Funny how life ignores the little rules you set for it. Funny how it sometimes throws you the sort of split-second, draw-your-lot type of choices that will change the script while you’re not watching.

I don’t know who wrote the plot twist, but my life isn’t going according to plan at the moment.

About this time last year I was wandering around a tiny airport in Trapani, Sicily. Sleep-deprived and hungry, I was begging strangers for 14 euros so that I could pay to check in my backpack and make it back in time for my own farewell party in central Italy. Tanned from the hours on the beach, from the treks we made through Palermo in the blistering summer heat, I was happy and broke and I had no plans. Standing around the airport lounge, telling my story in my crumpled shirt, people nodded and laughed, and gave me the money I needed, with a little to spare.

One year on.

Early this week I’m stumbling off the first class section of the plane, thirteen hours away from home. The company has me picked up in a Bentley. Sinking back in the plush leather seats, I expect one of those chatty semi-retired drivers. But this one is silent, concentrating instead on speeding through the streets of outer London on a wet and miserable faux-summer morning. I think it’s the quiet that does me in, because I’m suddenly panicking. The prospect of six months in this place, in this job, is terrifying. “International assignment”, they had told me. I’m almost certain I won’t live up to my own hype. What was I thinking?

And today.

I decided to get out of the office some hours ago, because it’s a gorgeous day outside. English summers are a fleeting tease, so I thought I’d steal the light for a while. I set out for a walk around the hotel grounds and I realise this place really is quite beautiful outside its musty 17th century walls. I’ve calmed the hell down; I’ve decided that the next six months will be a fun ride at best, and an educated misstep at worst.

That person in the little airport in southern Italy is coming to terms with the one who’s flipping through seven-figure budget reports. I think I’ll be okay. And I’m now sitting under this big shady tree, tapping away on my Macbook and breathing in the fresh countryside air.

But I gotta run soon, because a bug just crept up my ass, and it looks like it’s just started to drizzle.

If there’s one good thing about long-haul flights, it’s that they serve up - in small but constant portions - utterly delicious displays of human nature.

One in particular is that of the first-time business traveller (FBT).

Now this is a fascinating subject because there is no combination more delightful than that of ego, talent, and nerves at 30,000 feet in the air. And there are only three requisites common to this type of traveller, which need to be applicable before you can observe its fascinating pattern of behaviour. The FBT must be:

1. travelling for work, specifically

2. in business class

3. with the boss.

You first start noticing him at the beginning of the flight. He is overly courteous to what is usually a slightly older boss, helping to store his bags in the overhead compartment and letting him through to his seat with the muted grandiose of a doorman at the Ritz.

A flight attendant soon comes by with the obligatory “Champagne or orange juice?” offer. The first-timer always goes for the OJ. Vitamin C trumps the bubbly in the same vein of logic where firm handshakes nebulously equate first good impressions.

The next few minutes are now crucial to your observations, because that’s when the magazine trolley comes by. You can spot a first-timer by his slight delay in selection while he quickly contemplates the professional merits of choosing GQ over The Economist. (He never ends up with the men’s magazine). On a really good day, you’ll get to see him pulling the Harvard Business Review off the trolley with a strange sort of smile, not unlike a first time father holding up his kid’s nappy.

Take off. There is a lapse in activity throughout the plane until they’re up and cruising at a nice altitude. Flight attendants burst back to life, and the captain announces the usual details of route, speed and outside temperature.

Now comes the pièce de résistance of the first-time business traveller: Mealtime. Frequent flyers usually regard this flourish of cold silver and linen with a general nod to its existence. The first-timer, however, is often the most eager of diners. From the careful way he swirls his wine to the thoughtful selection of fish (kingclip) over chicken (that’s poulet to you, commoner), you half-expect him to pull out an eye glass to inspect the dessert menu. Why, this meal is splendid. And this here is cheesecake; and apple crumble!

He is chatty without being loud, polite but not dull. He engages his boss in animated conversation throughout the meal, nodding interestedly and furrowing his brow at all the appropriate moments.

When the last crumbs are cleared and the trays are stowed back into place, the boss usually settles in for a some reading, or more commonly, a nap. At about the same time, the FBT heeds an internal cue to pull out a stack of papers from his hand luggage. Cabin lights have been dimmed by now, but he keeps the reading light on so he can go over his points for tomorrow’s presentation, or absorb the peformance numbers of their Hong Kong office. More brow-furrowing ensues.

(Sit back and appreciate the moment, because in about an hour or so, the show ends and your unwitting star makes that transition from first-timer to ordinary passenger).

Minutes tick by, with the air in business class settling into one of dignified humdrumnity. Most people are sleeping by now, or are otherwise silently enveloped by the neon glow of their TV screens. Watch your first-timer carefully. Watch as he ruffles the pages of his notes a few more times, and watch as he occasionally glances over to the next seat to see if his boss is really asleep. Now you know the best part is near.

He quietly puts his papers away. The first-time business traveller now presses the silent alert for the flight attendant to come over, and when she does, he whispers “whiskey and coke” to her in the darkness. While she’s fixing it, he tosses his suede moccasins aside (near where his copy of The Economist now sits), and for the first time on the flight, tests the recliner functions of his business class seat. He pulls out the TV remote, and channel surfs.

“Your drink, sir”.

You know you’ve seen his last moments as a first-timer, because he now takes the drink from her and leans far back into his seat. All you hear thereafter are the silent guffaws as he watches a rerun of Dude Where’s My Car, and the ice clinking in his empty glass.

Just like that, you’ve witnessed one of the most enjoyable repertoires of human behaviour in long-haul travel.

And how do I know all this?

Because I’ve been on too many planes. And because - in the not too distant past - I was once that first-time business traveller, bumbling my way through the moneyed aisles of the upper deck.

(Newsweek and pink guava juice, nearly knocked it over too).

It’s funny what our first thoughts are in tragedy.

The cameras! Don’t let the cameras fall out of our boat! — these were mine some weeks ago, halfway across the world in the middle of a river where our perahu had stalled after hitting a bunch of rocks.

About ten thousand bucks worth of equipment, threatening to tip out of our skinny wooden perahu. Six in the morning, it’s pouring, and we’re in the middle of the Skrang river in Western Borneo.

We’re not even halfway through our journey.

While raincoats may make sense elsewhere, in this part of the world, on this morning — they’re just hapless sheets of yellow plastic breaking the visual monotony of mist and forest. I turn around to the girl behind me; she’s grinning and shovelling water out of the boat. I want to high-five her but she’s too far away.

Our two boatmen, still barely sober, have climbed out and by now are standing waist deep in the river. In between shouting at each other in Iban, they’re trying to force the perahu (all ten-feet-long, two-feet-wide of it) off the rocks and back into the Skrang’s downstream current.

It’s one of those moments where you stop and think: isn’t life supposed to be somewhere else?

The seven days before hadn’t been any less of a gamble. Like any good idea, this one began with one of those mindless late night chats. I’d told the Asia-lover about the Gawai festival in Sarawak. Spirit worship, paganism, headhunters, tattoos. A part of my country I’d never been to; the part of my country she hadn’t seen since she was six and on a bumpy bus ride, trying to keep her tooth from falling out.

(We had to go, of course).

And we did. We planned a trip that had no way of working out. Where we were going, who we’d meet, and what any of it would be about were imaginary details we’d sorted out in our heads.

Reality, as it happened, took to the plans we never really made. Two hours by plane, four by road, and three down the Skrang river. Lazy mornings that began at 8AM with a plate of rice and a shot of (warm) home-brewed alcohol. Hot afternoons where we drank some more, and got talked into running races with the village boys (crushing loss there). Nights in a longhouse with 27 other families, with baths in the river and animal slaughters in between.

When the week was up, I’d just about gotten used to the idea of barmy booze and public nudity. That I would go back to this other soulless, rush-hour existence suddenly seemed a terribly depressing prospect. The placid ride down the Skrang that morning wouldn’t convince me otherwise.

Until we hit those rocks. Until I found myself clenching the sides of the perahu so hard that my knuckles turned white. Until we finally reached the riverbank in one piece, where I lit a victory cigarette and handed it to the laughing boatman, who took a long, relieved drag while the soggy stick of nicotine trembled violently between his fingers.

Some days life is elsewhere. That quiet, throbbing morning on the Skrang, it was right there, and then.

Disclaimer: only if you’re a precious child of the eighties, because she went: “Who’s Rick Astley?”

(source of images unknown)

Weddings make you think of one’s happiness; the way funerals remind you of one’s mortality, someone recently told me.

Last Saturday I found myself chanting this over and over again in my head.
“Perfect beach wedding, BROTHER’S HAPPINESS”.
“35°C weather, MY MORTALITY”.

Happiness, mortality, happiness, mortality.

I couldn’t have wished for a better day though. My brother and Jan got married over the weekend, in what was at once the most intimate and the loudest party-like-it’s-1969 beach wedding.

Rose petals lining the entire path to the dock where they exchanged vows. The couple doing the Robot at their first dance. The pastor praying a solemn blessing for the couple. Derek, our six-year old ring bearer, getting so excited that he clapped the cushion hard enough to send the wedding rings flying across the dock. White linen, low lights, and wine flowing steadily. The band playing “(I can’t get no) Satisfactionnn”, and half of us yelling along to the chorus.

I was tasked to manage the entire affair. Out of love, loyalty and a complete lack of self-awareness I agreed to do it. This produced several moments of discovery:

Multilingual angst. I can yell in three different languages. I mouth off in English. My spoken Malay, usually reserved for the gentle nasi lemak mak ciks, comes flying at the AV guys who are taking too long with the microphones. My Cantonese is rapid-fire, except that I’m not sure if I just told the banquet manager to move the wedding cake, or to give his pet Chihuahua a bath.

Event management is not my thing. “Bring the groom’s pants to Room 113″, “Arrange the unity candles for the ceremony”, “People from table Nine are sitting at table Eleven. Tell us what to do!”. I can barely get by myself, let alone plan for 200 family and friends to live through an evening of festivities. A borrowed dress, bare feet, and me running around hoping no one notices I have no idea what I’m doing.

All mush. Sunset. I watch my brother standing on the dock over the lake. Beaming, while his bride walks down the aisle to Gustavo Santaolalla’s The Wings. Beneath my sunnies, eyeliner runs down my cheeks. I stand up to make a toast at some point during dinner. Not one minute into it my voice is quivering; I want to say clever witty things about marriage. But the speech that I never wrote down now comes out as a rambling tribute to one of my best friends in the world and his lucky, beautiful wife.

Happiness. Mortality. Happiness. Mortality.

Happiness.

AN OPEN LETTER TO ORANGE
(as in the telecommunications company)

Dear Orange Folks,

I think you’re doing a good job. I do, however, have certain strong feelings about a particular product of yours.

One of your corporate services, BEW (Business Everywhere) is a big part of my working life due to the nature of my job. It lets me dial in to my company’s private servers from wherever I am in the world, as long as there is an internet connection present.

Now that is all good. (And kudos to the guys who worked on the last upgrade — connections are more stable these days. Chest bumps all round!)

Where was I. Oh yes. While I have few complaints about your services, I must say the first eight seconds of any dial-in process quite bothers me. You see, this is the image that greets me each time:

*silent scream*

Now what is odd about this picture?

For starters, those photographer-types will tell you that your focus is all off, and uh, things like depth perception are wonky. But. As a general know-nothing plebian, I have issues with the woman in the picture. I speak for myself and for several colleagues, as well as (possibly) the other thousands of silent suffering BEW users all over the world.

Surrealism bites! Who is this strange woman in strange corduroy trousers and a green knitted top? In what looks like a field of dying weeds? I mean:

• Those trousers are terribly ill-fitting.

• That sweater looks like some random garment the stylist threw at her right before the photographer went “Okay, now look into the camera and pretend like you aren’t worried about rattlesnakes crawling up your roomy pantlegs!”
• And what about that hair? It doesn’t say ‘windswept’. ‘Frazzled as all hell’ is the message that comes through.

What is she thinking? Who is that phantom man standing in the background? And why are they in a random field looking like they’re waiting for the mothership to return?

I ask myself these difficult questions each time I use your BEW service. Those eight seconds or so distress me in a manner that I cannot explain, and I think I may not be alone.

When people operate remotely and have to dial in to work, let’s safely assume that they prefer their first visual encounter not be one like this. I’m not talking Man Ray surrealism here, this is plain disturbing randomness.

Now I cannot speak for anyone as to what that ideal visual should be (because in my head, I would probably say, juicy cheeseburger) but this just does not work.

I hope you will be struck by the gravity of this issue, and how it affects the user experience. Let’s have some change we can believe in, as Senator Obama would say.

Yours in hope,
L.

3 AM, no more wine at our place, and my friend Francesco’s sudden desire to speak in a language he did not know, to a girl that did not exist.

We completed ‘filming’ fifteen minutes before I had to get on a conference call to KL.

I’m not sure how amusing this is to someone who’s not familiar with the Malay language (or KL landmarks). Click here to watch the outtakes instead.

PS. I love the speeds on my shiny new macbook. HELLO, MINDLESS VIDEO-EDITING!

First impressions really do count.

They’re also usually made more than once. (Then they no longer count as first ones, you say)! But they do at the workplace, especially on business trips, and particularly at the breakfast buffet between the cereal and the croissants.

You see, those forty-five minutes or so at the beginning of the workday are crucial. They can make or break your next eight hours.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I go on business trips where there’s usually more than one of us from the company travelling at the same time. The social and professional pressure cooker that is the hotel breakfast room is a microcosm of all the trivialities that working life involves: your opening lines, the way you handle hot coffee. How you look in the morning, with jetlag and a strange bed thrown into the mix.

Based on the inordinate amount of formal breakfasts (and the occasional slip-up) that I’ve lived through, I’ve found that the only way to survive the power breakfast gig is to live by three cardinal rules:

1. Never eat anything that might stick to your teeth
This includes muesli, bran, any kind of chewy cereal really. Fruit with lots of fiber. And in Asia, sesame seeds (deadly). They will lodge themselves in that perfect spot between your two front teeth. You will find a semi-chewed bit of raisin stuck in one of those molars at the back of your mouth. With any luck, you usually make these discoveries at one of two junctures: 1) when you’re peering into your bathroom mirror at the end of a long day, or 2) when you’re talking your audience through Slide Three at the morning meeting.

2. Avoid wearing white
The crisp white Oxford is overrated anyway. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but food stains are a bitch to clean out. Coffee spills are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s the fruit selection that I now unconsciously separate into two categories: Juicy, and Safe. Watermelon and all citrus fruits fall under the former category by default. Bananas, melons and grapes save you the embarrassment. You never, ever want to be the chump who excuses himself from breakfast proceedings to go stab wildly at the orange stain on his chest with a useless napkin.

3. Watch the morning news
CNN. BBC. Hell, do local news if that’s available on the telly in your hotel room. Current affairs discussions are at the root of an ancient, universal corporate ritual where one discusses the day’s headlines with one’s colleagues in vivid detail and with sufficient animation. The tricky part about breakfast conversations is that there’s an equal division of people who want to talk about work matters, and those who want to do anything but. The latter group often revert to the fail-safe “world issues” chatter, so you should be ready to discuss Kenya’s political situation just as quickly as you’d talk about the crazy plane that attempted a crosswind landing Heathrow. Anything sufficiently relevant really, which from firsthand experience unfortunately excludes classic Tom & Jerry reruns and that nail-biting morning repeat of Deal or No Deal.

It’d been a long day, and I was in bed by midnight.

Several hours of dead sleep.

Then my phone rings, loud and persistent. I have the world’s most annoying ringtone after all - it’s the theme from Bewitched (judge not or ye be judged). So I’m stumbling out of bed, shuffling to the other side of my hotel room.

I look at my phone. It registers a strange number, but in that state, I pick up anyway, and this is how the conversation goes:

“Hi, is this Lola?”

“Huh? Um. Yes?”

“Hi! I want to ask you something.”

“Okayyy…” (who the fuck is this??)

“You know, those pole dancing classes. Tell me more about them!”

“HUH.”

“The pole dancing classes.”

“What pole dancing classes?”

“You know Fiona? From Talenthub?”

“Yes. Uh. Fiona Gomez.”

“Right! She’s got this pole dancing class and I want to join, so I thought I’d find out more.”

“You what? Who am I speaking to?”

“Eileen” (or Elaine, hell if clarity is going to be anybody’s best virtue at this point)”

“Okay. Eileen/Elaine. You want to take a pole dancing class and you’re asking me?”

“Yes! Fiona’s class!”

“Did Fiona refer you to me or something?”

“Yes, that’s why I’m asking you. Can you tell me?”

“Okay. I think I’m going mad.”

“Huh?”

“Fiona. Talenthub. Pole dancing. Does she know what’s going on?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Right. Look, I’ll tell you more about this stuff another time, but I can’t now because I’m in Brazil and it’s bed time and this call is costing me a shit load of money” (how that logical thought process even took place, I will never know)

“Oh? BRAZIL? When are you coming back?!”

“Uhhh..” (does mental calculations in head) “On the 10th.”

“Okay, I’ll call you then!”

“Okay. Okay. Bye then.”

I hang up, look around my dark room. Walk to the window and open it, peer at downtown São Paulo and wonder if I died in my sleep or something. If I did, I’m asking God for my money back because I’m pretty sure my package deal includes the whole life-flashes-before-my-eyes bit, and I didn’t get any of that before I keeled.

As it turns out, I’m doing fairly well on the living thing, since you are reading this now. But I seem to be a bit short on the parts where I don’t get cross-continental pole dancing enquiries at four in the morning.

I don’t think I’m making any of this up. When I get out of bed the next morning, my phone is next to me. I check my received calls and there it is. All one minute and thirty-four seconds of it.

Addendum: it is later revealed that I am not crazy (or dead). Fiona - an acquaintance and boss of Talenthub, a dance school - had two Lola’s listed on her phone. Guess what happened.