Monday
Good-bye to tearful Theo this morning ("Why doesn't Daddy live with us anymore?"), bag packed for a red-eye to Madrid. Helping Mike Smacker tee-up a market study for Grupo Chem. I'm getting tired of being the house whiz on polymers, but Madrid in the spring should be a delight.
Awkward return of John Bonanza to the fold. Everyone knows he got canned from Cashgrabdotcom, except for Bonanza himself (naturally), who continues to act like a raging success. Ken Armadillo has asked me to let him supervise my Du Rite team. Risky, since Johnny-Boy has already proven that he couldn't supervise a piss-up in a brewery, but it's my only chance to free up some time for selling against my (daunting) $7 million billing goal. So, I give Bonanza a giant stack of interim reports and recommend he let Nancy Nebraska do the heavy lifting. My rationale: Given free rein, Bonanza will reinvent my structured market segmentation study into a hunt for a deal, while chirpy NN will stick to my game plan. Off to sample Iberia's business class! Plan to try some dry sherry to help me sleep through.
Tuesday/Wednesday?
Cold, rainy evening. Endless traffic jam into town. The town in question being Seoul. Country of Korea, South. Yep, Seoul, Asia, as opposed to Madrid, Europe. Guess Mike Smacker forgot to explain this to me. Sure, Grupo Chem is headquartered in Madrid, but this study is with their struggling Korean subsidiary. Good-bye tapas and sherry, hello kim-chi and Pocari Sweat. Or whatever it is. Too tired to care, frankly. Intercontinental Hotel is fabulous, however, and after an expedition to the health club where a wrinkled masseur walks up and down my knotted backbone while Mike broils in some kind of electrocuting superheated hot tub, we are ready to meet Mr. Kim, our client contact, for dinner.
Which turns out to be mainly whisky, which we consume at an antiseptic subterranean club. Collapse into the Intercontinental's crisp linens at three in the morning. Nope, it's not Madrid, Mike.
Thursday
Feel like a mugging victim. Mike apparently even worse, so we pass the taxi ride to Grupo Chem in silence. In the conference room, a succession of managers make long presentations in Korean. Occasional acronyms jump out, like "BPR" and "EVA." Apart from that, it's all a big mystery. At a break, Mr. Kim (equally hung over) explains that the managers are summarizing their problems and the tools they expect us to use to solve them. After lunch, we're supposed to lecture on BPR and EVA. "And market segmentation," I tell Kim. "Be my guest," mutters Smacker, making a dash for the restroom. So I give the two-hour version of my stump speech, which has the happy consequence of curing my own alcohol poisoning. The Grupo Chem team nod politely, make notes, ask no questions, and back to the Intercontinental we go. "I think it went well," says Mike.
Friday
One-on-one with the president. Very formal. He has two concerns. Can we teach his team how to do EVA? (Sure, we've all read the book.) Can we live in Seoul for the next six months? (Not exactly.) After lunch, we're off to Kimpo airport. Sud-denly and oddly, I feel that getting involved in this project might be rewarding. Decide to sleep on it before mentioning this to Mike, who still seems shell-shocked.
Friday (again)
Spend the afternoon at the office, filing expenses and reviewing A&P's EVA "adaptation." Ken Armadillo asks me frankly how Mike handled things. Realize that a frank answer will get me a six-month tour of duty in Seoul. Fun, but I've a wife and kids. Tell Ken that Mike did fine.
No sign of Bonanza. Reminds me of when Theo has been too quiet in his room for too long. Go in search of my case team and find Nancy Nebraska with an uncharacteristically long face.
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