It would be a great job, if it weren't for the clients...

Just returned home from a final client meeting (with the emphasis on the word final). I fear I had what I am coming to describe as a 'Jack Nicholson Moment'.

The project was a nine-month sojourn around some very nice parts of the world. It was a Marketing positioning research project to find the ideal indication for a new skin cancer drug. Although skin cancer is far from nice, the project had, until last Friday, been very good for me because I had to interview world leaders in the field to determine the best market for my clients' new drug. Luckily for me, the world experts on skin cancer reside in nice sunny countries and so, dear reader, I have been merrily trotting around Florida, Sydney, and (for reasons unclear even to me) Coventry!

Still, all was well, the physicians had been very generous with their time and had all agreed on one irrevocable conclusion (a feat in itself since, usually, if you have three surgeons in a room that is enough for five opinions), there was a very clear space for my client's product, No, there was a screaming need for my client's product - Good Times!

It came down to testing which of two possible types of Skin Cancer the product should be marketed for and the results were, as I say, overwhelming. Indication A got 9 votes, Indication B got Minus 8 votes (they actually thought it would cause harm).

So, full of the calm bravado that the soon to be doomed often display, I presented my findings to the client. At the end, I sat down, awaiting the certain applause and ready to bask in the shower of adulation they were sure to heap upon me.

"We kinda (they weren't American but seemed to want to talk like they were) hoped it would be indication B" the CEO said. "Well I'm afraid it isn't" said I "but the great news is they would all use it yesterday if it were available for indication A", I grinned my best Tony Curtis grin in triumph. "Well, we REALLY need it to be indication B" was the sad reply.

We see-sawed with this for about fifteen minutes when (exasperated now, Tony Curtis grins a dim distant memory), I raised my voice "Look, it is what it is, it's good news why can't you be happy with that"?, at which point, things went VERY Pear-shaped. The CEO it was who finally triggered the moment I went critical and waved 'Goodbye' to my career - triggering my 'Jack Nicholson in 'A Few Good Men' moment' when he said (after only 25 minutes of this nonsense) "Look Tom, don't get mad, WE ONLY WANT THE TRUTH". I know, I guess you are ahead of me, I should have paused, done some dep breathing and relaxation exercises, my therapist would probably tell me to think of Mountain streams or fluffy kittens or something - instead I heard the veritable Mr. Nicholson's voice booming from my mouth "THE TRUTH?...YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH". The meeting ended shortly after.

And THAT is how you get from Tony Curtis to Jack Nicholson in only two moves.

The Senior Partner wants to see me in the morning - I wonder what it's about?

Tom

Retail therapy in the Middle East

Have just recently returned from a Business trip to Dubai and have an experience to share regarding the retail habits of a colleague.  The colleague in question we shall call Kostas Kostagiorgiou (although we know who you are really, don't we George?)

Kostas hails from a Mediterranean island, famously partitioned years ago and with a striking appendage coming off it - Italy!, no, joking, of course I am referring to Cyprus.  When I was a kid, I used to think that Cyprus was shaped like a giant Rhino's head but now, with the clarity that maturity and age brings, I see that if you look at the map upside down (as if you were flying from North to South), you will find that Cyprus is in fact Syria's speech bubble (Google Map it, you'll see what I mean).

Anyway, it seems that Kostas has a money allergy, prolonged contact with the stuff burns his skin so to overcome the possibility of extended contact he has developed a coping strategy that we doctors like to call "spending every penny he's got" (and quite a few he hasn't got as well).  

Where better place to scratch your retail itch than Dubai, famous for its huge Brand name designer Malls, its Gold souks and of course the 'knock off quarter' where counterfeit products come in various sizes, shapes and logos (tip for the first-time buyer, always go for 'Genuine fakes' they are so much better quality than 'Copy-copies').

So it was with some trepidation that I accompanied him on a trip to buy up North Eastern Dubai.  We got a taxi (no mean feat in Dubai) and set off, I swear I could hear his wallet twitching in the cab.  

You will have read that Dubai is constantly undergoing massive reconstruction and this is true. Just because a road is there when you set off from your hotel there is no guarantee it will still be there on your return.  Rather like the staircases in the Harry Potter School Hogwarts that keep shifting, you can never guarantee that the route you took last time will be the one you take this time, consequently, even the Taxi drivers stop every 100 metres or so to draw chalk marks on the wall to help them find their way back!  In fact, on this occasion, the traffic was moving so slowly that we were able to sketch watercolour City- scapes which we played in reverse to navigate home (rather like those huge cue cards they use in TV).

Finally we arrived at our destination and Kostas set about weaving his magic, in just five action packed hours he had emptied most of the stores into an ever swelling collection of bags.  This was all fine and dandy, as I explained, Kostas likes a little retail therapy to calm his nerves, it was only when I saw WHAT he'd bought that I started to worry!

There. amongst the collection of Gucci bags, Montblanc Pens & Dolce & Gabbana belts was A CHAINSAW!  I kid you not, an electric chainsaw.  "Kostas" I said, slowly and deliberately, as if talking to the hard of thinking, "Why did you buy that?", the reply was instant (I should have seen it coming) "because it was there and it was a good price" - so there you have it, the Edmond Hillary approach to power tool purchasing.  "How do you imagine you will get it home?" I asked, "Hadn't really thought about that" was the response.

This got me thinking about airline security, clearly there is no way they would let Kostas carry a chainsaw in his carry on luggage (even Ryanair wouldn't let him if he offered a fee) and most of us would say it is a good thing that carrying a chainsaw on board with you is frowned upon, yet here's the thing, it actually doesn't represent any danger, it only has a three metre flex!

Can you imagine the scene, Kostas as the world's most hopeless terrorist "Excuse me Stewardess, can you plug me in?, no up front please MUCH nearer to the pilot".

Anyway, astonishingly, he got it home without incident, he put it in his check in bags and it went through all the scanners without raising an eyelid.  Perhaps most Cypriots travel with Power tools? perhaps it is another example of my cultural un-intelligence that I find it odd.  Still, because it WAS a good price and because Kostas did not have to pay a surcharge/fine/Bail bond/Lawyer as expected, he will be acquiring money again now and the rash will be starting.  I wonder if he will buy my Dubai City-scape watercolours?

If Men are from Mars...

I had never really bought into this notion that the Brains of Men and Women were wired fundamentally differently, as seems to be the assertion in the tabloid newspapers on an almost daily basis. But recent events have, however, caused me to at least pause to reconsider my position.

The first occasion happened a few weeks back, there had been a programme on TV (I forget which channel, it was something like GB Gold TV Replay +1 or something similar) where a man and a women, who were both far too earnest for comfort asserted that the popular book Men are from Mars etc was essentially correct only didn't go anywhere near far enough. I let the programme wash over me rather and didn't take its central thesis too seriously because the nauseating presenters' attempts and first building and then dismantling Sexual Chemistry were starting to irritate me (I don't think they even managed to get to Sexual Physics, let alone Chemistry). The show did however, give me something to consider as I ambled down to the local to take part in the weekly pub quiz.

When I was about 200 yards (sorry, don't do Metrics) from the pub I saw two women peering into the window of the antiques** shop next to the pub. As I approached I heard one exclaim to the other "Ooh Sandra, come and look at these lovely spoons". It was at that moment that I realised that, although Men and Women LOOK like they are of the same species, that this is simply a delusion. The idea that a spoon could be Lovely is a concept as alien to most men as the title star of that Sigourney Weaver film where she sweatily climbs into a spacesuit wearing those little pants (men of a certain age will all know what I mean).

The second occasion that I realised that although the two genders walk side-by side on the planet but inhabit vastly different worlds, came last weekend in the kitchen of the Guru household. Our kitchen had a Microwave oven, fitted into a space above the oven, and, unfortunately, last Saturday expired, it has warmed its last sausage roll, you might say it had shuffled off its own coil (sic). No worries, I thought, I would just pop off to our local out of town Electrical Superstore, get a replacement and pop it into the hole and Robert would indeed be my auntie's husband.

Imagine my surprise then, at the exchange which took place between yours truly and Mrs Guru, the summary of which follows;

Mrs Guru asserted that, since there was now a gap above the Oven where the recently departed Microwave had resided, it was time to reconsider the entire cooker/oven/hob concept. It appears Mrs Guru has long hankered after a Range-type cooker (perhaps she wants to tie her hair back, wear a pinafore and bake bread - although she has never mentioned it). "Oh" was my witty and urbane response to this news, Ranges are a darn sight more expensive than Microwaves and my Senior Partner at the firm does not appreciate the true value of yours truly in keeping the commercial wheels on the enterprise in quite the way he should. However, that was just a warm-up, it was about to get a lot worse!

The Range would not fit in our kitchen as things stand, but would fit beautifully if the kitchen were to be extended into the dining room also. I was ready for this and rapidly riposted that this would mean that we would have no Dining Room, a major inconvenience and also a way of destroying the asset value of our home when we decide to sell (THAT's why they pay me the big bucks - speed of thought under pressure). Mrs Guru responded with the phrase that has always given me chills "I've thought of that" (I shudder as I type this) "we should get an extension built".

And THAT dear reader, is when I realised that we may live amongst each other but we are totally different species, a broken Microwave becomes the (pressing) need for a major home extension in two easy moves (via a Range) - this is how Nuclear wars start!

I wonder if they'll repeat that TV programme, I think I need to study it now - does anyone have a TV listing for GB Gold Homes Classic +1 channel?

Tom.

**Junk

Foreign Travel, More on Airlines & Healthcare

I am writing this blog from Asia as I have been presenting at a major health care conference here. Now the conference was fine, well attended and organised - I'm sure heralded as a great success by everyone. Yours truly was given the role of 'last speaker in a very long day', a very sought after slot, surpassed only by the coveted 'first on after a damn good lunch' position. I was presenting on branding, a subject close to one's heart and something that, ordinarily, I would have nailed, however this time, fate conspired against me and the source of the problem lies with my old friend, air travel.

Readers of this blog will be starting to realise that air travel is a part of my life that I have mixed feelings about (as in sometimes, I only despise it!), but there does seem to be a trend emerging that every time I get onto an aircraft, events or circumstances conspire to ensure that, as we say in the Consultancy business, "outcomes are compromised to the point of sub-optimisation" (NB Consultant's maxim "Never use one word when ten will do"). On this occasion, the problem is deafness.

Now I have always gone a little bit deaf on aeroplanes (everyone does don't they?) but on this occasion, the effect has been spectacular. We had barely left the runway at Schipol (I don't do Heathrow - but that will be a topic for another day) when there was a pop in my right ear and, that was that. Silence, silencio, rien de sound - aural nowt! Usually this reverses on landing so I was not too distressed. (This will actually soon become a boon since some airlines are piloting a (daft) scheme to allow people to use their mobiles in flight. Can you imagine? Manchester to Kuala Lumpur, 13 hours of being welded into an over large baked bean tin with wings, strapped into a seat next to some prat yelling "Yeah I'm on the plane, just going past Bangalore" - Oh god!) However, on this occasion it did not reverse. Going through customs I had to cock my head at a ludicrous angle like some kind of demented parrot, just to hear the customs official ask me if I was a drug-trafficking human slaver or not.

That was on Sunday, on Monday I was due to give my presentation and could not actually tell whether I was whispering or yelling like a TV evangelist (or worse still Donald Trump - have you seen the US version of the Apprentice? If not, you have no idea just how GOOD Alan Sugar, sorry "Sralan", actually is). Luckily, as this was a health care conference and one of the delegates was a client, help was at hand. A lovely lady, she manages one of the hospitals in town and speedily referred me to an ENT specialist. This was great and involved her in putting herself and her staff out for me quite considerably. I am very grateful to them all for their efforts but it did start a rather frantic race against the clock which one's blood pressure has still to normalise from, and resulted in me shouting at some strangers in Starbucks!

I raced to the hospital, leaving the convention centre at 2 in the afternoon (due to present at 5, so no pressure!). The ENT surgeon saw me really quickly but said he would have to make incisions in my eardrums (not as nice as it sounds!) but that, since this was a private facility, he would give me a local anaesthetic first which would take one hour to work. In the meantime, the anaesthetic would make me A LITTLE MORE DEAF and that I could go downstairs to the Starbucks and have a coffee while we waited.

This I did but on getting to Starbucks I was now so deaf I could not even hear my own footfall. I ordered a Cappacino, by which I mean I TRIED to order a cappacino. It was obvious from the body language of the "Barista" that I was not speaking too loudly (he was virtually bent double over the counter trying to hear me). As I am a world-renowned expert in non-verbal communications, I was quickly able to deduce that I needed to speak up a little bit and so I made a slight and subtle adjustment. He recoiled as if shot...everyone did. I looked behind me, it was carnage! Someone had dropped a tray on the floor, small children were crying and hiding behind their mother's skirts - it is just possible that I had over-adjusted just a tad on the volume front! I was asked to leave. Never actually been barred from a coffee house before so that is another first for the personal CV.

Finally went back to the doc and had the procedure then rushed back to the convention centre with 5 minutes to spare. Presentation was a bit of a blur but I think the audience didn't notice the pale pink liquid that gently seeped from the presenters' ears every time he looked up from the lectern.

I wonder if they'll ask me back next year?

Birthday shopping

It was my birthday on Friday - you forgot, it's OK! The entire Guru clan decide it would be fun to go to the Trafford centre to buy my present. I should state that the clan consists of the current Mrs Guru and three daughters. Knowing that, it will now take you just one moment to see that I am hopelessly outnumbered, that any two of them could take a vacation and I would still be outvoted! Come to think of it, even Millie, the 'Peter Pan' of the Retriever world, is a bitch (in multiple senses of the word) so actually three of them could take a vacation and I would still be the minority. So, it was against this Banana Republic, democratic backdrop that 'we' decided a trip to the Trafford Centre on a Friday would be just the ticket!

I tried to claim that I had an important client meeting to go to and so would, regrettably, and with a very heavy heart, be unable to join the retail fun. I so nearly pulled it off too until my secretary rang to wish me a happy birthday whilst I was indulging in my favourite birthday pastime ( a trolley dash around Staples since you ask - that's sad and pathetic you say? so you're so perfect are you?) and confirmed that "No, I'm looking at his schedule right now, Tom ALWAYS takes his birthday as holiday" (that blows next year too then I guess!).

So we arrived at the place, after only a very reasonable 2 hours of crawling along the M62 (I think speeds above 25 miles an hour are probably bad for us in some dark and sinister way so I am grateful to the Department of Transport for ensuring that my feeble and rapidly ageing frame was not to be subjected to the sorts of 'G' forces that speeds of, say 40 miles an hour, would have exerted upon it).

Have you been to the Trafford Centre? First thing, it's enormous, it's probably one of those structures that can be seen from the moon (or at least Widnes) it has doric columns and Greek cherubs on the outside and no end of very miserable people on the inside. I swear, in 4 hours the only time I saw anyone smile was when I caught my own reflection as a toddler dropped his ice-cream over a banister and on to the head of a very bemused chav beta male below. There seems to be some retailing compulsion gripping the British. We shuffle round these places (the new cathedrals) looking for stuff to make us feel better, only trouble is, any joy is fleeting and then the bills come in! Anyway, enough with the social commentary, as I say, the reason I was given for the trip was to buy my birthday present, which appears to be some sort of code for "Let's all buy shoes because we need a new bag". Those of you who are gentlemen may not have understood that last sentence but rest assured, you did read it correctly.

Buying shoes with Mrs Guru has been a task that I have not endured for some time now. For some reason, she felt the entire experience was somewhat less enjoyable when I was around. I find this odd as I very quickly grasped the concept of it. Accompanying Mrs Guru on a shoe shopping trip is actually like a kind of elaborate treasure hunt (Dan Brown, if you are reading this, please feel free to use this as subject matter for your next novel, it has more twists and turns than the 'Da Vinci Code' but is similarly complex and won't land you in court. Essentially, shoe shopping with Mrs Guru is a treasure-hunt where you go in the first shoe shop you come across after leaving the car and find a pair of shoes. You now follow the following process;

1) Try the shoes on
2) Say "they are really comfy, were just what you were looking for and are the perfect size"
3) Put them back on the shelf
4) Walk out of the shop
5) Visit every single other shoe shop in Christendom
6) Return to first shop and buy the shoes (if they haven't been sold in the meantime)

When I was newly wed, I thought this was an annoying and immensely frustrating practice, but Mrs Guru's careful and patient coaching down the years has helped me to to see that this is actually perfectly natural, and indeed the only way to get a pair of shoes. Nowadays however, I long for the joyful, simple charm of that method! Now there are offspring involved and the complexity has been ratcheted up significantly. Now the process requires more planning that Airbus uses to build the Superjumbo jet (then again, most people's bathroom habits involve more planning than the Superjumbo launch!).

I watched in abject horror as they, in turn, pushed, pinched coerced and just plain shoved their feet into stupefyingly tiny shoes. Shoes that had points like winklepickers but which started almost from ankle level. I cast my mind back a few short years, to the scouring around Lancashire looking for a shop with a 'Clarks' foot measuring service. Of paying wayyy over the odds for shoes that were guaranteed to not pinch those teeny tiny delicate little toesies "Do you have this sandal in a 3H?" Now, those same feet were being subject to forces more powerful than anything seen on earth (apart from the Tokyo underground train service obviously). Essentially, this process continues for a few hours and is punctuated by trips to designer knit wear stores to play the interactive fun game they have there. You know, the one where the assistant sneers at you for coming in and then follows you around the place. For your part, you must get out and unfold as many jumpers, sweater, cardigans, 'knitted tees' (whatever they are) as possible and they have to sigh or tut and fold them back up the very second you put them down. An assistant that was 'marking' me timed her move badly and ended up re-folding a garment I had not actually let go of yet, what followed could best be described as 'unseemly'

And yet, I shouldn't complain,the entire process was over in less than 91/2 hours (god they stay open late!), only cost £1,200 and did achieve it's primary aim, of getting my birthday present, and so, if I sound in any way bitter or ungrateful, please forgive me, I am not, a £20 WH Smith voucher is always going to be something I can make good use of! Until Next Time, Tom.

Preparing a Proposal

Have spent the last four hours preparing a proposal for a new piece of work with the firms most important account. Correction. Have actually spent three of the last four hours trying to get PowerPoint to do the things it is supposed to do without malfunctioning, crashing or presenting me with that irritating Paper Clip thing. What the hell is that thing anyway? Why does Microsoft imagine that I would follow the advice of a paperclip anyway? I mean, is that even likely, is it remotely rational?

The thing that really gets my goat about software designers (other than the fact that they are all younger than me and earn six times as much) is that they are all so melodramatic! Half way through slide 46 my laptop decided it had had enough of this world and froze. After frantically bashing the 'Enter' key (why do we do that? We know it won't work) I got a message telling me that a 'Fatal' Error of type 23087 had occurred and that my PC would now shut down, hitch to the airport and retire to Bermuda until it felt better. Why are PC problems always 'Fatal' or ' Catastrophic', why can't they say 'a mildly irritating thing has happened and I'm shutting down now, sorry you haven't saved your work for two hours, but, hey-ho, no one ever said life was fair". Moreover, are there really a minimum of 23087 catastrophic things that I can do to my computer? Why do they tell me the number? Is it in any small way possible that I could ever be so much of a trainspotter to actually memorise them ("Oh thank god, it's type 23087, that's not such a bad one, I'm so grateful it wasn't type 23,086 as that one is a total home wrecker").

I don't actually think the error numbers mean anything at all. I'm pretty sure they are just produced by a random number generator anyway. I think I can prove this. When you phone an IT help desk, having gone to great lengths to document every single keystroke leading up to the problem and then writing out long hand the bizzaro error message and number, you aways get the same response from the pimply foetus on the help desk "Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on again"? I don't know which makes me more angry, the fact that I am paying £1.25 a minute for such lame 'technical support' or the fact that it invariably works!

Finally defied all the odds and got to the end of the proposal and tried to send it to the client but the gods of IT are not done with me yet, oh no. First of all it was rejected by my firms mail server as being too large (lots of sexy graphics in it, e.g half moons, crescents etc - no one ever knows what they mean but they look good) Am now trawling through the thing trying to make images smaller so it will be small enough for the server to deign to send it, latest casualty was a fabulous image of a pyramid with 5 layers to it that looked superb (it didn't actually make any kind of a point but that isn't really important, it looked complicated and impressive and that in my game is what counts).

Whilst doing the research for the proposal, I found myself hopelessly distracted. I read recently about a phenomenon called WILFing. I think the WILF part means "What am I looking For"? I had thought it nonsense when I read the article but have in fact just spent two hours doing it myself. I remember, when preparing the proposal, I definitely opened a Firefox window to Google something specific, trouble is, an hour later I was reading an article by a relative of Ainsley Harriot's on the importance of aerating lawns, which itself lead to a very interesting article on why Bats hang upside down and another on the different fonts used on the old sixpence coins - all very fascinating but totally not what I went online to look for. I still can't recall now what it was I was after.

Time to go now, early start tomorrow, I'll just read this email that has come in.

Oh no, "Your email entitled 'Proposal' was rejected due to error number 23086 and just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, here comes a paperclip to patronise you until you are sorry".

The Joys of Business Travel

Just back at my hotel after a client meeting in Amsterdam. Now I'm not one of those who goes mad for a spot of International roaming but I didn't mind it in the old days. That is to say, in the GOOD old days, the days before of the 'No-frills' airline.

Because of "Economies" (the Latin word for cutback I'm sure) we are now obliged to travel in this godawful manner for all business trips. So there I was this morning at 6 am on a bus (they don't let you walk down a nice heated airbridge to the plane oh no) to a QuesyJet flight from Liverpool John Lennon Airport. Can I just say here, what a wonderful idea that was, to name a regional airport after one of its favourite singing sons? I think London should follow suit, they could call Heathrow 'Chas' and Gatwick 'Dave'.

Well I was the only person on the bus (and hence the flight) who was actually travelling on Business. There I was, best suit and tie with my nose directly adjacent to the armpit of one of a very loud and raucous group of women who were all wearing Tee-Shirts with "Barbara thought we were having her 40th in Sunderland, but we're off to Amsterdam, Yorkie Girls on the p*ss tour 07" emblazoned on them. Now that is a lot of words to fit on a Tee-shirt, regrettably both Barbara and the rest of the Yorkie girls all had the physique to accommodate such marathon syntax easily!

I wasn't prepared for the boarding procedure, I remember doing a case study on Southwest airlines (who pretty well invented the No frills concept in the US) once, so deep down I knew about the 'no-assigned seats' rule, what I wasn't ready for was the mad scramble across the tarmac as the bus doors opened. It was every man for himself, a war zone, elbows were flying, there was kicking, punching and eye gouging, small children were trampled underfoot in the rush! Looking back, I feel a little sorry now, perhaps I should have eased off a bit but it is terribly important that one is able to get one's Swiss Laptop bag safely stashed in the overhead bins!

Anyway, I quickly got my comeuppance a couple (she was wearing designer clothes, yards of cleavage and belly showing, this pale pink in the cold morning air and at stark contrast with a face that was a colour known to Dulux colour charts as 'Dale Winton Orange', he was short, round shaven-headed and clad in a football shirt and WAY too much Burberry. The sprog had one of those names that is pointless and bound to irritate (Callum or Cody or something similar). Thing is, the kids spent the entire journey turned round and stared at me over his seat top for the whole journey. I swear he didn't even blink, not once, the only time he moved at all was to wipe his nose on the seat back (Advice, next time you are on a QuesyJet flight, if you are in seat 22E, do NOT put your head back on the head rest!

Finally got to Schipol and landed at that wonderful new runway they have there, the one that is actually in a different time zone to the rest of the airport. After a 20 minute taxi, I swear you could almost see the airport! Waited an age for passport control while watching some poseurs going through the retina scanning line (no queues, no need to show your passport, straight through, no messing - god they looked so smug!). After waiting an age for my baggage, finally managed to make it to the station and the client. Now back at the hotel contemplating a depressing room service menu (they actually call the food 'Fayre' with a 'Y'. Just realised, I have to repeat the entire journey experience tomorrow, oh god, perhaps I should phone down for some hemlock!