This Conversation is Over

Wow, this was a rather interesting week (he writes in his best understated style).

I was in the pub last Saturday (right after writing last week's bit) and found myself overwhelmed by Irish football fans watching the first leg of Ireland - France. I was actually destined for a birthday party, but found myself throwing back pints back at a rather decent clip (as I was to find out later), actually enjoying myself and the folks I was chatting with.

No need to relay the banter...but I did find myself enjoying the atmosphere, but around 2am realized it was best time to go home. Unfortunately, I elected to skip the birthday party, which would have been an ok idea, except the party was in my apartment building. Thus, the boyfriend of the birthday girl came downstairs to get me as I was trying to open my door at 5 minutes past 2. I couldn't just say that I was unable to attend the party, so I trooped upstairs for a little heavy metal and a couple more beers. Ouch. 5 am finally arrived and I begged off for a bit of sleep.

Sunday was a bit foggy, as you can imagine, but I found myself in the gym having a relatively decent workout, though clouded with some interesting thoughts about a variety of things. Normally I'm a bit reflective in the gym (which makes for some interesting facial expressions in the mirror), but this particular day kind of got to me. As a result, the rest of the days planned activities sort of fell by the wayside, and after the gym trip, I spent the rest of the day lost in thought.

I did have the good sense to go to bed early, and awoke Monday with a clearer head, but then ran into a friend of mine on the U-Bahn on the morning commute. She relayed the sad news that some woman around 68 years old had accidentally strangled herself early Sunday morning after having inadvertently gotten her scarf stuck in the escalator in the main train station.

What an unfortunate way to go.

This was a bit higher on the news line, followed closely by the follow up reports on the funeral on one of the German national soccer team goalkeepers, who had elected to end his life the previous week by throwing himself under a train in the north of Germany.

Unbelievable.

At any rate, my mind was pretty full of dark thoughts during the first part of the week, but I found an hour or so to jot down some personal thoughts Tuesday evening, which made me feel quite a bit better. At the very least I was able to sort out some of my own issues.

The same evening I managed to bang out some stuff on the piano for about an hour, so I was acutally in pretty good spirits on Wednesday when I got to work. I spent a bit of time preparing a presentation for a business review scheduled for Friday, and then suddenly one of my customers called and asked if I could arrange to get an extra AC adapter over to the hotel later that day, so it could be picked up when the customers arrived in town.

"Sure," I said, "but don't you mean on Thursday evening?"

"Nope, we're on our way to Weiterstadt, now," replied the guy.

"Um, aren't we scheduled for the business review to take place on Friday?" I asked, realizing that I already knew the answer.

"Let me pass you over," said my customer as he passed the phone to his colleague.

"Uh, let me get this straight. You're planning to meet with us on Thursday in Weiterstadt," I asked, starting to laugh. "Your email asked us to reserve hotels for other dates, and furthermore, some of our guys won't be arriving in Weiterstadt until Thursday afternoon, as we thought you had planned for a Friday meeting!"

My boss had just arrived to work about this time, so I relayed the information to him, saw the look on his face, and immediately switched the mobile over to speakerphone so he could hear for himself.

"No problem," my boss laughed. "Can you please come in around noon, though? We need a bit of time to sort of set up."

He went on to organize a dinner gathering for later that evening. I excused myself, as I'm not always a fan of the customer socializing. Besides, we'd be having dinner again on Thursday. One time would be enough for me.

So, I headed to the city, intent on getting the gym for a midweek workout. My IT colleague phoned me right as I was getting off the metro, and we talked for a half hour about our concerns on the upcoming project where we move the German operations into our Prague facility. There's a transition plan of sorts, that no one (particularly the two of us) has complete confidence in. Never mind the fact that this was precisely the reason we were meeting with the customer the following day, we were concerned because 3 years ago, the two of us set up the German operations.

As most of you know (since any post written between December 2006 and present have tended to refer to the catastrophe of my work as a somewhat difficult experience), the repair logistics industry is a constant roller coaster. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that everything I've built in the past three years is about to be uprooted and simply "switched" to a new facility.

This transition will be rocky at best, and I'm getting the feeling that I'll end up having to go over and do the same things all over again. The new facility doesn't have a track record of laptop repair, which kind of means that they stand to make the same mistakes as we did, even though we "knew" what we were doing.

It's a bit heartbreaking, since the team I built will be disbanded, and more than a few people will lose their jobs in the coming months. However, this hasn't actually been announced yet, and I'd be the first to say the timing is bollocks. ("Hi, due to the fact that we can operate more cheaply in the Czech Republic, we're going to give up your jobs and give them to someone else! Have a nice day!")

Thank goodness I'm not the one who has to give that speech. I'll just have to pick up the pieces.

In a sort of ironic twist, it's our efforts, our sweat and tears, if you will that enabled us to accomplish what we have, and it's precisely these efforts that have earned us the chance to continue the relationship with the customer. Sadly, the reward is a pink slip.

Where does that leave me? Well, like I said, I'm going to have to transfer my knowledge, and, since it took me three years to learn what I have (particularly in relation to the customer), I find it difficult to believe that I can pass this info along in 2-3 weeks, especially to someone who doesn't really know what they're getting in to.

But hey ho, we'll see how it goes.

At any rate, after a bit of a conversation with my English colleague on Wednesday, I got my work out done, cleaned up, and was about to exit the building when I realized I was about to walk into a fistfight that was just beginning right outside the fitness studio. I wisely elected to stay quietly in the confines of the building, thinking the fight would end almost immediately.

I was wrong.

Fighter number one apparently knew what he was doing, because after a little paddling from the second guy, he proceeded to throw about three punches and completely level guy number two, who was suddenly on the ground directly in front of the door. As if this weren't enough, fighter number one proceed to give about 10 good kicks to the unfortunate number two's head, and about this time I realized that I was on the front row of a celebrity beat all fuck out of someone death match.

Eventually, he grew tired of kicking, so he gave one last stamp, then took off, leaving a bloody mess on the ground.

The girl who had come downstairs from the gym with me started scrambling for her handy so she could call an ambulance, as neither one of us believed the guy could get up. However, two minutes later, two people came along, helped the beaten guy up and took off as quickly as possible, leaving a pretty remarkable trail of blood behind.

I elected to head for the u-bahn quickest way possible and get myself home to a place perhaps a bit more safe.

The events happened very quickly, and while I sort of wished I'd done something to prevent the guy getting his head kicked in, I must say I wasn't in the best part of town. My gym is right off a main market platz, and is widely known as the place to get your drugs. There are always guys standing about looking for a deal (or looking to deal), and it's usually best to minimize the contact. Sure, I get hit up for ciggy every so often, but mostly I keep my head down and avoid eye contact.

So, that certainly prepared me for an fun filled day on Thursday, where we suddenly had to jump into presentation mode with the customer. We spent a good 9 hours sitting in the conference room, covering all of our topics, and I must say the meeting was quite productive.

On a positive note, I personally showed well, and that was a good feeling. Previously, I've had initimidation issues with one of the guys who always comes to visit. He's really an ok guy, but because of the challenges we've gone through in the past, he's not always been a particular fan.

That said, we all ate together in an Italian restaurant later that night, and laughed and joked as if we were all buddies. I'm still a key person in the relationship with the customer, so that will mean that it will be a while before I'm out of the picture, even when Weiterstadt operations are no longer.

I got home around midnight Thursday night, and stopped off for a quick drink in the pub. I was a bit too tired, but sometimes you just have to do it anyway. Fortunately, a few friendly faces were about; I was able to relay the events of the past couple of days (surprise customer visits, fighting in the konsti) to people I knew. Alas, I did overstay my welcome, and Friday was coming all to quickly.

However, after a spirited morning with the customer, during which we negotiated our pricing, things quieted down considerably during the afternoon. Of course, it helped that the customers drove back to Brussels. I did a bit of tidy up, had a quick conference call with the call center, then called it an early day, also.

I decided to keep a low profile Friday night. The week's events took a lot out of me, and I was glad to be in bed at a very early hour. I felt very well rested while I was at the gym today, and all in all, it's been a rather pleasant day. Had the Arsenal won their match this afternoon, I'd be feeling pretty zippy. Instead, though, I'm simply OK.

The music I listened to during the course of the week was in line with the type of week I just described. More than once, I found myself listening to a band called Alesana. Alesana can be very irritating because the lead singer has a bit of a whiny voice. Though his voice, as well as the music is very melodic, there's the screaming element that starts to annoy very quickly. That said, I still sort of like to listen to them sometimes.

However, it somehow was fitting that I had a few glasses of wine with them playing in the background, on a rather impressive volume level. Hey ho, none of the neighbors complained.
And, the overall theme of the week was abrubt endings to things: conversations, sms's, topics during our business meetings, etc. Hence, the title of the post.

keep the faith
bryan