I see that I last wrote in these pages on February 11. Seven months and God knows how many miles ago. The reputation that I've assiduously built over the eight or so years in the UK now precedes me around the world. I find myself in all sorts of priviledged positions. I am an insider. People who are new to a client company are told to make contact with me to learn what's going on. I'm asked to give feedback to other agencies. I have become, in some circles at least, a 'trusted advisor'. This is the holy grail of consultancy.
It's doubtful that I gain anything by even stating as much in these pages. Discretion is a big part of trust and even writing as I write right now feels like an impulse to self-sabotage. Except that the internet is such a wonderful place to make huge mistakes in plain sight. Better even than the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
I am a consultant now and not much else. No time for producing theatre or performing comedy. No time even to consume it. I wake up early and work online or I fly somewhere to do my thing in person. A week without passing through an airport feels strange these days.
But soon I am to be something else besides. After nearly ten years of trying I am to be a father. A baby girl will enter our lives on Christmas Day, if not before. And then everything must change. Part of the reason that I've embraced the Global Loman lifestyle is that it's nice to be wanted and especially nice to be wanted in far-flung parts. But soon I'll be wanted more at home than anywhere else on the planet.
I have no idea what that wll be like but I can't wait to find out.
In the last month I've flown passed through Heathrow nine times (and Gatwick once) on my to Australia, Italy, Egypt, Switzerland, the US and Germany. Without exception Border Control at Heathrow has been consistently the most unpleasant experience - more since the iris recognition facility ('IRIS') has been put into an apparently deliberate programme of slow abandonment.
I've long joked that one loses a little bit of one's soul with every pass through that benighted place and I've more than once been caught in the notorious hourlong queues at immigration. Is it wrong to be this happy about this news?
I'm on a flying visit to Australia and much as I love the country of my birth the oh-so-negative national mood can be a bit much. Sure, the national political scene is a cruel joke and the misallocated bounty accruing from the decades-long mining boom is distorting the wider economy but, jeez, can't you all just lighten?
The once healthy scepticism of politicians is now an outright contempt that has seemingly bled over into every sphere of life. Just as all achievements are the consequence of unearned luck all setbacks are deserved. Australians don't save enough. Don't pay enough taxes. Don't do enough for the poor or the sick. Don't care enough about the marginal lives of the original inhabitants. Don't feature on the world stage for any worthwhile purpose. Except that they do. They do all of these things and more.
As I've said before in these pages, the national psyche we resemble most in Europe is the Germans; law-abiding, sober and with a wary eye on the future. But try telling that to an Aussie without creating offence. So there's obviously something (bad) going on here that I'm missing.
That's the problem with flying visits - by the time you've sorted through the distortions you're already on the flight out. Then again, on Sunday night I did see a guy sleeping rough outside the Salvation Army passing the time by watching a film on his MacBook Air...
The last six or so weeks have taken me to Israel, Germany (three times), Spain (twice), Italy, Switzerland, St Lucia and Egypt. Not all for work of course. Tomorrow I'm working in Basel for the day then on Friday I'm off to Australia to visit family and friends. For personal reasons it's been a very tough few months and all that time in the air has afforded me, if not a sense of catharsis, then at least one of momentum.
I've done my best to keep up my various habitual 'inputs' (news mags, blogs, podcasts) and that's been hard enough. All of those ambitious 'outputs' (producing, directing or performing comedy, other creative projects, this blog) have been on hold - no point in demanding an audience's attention if there's nothing that you feel like saying. Time is taking a long time healing these wounds.
I hope to be on these pages more often over the summer. The consulting job is busier than ever yet every day for the last week or so I've woken up with just a little additional surplus attention, which is a good sign. I will start blogging more and watch the unfolding of friends' Edinburgh projects with interest, albeit from afar.
As I was driving out to visit a brand new client last Thursday I was listening to Melvin Bragg's In Our Time programme on BBC Radio 4. The topic of the day was the northern Rennaiscance philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) and much was made of the itinerant nature of his early career: -
"(Erasmus) is all over Europe, city after city... He's always to be found around courts. He's a great one for collecting patronage..."
And: -
"A lot of the writing is to please people because they are paying for his career..."
Perhaps it was because that morning's meeting was with a roomful of total strangers that the description so resonated. Is there a better description of a consultant, or of any successful seller of financial services, than someone on and off airplanes, city after city, collecting the patronage of those who can pay for our careers? Like Erasmus I am paid by the modern princes of Europe to be clever. Nothing gives me greater confidence than knowing that the big boss wants the project to go ahead with my involvement.
But let's not stretch the comparison too far. Erasmus fought a vicious, losing war of words with Martin Luther over the soul of the Catholic church and the fate of Europe whereas I help drug companies sell their drugs better.
Still, about halfway through that meeting someone described me as a 'thought leader', which was a nice thing for him to say.
Update on 2012-02-19 05:47 by Stewart
During the week a learned friend questioned the parallel with Erasmus and rightfully so. With barely suppressed bemusement he pointed out that there aren't a great many points of comparison between the career of one of the foundation thinkers of Western thought and that of a jobbing management consultant circa 2012.
What I was trying to explore was that for those who think for a living the importance of patronage hasn't changed much in 500 years. There's a stark difference in getting work out of an organisation where the big boss likes my way of thinking and one where he or she is indifferent. For any project to proceed the very least we external suppliers need is the absence of a veto. If the big boss dislikes what you do then any additional time and energy spent trying to change that is most likely a sunk cost.
I'm sitting in Prague airport after yesterday's 1-dayer for a new client. It will the last of 47 flights in 2011.
The job, a sort of six hour pitch to a pan-European mix of marketing and medical people, went well enough. It was one of those situations where whilst the people who need to approve the project weren't in the room, there were plenty there who could kill it. That gave me a very clear and not especially ambitious goal: to not have anyone say 'no'.
I had my usual mid-morning moment when it occurred to me that this may the last job I ever do; at the very least with this client and possibly ever. This is my subconscience telling to relax, stop worrying about the next job and to simply concentrate on the people in front me.
By the time we decamped to the bar for too much Czech beer there was sufficient agreement that the project should go forward. The clarity of a business model where you only attempt to be as good as your last job can be very liberating at times.
For my business the United States is the last frontier. After almost seven years working out of London I'm relatively pleased as to how my presence has grown in Europe. I am a known quantity here now and my clients seek me out as much as I seek out them. In December I'm starting a new project with an old client. Our third in ten years. Every time he changes jobs I get a call.
I wonder if the experience would have been as successful if my wife and I had chosen instead to live in the US when we left Australia in 2005. The challenge of getting visas notwithstanding the choice was ours to make as no company forced our hand by funding the relocation. I suppose we just liked the idea of Europe more.
I've never felt as confident walking into an American Head Office as an Australian, British, Swiss or Asian one. Nowhere else in the world are foreign accents such a source of undisguised bemusement. I don't respond especially well to the blank-eyed apathy that seems to say: -
Buddy, we're the richest pharmaceutical market in the world. There are over 300 million of us here. If your idea was that good don't you think we'd have thought of it by now already?
The only genuine traction I've had on American projects has been with European owned companies. My theory is that there's a sense that ideas should be assessed on value not provenance. Yet America beckons and yesterday I spent an hour on the phone with a Boston consultancy whose task would be to get me into the meeting where my ideas are heard louder than my accent.
One of the problems we discussed was that most Americans in bourgeois industries like pharma are just too damn polite. Offering a London-based consultant a project in the Midwest might be asking a bit too much of him, what with all that inconvenient travel and time away from his family and whatnot.
Convincing a client that I'll travel anywhere on the planet for the right fee can be a surprisingly high hurdle when landing an overseas gig. This is why consultants never complain about jetlag. Convincing my potential American clients that transatlantic travel is still just travel may be a step too far and I suspect the consultancy will recommend I relocate the business to somewhere in the corridor between Boston and Philadelphia. Hopefully he'll also suggest less extreme alternatives but I've yet to see any evidence that you can succeed in America with anything less than a display of total commitment.
Work is an obligation. Even if I really like my job (so much of the time of inclined to do it) I'm obliged to do it regardless of any momentary preference.
When our weekends and holidays 'feel like work' it's because we find ourselves obliged to do things during time we'd mentally put aside to pursue our inclinations. We like our friends because they're similarly inclined to us; time spent with them doesn't feel like an obligation.
I'm visiting Australia again in a few weeks and there's nothing like a trip home to focus the mind: which activities and engagements am I obliged to do, which am I inclined to do and which ones sit happily in the centre zone of a simple Venn Diagram?
This trip will be far more complicated because my wife and I are traveling together. As our separate and collective diaries fill up we're negotiating a much more complex Venn Diagram: there are things that are inclinations for one but obligations for the other, things that are obligations for us both and happily a few things that we're each inclined to do.
Travel alone and the trade-offs are purely internal. Travel with someone else and the negotiations need to be overt and honest otherwise we end up dragging the other person to events that we're only attending out of obligation anyway.
Adult life is a lesson in compromise and never more so than when returning to the sites of your childhood.
Part of me wants to stress over flight connections and the like. For the amount of emotional energy I expend in this way it's the only viable explanation.
Air travel: a procession of small humiliations.
Heathrow Express: your air travel experience starts here
Last night's sleeplessness, Manila traffic and the ambient chaos of Niño Aquino International Airport had me arrive at the departure gate chock full of bile and venom.
Of the myriad vestigial rituals clinging to 'luxury' travel the procession of interruptions that are supposedly the hallmark of good service pisses me off the most. As pointless as airline safety demonstrations may be I accept that a legal logic is in play. But tell me why I must hear from multiple crew members on other topics? Why is the captain as well as the purser compelled to make an announcement before take-off then again 'once we're airborne'? Why interrupt the inflight entertainment (wishfully claimed as a USP) to tell me that you're going to interrupt me again later?
Am I alone in measuring good service in terms of the least number of staff intrusions? Who was the last person actually pleased by hotel turndown service? I don't understand the logic: if I'm out I most likely won't notice the alteration in bedlinen when I return. If I'm in then whatever I'm doing is interrupted whilst I answer the door and say, "No thanks". Not all porn channels have a pause function you know.
The threat of a hovering proprietor is the main reason I shun the English Bed & Breakfast. Once you price in the energy expended gushing over the farm fresh eggs and the wasted ten minutes being shown the frankly troubling collection of objets d'art on the mantlepiece that country house hotel down the road looks like a bargain.
But whereas creepy B&B's can be avoided air travel is inevitable. Scripted platitudes droned out in multiple languages (I've been on Korean Air lately) and of course the seatbelt sign is illuminated before it starts so we can't even bury our ears in headphones. Any airline that starts from the assumption that I don't need to know by name the captain, first officer, whoever else is assisting them on the flight deck, the person heading up 'my' cabin service team and the rest of the crew will get my business.
Wow. One solitary solid week of travel and I'm whining like Tyler Brûlée.
1am in Ortigas City, the affluent precinct of Manila where I've been staying since I arrived in the Philippines exactly 72 hours ago. I'm wide awake and out of Stilnox (aka Ambien). I've only eaten lightly, used the hotel gym and self-medicating with red wine will only make the waking hours harder. I'm 50% through the project. Tomorrow I fly to Seoul to repeat what I've just delivered only this time via a (client-sourced) interpreter who claims, but only when chased, that she still hasn't received my slide presentation. Interpreters are often hard to deal with and this augers poorly for the rest of the week.
I tell myself to suck it up. Self-employment means that in the end every problem belongs only to you. The only sane response is to price interpreter angst and the inevitability of jetlag into the fee.
It's 5am in Manila.
This is the time I usually wake up but jetlag has had me in its throes for about 90 minutes already. I've doing the calculations: two hours until breakfast with the client, three and a half hours until we start the session and at least 12 hours until we wrap up Day One of this two-dayer.
'Twas always going to be thus. I got to the Philippines at midnight Saturday and spent all Sunday sleeping and searching out the least sweetened food the hotel had to offer. I went to the gym and I reviewed the programme. I gave the project my complete attention. I was the epitome of professionalism.
This is what business travel is: an exercise in discipline. And the rules are as obvious as they are simple: don't go crazy at the starch'n'sugar-laden buffet breakfast, say no to (at least some of) the free alcohol, decline those Sunday night drinks with ex-pat pals, don't kid yourself that you can get away with being a tourist for a day. And never complain about the horrors of the flight or its attendant jetlag. The job can only really begin once you've made a connection with your audience. Why would go out of your way to remind them that you live on the other side of the world?
I have been brought here because I am the best person to communicate certain specific ideas to their people. If they believe they could achieve the same thing with a local or even Asia-based speaker then I wouldn't be here. So my goal is simple: minimise all the factors competing for my attention and concentrate all available energy on being present.
Harder than it sounds. I'll let you know how I get on.
Summer is done and I'm traveling again: Madrid, Edinburgh, Manila, Seoul and Zurich to begin with. No complaints: if I'm not on planes I'm not getting paid.
Travel means packing and packing always makes me feel stupid. Specifically, packing is an exercise in imagining my future self and experience has taught me that that guy is an idiot. Indeed most travel planning could be described as 'negating your inner idiot'.
These oh-so-unimpressive alternative selves exist inside each of us. Stress brings them out. As does fatigue, distraction brought on by overwork and alcohol.
I've learnt to mitigate these minor demons with low-level paranoia. Printing out and filing the limo pick-up instructions for Ninoy Aquino airport now means one less thing for the idiot-me to forget to do later.
In pre-travel mode I become a parent to myself. Lists are made and checked off. I run semi-conscious wargaming exercises like, 'If the programme was pulled forward to tomorrow would you be ready?' I update the weather app on my iPhone to flag destination cities (Manila, 30C, thunderstorms, if you're wondering).
And don't pack drunk. Turning up in Toronto in January equipped for summertime Sydney taught me that. Not unless you want fur-hatted Canadians pointing you out in the street.
I'm in California catching up with friends. Last night my wife and I dined with them at a busy family restaurant (pizzas, burgers). The atmosphere was buzzy and the wait staff were as friendly as the portions were huge. So to my banal observation of the week:-
American restaurant food loses its flavour at the third mouthful
The plate looks great when set down in front of you and that first bite is amazing. As are the next two. You find yourself thinking that America is the greatest country on earth. Then almost immediately your palate jades. You start reaching for the salt and pepper and hot sauce. You start picking out the protein and vegetables and leaving the starch. You start breathing heavily. Your sense of struggle is heightened as you realise that you're not yet halfway through the obscene pile of food on your plate. You find yourself thinking that it's no wonder that America is the fattest country on earth.
But look around you. No one else at the table is even attempting to finish their serving. Only a gluttonous fool eats much past that fourth mouthful. No big deal. The busboy appears and removes the Americans' unfinished meals. Only we two Australians, raised in a different eating culture, doggedly persist. We plough on, well past the point of discomfort and mocked by the knowledge that what we're now doing is actually unhealthy. Eventually we concede defeat and the accusing plates are taken away.
"Now, I hope you folks have all left enough room for desert?"
And it begins again.
I am a social creature. I enjoy the company of others and have always made an effort to maintain friendships despite living on the far side of the planet from the people I knew growing up.
Technology makes this much easier to achieve than in times past. Facebook means we can keep up with the smaller details of others' lives and Skype affords us cost-free face-to-face interactions whenever both parties are at the computer, which is most if the time. Still, there's no substitute for being in a room with a friend so that's how I spent much of my time in Sydney last week.
As I've mentioned earlier when an ex-pat comes home after an extended absence a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't mechanism kicks in. As with any scenario where resources are finite (i.e. my time in this case) but demand is practically infinite, a zero-sum game develops. Time spent catching up with one person is unavailable for any other purpose be it work, sleep, exercise or seeing someone else. This fact is as obvious as it is brutal but its very obviousness creates a different, more subtle problem.
Most of my friends and family in Australia lead successful (read: boring) lives so these one-on-one catch-ups often turn out to be boring conversations that go something like this: -
Me: So how's everything with you?
Old Friend: Great.
Me: Family?
OF: Great.
Me: Job?
OF: Great.
Me: Parents. How're your parents doing?
OF: Good...
Quickly pressure starts to mount under the conversation. We both feel it. After all I've made time for this one person to the exclusion of all others and we can't seem to lift the discussion out of bourgeois banality. My old friend feels the need to somehow sing for her supper so she drags something out of left field: -
OF: Did you hear about my sister-in-law?
Me: No. I don't think I know her.
OF: Oh, I'm sure you would've met her at something. Anyway, her father has been diagnosed with Parkinson's.
Me: That's dreadful. It must be very hard on everyone.
OF: Well, they live in Melbourne so we don't really see them that much but it has been hard on my brother.
Me: I think I might remember meeting him at your wedding...
We've moved on from personal banality to surveying the horizons of our person existence for second- or even third-hand suffering to make sure that our time together isn't wasted and by the end of the catch-up we're both a little exhausted. An entire week of this can leave a guy not only wrung-out but thoroughly depressed as a
negativity bias kicks in. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not getting a true snapshot of anyone's life.
We want our friends to be there to support us through the bad times so maybe there's a tendency to road-test the disaster scenarios that lie in each of our futures just to see how it feels. Of course when the truly bad stuff has been and gone we joke about it. The easiest, funniest conversations to have are the ones where there's true sadness at the heart of the story: -
OF: Did you hear what happened when my Dad got arrested?
Me: No! I never even heard he'd been in trouble!
OF: It's hilarious really. Anyway we get this strange call from my stepmother late at night...
All of this effort and analysis is a poor substitution for propinquity but it's all we ex-pats have to offer.
Whilst in Sydney I endured the most banal of travel mishaps: I left my iPhone in the back of a cab. We need not dwell on the details except to say that it was late in the evening and that wine had been taken.
My less than sympathetic mother joked that the loss was the equivalent of a lobotomy. She was 100% correct in that I've outsourced much of my memory and lower-level mental functioning to a shiny piece of Apple. To people of my parents' age there is still something shameful about an unnatural over-reliance on machines to assist with menial tasks such as addition, subtraction and the recall of phone numbers. There are two responses to this: -
- These are menial tasks. Why expend any more effort on them than necessary?
- Reliance on an iPhone for memory is no more unnatural than relying on a kitchen for digestion
In his wonderfully thought-provoking book
What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly describes technology as the entirely inevitable next stage of evolution. A kitchen can be thought of as an external stomach that allows mankind to extract nutrients from a much wider range of foodstuffs. Our species' ability to survive on cooked foods that can kill us if eaten raw is the reason why we dominate the planet.
Opting out of any technology, be it cooking or iPhone apps, is willfully contrarian and silly. Still, doubtless there once lived some paleolithic version of me whose mother joked that his preference for cooked meat was proof that he'd gone soft.
- The Heathrow Express is best way to get into London, unless you are 3+ people with luggage, in which case a black cab is cheaper. Don’t ever take the Piccadilly Line (Underground), it may be cheaper but it takes forever and you’ll arrive at your hotel feeling like a loser after an hour surrounded by all those sweaty backpacker
- There are a few good hotels around Paddington, which is right at the other end of the Heathrow Express. These are actually easier to get to and far nicer than the Heathrow airport hotels which cabs hate taking you to, forcing you onto horribly unreliable shuttle services
- Without shredding your nerves with traffic stress, it is almost impossible to schedule appointments with two ‘London-based’ pharma companies in the one day unless both are in either Cambridge or Uxbridge. If you're not driving don't even contemplate it
- British clients assume that you drove to the meeting. So do Americans. European clients do not
- The pharma companies based in Cambridge aren't as near to the rail station as you would think / like
- Take a cab from Edinburgh airport
- Meetings in Dublin are rarely anywhere interesting or fun like Temple Bar. If you want anything like an Irish experience you'll need to get the hotel to order you a cab
- No one wears a tie in the UK. Nor does anyone carries a business card
- Travel everywhere by air conditioned cab in Singapore. The alternative is to arrive at the meeting sweating like a pig
- Vodafone doesn't have mobile roaming in Korea. Annoying
- Take cabs in Seoul. The streets are badly marked and Korean is impossibly hard to decipher on the run
- Don't expect to use your gym gear in Beijing, the notoriously poor air quality is such that you’re in danger of making yourself ill
- If you want to start a mild yet interesting argument over a meal in Malaysia ask the table for the recipe for an authentic lahksa
- An Australian wanting to compliment someone from the Gulf merely needs to say that the Burj al Arab is the architectural equal to the Sydney Opera House. You won't be lying
- Do not attempt to diet on a trip to Singapore. The food is just too good
- Discussing international travel is a great way to make conversation in Europe. In the US it only serves to remind them that you're not from under around here
- Never discuss politics or religion with American clients. When in doubt ask people to name their favourite Will Ferrell film
- Everyone in Europe loves Barcelona FC (except a few bitter, bitter people from Madrid and Manchester)
- Never wear leather-soled shoes in Scandinavia or Sweden in winter. You will slip and injure your head, neck, shoulders or back
- Don't be afraid of the Metro in Paris. But don't confuse it with the RER. Don't be afraid of the RER either
- There isn't a weekend’s worth of fun in Warsaw. Go to Cracow instead
- Contrary to their carefully cultivated reputation, Finns have a terrific sense of humour, however, they're prone to annoyance if you actually make them laugh out loud
- Public transport is brilliant in Basel. The iPhone 'maps' app has all the details
- Germans do not appreciate self-deprecatory humour. Never attempt to break the ice at the start of a meeting with a flippant comment at your own expense as it will make you seem inconsequential in your audience’s eyes. Let them make the first joke
- The Spanish like shaking your hand every time they see you, as often as ten times over the course of a day-long meeting. This is nice
- If someone mentions that Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Luzern or Nuremburg are an option for an upcoming meeting then push hard to make it happen. These cities are everyone's cliche favourites for a reason
- Brussels isn't much more fun than Warsaw
- Don't stress too much about mobile / data roaming charges. Life’s too short
I'm sitting at St Pancras station waiting for a train to Paris. My working year begins in earnest this afternoon with that fiddly, unnecessarily complicated, multiplayer project that drew down so much of my emotional reserves at the end of last year.
There are a myriad of little decisions still to be made, none of which are singularly vital but which nonetheless have the potential to run into one another and thus damage the overall project. The danger is that as there's no clear sense of who makes what decision we end up with yet more turf wars. My kingdom for a strong client, etc.
The time to ask for forgiveness rather than permission is nigh.
This is a bittersweet time of year for expats, especially those of us from the Southern Hemisphere and if we have a patron saint it is Clive James. I was given his wonderful Unreliable Memoirs for Christmas years ago and its influence is obvious.
The second volume covers James' relocation to England and it ends thusly: -
As I begin this last paragraph, outside my window a misty afternoon drizzle gently but inexorably soaks the City of London. Down there in the street I can see umbrellas commiserating with each other. In Sydney Harbour, twelve thousand miles away and ten hours from now, the yachts will be racing on the crushed diamond water under a sky the texture of powdered sapphires. It would be churlish not to concede that the same abundance of natural blessings which gave us the energy to leave has every right to call us back. All in, the whippy's taken. Pulsing like a beacon through the days and nights, the birthplace of the fortunate sends out its invisible waves of recollection. It always has and it always will, until even the last of us come home.
Next year in Sydney?*
*With apologies to the Seder
No city is so boring that it cannot amuse for two days. No airport is so amazing that it does not begin to pall after two hours.
My wife and I have been stuck in Warsaw for 48 additional hours and counting. We're now a long way past both the two-day and two-hour marks. It's the shortest day of the year and it's back out to Frederic Chopin airport to sit at a gate or perhaps even on the plane itself hoping that Heathrow deigns to allow us entry. Time will doubtless crawl; not a great way to spend the longest night of the year. And across the world passengers just like us will be doing exactly the same thing. No longer in Miami or Barcelona or Oslo we're reduced to generic tubes of people, 100% interchangeable in the eyes of air traffic control.
Last night we sat around the airport bar with a crowd of twentysomething fellow passengers waiting for the flight to finally cancel and cooking up crazy schemes to hire a minibus and drive round the clock for Calais. Aren't all the best long-distance driving plans are made whilst drinking heavily with perfect strangers? We snuck out through immigration and back to our hotel.
Just down the street from where we slept is a nondescript plaque, one of hundreds around the city. It commemorates the fact that nine Poles were summarily executed on that spot by 'Hitlerite' troops on August 1, 1944.
Horrible as this memorial is I find something optimistic and forward looking about the fact that the troops are identified historically as 'Hitlerite' rather than racially as German. And I love the fact that Poland's national airport is named not for a monarch or a president or a general or an explorer but rather for an artist.
