Two massages and a business deal!

Before I tell you about the business deal, let me tell you about the fourth sister! Last week in Siam Riep, a fourth sister and assorted nieces and nephews joined us for supper, apparently feeling left out from the night before. The fourth sister was 38 years old, born in 1971. If you know anything about Cambodian history, this was simply the worst time to be born. When I handed her the menu and asked her to pick a dish, she demurely looked down and admitted she could not read, even though she could speak Thai and Japanese, as an aside. She was born when the Khymer Rouge were in power and families were separated, ‘dissendents” sent to S9 and others sent to work at farms outside of cities. Children were separated from parents and often from each other. They worked in the fields all day and were not given any education. She simply never had the opportunity to study.

Now to the business deal. I won’t tell you which country I am in at the moment for reasons which will become obvious, but I am sure this happens in all Asian countries. We made our pitch to representatives from the Ministry of Education and they each took turns reading their prepared comments to our presentation. In fact, they were very insightful and obviously gave a lot of thought to our presentations of a month ago and our written documentation. I saw all of our work for the past number of months simply going up in smoke since they seemed to be so critical. At the end of about two hours of solid critique on their part and no response from us, their chairmen, with a huge mile on his face, told us they were looking forward to working with us. I could believe it. There was simply a cognitive dissonance on my part since I had just heard hours of criticism unanswered. As the meeting adjourned, our country representative got up, shook each bureaucrats hands and offered them an envelope. When I asked my people about it, they told me it was just ‘sop’- standard operating procedure. I am so lucky to be born in Canada!

When I am working in a foreign country, I usually get up at 6, have some kind of meeting at 7 and generally get back to the hotel at around midnight. Asians never seem to stop working….sort of. I am beginning to understand that they waste a lot of time sitting idly, taking massages ( which seem to be part of business) and so on. In fact, they probably do what we describe as ‘work’ in the west for a few hours a day but it takes them 12 hours to do it because of all of the interruptions like eating, talking on the phone, massages and so on. I do realize that they consider this part of work. Maybe we are just too uptight in the west???

My work colleagues took me for a massage in the middle of the day. I thought we were on our way to a meeting and was quite surprised to end up at a massage place instead of the school. It was quite different than Bangkok. In Bangkok, when you go for a massage it is like having a workout but you do not have to do anything. The masseuse does it all as you lay on the table while your limbs are stretched in every imaginable way. Not so in this country.

After paying our 6 dollars at the door, we went upstairs to a public room with about 7 reclining chairs. There were about three guys already there there wearing nothing but the strangest colourful underwear you ever saw and nothing else. I wondered why because in Bangkok, when you go for a foot massage you do sit in one of these chairs but you only get a foot and leg massage so why were they without shirts? I found out.

It was a full massage, but we had to make all kinds of gyrations to make it work. They started on our feet as usual, but then put the chair all the way down for a back massage, then we had to lie the other way for a head massage and s on. Not quite my ideas of relaxation although my colleague fell asleep and snored so loudly they had to shut the door so we did not disturb the next room.

Last night, our Asian partner took me out for supper and, as I guess is customary, took me out for a massage afterwards. This was higher class building with a proper table and private room but instead of cololurful silk underwear we had to wear an adult diaper. A little humiliating to say the least.

Josh, when I get home, you will have to straighten out my body. These massage ladies twist necks ( as I have seen you doing), stick their elbows in groins etc but they did not study chiropractic for four years! Today I can hardly walk and it is a good thing I am taking a plane home. It feels like the same injury I had in hockey a few years ago, if you remember that one.

Next week, I plan to take a little vacation somewhere, either to northern Thailand or Phillipines.. I will let you know and promise pictures.