Guest from the Extreme North

A call suddenly came in this afternoon while I was having lunch and reading the newspaper. It had been quite some time since the last time I had my lunch interrupted by a phone call like this. In fact, I missed those days. The days in which I didn’t even can sit down and have a proper lunch or enjoy fully the one-hour relaxing time. Too free might not be a good thing especially nowadays my phone rings hardly once a week. I picked up the call and I was informed to attend a meeting at 1pm. Deep in my heart, I asked myself who was the person who had set the meeting at 1pm. Didn’t him know that the lunch time was until 1pm. He should have set the meeting 15minutes later – at least I (or perhaps the guys we were meeting) could enjoy my lunch time until 1pm, take my documents and slowly walk to the location where the meeting was supposed to be held. Just to give my body a very short transition period to adjust itself from lunch time to normal working hours again.

It was the first meeting with our guests from the extreme north. A remote place where the weather is co cold and one can see snow more than six months each year. A mere thought of it make me feel better walking under scorchingly hot sun towards the meeting room located in a dilapidated building due to lacking of proper maintenance. The first sight on the guests noticed no differences from the normal westerners we could see anywhere on the streets. After some firm handshakes and exchanges of greeting, we started the meeting – the only purpose why we were there. There was a smooth discussion and apparently the guests were reasonable people that didn’t ask for something that they didn’t need. As long as we got our parts done, they were happy and open to any constructive suggestions. Hopefully the honeymoon like relationship could be maintained all the way until the end of the project. It is always nice to work with guests who know exactly what they are looking for and always with a willingness to listen to any voices that could help them find something better than what they are looking for. There are some guests simply don’t have an idea of what exactly they are looking for and they just want each and every solution to be presented and explained to them. Then only they make their very own decisions. It is just too tiring and troublesome for us to deal with this kind of guest.

(437 words)