like replacing a bad a advertising campaign - the product remains the same. Killing to replace a face is just plain silly but it seems a trendy thing to do at the moment.
It is worrying that such complete and utter nonsense can be used to justify who-knows-what actions. This supposedly educated man was completely serious, even after he drank my last glass of wine and left, probably never to return, at least not while that crazy farang is still there. But I might be a little more careful before paddling in the Chao Phraya river in the future.
That’s nothing Isaiah, you should’ve seen the Palmolive that got away. My missus and I live on it; it’s how I keep my schoolgirl complexion.
This has been a strange week. Our customer in the US had promised to send some files which I need to test and complete his order. They have not yet arrived as I write this on Sunday morning. It meant that I ended up dithering and procrastinating for most of this week. I could start on some other job but then I would have to stop that as soon as the files arrived, (as we wish to deliver and be paid for that order as soon as possible). So I ended up doing naff all and feeling frustrated by it. Ploy tried to encourage me to just do nothing and relax but I didn't feel I could do this until the order was finished and we had the invoice sent. So a wasted week until Thursday when I thought one small job I could do was to update the SingMai website. We have lots of 80% completed projects that I really need to make the effort to finish off and sell.
So I spent the afternoon adding one new product, finishing the user manual and putting it on a website where we advertise our products. The following day I had four new enquiries. This morning, even though it is Sunday, I have one more. All save one are for the new product which has been finished for about three months but I haven't had the time to tidy it up and write the literature for it. Now geed up by that response I am trying to finish the other four or five products I have ''nearly' finished.
That brief respite from work has really highlighted the need for us to have a break. We keep saying it but do nothing about it. But by Wednesday I found myself taking siestas in the afternoon and sleeping solidly for three or four hours and still sleeping through the night, (although still waking at some ungodly hour in the morning). Koh Chang is the favourite destination and it should be before SongKran and all that nonsense descends upon us. If I can finish the US order, (which may involve a trip there too), and complete two or three of the unfinished products I think that will be a good time to get away. And Koh Chang means we can drive and take Pinky with us, (for better or worse). It may be a little boring for Ploy who is not a beach and book person but it is her that is encouraging me to get away and she says she will find things to do and it is my choice.
One of my New Year resolutions, none which I usually bother to adhere to anyway, is to try and get a better grasp of the language. Well I have tentatively started by trying to learn to read and write the alphabet. I haven't been as rigorous as I should have, promising myself to spend half an hour every day after work with a glass of wine as reward, studying. Whilst reading without understanding may seem pointless it is the way I believe I can get a grasp of this language and it was reinforced by this school which takes the same approach. They use pictorial analogies to remember the sound of the letter which I haven't found necessary. For me I have used some children's books that Ploy bought me ages ago where you trace out the character copying the direction arrows. I find this helps me to remember the symbol sufficiently. I then write the symbol freehand into a notebook, two pages for each letter together with words using that character. Remembering another arbitrary set of pictorial anagrams is too much when the Thais have already got their own. I have had to find my own ways of learning this, (or any language), and lists of vocabulary or just repeating phrases has never worked for me and my CSE Spanish grade confirms. In some ways Thai allows this pictorial approach to learning that German or Spanish, with its recognisable Roman character set, doesn't and to read the front page of Thai Rath, (without having a clue what it means), would be nice achievement, akin to a Sun newspaper reader in the UK reading James Joyce, (or anything other than the Beano); you can make the sounds but have no idea what it means. But for me this approach seems to enable the vocabulary to 'stick' which just reading the various transliterations doesn't. Ask me again in six months if this approach works.
Our local temple, just across the road from us, is having a new window installed and is looking for sponsors so expect to see SingMai's name up in lights sometime in the near-ish future. Maybe by then I will be able to read it for myself!
This is the final chapter of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
The irony is that George was the one that argued against the use of lead acid batteries. As usual his reasoned arguments were dismissed because Hunter Electronics are not pioneers, they are followers. They have to wait for someone else to test the market first, as the bloated marketing department used to say . Lithium Iron, should anyone read George’s detailed summary of the available options, was his conclusion because of its lower toxicity, longer shelf life and high capacity. And it was less inclined to explode, especially in the non-ventilated environment that marketing insisted was a prerequisite of the design. George wasn’t totally happy with design and his premature removal from the company meant he couldn’t perform all the tests he wanted. But George was a very good engineer, as Frank endorsed on many occasions, and the likelihood of error was quite small.
“I haven’t seen Frank this morning, have you Barry”.
“I haven’t but he may be getting a coffee from the canteen, the coffee machine is broken again”.
Gamma meeting room was the largest of the three meeting rooms available to the engineering staff, there was one smaller room but that was kept as a demonstration room for any potential customers and could only be used with the special permission of the marketing director. Today the marketing director was striding up and down outside the meeting room whilst gesticulating invisibly to whoever was at the end of his i-Phone.
“I am a little unsure why I was part of the invitation”, said the HR cretin. “I have two staff reviews this afternoon”.
“New product launch. Only the specially privileged get invited. Think yourself lucky”.
He did. He hated staff reviews anyway. Especially as his Gaussian performance curve was being disrupted by the better than expected performance of the two engineers. He would have to mark them down anyway and although they didn’t usually say anything, sometimes that sanctimonious Benson idiot would try and defend their performance. He really should be put out to grass; reminder to self to include him on the next round of redundancies.
“It’s 9.15 already, I think we should get seated”.
The CEO has spoken and immediately nine bums landed on the blue cloth seats.
“I’ll be with you in a minute, Harry. Bloody Tokyo”.
Anyone other than the marketing director would have soon found his i-Phone rammed up against his gall bladder.
“Bloody wonder Martin is. I don’t know what I would do without him”.
In George’s absence there was no-one to give a retort to that. They were going to miss him.
“So this is it then eh”?
The CEO picked up the semi-translucent case in the middle of the polished oak table.
“Christ, that’s heavy. Martin, have you tried to pick this thing up”?
“Bloody Tokyo. They haven’t got a fucking clue. We are going to lose that customer if they don’t start getting their heads in gear”.
“It would be good if someone there spoke English too”.
Jack, one of the regional marketing managers, usually spent meetings writing pedantic e-mails to the sales staff in the Sao Paolo office or planning unnecessary trips to Venezuela so he could spend time with his mistress.
“What the hell is that! I can’t sell that piece of shit”.
“It’s the first prototype, the final casing is still with design because of those last minute changes your department insisted on”.
Mr. Benson entered the room.
“I can run the demo for you if you wish, Frank hasn’t arrived yet and Seymour has given me the presentation Frank sent him”.
“Well let’s get a move on”, said the CEO, “we are twenty minutes late already”.
Mr Benson sat down slowly, plugged his laptop into the projector and everyone stared towards the wall whilst waiting for the lamp to warm up.
“Can someone turn the lights down”.
Jack sprung to his feet and duly obliged hoping his actions would be noticed by the CEO.
“There has been a little disruption to the schedule of this project”, Mr. Benson said quietly, “because, as everyone knows, George has now left us. I think some of these slides may still be a little out of date and I know George still had some issues with the design”.
“I thought you had got someone to replace him”.
“You cannot just replace a man of George’s knowledge and experience straight away. We have a young graduate in his role at the moment but we really need to recruit. However I am told by Mr Misanthrope that we have a recruitment freeze at the moment”.
“Surely you must have someone in your army of engineers that can do his job”.
“Everyone is already overworked because of the last round of redundancies and George is, to be honest, irreplaceable. He has been working on these products all his life and expertise like that is rare these days”.
“Gerry”, said the CEO, “let’s talk about this afterwards. Maybe there is some way we can get this George back here on a contract, just until we complete this project”.
Over my dead body, though the HR cretin in a rare moment of lucid thought.
“Can we just get to the demonstration as I have another meeting at ten”.
George had conveniently labelled the remote control buttons but Mr. Benson decided to call in Seymour none the less.
“Just press it Seymour”, were the last words uttered by Mr. Benson in his life.
This is Chapter Eighteen of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
It is a rare privilege afforded to few to choose how and when you die.
George was one of the few but was having problems choosing the music to play.
He wasn’t sure to begin with who would first find his corpse. That is the trouble with murdering your friends and although Hannah is out on bail she seems very self-centred at the moment and is not returning his calls. He had decided it would be better if he didn’t go and see her, she was clearly quite unstable and potentially violent.
No-one from work will miss me – even if I still worked there the only one who might raise the alarm is Mr. Benson and only then if he remembered to take his medication. It mattered because he didn’t want the first person to find him to just turn off the music without recognising the staging that he gone to some effort to organise. The music and the careful placement of objects was to say something about who he was, to those that could see.
Debussy’s Preludes were high on the list. He didn’t want to appear too pretentious though.
He had written a note. Short and to the point. Something about the world having no dreams and aspirations, everyone only being interested in themselves, greed and avarice, that sort of thing, but when he read it he realised how pointless it was. Who would care anyway. It would be clear he had committed suicide and as soon as they realised that there would be no more reason to investigate. He might get a footnote in page 5 of the local paper.
He had made a will. The last thing he wanted was all his assets to go to the government. He had thought of giving everything to Cancer Research but he had always believed that they should be government funded and not have to rely on charity. After all that is what governments should be spending money on instead of lining their own pockets or the pockets of wastrels who are too stupid or lazy to get a job. His contribution would only be endorsing this injustice. Giving it to the science department of a university was a consideration but not for long. He knew how these accountants worked. They would take the money and use it to fund a new degree course in hairdressing and name the course in his honour. So he decided to give all his money to the RSPCA. Whilst he appreciated some of it would be used to care for cats he decided it was too difficult to discriminate. He had considered funding a project to euthanise anyone who abused animals but thought some politically correct individual would veto it. All in all it seemed the best option and perhaps after mankind was eradicated gerbils and hamsters everywhere would thank him by erecting a treadmill in his honour.
When George was with Kim he wanted to live forever. Now he looked at his bottles of Tylenol and longed for them to bring about his death. He had done a little research on the best drug to use and was disappointed that nothing could bring about the certainty he desired, certainly not from the selection available at Boots. They didn’t even have a section devoted to suicide and the assistant was of no use at all. The last thing he wanted to be was a drooling vegetable in a mental hospital. After a short period of rehabilitation he could find himself working in a marketing department.
Perhaps the Steve Vai concert? George wasn’t sure how long it would take before he started choking on his vomit and he didn’t want to have to get up and change the CD because he wasn’t sure he would actually be coherent enough to do so. And then all his efforts would be wasted as they would a drooling man surrounded by his own vomit in front of an open CD drawer.
Red wine always made George feel morose although today that seemed an apt mood. He poured himself another glass of the Pinot Noir.
It is forty years since we put man on the moon, thought George, and even that event was politically motivated. Maybe it is something in the air but certainly something has completely shut off our right side brain function leaving mankind with no aspiration, no dreams. Without dreams everything is functional, routine and cold. We are but robots conditioned to follow a path to our destruction.
Every action is logical yet unintelligent. No one has a world view, only a view of their own world. How much money do I get? How much is my house worth? How big is my car? Is my car bigger than my neighbours? Screw you, I need that. How is it possible in this day with the technology and resources we have at hand to find beggars on the streets of San Francisco? Are these the few dreamers we have left, the few who find themselves unable to function in today’s cold bankrupt society. Whose only available option was to drop out because they don’t want to be party to what is going on.
George smiled to himself. The beggar that had drunkenly followed him down Main Street whilst shouting torrents of abuse didn’t seem to fit with this theory.
Why are we now sceptical about global warming and evolution but not sceptical about politicians that lead us to war over something as flawed as democracy. What is the point of giving everyone a free vote when the people are idiots and when they only vote for themselves. George had always believed that the power should be taken away from the people, at least until we able to educate them to point that they realise the Sun newspaper or Fox News may not be entirely vigilant in its pursuit of journalistic truths. Until then we should leave this planet to select group of philosophers and scientists who have both the capacity and open mindedness to have actually considered the state of the world and what might be done to improve its lot. Of course that will never happen. Was he the only one that watches the original ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ movie and shouts at the screen for Gord to destroy the planet. Even the Iran’s and North Koreas of this world don’t actually have the wit to make a good go at destroying it. You even can’t rely on power crazy despots anymore.
George might have tried to hang on in there he had thought there was an imminent apocalypse about to happen. He was disappointed he wasn’t able to find a way to exacerbate one. Unbelievable politicians have become so stupid they can’t even bring about a nuclear annihilation anymore. He had been heartened by reading that even as recently as the Vietnam war Nixon had thought dropping a atom bomb might help move things along in their favour. That is the sort of positive thinking required but today’s politicians just don’t show sufficient bravado and the likeliest of the nations to do something like that, the US, is in freefall and to busy studying its own naval. There was a momentary hope given in the Middle East but even there they are only playing and Iran looked like it might have some real intent to start a holocaust but now its looks like Ahmadinejad is just mad; disappointing given he is an engineer as he should have been able to devise some nice weapons of mass destruction.
Maybe Shostakovich. Number 5 or Number 10? This is so difficult to choose.
George opened another bottle of the New Zealand Pinot Noir. I should be feeling more depressed. I’d better find a suitable book to lay out. Fiction or non-fiction? A bit of both I think. George walked across to the overflowing bookcase, tripping slightly as he did so. He slowly ran his fingers along the spines of the books.
Ah, The Ascent of Man, that’s a definite. Mathematics for the Million, definitely. And a Far Side compendium to add a little humour. And lastly, a Hilary Mantel novel, perhaps A Change of Climate, he liked that one. He arranged the books on the table, leaving open the Hilary Mantel at a random page.
George settled on Shostakovich No.10 and set the CD on repeat. He opened all the bottles of the Tylenol and poured out the tablets onto the table as he thought he might not be able open the child proof caps later on. He took some of the tablets and drank a little wine. He decided to crunch open the tablets distrusting their fast dissolving skins. He cupped his left hand and filled it with tablets, poured a very full glass of wine with his right and sat back in his favourite chair. Slowly he took each tablet, crunched it in his mouth and then swallowed it with a sip of wine.
George had forgotten to count how many tablets he had taken. He dozed slightly before leaning forward to repeat his actions but before he could pour another glass of wine his head fell forward and hit the remote control for the CD player forcing it into pause mode.
This is Chapter Seventeen of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
“Hello, is that Seymour Bush”.
“Yes”.
“Hello Seymour, my name is Frank Butler, I am head of engineering…”.
“Yes Mr. Butler, I know who you are”.
Seymour found himself standing to attention which strained the coiled lead of the telephone and lifted the handset slightly off the desk.
“How are you settling in”.
“Well, it is a lot to learn…”.
“Well George was a very intelligent engineer, the best we ever had, so just do your best, however inadequate that might be”.
“Yes sir!”.
“I know you are looking after George’s projects now he has left us. I have some personal issues to sort out this afternoon so I cannot come into the office. However I need to have a demo of our new battery powered amplifiers that I think George left with you. Could you do that for me”?
“Yes if…”.
“If you can set it up in meeting room Gamma and plug it in for me so the batteries are fully charged for the morning I would really appreciate it. There should be speakers in the room already and they will also need to be plugged in to charge their batteries”.
“I’ll do it right away Sir”.
“I’m sorry if it means you staying a little late”.
“That’s all right sir”.
The great thing about today’s education is it is all based on financial returns, thought George. This means that blindly following rather than questioning brings greater returns and therefore new graduates are conditioned to unfailingly do whatever is asked of them. The old mythical joke of sending the newby down to stores to get a bag of holes is now a reality.
This is Chapter Sixteen of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
George lay on his back staring at the plaster swirls on the ceiling.
Hannah nestled her head into his chest and he slipped his arm under her and drew her even closer. He ran his fingers down her arm and kissed her gently on her nose. Hannah smiled at him and closed her eyes.
You didn’t know what you were missing did you, the pansy in the pink shirt you rejected all that time ago. How things might have been different if you had chosen me over the fashion unconscious student you chose to shack up with. You might now have your doctorate and be teaching students chromatography or demonstrating thermite reactions to an enraptured class. I might have encouraged Frank to start our business building that Hi-Fi stuff. No project managers, no marketing idiots, no CMM, no bullshit. Just doing a job I enjoyed with enough remuneration to be comfortable. Now look at us, naked in each other’s arms but with no future together. Too late to change anything now, already everything is in place and it has too much inertia for me to stop it. Already dead to the world we have to go through a few pre-ordained movements before the misery that is our lives is formally ended. Well let me help you as best I can.
George’s sense of smell was not very good and he had to wear reading glasses for most things. They say that your senses equalise themselves and in George’s case that meant that his hearing was very good. At the party he could hear what Frank and Matt were saying to each other, even across the background chatter and in meetings he can hear the whispered conversations which are usually some attempted joke or disparaging remark about his presentations. Now he could hear someone come up the stairs, a solid deliberate footstep.
Hannah stirred when the key was put in the lock but she didn’t fully awake from her daydream until Frank came into the room and made a little snort like exclamation.
“You bastard”!
George was surprised that Frank had recognised him so quickly, Perhaps he dreams of me naked, thought George.
Hannah got to her knees and George was surprised, given the circumstances, that he found himself getting slightly aroused as his eyes focussed on her small but beautifully symmetrical breasts and the small trickle of semen that ran down her leg.
His arousal was not immediately stopped either, even when Frank’s shoe arrived at his back. Frank kicked George again. And again.
“Stop it Frank!”.
But Frank was on automatic pilot now.
Years of being the underdog, of kow towing, of taking abuse from idiot managers and inept marketing personnel, of being the butt of engineer’s jokes and the scapegoat for failed projects were gushing from him.
Frank pushed George to ground and starting hitting him repeatedly in the face. Frank was not a natural fighter but he was he was quite large and the blows came with some force. George puts his arms across his face but the blows still rained in, to his neck, to his chest, to his abdomen. George could taste some blood on his lips but he felt no pain.
“For Christ’s sake Frank, leave him alone”!
Hannah tried to push Frank off of George but she was petite and her nakedness made her feel vulnerable.
“You…fucking…bastard…George”, Frank managed to pant between blows.
Frank put his hands around George’s neck and squeezed his thumbs hard into the windpipe. George tried to lever Frank’s arms away but was weak from the pummelling he had just received and he was also tired from the vigorous and spontaneous love-making. Frank pushed harder summoning every ounce of strength he had from his substantive frame.
It was on a trip to Thailand that Hannah had bought the bronze statue of Buddha. Frank had never even noticed it and he didn’t now as Hannah swung it hard against the back of his head. Frank released his hands and crouched stationary above George. A stillness blanketed the room just before the laughing Buddha again crashed into the side of his head causing a small trickle of blood to run down the back of his ear. Frank stayed frozen in time in a pose very reminiscent of what Hannah had assumed earlier, although George was less appreciative of it at this moment. Hannah pushed hard at Frank who rolled over like a puppy who wanted his tummy rubbed stopping only when he hit the coffee table.
Hannah was panting hard. She dropped the statue onto the carpet and staggered backwards into the armchair which made a small apologetic Reginald Perrin farting noise.
George lay on the ground motionless save for his eyes which swirled with the plaster decorations on the ceiling. George tried to swallow and as he did he tasted blood at the back of his throat. Slowly he moved each limb to check its function and when all the pre-standing checks were successfully completed his used his left arm to raise himself.
He looked at Hannah who was staring out at nothing.
“Are you OK”?
George would later laugh at the banality of that statement but now it was the only thing he could think to say.
“I think so”, gasped Hannah.
“We had better get dressed”.
“Is he OK George”.
George had forgotten about Frank. He was much more concerned with his throat and he was finding it hard to breathe normally. He looked about the room for his boxer shorts, the blue and black ones he had taken an age to choose this morning. He found them at the back of the sofa and tripped slightly as he put them on. His jeans were across the other side of the room and George smiled as he remembered how vigorously Hannah had pulled them off him before running her tongue down the side of his cock.
“George! Is he OK”?
George zipped his fly and looked down at Frank. He looked fine, thought George, although perhaps he is a little too still. He tried to see of any sign he was breathing but Frank still had his dark brown overcoat on and George could not see. He knelt down beside Frank. I’ve seen them do this on TV. Two fingers on the side of the neck, somewhere here. Frank’s skin felt clammy. Is that good?
“Do you have a mirror”?
“What for”?
“To check his breathing”.
“For God’s sake Frank, is there a pulse or not”.
“I don’t think so but I haven’t done this before”.
Hannah quickly moved to George’s side and put two fingers on Frank’s wrist and two on his neck.
Her eyes were wide.
“I think he’s dead”.
George slowly got up and looked for his shirt. He had chosen the button-less one assuming it would be easier to remove, which had proved to be a good decision on his part.
“George, we’ve killed him”!
George pulled on his shirt and knelt down and picked up the Buddha statue.
“Funny”, he said, “if customs had done its job properly you wouldn’t have been allowed to take this out of the country”.
George put the blood stained Buddha statue back on the side table. Not an entirely appropriate thing to use, he thought.
“What are you doing George”.
“I’m phoning for an ambulance. If we don’t phone immediately the police will think we are covering something up”.
“Police? But it was an accident”.
“I don’t think the police tend to be of the opinion that clubbing a man over the head with a Buddha statue constitutes an accident. You could try an act of god defence but then you get into the philosophical arguments about whether Buddha is a god or not. I think the Mahayana…”.
“Shut up George. Shut the fuck up”.
Hannah fell down into the chair and sobbed, her body heaving in a rhythmic convulsion.
George took one last look at Hannah’s naked body.
“Here, you had better put these on, the ambulance will be here soon”.
Hannah slowly obeyed.
“You shouldn’t have hit him twice”.
“Christ George, I thought he was going to kill you”.
“Yes, but now you have killed him. The police might think two blows were excessive”.
“What do you mean”?
“Well the police will ask you what happened of course. They will understand the initial blow but they may question why you found it necessary to hit him again. I think they call it reasonable force”.
Hannah slowly dressed herself and then sat motionless in the chair. George walked into their bedroom.
The great thing about today’s managers is they are technologically inept. Rather as the appendix appears to serve no purpose in the adult human, the left side brain appears to serve no purpose in the adult manager. That is why an army of secretaries and personal assistants, in addition to the sexual favours they offer, are also required to manage appointments, book hotels and meeting rooms, prepare presentations and slap their todgers against the urinal to knock off that last drip. Part of this dependency is that manager’s computers have to be open to all users of that computer. George sat down at Frank’s computer and it immediately prompted him for a password. George typed it in and quickly sent out the meeting invitation.
“What are you doing George”?
Hannah had splashed her face with cold water leaving her face adorned with red blotchy patches.
“Just sitting”.
The whoop of the ambulance siren announced its arrival. George went to the door and opened it.
This is Chapter Fifteen of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
She sits on the steps in the shade of a tree.
The moistness in her dark brown eyes makes them look even larger than normal. The moisture forms into a salty tear which first slowly, and then with greater speed, trickles unnoticed down the side of her nose.
Love lost. Nothing, not even the death of a parent or of a child, can bring such despair. True love invades every corpuscle of the body, but when it leaves it mortally wounds those very same cells. Love as a presence warms and comforts; love as an absence leaves one cold and alone. The heart that had once excitedly pulsed vibrant red blood around the body was now tired and heavy. The brain that had once sparkled with firing neurones was now dulled and filled with hopelessness.
Hannah throws back her head and tries to breath in the air but her lungs will not let her. Her lungs are filled with the smog of despondency.
Another tear drops on to the concrete step. Her body slowly rocks to the rhythm of a tune only she can hear.
She stares out along the road, but she does not see the young couple holding hands as they walk, or the burrowing squirrel, or the Labrador dog bouncing around the garden. For her these things do not exist; she is excluded from their happiness, alone in her painful solitude.
George stands quietly by the side of Hannah, unsure what to say or even if he should be there.
“George”!
“Sorry. I, er…”.
Hannah wipes the tears from her cheeks and pulls an old tissue from her jeans and blows her nose.
“I guess you have heard about Matt”.
Hannah slowly stands and squints into the watery sun that silhouettes George.
“I could do with a drink”, says Hannah, who slowly walks back into her apartment block. George follows her in and up the stairs unsure if that was an invitation or not. But he could sure do with a drink too. He always can.
Hannah held the door open for George before quietly closing it after him.
“White or red? I’m afraid I only have wine. It was left over from the party”.
“White please”.
“Sit down. Anywhere you want”.
“Has Frank gone to work?”
“Yes, some meeting or other. To be honest it is nice to not have him around”.
Hannah brought in two large glasses of white wine, handed one to George and took a large gulp from hers before sitting down next to George on the blue cloth sofa.
“Thanks for coming”.
“To be honest I wasn’t sure I should. I mean I didn’t know if you would want to see me or what you had been told about the accident”.
Hannah stared straight ahead whilst George watched tears start to well in her right eye.
“To be honest I don’t remember very much about the accident. I spent all day trying to tell that to the police whilst I was in hospital. They are quite stupid you know. They think by asking the same question again and again that somehow you are just going to remember something or change what you have told them”.
“We should have put a seatbelt on him when we put him in the car. I don’t see how it was your fault George. If anything it was my fault for insisting you drove him home”.
“How are you anyway”.
“Bruised. I feel like Chuck Norris in Way of the Dragon. The air bag saved me so I am told. Matt’s air bag didn’t inflate because he didn’t have his seatbelt on. I am surprised there were airbags in the car, it was a bit of wreck”.
“I should have told Frank about Matt. Not that anything ever happened. In fact I don’t think Matt knew how I felt about him. Frank doesn’t understand why I am so upset although I don’t think he notices much. Matt was his best friend but he doesn’t seem bothered at all”.
“I expect it will hit him later”.
“More wine?”
George took the empty glass from Hannah before waiting for an answer.
“It’s in the fridge”.
George poured half a glass of wine out and opened another bottle to fill Hannah’s glass.
“I didn’t want to mix the grapes, drink up and I’ll pour you a full glass of the Chenin Blanc”.
Hannah did as instructed and then gulped down a quarter of her fresh glass.
“God, everything is such a mess. The man I loved is dead. I am living with a man I don’t love and who I don’t think is in love with me and then there is you George. Where do you fit in all of this”.
“I don’t seem to fit anywhere anymore”.
Hannah turned to look at George. I feel something for this man but it isn’t love. What is it? Do I just feel sorry for him? Why do I not hate him for being here instead of Matt”?
“I don’t like to ponder what ifs. What has happened has happened. You may not have been happy with Matt. As you said, if Matt liked you surely he would have done something. It was equal opportunities when we met as it were. And Frank didn’t exactly sweep you off your feet. Matt had lots of opportunities and didn’t take them so you can only assume he didn’t want to do anything. Unrequited love is such a wasteful emotion. I have always fancied Vivien Leigh but what’s the point. Not only is she dead – a technicality - but she is a dead nymphomaniac. But no point on pondering what might have been. You seem happy enough with Frank. Don’t jeopardise that by thinking about a relationship that obviously wasn’t ever meant to happen”.
“Thanks George”.
“For what. Telling you the man you think you loved didn’t actually care for you so it is fine to forget him, especially as he is now dead”.
“Yeah, something like that”.
Hannah blew her nose and took a very large gulp of her wine.
“It wasn’t love you felt for Matt. You and Frank were just both very alone and loneliness can sometimes attract. But Matt was quite an unpleasant individual. You are the complete opposite of him, intelligent, respectful, quiet and whilst they say that opposites attract that doesn’t apply to matter and anti-matter as you know. You already had one bad experience, trust me when I say Matt would have been a worse one. There was no room in his life for anyone except himself”.
“I don’t think either Frank or Matt is right for you. What you are feeling comes from frustration with the wrong decisions you have made in your life, with your job, your relationships, and you keep making them in some type of self flagellation. Now you might be into that possibly but too much of it is probably not a good thing. I lost the only person that mattered in my life and since then I feel myself being eaten away inside until I am just a hollow shell. Don’t let that happen to you. I don’t feel I have anything left in my life now except to try and irritate as many people as I can and possibly escalate Armageddon”.
“There are not many people who see the world for what it is. If you do see it then you don’t want to be a part of it. It sounds trite but the only protection I have found is true love. Once that is gone you are exposed to the ultraviolet light of its stupidity and greed and it will burn you”.
George turned to Hannah and kissed her softly on the lips. He left his face close to hers feeling her hot breath on his face. She didn’t move so he kissed her again, more forcibly this time. As he pulled his face away Hannah put her hand behind his head and pulled him back. He tried to put his wine glass on the floor but he couldn’t stretch his arm far enough and it fell onto the carpet.
This is Chapter Fourteen of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
“I would like you to read this letter Please, George”.
The HR cretin placed a plain white envelope before George which was unmarked save for a simple stick on label which read ‘George Miller’ in Verdana font. Don’t people know that serifs actually help with the readability – at least you would think a secretary would know that. But I guess the cretin doesn’t employ his staff for any perceivable secretarial skills but more for how accurate an impersonation they can give of the woman of the Rossebeert area of Amsterdam.
George was surprised to find his hand slightly shaking as he tore open the envelope and took out the letter. The cretin sat opposite him pretending to read his e-mails.
‘Dear Mr. Miller, With regret, and after the mandatory written warnings, as we have found no improvement in your performance we therefore find it necessary….’
George quickly scanned through the rest of the letter. Notice period. Last pay day. Please document your outstanding work. Prepare to train someone to do your job. Remember to run a 4 foot greasy pole up the arse of the CEO before you leave. The last one I can do but I might forgo the grease.
“I think you will find we have been lenient George, for example we will honour paying your untaken holidays and we have given you a two month notice period so you have time to find another job.”
“That is very generous”, replied George. “But I see you expect me train someone: did you expect me to train them in my own house then.”
“George. We have done everything we can to help you. We did not make this decision lightly as you are a good engineer. It is your attitude that is the problem and unless you buck your ideas up you are going to find it very difficult to get another job”.
“I wasn’t aware that I had done anything to upset anyone recently”, countered George, “in fact I thought I had just been quietly getting on with my job. I admit I have been a little slow getting up to speed with Dirac’s equation. I am a little rusty on quantum mechanics, but I think in a year or two I should be a position to rewrite Schrodinger’s wave equation that should set us up nicely to be able to implement Stephanie’s idea sometime in the middle of the next decade.”
George didn’t really care. He had got over the initial shock by now and was preparing for a fight.
“I’m afraid I had another bad report from one of your managers”.
“Which one, I only have one manager, Mr. Benson, despite your worthy attempts to provide five managers to every engineer; at least there is only one that does my reviews, so he reported me”?
“I’m afraid I can’t reveal that information, George”.
“But what if it is wrong, what if someone just doesn’t like me and just wants to make trouble. I should be able to challenge that, right, or are you running some snitch campaign in the company where anyone can get anyone else sacked just because of petty jealousies. Did you get the information from WikiLeaks”?
“George, there you go again. Do you really believe the staff in this company are so childish as to just report you for no good reason. Don’t you feel that is a little insulting to your colleagues”.
“We would both find out how petty people can be if you told me who it was that complained and what the complaint is”.
“I have investigated the complaint myself George and I have upheld it. As I said, this decision was not made lightly and it was made with the knowledge of Mr. Presley and Mr. Parfitt”.
“Who is Mr. Parfitt”?
“Barry Parfitt, head of the Project Office”.
“Why the hell would he have a say in me getting sacked”.
“We don’t use the term sacked anymore, George, it is dismissed. And it is because he monitors the performance of all staff through timesheets and how much each person is costing the company”.
“And what about how much each person saves the company or contributes to sales, does he monitor that too”.
“That is not the role of the Project Office”.
“I know you are not bright or you wouldn’t be in HR, but surely you can see that such a report is a little one sided”.
“Mr Parfitt’s figures were merely one aspect of the decision to sack you”.
“Dismiss”.
“For God’s sake, it’s s stitch up. You feed unsubstantiated claims to a department head that can’t wipe his own arse without a secretary being present and you take figures from a mole that takes no account of any contribution I may have made to the profit of the company. Do Frank and Mr. Benson know about this.”?
“They have been made aware of our decision, yes”.
“And they didn’t have anything to say”.
“The decision was out of their hands, George”.
“Now I hope you will accept this gracefully and professionally and do as we ask in helping us train a replacement for you”.
“Why don’t you get Stephanie to do my job? She can apparently rewrite fundamental laws so she be able to bolt a couple of new features to our products every year”.
“Once again I don’t feel we are getting anywhere George. The decision is made. Now I want to introduce you to the person we wish to take over your position. I want you to be professional and to train him during your remaining time here. If you don’t do this we are liable to withhold any due salary or holiday payments”.
Cute, thought George. I wonder if I have time to teach him how to irritate marketing to the same degree I have perfected. Or to teach about the 5S procedures that require you to hide your tools away in locked draw before some manager decides they are unnecessary for your job and confiscates them. Strange they can take away my tools if they consider them unused but that grey lump of matter between their ears is left alone even though it hasn’t been used in years. Oh yes, there is much to teach him. Two months is not nearly enough.
The HR cretin called to his secretary.
“Penny, is Mr. Bush in your office”.
“No, he has gone back to his cubicle. Do you want me to call him?”
“It’s OK, it’ll be quicker for me to walk over”.
As soon as the HR cretin left George alone he quickly got up and scanned the contents of the folder lying on the desk in front of him. Copies of the warning letters, his contract adorned with day glow pink highlighter pen marks, his last performance review, (5 out of 5 for technical aptitude, 2 out 5 for team interaction), and a scribbled note followed by a printed report. ‘ …deliberately sabotaged a project costing the company a minimum of $40k, harm to supplier relations and possible loss of earnings to next year’s product line. Mr. Miller showed no remorse when challenged over this…’.
George quickly scanned to the bottom of the page. ‘Frank Butler, Head of Engineering’.
Frank? George took a while to register the name. My Frank? The Frank? Cheery, always support me Frank?
George heard whispered voices in the corridor.
“This may be a little awkward so let me do the talking…”.
George just managed to sit down before the HR cretin entered the room followed by a young - very young – smartly dressed, ginger haired man. Well boy really. And he was wearing a tie which said it all.
“George, this is Mr. Bush, Seymour Bush…”.
George laughed out loud. He couldn’t stop himself.
The boy’s face went red to match his hair but the HR cretin just continued. I’m not surprised he doesn’t get it, thought George.
“ Seymour has just started work with us and this will be a good opportunity for him to get to know our products in some detail”.
“I don’t think I can teach him everything I know in just two months. I guess he is straight out of university so he is still at the take the washing home to Mum, burn the toast, wank to a Britney Spears’ poster stage. It will probably take a month to teach him to tie his own shoelaces or to set his alarm so he actually comes into work before lunch. And I am quite sure two months is insufficient time for toilet training”.
George was surprised for the second time in just five minutes as the HR cretin bounded across the room and thrust George up against the wall.
“I have fucking had enough of you George. Get of my office, pack your things and go. NOW! If you have not left in thirty minutes I will have security forcibly remove you”.
The HR cretin slowly removed his arm from George’s throat and backed away. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead, shimmering in the glow of the fluorescent lighting and George watched one amble unhurriedly down his cheek.
“We don’t have security, unless you mean Alf on the gate. Just telephoning him could well bring about his cardiac arrest”.
“Leave! Now!”
The HR cretin pointed towards the door, used as he was to having managers in there who are easily confused. Mr Benson had once been in there for over four hours until Penny had helped him find his way out. Indeed but for accidentally finding and gorging himself on the cretin’s stash of Diazepan, (which he used for when enduring appraisals), he might well had had a panic attack.
George left. He slowly walked past Seymour, past Penny and the other secretaries who were now standing at the door of their office in their very best window shopping poses, past the group of test engineers who hurriedly gathered around the coffee machine at the end of the corridor and up the short flight of stairs to his desk.
He sat down, aware that everyone in the department was staring at him. George felt a little sick. When he got the e-mail asking him to this meeting he knew what it was for. The HR cretin didn’t choose to meet the staff unless it was unavoidable. He had prepared a small speech but had forgotten it as soon as he sat down in the office. He was surprised he was affected by the decision. He didn’t need the money but he knew he would miss coming into work and irritating marketing. It was what he was born to do. You can’t teach someone to do that, you have to be a natural at it. It has to be a calling. Seymour clearly is not the right material. He is too young, he has red hair and any attempt he made to ridicule anyone could immediately be countered by them using his name. No, it is the end of an era.
George locked his tools away from management, draped the monitor leads across his desk so that the Project office could hide in the conduit the next morning morning and write a 3 page report on his non-conformity to the 5S principals, switched off his computer, put on his jacket and slowly walked out of the building. George Miller is once again leaving the building.
A Watershed
When we were living in Canada and had just started SingMai in the basement of our house a person that I had had previous business dealings with and had become the head of marketing for Asia for a a large FPGA manufacturer contacted me to say he had moved to Hong Kong to start his own business and perhaps we could work together on something. It was only a couple of weeks before he told me of a company in Shanghai that wanted to develop an IC using some of our designs. In part that was what instigated our move to Asia.
After a few months, including a week long trip to Shanghai it all fell through, almost certainly because the Shanghai company realised that everything they needed was with me and that my partner contributed nothing to the deal despite insisting that he was constantly involved, (the company offered me a job and even offered to invest in SingMai - I turned both down). Perhaps naively I felt some obligation to him because he provided the initial contact but the months of work and preparing demos of our designs meant that we neglected other work and we were certainly out of pocket at the end of the exercise.
A little time after this he again contacted me to ask if we could work together on the design of a security camera which he felt he could sell into the China market. Our return would be a percentage of all sales as he was planning to sell a complete manufacturing kit. After months of work which meant neglecting other enquiries I had to ask for some initial payments, just to keep the wolf from the door, which he did provide. Towards the end of the project I started getting forceful about the expected returns we could expect only to be told that he had planned on paying me $0.10 for every unit sold with an expected sales in the first year of 300,000: $30,000 for the best part of a year's work adn without which he would have nothing. In that time I had failed to follow up at least three enquiries, each of which was for a product that sells for more than $30,000. It is fair to say that the relationship became a little fraught at this time.
Yesterday I delivered the last of the designs I had promised. Yes, there is a little more to be done but the work is negligible: he has everything he needs to sell his security camera. If he does start to sell the design maybe we will get a little income - akin to getting royalties on a song or a book, which is nice but of course is completely out of my hands.
Today I have one more order to complete, another custom design, which is also proving to be a real pain as the customer realises he didn't actually know what he wanted but still expects me to provide a solution. But one week's hard work should see that off and there is more money left on that order than two years of sales to my Hong Kong friend so more reason to complete it.
And then I will be free with the promise to not undertake anymore long term custom designs. My first company made the mistake of relying on these custom orders which consume a lot of time and very rarely pay for themselves; however they are relatively easy to get once you are known in the field as few companies will undertake them - for good reason. Increasingly companies outsource their design so they always on the lookout for design houses but the designs are usually so specialised that we cannot sell them to anyone else so it is time to be selfish; we have our own ideas.
We will have enough money in the bank to not have to take these orders and grateful as we are for the fact they have given us our freedom, financially, it is now time to concentrate on our own designs and to plough our own furrow.
A fog of despondency rolled in with the tide. Two watchers and a muster of crows watched the dawn of the day that marked the end of mankind.
This is Chapter Thirteen of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
I don’t even own a car thought George, What the hell am I doing driving this prick home in his own car.
George accidentally turned off the headlights in attempting to turn on the windscreen wipers. Blinded by the heavy rain he hurriedly turned the wipers onto double speed, turned the lights back on and accidentally sounded the horn. He hadn’t found how to move the seat back further so his knees rubbed the bottom of the steering wheel and he hadn’t got used to the manual gearbox having driven an automatic for most of his life. He had managed to turn off the radio which was tuned into Radio One, something the radio announcer found it necessary to shout at the listener every fifteen seconds which is presumably their average attention span. It doesn’t pay to be sober.
The rain was becoming heavier still and the wipers did little to help, smearing the oncoming lights into a watery blur. I’m buggered if I am going to take him to his apartment, thought George, I’ll park him outside and ring for a taxi to take me home; it is too late for a bus and I don’t fancy sharing the ride with urine scented tramps and inebriated hooligans anyway.
It’s more than he deserves anyway, he has been a pain all night. Why the hell does Frank insist on inviting him all the time, all he does is continually complain about his worthless job which he doubtless gets paid a fortune for, although you wouldn’t know it from his car. Strange really, I had him down for a nearly new BMW Series 5 driver. Maybe this is not his car. Maybe it belongs to the uncle that sexually abused him as a child and who still has lingering fantasies about him despite him growing up to be a rather unpleasant and plain looking adult. Maybe, to add to his huge list of personality defects, he is a mean bastard. Actually, come to think of it, I didn’t see him buy a drink all night.
George had spent the night biting his lip. Frank had been teasing George about his team winning the team building contests which prompted Matt to go on for hours about how important these events were and why people who were disruptive – and George knew who he had in mind – should be sacked. Or gassed, he wasn’t listening at that point and was spending his time trying to decipher the body language between Frank and Hannah.
The two of them didn’t look comfortable together in the way that couples that lived together should. In the way that he and Kim had been.
George had tried to argue it is individuals that have driven mankind forward, outstanding individuals. But there is no room for the individual anymore. Instead of elevating everyone up to their level everyone is brought down to the lowest common denominator of the group so standards continue to fall. What is it, 60% of Americans believe the earth was created 10,000 years ago and they might yet elect that hockey mum who is one of them. What does that say about a nation. And now they want to teach creationism in schools as an option to evolution. So the next generation will be even more cretinous believing that man lived at the same time as the dinosaur. There again working for a big company you get the modern equivalent of what that must have been like. The project office if the lumbering Diplodocus, harmless but keeps getting in the way and notable for the fact that the skull is usually missing from fossils as it is from all in that department; management is the Lambeosaurus, notable for being a herd animal and having two structures on its head, both of which are hollow, and marketing is the Caudipteryx, a show bird like dinosaur that is not actually capable of flight, in other words, incapable of performing the function for which it was designed.
Everyone is just being brought down into a homogenous soup of cretinism.
Every major technological event of the twentieth century was driven by man’s racism. From the atom bomb to the moon landings everything is driven by man’s necessity to perceive difference where there is none and to try to impose one group’s supposed better values on another’s. A hundred years before inventions were made to bring man together, from the telephone to the powered flight. And are we so much better off now socially than we were then. Slavery is now abolished but is there real social integration or equality between races. Man has a self destruct gene in him, the only evidence there is for the fact that we were some huge alien experiment, seeded on Earth by some super-intelligent race who put in a fail safe mechanism in case they got bored watching us develop because there was something more interesting going on in another part of the galaxy. Is it conceivable that evolution does this to avoid total dominance of one species over another. Or is mankind so inalienably stupid that is doesn’t even realise it is destroying itself.
And this prick beside me only cares that he got berated by his manager. He thinks his world is coming to an end because he will have a small black mark on his performance review when in fact the world really is coming to end, for man at least. If his company is anything like mine it is also going down the toilet through its obsession with processes and procedures and its suppression of individuals, the only people who would be able to make a difference.
It is self centred people like Matthew that lie at the core of what is wrong with the world. How can you bring people together when this man’s world is just himself. Step on whoever you want, I need to get on. Get out of my way, I’m coming through. So it is the greedy and the morally bankrupt that rise to the top and we wonder why we have a problem today. And then we have the Franks of this world who let themselves be trod on or who buy drinks all night and not make others stand their round. Of course you can bugger me from behind sir. Let me get the KY jelly for you.
I don’t know what Matt has to complain about anyway, other than this crappy car. He isn’t about to lose his job like I am. He doesn’t have the vision to see anything wrong with the world, he is cosy in his little shell. He will continue to rise to top like rancid cream.
I wonder what Hannah sees in him. She and Frank hardly looked at each other tonight but despite Matt’s drunken rant she still had eyes for him all evening. Frank didn’t even notice. She even defended him at one point, What was it now? Oh, I forget. I find him so tiresome and full of himself. I know they say the girls are attracted to the bad guys but do they have to be this bad. Couldn’t they pick someone who has a small irritating trait instead of wanting to breed with morons like that. Such behaviour just gives more grist to mill to the Creationists and it seems to disprove Darwin.
Every day we seem to move further and further away from a progressive benevolent society. We laud nobodies, parade them for all to see and applaud and no-one shouts out, ‘for God’s sake, they are cretins, can’t you all see that’. Celebrity morons without an ounce of talent . If was restricted to some pathetic reality TV programs it wouldn’t be so bad but now it is everywhere. An articulate philosopher can no longer become prime minister because nobody understands what he is saying. Instead we elect celebrities more known for their ability to breed than for any innovative initiatives. Singers who can’t sing, sportsmen who can’t play sport, politicians who cannot think. And marketing pricks like this idiot beside me who hasn’t had an original thought in his head since he discovered how to pull the skin back on his willy. Was it always like this? When Kim was alive I didn’t seem to see it.
Well the world can go and fuck itself. When you think what we might have been able to do if the Inca or the Greek or the Roman civilisations had not imploded. Why don’t we take a leaf out of their book now and punish mediocrity. It almost doesn’t matter who is in and who is out. At least we do something. Let’s start with Daily Mail readers and then move on to Sun readers and all those who watch American Idol and any of the offshoot programs or any reality TV program. That is only a few tens of millions but it makes a statement. Then all politicians because no-one today would become a politician without having the wrong motives because they should know they cannot change anything. And then every manager, management consultant and anyone calling themselves a guru or worse still, visionary. Every marketing department. Anyone studying media studies, tourism, complementary medicine, political science, social studies, journalism, law or any other Mickey Mouse degree. Anyone who is a member of Mensa. All non-atheists. Anyone who thinks Formula One or darts is a sport. People who fly their country’s flag in their front garden. People who think it is OK to not know the difference between there or their or your and you’re or who use a comma instead of an apostrophe. The Pope, (just in case he is an atheist and was exempted from the non-atheist group). People who voluntarily join the armed forces and then complain when someone tries to kill them. The Royal Family. Bankers. Lawyers. People who smoke. Anyone who thinks Reeves and Mortimer are funny. Anyone who keeps cats. Anyone who thinks ISO9000, CMM, 5S or any of the other pointless management or project procedures are worth a fart. People who think Hip Hop and Rap are music. Anyone who likes ice hockey or American football. People who like mushrooms. People who like to dress dogs up. People who think we really didn’t land on the moon or that there are aliens amongst us. People who give their children strange names or deliberately (or accidentally?) misspell their names. Any non-Chinese person with a Chinese character tattoo. Anyone who whistles. Obese people. Older women that dress like teenage tarts. People who smother their food in salt before tasting it. Actors. Anyone that uses business speak. People who signal apostrophes with their fingers, (oh, maybe not them, yet; I must stop doing that). People with unruly children. Anyone who buys anything from FCUK. People who cannot form a fucking sentence without using a swear word. Anyone that uses the ‘no win, no fee’ lawyers. People who write letters using abbreviations like LOL. People who take huge bags onto carry-on on an airplane. And especially those who then move your bags to make room for theirs. People who have borrowed CDs and books and have never given them back. People who call me ‘mate’. People who ride bicycles like they are a weapon but then complain about car drivers for being inconsiderate. People who are mean. Anyone who use the word awesome for trivial events and happenings. Anyone who Twitters. People who crack their knuckles. And project managers.
George had an ache inside. He was screaming but no-one could hear him. No-one wanted to hear him.
George let go of the wheel and closed his eyes.
According to the coroner’s report, Matthew died when his head hit the road, 25 metres in front of the car.
This is Chapter Twelve of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
The T-shirt was a rather nice shade of blue and the emblem discrete enough for it to be worn another day. George examined the badge too closely making him feel giddy by doing so. It appeared to be two hands shaking. It would be more appropriate if one of those hands was replaced with someone’s neck, thought George.
The HR cretin, who was not wearing the mandatory T-shirt uniform but was still in his usual grey suit, stood in front of the seated staff accompanied on his left by the excitable squirrel manager wearing a bright red T-shirt and on his right by the department manager, Mr. Presley, a huge man with a mop of unruly hair who had somehow squeezed himself into a green T-shirt which gave him the appearance of air bag that had only half exploded. The cretin blew the whistle that hung on a rainbow coloured band around his neck. On the fifth attempt he was able to finally make himself heard. His first utterance was an attempt at a smile which was clearly something new to his face muscles and after various attempts he assumed the pose of someone passing a kidney stone.
“Hunter Electronics realises that without our staff, without YOU” – he gestured so vigorously it threw him off balance – “without YOU, we would not be the success we are today. Integral to this is we are more than the sum of individuals. By working together….”
George was handed a flaccid yellow balloon. Others were given red ones and green ones and pink ones and blue ones. How gay, thought George.
“Now I want you all to blow up your balloons and there is to be no swapping of colours so your friends have the same colour of you”.
“He would have been great on Playschool or that other kid’s program”, murmured George to no-one in particular. What was it now? Rainbow. That was it. Although he is more Bungle than Geoffrey.
“Now I want all of you with the same colour balloons to group together somewhere on the field and to elect yourself a leader of your group”.
George watched several red balloons near him run excitedly out onto the field.
“Fuckwits”.
George ambled his way out to the group of yellow balloons who had parked themselves in the furthest corner of the field and were animatedly gesturing at each other.
“George, you haven’t blown up your balloon yet”. George studied the group to find the owner of the voice and was surprised to find it belonged to girl whose breast he had momentarily brushed at the company meeting. He looked down at his limp inflatable which drooped from his had like a used condom.
“Here let me”. The girl took his wilting sack and took it to her lips and in just five quick blows and a twirl of her fingers handed back a bloated yellow rubber testament to her aerobic skills.
“Barry it is!” George and girl looked back at the group. George was sure Barry, newly self appointed group leader, or more precisely Barry’s head, actually grew by an inch at this announcement.
George knew of Barry but hadn’t ever spoken to him. He worked in what was known as the Project Office, which was a like a leper’s colony to an engineer because it was from there that e-mails about timesheets and CMM and lots of other acronyms would arrive which George deleted almost before his in-box had time to register them. Barry’s job was apparently to sit in the corner at meetings and write things down in his notepad. Somewhat ironic therefore that a man whose job it is to be invisible puts himself forward to be leader of a group as soon as an opportunity presents itself.
The yellow group looked at George. Ah, they know me, he thought, recognising that familiar mix of fear, trepidation and disgust he had started to get used to.
The HR cretin walked towards the yellow group. Keeping an eye on me are we.
George thought he could see the cretin’s hands shaking. No wonder, George grinned, he has never had to be this close to so many of his flock before. He is probably worried about getting some disease from us.
The cretin turned and shouted hoarsely.
“Now I want you all of you from your group to form a line with your leader in front and I want you put your balloon between you and the person in front. I then want you all to start walking forward without the balloon falling to the ground but you cannot use your hands to hold the balloon. Each group is to then turn and walk between the other groups sort of snake like…”.
“Boustrophedonic”, suggested George.
The cretin stopped talking and threw an irritated glance at George.
“…snake like. The last group to have not dropped the balloon wins”.
“OK, now all get in line and…”.
“What about Barry”.
“What? Barry? What about Barry?”
“Well Barry doesn’t have anyone in front of him”, George helpfully pointed out.
“No, how can he, he is your leader”.
“If he joined up with Lucy at the back he could”.
“Then you would be a circle and you wouldn’t go anywhere”.
“Isn’t that a more apt analogy for our company?”
The HR cretin thought for quite a long time about answering George before deciding to just ignore him.
“So get in line and when I blow my whistle I want all of us to start moving forward”.
“All but you”, muttered George, the company Übermensch.
There was the sound of the whistle blowing immediately followed by the sound of two balloons bursting, another whistle blowing and an almost silent “Sorry”.
“Trevor, do we have any more green and pink balloons?”
Trevor, the squirrel manager, stood on tiptoe to whisper something in the cretin’s ear.
“OK, the two of you that have burst your balloons are going to have to pretend that there is a balloon in front of you. Now, on my whistle.”
“That’s not fair”. George saw it was the over-keen lad from the test department.
“Those two groups have one less balloon so they are more likely to win”.
“This is not a competition.”
“Yes it is, there is a winner”.
The HR cretin wished he had read the chapter on awkward team members but it didn’t come until page 245 and he had only got to page 112 and he had skipped all the introductory stuff on the rationale behind the games.
“Notionally there is a winner…”
“But we are all winners, aren’t we Mr. Misanthrope”.
“Exactly”, said the cretin to the girl whose breast George had accidentally touched.
Wonderful, thought George. There are more of us.
The whistle blew and the coloured balloons edged forward. Barry put his right hand out and George’s line followed. As they passed the green line George noticed in the middle one of the two balloon-less participants who was walking with his legs astride, knees bent in the manner of someone who had a particularly large and gooey turd in their pants.
“For Christ’s sake Frank”.
Frank, who was a member of the red team, had dropped his balloon and therefore consigned his whole team to failure.
“I couldn’t help it, Chi just suddenly stopped”.
The blame continued to be apportioned around the group and also amongst other group as balloons started dropping and bursting everywhere.
The whistle blew.
“We have our winners, although of course we are all winners at Hunter Electronics”.
“It is the yellow team”.
“That’s us George”, said the girl with a smile.
George had to allow himself a smile back. He watched Barry’s head enlarge a little more as Barry did the obligatory motivational thanking of his team.
“Well, I think we are all ready for drink after that”, said the HR cretin.
“Refreshments are available over there”, gestured the squirrel manager, “provided free of charge courtesy of Hunter Electronics”.
“I forgot to say”, added the HR cretin, The winners get to keep their balloons but the rest of you must hand them back to Trevor.
George sat down next to the with his gratis can of Sprite and his prize yellow balloon. In the middle of field was a heaving balloon monster that suddenly erupted its balloon skin to expose the nakedness and vulnerability of its Trevor beneath.
George clicked cans with the girl. She a pretty girl, thought George. She was slim – there was no hint of the breast by which George had introduced himself beneath her over-large yellow T-shirt – but she wasn’t so slim as to be bony and warrant the attention of Bob Geldof.
“I’m Paula,” said the girl. “I haven’t seen you at these events before.”
“No I avoid them. But the HR cretin made is plain there would be serious consequences if I didn’t attend this one”, he added in response to her furrowed question.
“You mean Mr. Misanthrope”?
“Yes. I think his name just about says everything, don’t you”.
“I am older than you so you probably don’t remember when HR departments were called Personnel. Human resource. It is so cold and unfeeling, like we are just numbers in a tombola, no.38 you do this shit job and no. 54 you do this shit job. When I was interviewed for this job I was asked two technical questions. The rest of questions were all about them and about my ambitions to be a manager, about how I saw the role of marketing in a company. I didn’t give a toss. I didn’t spend fifteen years of my life trying to be a good engineer to sell my soul and become a manager or marketing prick. But they employ people by numbers. They needed an engineer and it said on my resume I was an engineer. Box ticked, all that matters now is how cheap I am and will I rock the boat. Well they got half their wishes. I was cheap”.
“Development like you George. They feel you are fighting for them and you say the things they would like to say”.
“Well, why don’t they say them instead of looking at me like I am leper”.
“Because they are much easier to sack than you George and they need their jobs”.
It is true. What is the use of fighting. Of railing against a morally bankrupt society. The intelligent can see it but are too frightened of being ostracised, of losing their jobs, of losing the respect of their peers. And less and less have the insight to see it. For a whole generation now we have been taught that greed is all. That avarice is acceptable behaviour. And greed and avarice favour the unintelligent because those people have no philosophy on life, no moral code of their own that they follow. Matt puts shit through car windows whilst in the rest of his life he just craps on people. Crap on or be crapped on.
Paula was smiling at him.
“I’m not some working class hero you know. I am not so different from them. Mankind is going to hell in hand basket and I’m quite happy to help them along if that is what they want to do. I don’t care enough to help even if I could, and I can’t”.
“It is very unusual to find anyone who cares these days, George”.
“I don’t think I do care. Certainly not in a ‘run off to the African continent and do voluntary work’ kind of way. Anyway I am reasonably sure the starving out there are not putting consumer electronics at the top of their wish list. Or maybe they are. A Hunter Electronics MP3 player or clean water. Ching. Another sale and we’ll throw in a free Paul Simon track too”.
“I just don’t see the point in these things. A whole day playing games with people I hate”.
“Not you of course”, George quickly added.
“I mean that lot huddled together over there. Why the hell would I want to bond with one of them. I feel my gene pool being weakened just by being near them”.
“Look at them. The only enjoyment I get out of this is how uncomfortable they all are doing this. And tomorrow morning we all go back to our mundane jobs, HR ticks some box that says it engages with the employees that gets sent to some super-HR department in the sky and the managers go back to being the pretentious incompetent pricks they were before”.
“When will they learn that people can work quite well together and motivate themselves without having some grey suit force them to play stupid games”.
The whistle blew. George sighed.
“Now I want you all to form into your groups again…”
This is Chapter Eleven of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
“What am I going to do Frank”?
“Getting drunk seems a good first move”.
“Yeah, good idea, I’ll get some more in”.
Matthew returned with two pints and the obligatory bag of cheese and onion crisps for Henry who mustered his every ounce of his available energy to wag his tale twice in recognition of the gift.
“So how long have you got”?
“What do you mean”.
“How long is your notice period”.
“I’m not sure”.
“Well didn’t you ask”?
“I didn’t think. They just called us into a meeting, out of the blue like, I thought it was just another project-behind-schedule meeting, but they told us they were closing the whole department. The whole bloody department. Just like that”.
“All the engineers were just milling around together, drinking coffee and doing whatever they do. Oh! I forgot. One bastard came over to me and told me that it was all my fault. I should have punched him in the face. If they’d actually done their jobs and delivered on time none of this would have happened”.
“I wouldn’t put it beyond them to have run the project late deliberately”.
“Oh sure Matt, they all put themselves out of work because they don’t like you”!
Now Frank was going to have a go at him. He always sided with them when it came down to it.
“You’ve got to start planning. Will they give you a reference”.
“No idea”.
“Didn’t you ask anything at all”.
“For fuck’s sake Frank. It wasn’t you that lost his job today was it. How the hell am I going to pay the mortgage or the car loan. I just bought a new home theatre system last weekend which max’d out my credit card”.
“One thing at a time Matt. Although didn’t you think it was a bit stupid to go and buy something expensive when your project was running late”.
“Projects always run late, it’s the way things are done today”.
“But you must have some money in the bank, you earn a fortune”.
“No I don’t and no I don’t. I spend it Frank. The holiday in Maldives, remember, nice suits, entertainment”.
“Entertainment”?
“Yeah, entertainment. You know, entertainment”.
“No I don’t, Matt. What entertainment”.
“I sometimes pay for a lady to accompany me of an evening”, Matt said coyly.
“Prostitutes!”
“I think they prefer the term escorts”.
“God Matt, can’t you find a woman by yourself. I didn’t know there were agencies here”.
“I can think of at least five but none of them come cheap”.
“Well, whatever. You obviously need to start looking for a job straight away”.
“Do you have any jobs going at your place Frank”?
“Christ Matt. Do you listen to anything I say? We are making redundancies too and there is a recruitment freeze, except for marketing that is, they always seem to have new people joining them”.
“Maybe I could get a job there then. Can you put me forward Frank”?
“You’re not a marketing person, Matt, you’re a project manager”.
“Not much of a difference. I am sure I could do their job. Guess how many we are going sell, plus or minus a 300% error, guess what the competition are going to do, well I know how to Google for things, and produce useless but pretty PowerPoint presentations. It’s not rocket science”.
“I wouldn’t recommend working for us. The shit is going to hit the fan soon. Anyway I am an engineering manager, I have no influence on what marketing does”.
“Jesus Frank, I thought you said you could help”.
“I can if you stop staring at your naval and think the whole world hates you”.
“Now, what about getting your resume up to date and sending it around a few companies. Maybe register with a few agencies too but not the sort you have been using”.
“Yeah, I suppose so”.
“It just doesn’t seem fair that I get made redundant and that tosser George is still in job.”.
“Well he may not be for much longer”.
“There is another round of redundancies coming up and he is not making any friends at the moment. He seems to be going out of his way to get sacked”.
“Good. He can know how it feels”.
“Well, he is not like you, he doesn’t run his life on the red line. He owns his house outright, doesn’t have a car and seems quite comfortably off”.
“How the hell can he do that, he’s just an engineer”.
“I think his house is his mother’s. She died and he is an only son. Anyway not all engineers get paid lowly salaries. I keep telling you that he is a good engineer and he is at the top salary scale before he goes into management”.
“Maybe I should have been more abusive to the management and they would keep me on”.
“I don’t think the management like him Matt, but they can’t do without him and even they are not stupid enough to not realise that. But he is treading on thin ice. If they get a chance he will gone”.
“None of this is helping you though and I thought that is what you wanted to talk about”.
“Look why don’t you get rid of that Beamer of yours. It is costing you a fortune and you don’t need it. I bet the cost of the 6000 mile service is more than I paid for my car”.
“How am I supposed to get around without a car”.
“George manages it”.
“Can we stop talking about him all the time! I’m not George for Christ’s sake. I can’t imagine anyone who would want to be.”
“Well you could always change it for something else that isn’t costing you an arm and a leg”.
“How can I do that! I am still paying a loan on it”.
“You can transfer the loan to someone else and then go and buy a run-around”.
‘Actually I do have an uncle that always said he would take it off my hands for me. I thought he was joking but maybe he will. He likes BMWs, he used to have one of the old 3 litre CSIs; maybe I should contact him”.
“And contact your mortgage people, tell them what’s happened. Better that than just running late with the payments. And see if you can give back that home theatre system. They might not give you a full refund but maybe you can say something like your wife doesn’t like it or some such nonsense. Don’t they offer a money back guarantee if you bring it back within seven days or something? Where did you buy it”?
“Yeah, I guess they might”.
“Even if you get a job tomorrow these are probably good things to do. These are not good times to be in hoc to anyone. We are beginning to reap what we have sown”.
“What do mean”?
“Oh, it doesn’t matter. Just it seems that all that devil may care, look after number one attitude of the eighties might just be coming home to roost”.
“Well you do have to look after number one. No-one else does”.
“A little more altruism might just make the world a better place. Your selfishness in wanting everything now even though you can’t afford it just lines a few credit card companies wallets, but when people with real influence take that attitude it is bad for the country and bad for everyone. Most of the time it is not their money they are being selfish with. It is certainly not their lives”.
“Christ Frank, I never knew you were Communist like George”.
“It is not Communism Matt, it is fairness. It is an awareness there are actually other people on this planet and what you do may actually influence someone else’s life”.
No point in arguing thought Matt. I don’t feel like it anyway. Frank will always be downtrodden and he is naturally envious of those of us who can make it big. Just watch me Frank, in a couple of months I’ll be earning twice what you do.
“Anyway, if you want a personal reference you don’t need to ask. You know my address”.
“Yeah, thanks”.
Matt felt like his whole life had just been destroyed in front of his eyes, washed away by a giant tsunami. The only part of the meeting he remembered clearly was the allowing time for you to look for other opportunities. So he did although the only thing he thought to do was phone Frank. And that wasn’t an easy call to make. They had been friends a long time but each knew his place in the relationship and Matt’s was first position and Frank’s wasn’t.
“Don’t tell anyone will you”?
“Why would I”.
“Well I don’t want George making jokes at my expense”.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t…”.
“And don’t tell Hannah either”.
“Why…. Oh, OK, If you don’t want me to”.
That would be an end of any hope I had. Puts shit through car windows and is a loser to boot.
“Promise, Frank”.
“OK, I promise. If it matters so much to you”.
“It matters”.
A lot.
“I forgot to tell you, Hannah and I are moving in together”.
“What”!
Can this shitty day get any worse.
“But it’s only been a few weeks”.
“Months actually. And things just seem to working out. We fit together well and it doesn’t make sense for both of us to be paying for an apartment. She doesn’t get much salary anyway, I’m stuck in my place by myself all the time so I’m selling my apartment and that should give us enough money to buy her smaller place outright”.
“Oh, so you’re going to ask her to pay rent then”.
“No Matt, we’ll put it in both our names and we’ll both contribute”.
“But what if things go belly up”.
“Then we both get 50% of the apartment, but that isn’t likely to happen. We are not teenagers, we have both had long term relationships before; we know what we are getting into”.
“Are you getting married then”.
“Not yet, we’ll see how things go”.
“So you give her all your money but you don’t get married. And you call me irresponsible with money. Why don’t you get a pre-nuptial, protect yourself a bit”.
“It’s called trust Matt. Without that you haven’t got anything”.
“Besides, it’s not all my money, I still have savings in the bank and I’m not like you, I still have something left on my credit cards. I’m lonely Matt. She’s nice. She makes me laugh”.
“Nice! Don’t you need a little more than that to move in with someone”?
“You know what I mean. I’m comfortable with her”.
“Comfortable! Nice! Well I hope the sex is mind blowing. That would help make my mind up”.
Actually the sex is nice, thought Frank. Comfortable and nice.
“Well I hope it works out for you”.
No I don’t. But there is no going back now. Being shop soiled by someone you have never met is one thing. But having sex with a woman that you know has already had Frank’s penis inside her is something else, especially as Frank is better endowed than me. She might not say it but I know she’d be thinking it. Sod it. Why didn’t I say something on that first day before Frank had a chance to mention the dog turd incident.
“Don’t look so down Matt. There are plenty of jobs out there, just don’t set your sights too high to begin with”.
“Look, I’ve got to get to work. Our project is also late because marketing keep changing their mind over the features. They are insisting of adding something that George says is impossible but they think he is just refusing to do it. I must admit I am probably with George on this. Stephanie, who proposed it, isn’t an engineer and hasn’t been with the company more than a couple of months anyway”.
“The Stephanie”?
“I don’t know; do you know her, blonde girl, about twenty…”.
“Christ Frank. You don’t remember. You invited me to one of department get-togethers as you didn’t have anyone else to go with”.
Frank did remember. He didn’t want to go alone but he also didn’t want to let everyone think he and Matt were partners. It would put him out of the picture with Alice from Test who he had been making overtures to.
“She’s the one with the huge knockers isn’t she”.
“She is ample in that department, yes. But I don’t think she is qualified to make proposals like she has done but she seems to have everyone that matters in her pocket”.
“More like she been in their pockets”.
“Phew. George or Steph. What a difficult choice. I’m with your marketing people on this one. Are you sure you can’t get me a job in that department”.
“Anyway, I must go. Want to meet tonight after work. I’ll see if Hannah wants to come”.
“No!”
“Sorry”.
“I mean, please don’t bring Hannah, we won’t be able to chat about my predicament in front of her”.
“That might be tricky. She might see it as me going behind her back”.
“Just tell her you’re working late”.
“I told you Matt, trust is important, especially at the beginning of a relationship. I’ll call you”.
So that’s that then, thought Matt. The end of our relationship as it was. Frank has a new number one in his life.
Well at least he had one good idea. Matt downed the rest of his pint in one go and went to bar to order another beer and a whisky chaser.
This is not that Toilet Seat thing again, is it?
Folklore has it that when you marry slowly you will have those little charming foibles that you have, but your partner finds irritating, knocked off, or perhaps slowly removed with an ultra-fine P1500 grade sandpaper. If I had an independent observer available to me they would no doubt say I am probably unrecognisable from the arrogant turd I was before I met Ploy, now being little more than pompous, (whilst still a turd).
I can also see changes in Ploy; mostly she is now very much jai yen whereas when I met her she had the habit of garroting people that had annoyed her; she hardly ever does that now. But one thing has remained unchanged - Ploy never puts the lid back on anything properly or closes anything. The rubbish bin is left open so the kitchen smells like a rubbish dump when I am first to come down in the morning for my coffee, tops on fish sauce bottles remain open, lids on plastic containers are never sealed and even the fridge door can remain open sometimes after a market shopping expedition has filled it to overflowing. And the toilet seat is never closed even when the bowl is not entirely empty, (Ploy does not always flush if she deems her latest bowel movement is not worthy of using the water - bet you are glad to know that). In fact it is me that is always putting down the toilet seat.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned we had found mice in the kitchen. Armed with one of our heaviest pestles wrapped in a plastic bag we sent three of the blighters to mouse heaven but we always suspected one had got away. (As an aside, the Thai for mortar is pronounced kock, it always seems to me that should be the pestle). Well so it proved. After all the work on the house we decided to have our air conditioning cleaned and when the covers were removed from the unit in my workshop, next to kitchen, a blighter made a run for it. Once the men had left Ploy and I made an attempt to catch it but with no luck despite several sightings - crafty buggers they are. Well all went quiet for a week or so until the other morning.
To save Ploy being woken by my flushing the toilet, (which I do without consideration of the water usage), I use the downstairs toilet for my early morning ablution. But Ploy was obviously the last one to use it because the door was open and the toilet seat was up and there, in the bowl, staring up at me was a drowned mouse in its very best drowned rat pose. I poked it with the toilet brush and it was still alive but obviously had fell in there and was unable to get out. I will spare you the details but rest assured he has joined his family on that treadmill in the sky. But how am I ever to complain to Ploy again about leaving the toilet seat up.
Instead of a photo of a dead mouse I decided I will put a photo of these two love birds that roost in our tree that overhangs the new veranda.
One final note: we have bitten the bullet and decided to exhibit at the Broadcast Asia exhibition is Singapore, in June. We have six months to get everything together and I have just shipped our order to Canada so we can afford it and Singapore is close enough to not be a problem to get to. I hope it will kick start SingMai onto greater and bigger things in the latter half of 2011.
This is Chapter Ten of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
“George. Oh good. Sit down, won’t you?”
George sat down, crossed his legs, and opened his virgin notepad which he had got out of the stationary cupboard especially for this meeting.
“Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Butler have both asked me to talk to you George. Mr. Butler is particularly concerned about your, um, attitude at work, and feels that you may have some personal issues. That is why he thought it was better I talk to you in confidence. I would also like to talk to you about your outburst at the company meeting.”
They thought it would be better I talk to a complete stranger than managers I have known for three years?”
“I think that type of response may be what they are referring to.”
Damn, thought George. He had rehearsed this meeting over and over again. He had decided measured and aloof was the best approach.
“I thought we would start by looking at one recent incident. Mr. Butler told me you stormed out of a planning meeting, which reflected badly on the competency of his team in front of some important managers. Why did you do that George?”
“Isn’t that an oxymoron”?
“Sorry”?
“Anyway, I didn’t storm.”
“Sorry?”
“I didn’t storm out. I collected my papers and I walked out. I didn’t slam the door, I didn’t throw anything. I left the meeting. I may have called a couple of the managers fucking morons, I forget now, but if I did it was just a statement of fact.”
“O.K. Why did you leave the meeting George?”
So he accepts they are fucking morons and the issue is me leaving the meeting. Now we are getting somewhere.
George sighed loudly.
“The meeting was to decide if we were to incorporate a certain feature in our products. I was the one who had proposed the feature. After thirty minutes of trying to explain, I was told the decision had already been made to drop the feature, and instead, to add another idea who that stupid cow from marketing with the huge tits, Stephanie her name is, had proposed. I pointed out that I had already considered her idea and it would not work, would not make the product better, would cost too much and would make the product late because we would have to rewrite the laws of physics as they stand at the moment and that takes time: I had already sent them a detailed report with my conclusions. I was told I was being unhelpful, so I decided to be unhelpful somewhere else.”
George was becoming breathless and he could feel his heart pumping rapidly. He told himself to remain calm and not to lose his cool. Aloof and measured, George.
“Those comments about Ms. Macarthur could get you in a lot of trouble, George”.
“Oh Jesus. She’s not blowing you as well is she? Am I the only one in this company who has not her lips around their todger. You had better take care with Mr Jenkins, you could kill him. He’s not as young as he once was”.
“George, these comments of yours can be construed as sexual harassment and can lead to instant dismissal”.
“It’s like the Stepford wives here. What do I have to do to join or is that what this meeting is for. Are you going to initiate me”?
“I think it is best if we try and keep on track George. I will pretend those comments were never said”.
“Now to return to that meeting, you should not take these things so personally; it is unprofessional. I am sure they had a good reason for making the decision.”
“That is unlikely. You are attributing commonsense and intelligence to them, and that is unwarranted and unjustifiable. I thought we had both agreed they were morons”
“They are senior members of the company and are due your respect!”
“Respect! They did not choose to be what they are. They are like dustbin men, they are doing it because there is nothing else they can do, and because they have no wish to actually perform a useful function like collect rubbish. They have a genetic aversion to hard work so they become managers or work in marketing.”
“I think you should be careful you do not step over the line. Some people could deem what you have said as offensive. Do you seriously think a company can run without managers George?”
“I seriously think a company can run better with less managers.”
“That is a rather ridiculous thing to say, don’t you think George? Do you think that Microsoft, or IBM, or ICI run without managers?”
“Of course they have managers. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t run better with less of them. This company has more managers than engineers. If we were a management consultancy that might be fine, but as we design and manufacture things that seems a luxury. It’s like having a brothel that has more madams than whores. What do managers do other than attend meetings with other managers and send pointless e-mails? What do they contribute to the running of the company other than absorbing its resources.”
“They manage the day to day running of the company George. Without them the company would soon be in chaos.”
“You mean it isn’t? I guess you are working on the premise that given a million monkeys and a million typewriters they will eventually come up with Macbeth; that is why you keep recruiting them, rather than more engineers who are working fourteen hour days, six days a week to bail the company out of the mess we are in.”
George was on a roll.
“Are you saying I can’t do my job unless I have a manager, or better, more than one? I am capable of solving relatively complex engineering issues, but I am not capable of organising my day to day schedule. You should know I can wipe my own arse and I seem to be able to do that without a manager.”
George could see the HR cretin was getting a little flustered and he found it difficult to not smile. This is not in your 'How to be a HR Manager' book is it?
“What do you call it. Matrix management. I know it is fun for me trading off two managers but do you not think having two managers to one engineer is a tad excessive. I have to explain the same thing to each of them as they don’t talk to each other so that wastes my time twice. Neither understands it anyway. Mr. Jenkins has dementia and Frank is confused like a teenager who isn’t sure if he is gay or not. He can’t decide if he is manager or an engineer. He has too much of a semblance of a brain to be a manager but being a manager for three years has killed the part of brain that reasons so there really is not way back for him. Poor soul is stuck between a rock and a hard place”.
“You are just being stupid now George.”
“I hear that a lot. It is usually said to me by people with little intelligence and no imagination. I did check my qualifications and experience and I am reasonably certain it isn’t me that is stupid.”
George was warming up.
“How did they get to be managers? Most of them are raw graduates with a nonsensical degree and with no experience of real life. If they want respect from me, perhaps they should first respect my training and knowledge instead of disparaging it in front of everyone, and making proposals that a five year old child would think stupid.”
“This conversation is going nowhere George. I hoped we might be able to resolve some of your issues today, but I can only help you if you are willing to be helped.”
“My only issue is why you and others think that a twenty something bimbo with big tits is able to rewrite the laws of physics. I spent a lot of time working on something that could potentially give us a unique feature, that could lead to increased revenue and the feature is dismissed because certain marketing and management people feel if she gets upset it means an end to their titty fucks of an afternoon”.
“Your behaviour is totally inappropriate, George. I would normally suggest that meet on a weekly basis but I feel that this problem of yours requires professional help”.
“I think you’ll find it difficult to find a professional in this company anymore. Once perhaps in the dim distant past but certainly not now. You also might like to consider that perhaps the problem is not my problem, but your problem. Surely your boys book of HR told you to find the root cause of the problem, to address the problem not the employee or haven’t you read that bit yet. The problem is quite clear, the management and marketing personnel in this company are imbeciles. Take them all out to the car park and shoot them. You will find an immediate improvement in my attitude and if you let the engineers do the shooting you will see a huge increase in the company morale. The Employee Engagement Survey results will go through the roof and you will be able to take credit for that. However to maintain those figures you will have to employ another group of morons just prior to the next survey and so that boredom doesn’t set in be a little more imaginative in the mechanism used for the next cull. Perhaps you could let the engineers devise some equipment, a good project for a Friday afternoon. Anyway, enough ideas from me, I’ll let you think on it. I feel better already. Thank-you”.
George closed his still unused notebook and started to get out his chair.
“I will have to report our conversation to Mr Jenkins and Mr Presley.”
George recognised the thinly veiled threat.
“I very much doubt that Mr Presley even knows who I am. You had better take a photo of me so he can recognise me in the corridor and whip me within an inch of my life”.
As George left the office, quietly closing the door, he smiled at the blue embossed sign. Mr. Gerry Misanthrope, HR Manager.
This is Chapter Nine of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
George slowly ran his finger over the photograph.
Is this all he had left of seven years together? One frozen millisecond.
Kim smiled back at him from the entrance to their bright yellow tent, her eyes squinting in the bright Cornish sun. George remembered the warmth of that day on his back but when he looked at the image he felt only a cold ache.
George closed his eyes, trying to imagine himself into her arms, feel their security, feel her warm breath, lay his head on her breast and be rocked by her gentle breathing. But there was nothing, He screwed up his eyes but still, nothing. He was empty; there was nothing of her inside him, no remnant of their time together.
There was radiance to her, like an angel in a restored Giotto fresco. He had never known such happiness as those two weeks in Cornwall. Sitting in the evening listening to the play on the radio, drinking beer and wine and eating their way through the piles of pate, meats and cheeses they had bought in Truro.
Walking from the Lizard point to Cadgwith along the cliff top walk and eating the fresh crab sandwiches for their lunch.
Their steak dinner at Malpass watching the herons fly to and from their nest.
Sitting on the beach at St. Agnes eating ice-creams, watching the children play in the sand and planning their life together.
Yes, this was where they would buy their cottage. Maybe run a small B&B. Buy a small boat and cruise down to Spain for week long breaks. George didn’t know how to pilot a boat and neither did Kim but anything was possible together. Hell, they would probably build their own boat.
They had met at college. He had watched for afar for months, watched the rest of the male students circle her like bees around a honey pot. She was clever without being arrogant. She laughed a lot. And she had an untouchable innocence about her. And then one day they had been grouped together in the lab. He had never felt so nervous, so unsure of his abilities as he wanted everything to be perfect. He had touched her hand by mistake and felt his heart leap. Seconds became minutes in his mind before he looked up and saw her smiling at him and he quickly withdrew his hand. But that touch, that frisson of excitement was the start of their love. And it stayed with them. They held hands everywhere they went together and each time he took her tiny hand into his he felt that same excitement. He wanted to squeeze it and squeeze it until it became part of him.
From that moment George became unburdened. Every worry and tribulation in his life just disappeared. He felt he could scale Olympus Mons wearing a T-shirt and flip flops and carrying a small hippo on his back. Nothing was impossible anymore. He was Peter Pan but without the Lost Boys innuendo.
Why hadn’t he taken more photographs of her? Why hadn’t someone told him what was going to happen? Why was there no sign? He would have done everything so differently.
She would have loved New York. He was so close to buying those tickets. It would have crippled them, “we can’t afford it George, wait a little while.” Now look. He should have just bought them; they should have just gone. Maybe things would have been different if they had just gone.
There were no photos of their wedding either. That was his fault too.
“Let’s get married.”
“What!”
“Now, let’s get married now.” It took three weeks for the formalities and for Kim to think who to call to be a witness. George couldn’t think of anybody. George didn’t have anybody. A man at the Register Office became their witness; he couldn’t remember his name now. Kim asked a girlfriend called Penny that he had never seen again. And he forgot to bring a camera. It didn’t matter then; it was only about the two of them. Now it was just him and he needed the memories.
That night they went to their favourite restaurant. They had forgotten to book and they had to wait for a table. By the time the first food touched their lips they had already drunk a bottle of wine. They were the last to leave that night. It took forty minutes for what was normally a ten minute walk as they staggered their way home stopping to kiss in every shop doorway.
His mother disliked Kim from the beginning. “She’s a tramp George, ask anyone from the newsagents. She’ll be no good for you. I just want what is best for you, you know that, love”
George didn’t say anything. He didn’t tell his mother they had married until he announced he was moving out to live with ‘that tramp’. As he filled the cardboard boxes with his things he could feel is mother staring at him from the bottom of the stairs. Serve her right. George’s mother never saw Kim again.
Kim was wearing his favourite green shirt. It did make her look a little tomboyish, but he loved that shirt, he loved her wearing that shirt. She was waving at the pilot of the hovercraft. She so liked the hovercraft. Every time they went walking along the seafront they had to visit the hovercraft.
“Look another one’s coming Georgie, let’s just wait until this one comes.” George wrapped his arms around her whilst Kim stood being pebble dashed by the shingle. She then turned to him him, wind swept, saturated and happy. And her happiness washed over George in waves, soothing, comforting and exciting.
He remembered the birthday. They must have been the only ones there that night. Kim had organized everything, pre-ordered his favourites even though they weren’t on the menu and even had a cake made. They had both got a little drunk, that fun, exhilarating tipsiness that alcohol can bring when it is drunk with laughter. That was just over seven years ago now, one month later she would visit the doctor with what they thought was little more than stomach cramps.
At first they didn’t believe it. Ovarian epithelial carcinoma the doctor said. George had heard it enough times to remember the name. He had read about it on the Internet. Read about it in books. Advanced stage III. Already spread to other organs. He knew the prognosis. In the beginning there was hope. She was young. She was strong. She had a little pain but could it really be as bad as the doctors said. She had George and they would fight it together.
Three months later Kim told George she loved him. She told him every day but this time there was finality to it, an intended permanence as if she knew he might not hear those words again.
“I can’t fight it any more Georgie”.
George couldn’t fight it by himself. She was the strong one. Without her he didn’t have the strength. George desperately looked for something else. He pleaded with the consultant. But what about radiotherapy? What about this Gerson diet? George already knew the answer. He was an engineer. He knew that the Gerson diet was akin to hanging a furry dice off your record player to improve the sound. It was all nonsense and he knew it but there had to be something. If those bloody governments would stop fighting stupid wars in the name of democracy and use the money to fight disease there might already be a cure. She might be with me now. We might now be on that boat to Spain or in that tent in Cornwall or sipping Margaritas in a bar in New York. We could still be together. We should still be together.
It is the finality of it all that hurt George so much. Those deluded idiots that believe in some Bill Frindall like bearded wonder do not feel the loss as I do. They have this belief that they will all meet up again dressed in their Sunday best, presumably younger and free from any ailments they may have had in mortality. They don’t feel the loss because this is just a staging post on the way to the idyll of the destination. It is so disappointing we don’t have the opportunity to bring these people back from the dead just to shout ‘Wrong!’ and ‘I told you so’ in their ears and laugh at them before finally putting them out for good. As scientists try and expand our view of the universe so religion tries to contract it. All that matters is He is out there somewhere, you don’t need to know where. Replace reason with faith and should your faith start to wane or common sense start to prevail we have a numbers or measures to ensure you stay in line or at least create enough apprehension that you won’t step out of line. Why do so many that don’t pray or attend church say they are Church of England or say they believe in a sky fairy? Why don’t they say, I don’t know, which is accurate if not exactly committed. Because once you step out of the closed society of religious idiots you are own your own. Rather than atheist I have always preferred free thinker as a term. Because that is what we do, uncluttered thinking, unbounded by a dogma that was forced on us by our parents or school. And that is why it hurts so much when a person we love dies because we are bare and naked to the world without a false faith to enshroud us and comfort us. We have nothing to turn to for consolation, no expectancy of tea parties on a fluffy white cloud with a group of relatives you went to enormous lengths to avoid when they were alive. It is a raw hurt for which there is no soothing balm.
“I love you too Kim, and I always will”.
The photographs, the memories, they were cold, empty fragments of a life he did not recognize; days without sunshine, sunshine without warmth. He knew what it should feel like, but no matter how hard he tried it remained outside his grasp.
Those last weeks, those last days, had drained him, literally. Everything soft, everything gentle, everything she was, that she had given him, died when she died. He was a dry shell, an empty seed pod waiting for something to grow inside.
And something was growing inside him. George felt it. Whatever it was, it was hard, unyielding. It didn’t nourish him or cherish him, it was just there. A black malignant lump, like her cancer. Growing. Growing.
He was 12 year old Frank ‘Tubby’ Perkins by day but by night he became Samurai Franky Oda Miyake fighting evil doers with his kendo parasol.
or
Ashley Miyake hated the martial arts school and he had little success in the battles using his pink parasol or his feather tickling stick.
This is Chapter Eight of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
“Are you sure you can afford this, Frank. It is the third time in just a couple of weeks”.
Well, what else was he to do with the money he earned. Apartment almost paid for, reasonably good job, now all he needed was someone to take care of him. A pretty good use of his salary in his opinion. And after the last meal they had had sex and he thought that had gone quite well. He remembered all the things that Bridget had liked and found that Hannah seemed to like them too. Except he had got a little carried away and bit her nipple quite hard which had stopped the momentum for a little while. And she had been very good about it even though it had drawn a little blood which Frank could taste in his mouth.
“Sure. I like it here and the service is really good”.
Well better than in the Barley Mow which was his regular choice of dinner engagement. Here they didn’t give you a numbered wooden spoon to put on your table. This was high class and with George’s help he knew what most of things on the menu were now, not that he ever ordered anything different. Prawn cocktail, fillet steak followed by cheesecake. But to prove he wasn’t boring today he had allowed Hannah to order Lyonnaise potatoes instead of his favoured French fries to go with his steak.
“You’re staring Frank”, said Hannah. Normally she wouldn’t mind but Frank wasn’t George Clooney and there was something creepy about this stare she didn’t like.
“Oh, sorry. Daydreaming”.
“When you have such a beautiful girl to entertain. It must be a good dream”.
Frank flushed unnecessarily.
“Just a joke Frank”.
The prawn cocktail arrived but today there was an especially large whole specimen hanging off the side of the goblet. How Frank hated change. Especially if that change meant he had to deal with a large unpeeled prawn. The very reason he ordered the prawn cocktail and not the garlic prawns was because the prawns were hidden from view; a prawn dish for those who don’t like prawns but do like mayonnaise and tomato ketchup. This one wasn’t hidden, it was being completely brazen in its substantial nakedness.
Frank used his fork to tip the prawn off the goblet and onto the plate. Hannah, meanwhile, had allowed the waiter to pour a little more white wine and she was holding her glass waiting for Frank to acknowledge it with his own glass.
Frank, who was still eyeing his unwanted prawn reacted suddenly to Hannah’s gesture and in his haste rather too vigorously clinked his glass against hers causing her glass to crack.
“Oh sorry. Um…”.
Hannah calmly called over the waiter who brought another glass.
“I will take this away in case there is some glass in your wine, Madam”.
Hannah acknowledged him with a smile which Frank found a little over-friendly for his liking. He was surprised he minded.
Frank fished suspiciously around in his prawn cocktail in case the chef had taken it upon himself to do instigate any other changes whilst Hannah took her spoon to her crab thermidor.
“This is delicious, Frank. Try some”.
“What is it”?
“Crab thermidor. Crab in a Béchamel – butter, flour and milk – sauce with potato and there is some herb in here I can’t quite get”.
“It’s fine thanks, I have my prawn cocktail”.
Frank watched Hannah finish her starter. Only on two occasions did her attention wander from her plate when she took slurps of her wine. Not once did her attention wander to Frank. No exceptions. Did she like him? Well they did have sex and she didn’t exactly fight him off. But then maybe that is what happens these days, it is years since I last dated. It took weeks and considerable persuasion and expense to get Bridget into bed. And that had proved to be somewhat of a disappointment as neither really had much idea what to do. Watching those pornographic videos in preparation had given Frank lots of ideas that his body really wasn’t really up to performing and his mind didn’t have the appetite for. His first attempt at cunnilingus was stopped in its tracks by Bridget who anticipating the move grabbed his head and gave a firm, “I don’t like that”, for which Frank was somewhat relieved. Frank had always found the clitoris tricky to find in daylight under medical examination, for him to find it with his tongue in the dark was only adding to the difficulty. With previous girlfriends – not that there had been many – he had just let his tongue flop around for a while, akin to a Dalmatian licking a Cornetto, in the faint hope of finding something before his arm had gone to sleep, or his girlfriend had gone to sleep, whichever was the sooner. He had wondered why, given all he had read, Bridget hadn’t even wanted him to explore, but he was happy enough to spend more time on the left nipple as he could find that without a torch.
The waiter came to collect their plates.
“Are you finished, sir”?
“Yes, I’m just not that hungry. Thanks”.
“If you’re not hungry why did you want to eat here, Frank, it’s so expensive”.
Because I want to get in your pants again.
“Because you like it”.
The explanation held no sway with Hannah. She would rather eat alone than eat with someone who was clearly not enjoying their food. It was like eating with vegetarians who always disapprovingly pick at their food as if you had deliberately slipped some goose liver in underneath their aubergine bake. Actually Hannah had never met a vegetarian that enjoyed life, let alone their food. Food nourishes the soul, she thought. These people have no souls to nurture. Now she had picked another one with no soul and to make it worse he let good food go to waste.
Hannah’s lemon sole arrived as did Frank’s steak. Is he always going to order steak wherever we go. Stop it, she scalded herself. He is nice enough and setting your standards too high has got you where you are now, with no friends and no lovers. He can change and with practice the sex might actually become mildly interesting. Maybe it was her fault anyway. She hadn’t really been in the mood but didn’t have the patience to make coffee and sex meant she didn’t have to make conversation. And after the last disaster – never again will she go with ‘dangerous’ as a species of boyfriend – Frank was safe and nice. And this restaurant is nice.
“How’s your steak”?
“Good. They do a good steak here”.
“What were you saying about George”?
“When”?
“In the car coming here. You said he had some problem at work but then that idiot on the motorcycle cut us up and you didn’t finish what you were saying, to me at least”.
“Oh. It actually happened a couple of weeks ago. George decided to take on our CEO at a company meeting and basically told him he didn’t know what he was doing”.
“And does he”?
“Does he what”?
“Know what he is doing”.
“That’s not the point”, said Frank whilst picking through his Lyonnaise potatoes.
“What are these bits”?
“They are onions Frank”.
“You don’t tell the CEO he isn’t doing his job right in front of the whole department. Or anywhere for that matter”.
“So what happened”.
“Well I am not directly involved as I’m not his immediate manager but he was given a talking to by HR and I think he was given an official warning”.
“But you can’t do that. Was he rude”?
“Actually no. He just questioned some redundancies that are going to happen soon when we are actually still making profit”.
“That seems reasonable to me”.
It was. Frank knew that.
“It is only going to be 25 or so from the development and test engineers, out of about 190”.
“Only”!
“You know what I mean, 10% or so. It could’ve been much worse”.
“Why don’t they get rid of some managers, I bet they earn five times what the engineers earn so you would only need to get rid of five of them. Or maybe half a CEO”.
“You and George should marry”.
We should. Trouble was Hannah didn’t fancy George as much as she fancied Matthew but she did like George. But Matthew and George didn’t have Frank’s stability and she felt she needed that in her life at this moment. What a shame there is no Pick-n-Mix on offer. Frank’s stability and choice of restaurant, George’s peculiarities and humour and Matt’s face. She smiled to herself. I guess I’ll to try them all out to choose whose dick I want.
“Don’t you see the injustice yourself”?
“Of course, but don’t forget I am one of those managers you want to cull. That would be an end to evenings like this”.
Good, thought Hannah, immediately feeling guilty for thinking so.
Good, thought Frank. Steak and Guinness pie at the Barlow Mow with real chips.
Frank beckoned the waiter.
“Can I have a side order of chips please”
“We do have rosemary scented French fries”.
“No chips? OK, I’ll try them”.
“Sorry”, Frank said to Hannah.
“You order what you want to”.
Frank picked at his steak not wanting to finish it before the chips arrived.
“How is your job”?
“It’s OK. We are just finishing a new product launch presentation. We have to present it to management first and then we release it to the press if we get the approval. It might mean a bit of travel which might be nice”.
“Not if your company is the same as ours. Because we are supposed to save money anyone that wants to travel is lucky if he can get upgraded to economy class Aeroflot. I think they choose the airlines based on who has the worst safety record because they can get refunds for the unused return leg”.
“It can’t be that bad, can it Frank”.
“Oh, it’s bad all right. They sent George to a conference in the US and he was supposed to transit 2 times, once with a 13 hour stopover and once with a 5 hour stopover. The total travel time was 27 hours door to door for a direct flight time of 8 hours. He booked and paid for his own flights”.
“What did the company do”.
“Nothing, they didn’t care, it saved them money although in hindsight I’m surprised they didn’t try and get him to use his holiday days as I guess as he wasn’t flying on business anymore, not strictly anyway, he was flying on his own time. I should mention that tomorrow”.
“I don’t think I would. George is a little sensitive over these things”.
“Oh, you’ve noticed have you”.
“I can’t say I blame him. He seems a good engineer – you say he is a very good engineer – but then you treat him like cattle”.
“I don’t treat him like cattle, the company does”.
“But why don’t you complain. If you all complained maybe something would get done”.
“No it wouldn’t. Well, if anything was done it would be me finding myself another job”.
“They can’t just sack people anymore, Frank”.
“No maybe not. But they do close down departments”.
“But then they don’t get new products and they don’t make the profit they so eagerly need and want”.
“You’re young and idealistic. Big companies like Hunter don’t notice a small department being lost. They close down whole country sales departments and then just farm the work out to some agent. There is enough inertia to ensure that things carry on and managers are not in it for the long haul. They will go into some semi-retirement post when they are 40-something and they will have enough share options and alternate business interests to keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed for life. If Hunter did nothing for twenty years it would probably still make money because of patents and licenses and stuff that only need a fresh coat of paint and new advertising campaign to keep it going for ages. There is not much new under the sun you know. Most of the products in the consumer market are revamping old ideas in shiny new plastic boxes. We are lucky that the customer is becoming so vacuous I think we could actually go around his house, steal his TV and sell it back to him as new the next day”.
“So why do you fight George so much when you believe the same things as him”.
“Because he thinks you can change things and I don’t. If you start to believe what you do is important or let something like principals get the way of your work you will quickly find yourself sidelined or worse. Go with the flow”.
“Isn’t that a waste of your life”.
“What do you suggest I do? There are 66,000 employees in Hunter…”
“Minus the twenty or thirty losing their jobs soon”.
“66,000 employees in 45 countries. I am just a lowly manager. I don’t think I could even get my immediate manager to listen, he is one of the young fast track MBA crowd they like to employ now. He’ll be gone in a couple of years, higher position, capable of causing more damage, sliming his way up the management pole”.
“And you, why don’t you follow Frank”.
“I can’t bring myself to do it. Actually I would like to get back into engineering but that’s seen as a retrograde step of huge proportions. I could leave and try and find another job but I have been out of it for a while now and anyway companies can employ five graduates for my salary. I know, we do it too. Quantity not quality”.
“Maybe we should do something together, you, me and George”.
“Ha Ha. Maybe”.
“Do you want dessert”?
“I had my eye on the crème caramel, they make it here. Are you having something”.
“No, the extra chips have filled me up”.
“Let’s go then”.
Frank and Hannah had sex again that night during which Frank bit Hannah’s other nipple.
This is Chapter Seven of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
“Thank you George”.
“I called you all here today because I feel that George’s idea could be a major feature of our new product range for next year and beyond but we need to get all parties in agreement because we need to engage with the external suppliers immediately if we are to realise it in time”.
This was Frank at his best. He knew how to play the games of the management – he was after all one of them – and he knew what marketing wanted to hear. He just had to get both of them to think it was their idea and we would get the go-ahead.
“I think George’s presentation was very thorough and I think we should give serious consideration to incorporating the feature. I don’t see we have anything to lose”.
That was the easy one, thought Frank. Mr. Benson has a soft spot for George.
“We have $350,000 to lose. I think that is what the figure is for the NRE”.
“Yes, but amortised over 2.4 million units and including the bill of materials cost saving we actually save money and we get a new feature that we know our competitors will not have. George can you bring back up the slide that shows the savings year on year”.
“Well we all know what can be done figures. I think we all do it”. The suit laughed knowingly.
You may do it, you hairy wart, but some of try to do as much research as possible to ensure the figures are as accurate as possible instead of pulling numbers out of our arse.
“Do we know if this company can deliver what they say they can”.
“Charles has already been to visit them and he has almost completed a full audit on them. They are well established with good funding so we are not expecting any nasty surprises”.
“Do we have to use this company? Aren’t there alternatives or why can’t we do this ourselves”?
Fuck. Here we go, thought George. Know any other companies with expertise in Class K amplification do we, you tosser, or do you have a hidden skill other than your ability to hold a responsible position in an electronics company without having a clue how your desk lamp works. They have all the patents on it. We might have been able to do something ourselves but we just sacked 37 development engineers but left imbeciles like you in work. Look at him. He hasn’t even waited to listen for the answer, he is back tapping away on his laptop. George felt an almost uncontrollable compunction to reach across the table and punch him the face. George felt his breathing increase as his pictured himself smashing his fist in that face, again and again. That would give Barry something to write in his notebook. And HR would have another reason to send me on another anger management course where I could learn to identify what triggers my anger. Well Mr. Miller, what exactly is it that you find causes you to get angry. There are so many things in today’s world but one particular hate is people who run nonsensical courses and charge exorbitant sums of money for them. And with that I repeatedly punch him the face to the applause of the other participants. Why do the people that run these courses not have plasters all over them anyway, or their arms in a sling or bloodstained shirts. How can they be so immaculate. You don’t see surgeons leaving surgery wearing pristine white gowns do you. Clearly they haven’t leant to press the right buttons.
“This will leave us open to exploitation by this company if we don’t find a second source”.
They have all the patents you screaming bender. You can’t have a second source as I explained in the presentation. Oh, but you were grinning away at your Blackberry weren’t you so you didn’t listen but even then the chances of your neurones communicating is remote given the distance between each one. Inconceivable I know, but just maybe this company retain some vestige of ethics and we can actually have a professional long term relationship. They have more to fear from us than we have of them.
“Personally I am concerned that we already seem to have spent some money on this proposal without getting approval for the feature from marketing. How much time has Charles spent on this”?
“Where is Charles anyway”?
“He is still in Korea completing his audit”.
“It seems to me that engineering seem to dictating the features in next year’s products and not marketing”.
I hope that was joke, thought George, but he knew it wasn’t.
“The reason we propose the features and research them to test their credentials is that if we left it to you we would have an MP3 player made of asbestos, the size of bus that was radioactive with a remote extension arm that fondled young children and cost $640,000”.
“Is it possible to get a remote arm into our higher end product, I think that is a feature our customers…”. Victor Baggins was new to the marketing department but not so new that George hadn’t already identified him as a particularly pliable and impressionable idiot. Thank God for ambition.
“I think George was being facetious”.
“I still think we could consider…”.
“Let’s keep this meeting focussed on this proposal today. We must try and make a decision as Frank has said”.
“I’ll look into that feature for you just as soon as this meeting is finished”, said George in confidence. “Is there a particular age of child you wish to molest so I get the size of the grab hand correct”.
Victor tapped something into his Blackberry. Please, thought George, please send me an e-mail requesting that.
“Is this the only new feature we have for next year’s product line up”.
“Frank”?
“Yes it is. We haven’t had time to thoroughly research some other proposals George has made because we were asked to look at whether we could add a heart defibrillator to our home theatre products and that has taken up all our time”.
“Who asked if you could do that”?
“You did”.
George had actually liked that idea and had supported it at meetings. He had hoped that the product trials would slowly cull the entire marketing department if he got the design just right. Indeed if it went to market it could actually bring down the whole company with litigation suites.
“What happened to Stephanie’s proposal”?
You are taking the piss now aren’t you. Pouty lipped Stephanie who was employed more for her tits than her freshly minted MBA felt she had to ‘make an immediate impact’. So she proposes something that an unborn sloth would think preposterous but the whole marketing group endorse, mostly because any faint chance they have of realising its stupidity is lost when the blood drains from their vacant heads to feed their lazy lobs.
“I think we should consider Stephanie’s proposal at the same time as, um… the other proposal”.
“George has already considered Stephanie’s proposal and he does not consider it feasible or cost effective”.
“I think we should get Stephanie in here”.
“Good idea, I’ll get her”.
Frank looked at George. George just shook his head slowly. What is the fucking point. This idiot proposal suggests something that breaks the fundamental laws of physics. Those things take longer to implement and tend to be costly if you have to build your own CERN cyclotron or launch satellites into deep space because you need a gravity free environment. And you are quibbling over $350,000.
I should leave. I am not going to be able to control myself so it is better to just leave now. I could pretend to go to the loo but then I would have to leave my laptop behind. Although George knew for a fact of least of two employees who did take their laptops into the cubicles. George unplugged the projector from his computer.
“Don’t do that George, we may want to look at some of your slides again”. Mr. Jenkins nodded at George and gave him a reassuring nod of his head.
Poor old soul, he doesn’t realise there is no hope here. How does he manage to still live in the company of forty years ago. Has he invented some sort of protective bubble that filters out all the daily bullshit or is it Alzheimer’s? Does he actually know where he is or are we just hours away from when he calls everyone Betty and forgets to wear trousers.
I don’t have the tits to win this argument and neither does he. I could get Chi in here. He is well endowed with man boobs and if the rumours are true he can give a good blow job too. George was just thinking of trying to find Chi when Stephanie flounced into the room.
“I didn’t really have time to prepare a proper presentation”.
“That’s alright my dear, just show us what you’ve got”.
Shit. I swear he winked at her after his attempt at Carry On innuendo. Even Chi would be out-gunned here.
“George, can you give Stephanie the lead”.
“I don’t really know all the technical terms, I leave that to our boffins”, she nodded at George who scowled back, “but I did find this on Google which I think vindicates my idea”.
“I can buy a perpetual motion machine on Google too”.
George nodded at Victor and Victor responded by tapping furiously into his BlackBerry. Another e-mail to look forward to later.
“I think what George is trying to say he has already considered the technical aspects of Stephanie’s proposal and he does not feel that we able to implement it at this time”.
Stephanie continued undeterred.
“So to summarise, I think we can use the wireless communication to the rear channels to transmit power at the same time so the client does not need to find a separate power source. I have done some market intelligence and I don’t find that feature planned in any of our competitors”.
Surely that is an oxymoron, thought George. Chi, get your knockers out, at least it will divert their attention for a while.
“George! George, were you paying attention”?
George punctured his vision of Chi slavering over the marketing director’s dick.
“Do you have any comments”.
“Do you know how much power would be required to be transmitted to the rear channels for even a modest 5W output”?
Stephanie giggled. World peace anyone, thought George.
“I leave those details to you technical boffins”.
“Well it is not so much a detail as an impossibility”.
“George, I don’t think you can have had time to go through the technical details yet”.
George could feel his heart pumping faster again and he knew what was coming.
“You would fry everyone in the room. Make a fucking marketing feature out of that”!
“George, Stephanie is new here; you can’t expect her to know every technical detail of our products yet. That is why we employ you”.
“Then when I tell you it is not possible why, given that is why you employ me, do you keep on insisting on this fucking stupid idea”.
“George, there is no need for such language or such a disparaging attitude. Stephanie’s idea is just worthy of consideration as yours”.
“No it isn’t. I have worked in electronics for sixteen years and I am considered to be competent in my field. In your inflated bullshit marketing language that is equivalent to me being a fucking genius. She is a bimbo who thinks there is small person inside her GPS unit giving her instructions and who probably leaves some food on her car dashboard so the midget doesn’t starve. I have written a detailed report – and believe me it didn’t warrant it – explaining exactly why the idea is complete unadulterated rubbish. I even drew some pictures, in colour, and tried not to use any word greater than two syllables. If you don’t wish to use my idea, that is fine but please don’t denigrate me by suggesting alternative ideas that rate with homeopathy and astrology in the ‘I am completely crazy stakes’”.
“If you want to shag her, just shag her. Don’t torture me as well by making me consider her so-called ideas. Why don’t you start employing some gays into marketing so at least Frank’s cock can compete with her fanny. That way we would stand a chance as Frank doesn’t use his cock but I am sure Stephanie’s vulva flaps open like a turnstile at the Stretford end of Manchester united football club. Fucking morons, all of you”.
George closed his laptop, picked up his pen and notebook and left the room, aware that all eyes were following him.
I’ve blown it, thought George, I’ve gone too far this time.
George switched off his desk lamp, put on his jacket and slowly walked down the corridor between the cubicles. George turned and waved to no-one in particular. George is leaving the building.
This is Chapter Six of my NanoWriMo novel, George and the Rabbit.
“Why is he always hanging around”?
“We don’t seem to be able to go anywhere without him always appearing, whinging on about something or other”.
“I rather like him. He has some quirky views but he’s quite funny sometimes”.
“And he is one hell of an engineer”.
“Quirky to some is downright peculiar to others. Are you sure he is all there”.
“He can be a little provocative sometimes; he keeps having run-ins with our management and especially with marketing. He is lucky in having an old-school manager in charge of him otherwise he might not have a job by now”.
“He wouldn’t be tolerated in my company. I don’t care how good he is. People have to work as a team else nothing gets achieved”.
“Well, I don’t totally agree with that, but first I need another beer. Your round I think”.
Frank pushed his empty glass towards Matthew who obligingly went to the bar for a refill.
Frank stared out of the window and watched the ferry play chicken by crossing the harbour in front of the large naval vessels.
“I’m taking Hannah out tonight”, said Frank to Matt who had returned with two pints. Henry looked inquisitively up at Matt but slumped his head back down on his front paws with a long sigh once he saw that he had brought no offerings.
“Where are you taking her”?
“I wasn’t sure; I wanted it to be a bit special. Nothing is really happening to be honest, we are drifting without ever having actually getting the sail up”.
“Is that a euphemism”, Matt retorted in rare moment of humour.
“Ha ha. No it wasn’t meant to be. I just mean that it doesn’t feel that we are going anywhere, we are just going through the motions”.
Then give her to me, thought Matt.
“Don’t you fancy her then. I think she is quite something”.
Matt blushed as he felt he had put a little too much emotion into that last statement.
“I don’t really know. I do fancy her, she is very pretty and I must admit I am a bit lonely coming home to that empty flat everyday. I am not interested in any of the girls at work – most are married anyway – and I don’t meet any other females. Ever since Bridget left I have become a bit of hermit”.
“That was four years ago Frank. Your prick will just shrivel up and drop off if you don’t start using it soon”.
Four years; has it really been that long. Four more years and I will be forty. I wish I could find the energy to do something with my life.
“There is a new restaurant opened next to the Laundromat in Percy Road. Thyme I think it is called. Bit pretentious for me but Hannah might like it, judging by her party she is a bit of foodie”.
“I’ll have a look at the menu. I might have to book I suppose if it is newly opened”.
Frank didn’t really enjoy food. Even less he didn’t enjoy paying for food that, to him, tasted the same as Mark and Spencer’s microwave meals, his staple diet. But he knew he had to step up from here or the Barley Mow if he was to get his rigging up. He had to make the effort or Hannah would become yet another in the very short list of girls that he dated for a month before they started researching how to correctly perform Seppuku.
“What about you Matt. No-one you have your eye on”?
Well there is someone, thought Matt. But I am just waiting until you bore her to death before I come to her rescue.
“I have been seeing a girl from work. She works in the same marketing department and she is quite hot but she hasn’t called me for while”.
“I think it works the other way around, Matt”.
“Huh”?
“I think you have to call her. Call me old fashioned but that is the way it works”.
“Not with me it doesn’t. If they want a bit of me they have to make the running else I’ll find someone else”.
He is an arrogant prick, thought Frank. He didn’t use to be like that. In school he was timid which is how we first met; the two quiet kids always the last to get picked for the lunchtime football match. Some half decent A level passes and a university place up for grabs and then all of sudden he takes some job as a shop manager. Four years later I am in a dead end job with nice piece of embossed paper and he has a swanky apartment and enough rag paper every month to pay off the debts of General Motors. Things have equalised a bit now after his failed marriage and some expansive failed investments and by me cock sucking my way into management.
“Funny how things have changed for us, eh Matt”.
“Do you remember we were going to start our own business together making esoteric hi-fi stuff. Remind me why we didn’t do that again”.
“Too much risk. Things have worked out OK. The marketing head of my company is a bit of tosser. He needs to be put out to grass. I’d give him a couple of years and then yours truly will be ready to step in and grow the company properly. In time a seat on the board beckons”.
“Yes, but we could be doing our own thing instead of kow-towing to the next twenty-something fast track manager who passes through”.
“Excuse me, I am one of those fast track managers. I’m going to have to break you two up. You are beginning to sound like that prick of a friend of yours”.
“George has some good ideas. He has morals too which is what gets him into trouble. And he won’t kow-tow to just anyone. I wish I had his balls”.
“No point, you’re not using the two you already have”.
Two jokes in less than an hour. Matthew was pleased with himself. And irritated that recently the conversation always seems to keep coming around to George.
“George has a quiet rage inside him and he has refused to sell out”.
“Why don’t you forget Hannah and shag him them, sounds like you would get along fine together”.
Frank audibly tutted.
I guess there is no way back for him now. Will I go the same way. Once I moved to the dark side is there some external force that slowly erodes my morals and ethics. Will I start thinking that tax cuts are the be all and end all regardless of effects on services and utilities; will I get an investment portfolio so I become one of those parasitic shareholders that have no interest in the well-being of company, only what I can get from it; will I start feeling the need to hunt and disembowel animals for pleasure and not food; will I start to think George Bush was not given the respect he deserved; will I start reading the Daily Mail and thinking our immigration policies don’t go far enough. Oh shit! It has started already. I buy the Marks and Spencer microwave ready meals. A small but significant step.
“Don’t you feel you are caught in rut though, Matt? Don’t you feel that, whilst being paid handsomely for doing little you are not actually contributing to making things better”.
“I am contributing. I’m making things better for myself. If I don’t do that no-one else will. I have a duty to myself”.
“But you could give some of that money away. Give to charity or something”.
“What the hell for. They have floods in some god-forsaken hell hole that only an idiot would live in and then expect us to bail them out”.
“Nice pun Matt”.
“What”?
“I don’t think these people choose to be where they are. It is like that strange statistical anomaly about why tornadoes only ever hit trailer parks”.
“It is for governments to bail these people out, not individuals”.
“I might agree with that, but are you willing to have your tax increased to pay for more foreign aid”?
“Of course not, we pay enough out already. I look after number one and there is nothing wrong with that. Love thy neighbour. Bollocks. Have you met my neighbour. A lazy layabout who has never done a day’s legitimate work in his life but the government bleed me dry to pay his and his abhorrent family unemployment benefits and child allowance and god knows what else”.
Matt had a point. How he had moved the conversation from true people in need to those that aren’t in need he wasn’t sure but it was muddying his case and he didn’t have the energy to try and fight the cause.
“Anyway, I’d better go back and clean up a bit, just in case Hannah wants to come back”.
“You’ve got more chance of taking Obama back to your place”.
“I’d better get some Planter’s Trail Mix in then”.
Frank finished his beer and stood up.
“Wednesday at the Barley Mow?”
“Sure”.
Frank buttoned up his coat and pushed open the heavy door to be met by a blast of icy wind. It was a long walk home and his feet already felt leaden. He had better check out that restaurant too and make sure they have something on the menu he can eat.
A wintry Sunday afternoon Percy road was empty save for the huddle of cars outside the off license and the vibrating mass of smokers reluctantly obeying the new non-smoking laws outside the all day pub. Britain is not a handsome nation, thought Frank, and now they parade the ugliest ones out on the street like some grotesque’s pageant. They really should be kept hidden.
A group of five louts ran out of a side street chasing another lout.
“Mother fucker, fuck off back home and fuck your ugly sister”, shouted one of the five.
The chased one ran off down the street opposite and the five returned from whence they came. Well, good to see some family values are still intact.
Diverted by the entertainment Frank walked straight past the restaurant and had to double back.
It looks a bit pretentious, thought Frank.
He hid in the restaurant doorway out of the sleet which had just started again.
Hmm. I am always suspicious of a restaurant that uses French terms like canard. Unless I walked further than I thought I am still in England and I am reasonably sure we call it duck. Lots of jus and mousellines and what the hell is a beurre noisette or a macédoine. Still they do a steak so I think I can find something I can eat and this is not about me after all. Frank knocked on the glass door.
A man dressed in a black waistcoat appeared from the back wiping his hands on a cloth. He gestured the restaurant was closed. Frank knocked again.
The man unlocked a solitary bolt and opened the door an inch or so.
“We are closed”.
You can drop the fake French accent, thought Frank.
“I want to make a reservation”.
The man in the waistcoat sighed.
“When for”?
“Tonight”.
“Just come, we are not busy tonight. How many is it for”?
“Two”.
“We open at seven”.
The door closed, the bolt was drawn across and the man returned to the back of the restaurant and switched off the light as a do not disturb gesture.
Nice, thought Frank, but it is this or the Barley Mow and Frank was sure Hannah was not as taken with the Steak and Ale pie as he was.
Frank walked the extra mile to his apartment and closed the door behind him. Strange, no matter how many soft fabrics I put in the place that door always closes with a cold echo. Frank looked around thinking how best to arrange things to impress his guest. He looked through his CDs moving likely candidates to the end; the Eagles, just good background stuff, Joe Satriani, no better leave that, Tom Jones’ new album, yes maybe, I think Hannah said she like him; Abba, that’s fairly safe. He also favoured a collection of opera arias from a free CD that came with the Guardian newspaper as that would show he had suitable gravitas. I wonder what Obama likes just in case Matt is right and it doesn’t work out with Hannah?
Frank pondered the electronic design magazine, his only remaining contact with his chosen profession. Does it look to geeky to read that. Frank decided to keep it but he also put a copy of Mojo on top as he thought that showed he wasn’t so stuffy as most thought, (although he had only bought it because of the article on Altered Images; he had always fancied Clare Grogan). Frank stood back from the coffee table and spent several minutes trying to make the magazines appear as casually placed as possible.
He caught a glimpse of one his pornographic DVDs that he had bought to try and spice up his love life with Bridget laying by the television. Appalled at the vision of Hannah discovering them he routed through his 200 or more DVDs removing the offending movies and then spending thirty minutes reading the back covers and ten minutes deciding where to hide them eventually deciding on one of the kitchen cabinets with the packets of stuffing mix, the breakfast cereals and various packets of biscuits. He thought of putting the biscuits out on a plate but decided that would look too premeditated and too much like expecting a visit from your frail auntie.
Frank then checked his fridge for wine and decided he needed to stock up. He had noticed that Hannah drank white wine and he was a beer and red wine person himself. And an occasional single malt when the mood took him.
Frank slipped on his coat and went out to buy some wine from the busy off license. And some new wine glasses as he didn’t have two that matched. And as it was close by he also popped into Marks and Spencer to get some of their party snacks. You never know, he thought, and they do some nice mushroom vol-au-vents.
So much for the plans to write about Thai food; my last entries were months and months ago.
We have been eating in a lot more recently, partly because the house is finished and we like to sit on our new veranda and watch the sunset and rest of the world go by over dinner, (although last night there was a plaque of midges so ate inside - this happens occasionally and seems weather related); because Ploy seems to have become the target of the local mosquito population in the restaurants we like to frequent, (who cunningly love to have some small ponds and water features splattered over their premises); because I have had a bit more time of the evenings to make something and because we both like cooking anyway.
Ploy has even been reading her Thai cookery books for some ideas and also to find recipes for things we have eaten out and I have mentioned I especially like. So last night Ploy spent two hours trying to set the kitchen on fire and produced two wonderful dishes, both variants of things we have eaten locally.
The first of these is Pla Chon, a popular fish in these parts which was deep fried in sunflower oil until the skin is crispy. Over this a sauce is poured made from diced young ginger, lime leaves, lemon grass, cashew nuts, dried chillis, diced limes, green pepper corns, mint leaves and fish sauce and soy sauce. The lemon grass and lime leaves are cooked and deep fried respectively so that they are edible.
The second dish is a vegetable called Pak Boom of which you cut off just the very young shoots throwing 95% of the tougher part away. Ploy had six large bunches of this which produced only what you see here but then that only cost us 20 baht. After washing Ploy makes a tempura like batter and deep fries the vegetables. They are served with a sauce made from chopped prawns, coconut milk and garlic.
A dish of prawn crackers (deep fried of course!) was produced as a starter and a nice crisp Chilean Sauvignon Blanc to wash it all down.
I am not sure what my heart thought of the meal but my stomach loved it and we don't normally eat much fried stuff anyway unless I make some chips. Perhaps a tuna salad tonight to balance things a little though.
At 5p.m. on Sunday the painters loaded their scaffolding onto their pickup and our builder loaded the unused construction materials onto his, (part of his 'tip'), and gave me back the tools he had borrowed from me - at least the ones he hadn't lost or broken. It would take a little time to clean everything, although the painters hadn't done a bad job themselves, but six weeks of major demolition and construction would take a time for the dust to completely settle.
On Monday it was like living in a stately home as visitor after visitor was invited in by Ploy for an escorted tour. Ploy lay in wait for anyone who loitered outside before pouncing on them asking what they thought of it. Suay (beautiful) was the obligatory answer. I have never seen Ploy so proud. Indeed I feel proud and sitting on the balcony Monday evening with our snack of potted shrimp, (well prawns, no brown shrimp to be found here), and toast we found ourselves just looking around and muttering 'amazing'. Just the garden fence and the gate to do but that is waiting until we receive more money as we don't want our savings to drop too low in case of emergency.
The work looked like it would never end. The painters found a few repairs in the roof that needed doing, another day gone; they suggested how we could build up our eaves so the pigeons didn't nest there so easily, another two days work for the builder. All good things done but the last week was really trying my patience. The problem is our builder is a chatterbox and even without someone to talk to he talks to himself - loudly and incessantly; I just couldn't shut it out. That and the dust everywhere being trod throughout the house and dropping onto all my equipment was driving me to distraction. But it was worth it and it also meant we were forced to go through every room in the house cleaning so the house is spotless. We haven't really done anything much to the house since we moved here, a bit of tiling here and there, otherwise we have really used it as a place to sleep and work from and all our energies were spent on the latter. In the background there was always that move to Chon Buri. But suddenly Ploy especially seemed to become content here and investment of time and money on the house didn't seem so wasted.
Over the new year I took a few days off to paint and reorganise my workshop which I am also chuffed with as it has left me with a lot more space for the same amount of equipment. Ploy wasn't keen on me doing the interior painting but having seen the transformation in the workshop I think she has changed her mind and we can slowly work our way around the house with the minimum of disruption. The dining room is next.
The house is now at a really nice state where all major work is completed and we just get to buy the nice trinkets and put our pictures up. We never got to this state in our houses before, or if we did, as in Canada, we then immediately moved. We never even cooked a single meal in our brand new kitchen there. There will be no immediate moving from here and as I write this Ploy and Pinky are sprawled out on the sofa on our balcony, Pinky contentedly chewing away at one of those artificial bones and Ploy contented without one.
Actually the new peace around the house also seems to have calmed down Pinky and she seems very happy to sleep on the balcony where there is little she can do, damage wise. Maybe it is because it is right next to our bedroom but she seems much less destructive at the moment and we don't wake up and go downstairs with any feeling of dread anymore.
A surprise came in the post this week too as I got a social security card that I can use to get free treatment at the hospitals here: that is a really nice bonus.
I am still waiting for the new order from Canada, (it is one of those companies that need to approve all new vendors, even for one off orders, and where purchasing departments can delay projects for months through their bureaucracy), and I cannot do any more work on my US order until they send me some data so I have been able to relax a little and also work on my own projects for a bit. The US company have also told me they will order something extra which is an unexpected bonus.
So Ploy is off to have the oil changed in our car, to donate a load of old unwanted stuff from my workshop organisation to our television repair man and to buy some more white pebbles for our garden. I have some work to do for SingMai, I have promised myself to paint the dining room today - it is a small room - and Ploy got some new plants for the garden, including a banana tree, that need planting, a job that seems to have become mine. Our house just became our home.
Think of Richard Gere, he’d written. Let’s meet by the Silver Bridge. Tall and dark maybe, but handsome? No more blind dates, thought Susan.
“Need your shaft lubricating or your pole greased? We are the best in business, satisfaction assured. Visit us at the Castro District, SF.”
2010 had one last surprise before the New Year happened upon us.
Yesterday morning I had planned to do some work on SingMai. Our builder was away seeing his family in Sing Buri for the New Year although he did say someone would come by and pick up his tools and the wood used for the scaffolding sometime during the day. In fact he and two of his family arrived early whilst Ploy was at the market. The previous night, because the garden was now finished, we had put Pinky out as she keeps tearing things up in the house whilst we are asleep. There is less and less for her to rip to shreds now but we thought we would make the gesture to her anyway. So with new flower beds and an uninterrupted night of carnage ahead of her she took to moving the contents of the flower beds onto the new laid tiles, and given time I am sure she would have moved the tiles to the flower beds. We did what all the books tell us to, rub her nose in where she has done damage and give her a good thrashing - at least that is our interpretation of the behaviour correction method. Unable to face tidying everything up I went back to my workshop but then almost immediately the man arrived. So, spurred on by his actions, I spent the next two hours tidying the garden and then the next two after Ploy arrived back from from the market tidying the garden. Unused to such physical work I was totally knackered by that point and went for a lie down.
Ploy, in the meantime, started making some sausages for the children's party that night; a party I think I was expected to attend. Our plans for the evening were vague but I knew included moving our existing psuedo-leather covered sofa (more water resistant) up to the newly completed veranda so we could enjoy the evening up there. Ploy came into the bedroom after her kitchen vigil and urged me to go the Prabhat with her. We needed more compost for the garden and more of those white pebbles to cover the flower beds and we also needed to get our Canada sofa (cloth covered) to replace the one that was to become upwardly mobile. Before we left however Ploy decided we should clean the veranda and I suggested moving the sofa up the stairs first whilst we had a tiny bit of energy left. So the two of us man-handled the sofa up the dog-leg stairs, carried it over the stair rail at the top, through the bedroom door and out onto the veranda. We then set off for Prabhat via ESBO.
Although Ploy pretends I said nothing I managed to get her to buy the paint for my workshop. I had promised myself that over the New Year I would re-organise my workshop and whilst doing that take the opportunity to paint it. Ploy has been unwilling to do this for some reason but this time we left ESBO with two pots of paint and some paintbrushes. Painting the interior of the house is our job as we can do it little by little without having to gut the place if we get someone else in is my argument. We picked up the fertiliser and arrived at our storage place in Prabhat.
What immediately seemed strange was a large bench had been pushed against the door. When we went to unlock the door we found it already open and moving inside we found all the boxes opened and our stuff strewn all over the place. We had been burgled before, when we were in the UK, and it leaves you with a strange sense of disorientation. Did we leave it like this? Perhaps an animal has got in here? An animal that has systematically opened every plastic box and cardboard box and gone through their contents. It must say something about our taste that they didn't appear to have taken much. There was nothing valuable there, furniture, some paintings which they decided were too avant garde for their taste I guess, lots of kitchen utensils and clothes - the warm clothes from the UK and Canada. It wasn't easy to guess what they had taken. I hadn't been to Prabhat for a while and hadn't hankered after anything particular. I knew the furniture that was there but we had already opened the boxes and taken to Saraburi that which we wanted or was valuable. We got the sofa we wanted and loaded it onto the car. They had entered through the roof as far as we could tell and there was little we could do to prevent that again. Ploy will return today to put the clothes back in the boxes. We could find somewhere else to store the stuff but this is convenient and there is little to steal - certainly not anymore anyway.
We drove home, too late to pick up the stones as they had shut early for the New Year's Eve. Ploy told me she didn't feel like going to the party. Our neighbours had set up a mini karoake in the street outside their house with 'music' blaring out. I was hungry and I had promised to cook spaghetti with meatballs for Ploy but she took one look at me and said, let''s go to the party and we don't have to cook. I still wasn't willing so she said she would look and see what was on offer. First stop was our Isaan neighbours and their family from across the street. I had already ruled them out as I didn't think my ears or head could take getting any closer to whatever it was they were playing without insanity setting in. In any case, call me snobbish, but I find Isaan food difficult to take as they usually, out of necessity I guess, use the poorest cuts of meat, have a penchant for the bits of fish I usually throw away and drench their strange vegetables in chilli to hide the appalling taste. Ploy took some bottles of Leo (leaving me the Archa) out to them but returned just minutes later. I can't see what the food is, she said. It's dark and all the food is black. Never mind, I said, let's go to your friend's party down the road. Yes it is a children's party but that night, chosing between 130dB of Morlam or children, I chose the latter.
I quickly changed and we took the short walk down the road armed with Ploy's sausages and a cake she had bought. As soon as I arrived the woman's husband grabbed me and beckoned me to sit down at the Man's table, replete with dishes of food and the ubiquitous bottles of whisky. Mai Ow, mai chawp, I muttered as they started to pour me a whisky. Ah, he must be gay was the look I got back and they started to pour me Coke instead. Do you not have beer, I asked in my hesitant Thai. Beer! Yes, and the gay attribute was taken from me albeit I was the only one at the Man's table to drink it. Later an elderly gentleman joined us and he drank the luminous green fizzy stuff so the gay moniker was moved to him.
Ploy immediately grabbed me to introduce me to various people before I was told to go and sit down again. Obediently walking back to my chair I stumbled across the children, all of whom stared at me, and some tried out their English on me, which is usually limited to what's your name''. After that they are reliant on my Thai so we go through my usual conversation subjects, 'Where do you live', 'How old are you', 'Do you like beer' and 'Have you ever seen a grown man naked'. After that I returned to my seat. Karaoke started up but at at a more reasonable level and all the children danced to it.
The lady that organised the party, she of the spiritual elephant god possession, cooks food for a local children's school. This party she held was only as an act of 'jai dee' (good heart) for the local children. She had even bought presents for all of the children. I ate generously of the food at my table - very good it was too - and eventually Ploy emerged from the kitchen with Pinky, who we had sort of unwisely brought along. This headstrong dog, who ravages our house and garden, we somehow trusted to bring to party, off leash (she doesn't have one anyway) and she behaved herself impecably if somewhat excitedly. Capable of biting the heads off the children she lets them pat her and play with her whilst she forages for food, the chicken drumsticks proving a favourite despite my warnings about dogs and chicken bones; I didn't fancy having to give our dog the kiss of life but they seemed to be eaten whole so I guess it didn't matter.
Ploy broke all convention by joining me at the Man's table - the women were all sat in a row opposite us on plastic seats and knew their place and we watched the children excitedly play. How far removed from any visage of a place I thought I would find me enjoying myself at. But I was. The food was good, my Man friends were pleasant and always ensuring I had sufficient quantity of ice and beer, the children were great fun to watch and so was Pinky as she stalked the area for food.
We took the short walk home and spent the next hour sitting on our veranda, just the three of us, Ploy with her usual glass of iced water, Pinky with her bowl of non-iced water which she always steps in to drink for some reason, and me with nice glass of Chilean Chenin Blanc. It has been a good year hasn't it, said Ploy.
Ambition
It has been a long time since I have looked forward so much to a New Year. It is has been a long time since I felt so energised to do things in the coming year.
Things have just clicked into place during 2010 and I feel I am now free from the corporate nonsense that has dragged me down for so long, free from the requirement to conform to processes and structures that I think are idiotic and that stifle my limited creativity. I have found myself, slightly through accident and slightly through necessity, in a country I am growing to like a lot. I keep saying it, but the fact we have been able to purchase our house and with the cost of living so (relatively) low we have a peace of mind that we have never had before. Even if SingMai is not a success I will find something else to do here that puts some food on the table, but that is increasingly looking an unlikely turn of events. So here is the list of things I would like to achieve in 2011. Who knows if I will get there, who knows what surprises may yet be in store, but it will certainly be fun trying.
- The novel is written but by the end of 2011 I want to shape it into something I feel I can present to others without fear of total humiliation. Of course, publication is the aim but maybe I will just put it up for free on the website.
- And talking of writing, I want to finish that (barely started) book on analogue video processing.
- And finally, on the subject of writing. 2010 saw this website get nearly 1 million hits and just under 17,000 unique visitors. It has been about the same for years now even though the only page regularly updated is the Diary page. So in 2011 I will try and make more of an effort to add content to the other pages, (particularly the Art History pages, the second most popular pages after the Diary). That will mean giving serious thought to the art history book and it is long overdue that I did, but three books in a year is too much (and there is the semi-auto-biographical one too, so four). But the ground work for the art history book could be researched on the website during 2011.
- SingMai of course has to be the number one priority. We currently have one large order on our books and one, we are told, is in the pipeline. But 2011 is a year of self-indulgence. No more special orders will be accepted, it all about our first four stand alone products, one of which is sitting beside me as I write this, the second is with our Singapore sub-contractors waiting in the queue for PCB layout. 2011 is the year when SingMai goes it alone as it were and also is the year when I hope we can start to look for some land to build our own offices.
- And lastly, 2011 is the year when I try to set aside some time to learn the Thai language on a serious basis. 30 minutes a day should do it but it needs a routine so it doesn't get quickly neglected. Please don't let me get to the end of 2011 knowing just a dozen more random phrases!
There are lots of little things too, of course, like painting the inside of the house and making time to get that proper holiday that we both deserve. There are also some initiatives to help technology start-ups in Thailand that I may be involved in, and that could be fun.
I have not written about Ploy's ambitions but I know she has some. As soon as I mentioned about buying some land she immediately started telling me about some area she thought had great growth potential and also that the shop premises at the front of our estate are available for 'just' a million baht and she think this area is a high growth area in the next few years. Always the plans, always the ambition. Maybe 2011 is the year we start to see some of those ideas come to fruition.
Happy New Year to all my readers!
Regrets, I've had a Few; Too Few to Mention
One of the Thai traits that I particularly like is they do not dwell too much on the past and don't waste time or emotion with regret or with 'if only'. (That could well be a reason we constantly see such political turmoil here as few politicians seem to learn from past events - mind you there are a quite a few countries for whom that could be said).
So it was a surprise last night over dinner, (chicken casserole), when Ploy, not for the first time, pondered what would have happened if we had stayed in Canada. Up shit creek, was my answer, although my attempt at the Thai version of this was not a success judging from Ploy's face. Certainly it is difficult to see how we could have stayed there and we almost certainly would have had to stop SingMai because the continuous outpourings of money just to put food on the table and keep a roof over our head would not have allowed us the time to get it established.
But just that morning I had been telling Ploy of my plans for SingMai for the coming year and the fact I wanted her to look for some land locally that we could build a factory on. Although there are factories available, and some bank repossessions at very low prices, they are more warehouses, usually very large empty shells, and my intention is only to have design and test here so we want more an office style environment. It will be fun too and we can pace ourselves according to the money available. 2011 will be a year of expansion for SingMai, income allowing as we will not borrow having worked so hard to free us from any debt, and we have just put up a job page advertising for engineers with that in mind.
Another outcome of this is that I think Ploy has finally come around to making Saraburi our home. I like Saraburi a lot, it is just the right mix of rural and town to be able to get most things you need without having the hassle of trying to get around a big city and with the countryside on our door step. I think what has also caused Ploy to have a change of heart, (her insistence on moving to Bangkok at some point), is the near completion of the work on the house and her satisfaction in how good it looks. She would still like us to buy an apartment in Bangkok for Tang Mo - her daughter - but no longer is she asking that we move there, (I suspect she thinks she can also stay there when she hankers for that bit of city excitement). Bangkok is relatively close, about a 2 hour drive to the centre, but for me the slight inconvenience of living here is the long drive to the airport although I don't have to travel so much anymore so that is not so bad. Land is affordable here and we have a tame builder to call upon for work. We do have one slightly annoying neighbour, but much less so than we first moved here and we have had annoying neighbours wherever we have lived. This one barely rates on the scale of annoyance and to counter that we also have lots of nice friendly neighbours.
And to evidence that, yesterday someone reported a cat had fallen into one of the storm drains. Ploy asked me to help, but not being a cat lover I was prepared to but it down to destiny. This was Buddha's wish I argued but I got pushed into some sort of action; momentarily only as our builder jerry rigged something to pull off the heavy concrete slabs covering the drain. That still left the problem of the cat, clinging to wall, head only above water, about seven feet down a sheer side. Again I came to fore with ideas. Why don't we lower a small child down there to get the cat, I suggested, but again I was overruled, and various attempts were made to make a platform for the cat to climb up, to no avail as the cat was not letting go of its tenuous grip on life. I chose a small chubby boy from the watching crowd which had grown to about fifteen people by now and started tying the rope around him when our builder improvised a lasso which he skillfully threw over the head of the cat, pulled it tight and then launched the cat out of the drain several feet into the air before the drowned animal skillfully landed on its feet. Lasso removed it ran off home.
On Sunday Ploy drove up to Korat to buy a plaster frieze for our garden. Our house is on the corner and, so Ploy tells me, it is bad feng shui to have just a fence there and we should build a wall so bad things cannot enter the house that way. I went with the flow after a brief comment that bad things might choose to use the gate like everyone else and maybe we should brick that up but settled on the condition it looked good and Ploy duly ran off to instruct our builder to build an arched wall; (although I am reasonably sure given the brevity of the instruction that I was last to know about this). The frieze is 2m x 1m apparently and will take two weeks to be made. She has also bought two lions as additional protection, nothing bad is getting in that way, that's for sure.
Today is yet another Wan Phra or Buddha day and the house is full of flowers and bananas this time; the longer Ploy stays here the more she is fitting back into a culture I feel she felt excluded from before. Now she can afford the few baht each week or so - something she couldn't before - for the flowers and fruit or the few baht for the paper shirts and money to burn in honour of her parents she can fully engage with these practices and however strange and illogical I find them there is no doubt she is a happier person for it.
“I should have won that Oscar for Mrs. Miniver you know.”
“Yes Walter, you have been telling me that for 50 years, and it’s getting boring.”
It is Christmas Eve but work continues on our house as normal. The tiling of the garden is nearly complete and they (the man, his ex-wife and another woman) have done a fantastic job. We have had just about everyone in the neighbourhood stop by to poke their nose around the gate and say how beautiful it looks (and the inevitable other question - how much did it cost). The railings are installed on the veranda and now it is just a matter of plastering and cleaning and adding things like outside lights, more soil and the white pebbles to our flower beds, replacing one rotten window frame and some boarding to prevent the pigeons making our veranda their new love nest.
We have also booked someone to paint the exterior of the house. The cost is 10,000 baht (negotiated down from 12,000) plus the paint which we have to buy as usual. We are going for light blue for the main house, a sandstone colour for the garden walls and chocolate colour for the windows and doors. And then that will be it for while until we receive some more money when we will replace the garden fence and gate. The interior of the house we (I) will paint ourselves (myself) as we can do it with less disruption to my work, slowly, a room at a time.
I had an enforced purchase, a new oscilloscope, a Christmas present to myself, as my old faithful Tektronix finally gave up the ghost. I bought it second hand in Singapore and it has travelled the world with me. I can get it repaired but it is probably cheaper to buy a 'new' second hand one. Tektronix no longer make analogue scopes which I much prefer for my work so you are forced to buy from a group of enthusiasts that think the same as me and keep these things alive. But for the time being, as I needed something immediately but not the special features of the analogue 'scope, I found this Chinese company that quickly shipped a really nice digital 'scope for $760 all in. It has some nice features which complement the Tektronix and gives me time to consider what to do about replacing it. I will probably look to buy a new analogue 'scope because, however much I love the Tektronix, they are getting a little long in the tooth and you only get a 3 month guarantee with them; a new 'scope has a 3 year guarantee.
We have received a solitary Christmas card from an aunt of mine in the UK, (the one I visited on my return there a couple of months back), which is our sole concession to Christmas this year. The veranda is finished too late to put up our plastic Christmas tree so it will have to wait until next year. With all the work on the house we haven't wanted to put effort in this year to putting anything up in the house, our time is spent just trying to keep the dust and dirt out of the house. It is a nice time to work - no Christmas shut down for us - as most of my customers are Europe and US based so they all go off on their holidays and leave me in peace. Our second standalone product design has gone off to the Singapore company for printed circuit board design and manufacture/assembly so hopefully we will have that to sell in the early part of next year. Our first product has been 95% tested with no issues so that should be able to go straight into production. Next year is a big year for SingMai as we look to introduce these new products and move away from our custom designs to a reliance on our own products. It is also a chance to break the seven day working week and allow more time for ourselves and time to edit that novel. 
Some move in that direction has already happened with me cooking dinner for us much more often, (last night was chicken with champ potatoes - mashed potatoes with spring onions - and stir fried vegetables. Tonight is tuna fish cakes with chips and salad).
Pinky, our dog, has been testing us recently. She has taken to tearing up pillows, paper or anything she can find when we go out together or even at night when we are asleep, (we close the bedroom door and both sleep like the dead). We have been unable to put her outside because there is usually cement drying or too many things for her to destroy outside at the moment. What has brought this behaviour about we have no idea as previously she was OK left alone, even for quite long periods. We have tried explaining to her her actions are not appreciated, tried not feeding her, leaving food out for her, surrounding her with chewable toys or even giving her a good old fashioned thrashing; nothing seems to work. She knows she is doing wrong as she goes into submissive mode when we return or I come down in the morning but it didn't stop her doing it. But then this morning everything was as it should be. Her mother was neurotic and her father was probably the Woody Allen of dogs so maybe it is something we have to learn to live with. I am not paying for therapy, euthanasia is cheaper and scientifically proven to work. At least if we put her outside she won't be able to do much damage in the garden now it is tiled and thank heaven we didn't give away her kennel.
I take huge delight in reading about the demise of the UK and the last week has brought particular joy because it also involves Heathrow, my least favourite airport and British Airways, my least favourite airline.
The UK has had some snow - a light dusting from all accounts, save for the higher regions; as far as I remember Heathrow is not atop a mountain. Now it is certainly true that southern England does not often have any snow at all but the last couple of years that trend has changed. But inevitably this minor weather event has left 600,000 people stuck or in the wrong place, just as Christmas arrives. There is even a Salvatian army tent outside Terminal 3 by all accounts dishing out tea and coffee, something that BAA, who run the airport, couldn't afford from their 1 billion pound profit. The telling statistic I read from all of this is that Heathrow runs at a 99% capacity. I know of only two other businesses where that capacity is met, or even exceeded. The first is in silicon wafer fabs where that capacity allows us to get cheap memory and cheap microprocessors to feed our fetish for useless electronic gizmos. The second is dentists. In the first case you do not often have one of the dies on the wafer suddenly realise he has left his passport in Starbucks so generally speaking that capacity runs through without a hitch. In the second case it means you will actually see the dentist at 5.23p.m. even though your appointment was for 11a.m.
Heathrow is even worse than the dentist. One no-show passenger and you get that dreaded announcement by the captain that we have missed our slot and we will just have to wait until we get another allocation, probably in a couple of days but possibly longer. Arriving after a thirteen hour flight from from Singapore - extended to sixteen as you fly in circles around London - you will greeted by the captain's announcement that Heathrow are somewhat surprised to see us there and that we will have to wait in the outer reaches of the airport until the plane currently at our gate - there as it missed its slot because Mrs. Emily Carruthers had left her passport in Starbucks - is allowed to leave.
In short, 99% capacity doesn't seem a good idea for an airport. The tiniest hitch, a Mrs Carruthers or a light dusting of snow and we get to the point where there are security guards on the doors of the terminal stopping people entering unless their flight is guaranteed to leave in the next six minutes. Apparently some people have been at the airport for three days waiting for their flight. I am usually lucky enough to be able to hide in the Singapore air business lounge but even then 3 hours is the maximum I can cope with without looking to buy some old fashioned razor blades and some aspirin. One of my early flights to Thailand, a long time ago now, was met by a closure of Heathrow. I was flying on SAS via Copenhagen or Amsterdam, I can't remember now, and I remember the terminal resembling a war evacuation zone. I also remember the looks on the pathetic souls flying BA as SAS coached us out into London for an overnight stay in a hotel, at their expense. Those would be passengers were still there in the morning as we were coached back after a rather nice breakfast. They may still be there for all I know.
Criticism of BAA is already being deflected with the same lame excuses used on the trains when I was young; namely the exceptional nature of the weather. After all this has only happened five times in the last two years so it certainly is a near unique event. So is a fire, probably more so. But they seem to deem it worthwhile having their own fire-station on site but for some reason require only one third the number of snow ploughs as they have at Gatwick, a much smaller airport run by another company with some semblance of what is required for customer service. It also seems that we have little to learn from countries like Sweden or Norway because they have snow six months of the year and what they do to prepare is not appropriate for Heathrow. It must be a completely different type of snow they get there.
I must admit that my last trip back to UK did instill a tiny bit of nostalgia, probably because I spent it in Portmouth away from the train strikes that were happening in London at the time. But that momentary affection is immediately lost when I read of the cold stark reality of what the UK has become today.