R.J. Lynch's Blog, page 18
August 21, 2014
In Egypt, tip
As with my last post, I was the author of this post and I am lifting it from the Mandrill Press website where it first appeared.
I arrived at Cairo International Airport and got onto the bus operated by the hotel where I usually stay. The other passenger on the bus was a young Japanese businessman. As you may know, the Japanese don’t tip. They regard tips as an insulting suggestion that the person they are tipping is inadequately paid. However, an Egyptian bus driver knows he is inadequately paid and he won’t feel insulted if you add a little extra. We arrived at the hotel and I gave the driver $2—enough to feed his family for a couple of days. The Japanese gave him nothing. As we walked to Reception, the driver skipped after the Japanese, asking if everything was okay. Yes, yes, all was fine. I said. “Tip him.” “What?” “Tip him!” “Oh. No.” Okay, have it your way. So we walked into the hotel; the driver followed us, speaking to the receptionists in Arabic which the Japanese did not understand; my receptionist said, “Welcome back, Mister John; we’ve upgraded you to a room in the Tower, no extra charge”; and the Japanese’s receptionist said, “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t find your booking.” Okay, she would find him a room eventually because they wouldn’t want to lose the money but she’d make him wait and I might well be showered and ordering dinner before he got to his room. The lesson: in Egypt, tip.
The International Sales Handbook by John Lynch will be published by Mandrill Press in paperback and for Kindle on 1st November 2014. You can pre-order the Kindle version here; for more information on the paperback email admin@mandrillpress.com and ask to be put on the mailing list for our newsletter.
August 20, 2014
Losing face
I’ve lifted this post directly from the Mandrill Press site–and why shouldn’t I? I wrote it. If you’d prefer to read the original, you’ll find it here.
Losing face
Yes, I know—if you had a face like mine, you’d want to lose it, too. Most amusing. The face I’m talking about is the kind that people in South East Asia hate to lose.
I visited a company in Tokyo with whom we had done business for about ten years, but this time we had some renegotiation to do. I was greeted as cordially as ever but told that the Managing Director would not be able to join us as he was in Osaka, 400 kilometres away. The negotiations were easier than expected and we agreed a new contract both parties were satisfied with, at which point some rapid Japanese (which I do not understand) was spoken and an underling rushed off down the corridor. He was back two minutes later with the Managing Director, bowing and wreathed in smiles. He had not been teleported from Osaka; he had never been out of the building. The Japanese had not believed we would succeed at the first attempt to negotiate a new deal and the MD was not to be implicated in failure—hence his “absence”.
In the 1970’s a Hong Kong Government team (remember that Hong Kong at that time was British) was negotiating with a Japanese consortium interested in building an oil refinery and petrochemical plant on one of Hong Kong’s outlying islands. While negotiations dragged on, the price of crude oil fell far enough that the viability of the project came into question. The Japanese played an impeccably straight bat in the negotiations for many months without revealing their hand or committing to anything until at last the leader of the Hong Kong team yelled at them “Do you want to drop out of these negotiations? For God’s sake just tell me”.
Solemnly all the Japanese stood up and went into a huddle in a corner of the room before coming back to the table where their leader said “Yes!” Interminable bowing and smiling followed as they backed towards the door. They had suffered a huge loss of face and the people who had witnessed it would never be forgiven.
These are things anyone from South East Asia would understand instantly; westerners wanting to do business there need to learn about them.
The International Sales Handbook by John Lynch will be published by Mandrill Press in paperback and for Kindle on 1st November 2014. You can pre-order the Kindle version here; for more information on the paperback email admin@mandrillpress.com and ask to be put on the mailing list for our newsletter.
August 17, 2014
August 16, 2014
August 15, 2014
August 13, 2014
She stood on the bridge at midnight
She stood on the bridge at midnight is, of course, the opening line of that liberal anthem of which the first verse runs:
She stood on the bridge at midnight
Throwing snowballs at the moon
She said, “Jack, I’ve never ‘ad it”
But she spoke too bloomin’ soon.
The chorus that follows sets the tone:
It’s the same the ‘ole world over
It’s the poor wot gets the blame
It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure
Ain’t it all a bloomin’ shame?
Common politeness prevents me singing other verses outside a rugby club (which is where I learned many of my choicer ditties; it’s only now that I wonder whether other people know a more wholesome version of this song), although there’s no harm in telling you that the last two lines before the final chorus are:
She is now completely ruined
And it’s all because of ‘im.
I found these lines running through my head after receiving an email telling me why A Just and Upright Man was such rubbish and how pleased my correspondent was that she’d bought it for her Kindle and read it quickly because she’d been able to get her money back from Amazon, the miserable skinflint, and so my trash hadn’t cost her anything other than the few hours of her time I’d stolen.
My offence was to write an historical romance/crime novel from the point of view of the people at the bottom of the social heap—the poor. Lizzie Greener and her family, as well as Tom Laws and his, should be beneath notice. Literature, whatever that is, should concern itself only with the upper classes. If some people of the past are invisible there is, it seems, a reason for that. They are not worthy of notice.
Well, I can’t agree. I suppose I’m influenced by the fact that, if Lizzie Greener and Tom Laws has not lived in the northeast two hundred and fifty years ago then I wouldn’t be here now, but it’s more than self-interest. Those peasants and paupers whose every day was a struggle to survive make for better fiction than some spoilt princess.
In any case, they’re not invisible. You have to look a bit harder—I’ve spent hours in archives around the country, going through original documents, and I’ll spend hours more and after doing that for a while these “invisible” people start to look out at you from the pages. Look at this from a 1765 parish account book:
Three Fox and two Foulmartens heads four and twopence
Who trapped and killed those foxes and martens so that they could claim the bounty? And what did they do with the money? Four shillings and twopence was a fortune at a time when they could also write:
To Hauxley Todd for 2 carts of coals & loading three shillings and eightpence
and when it cost the parish a guinea—one pound and one shilling—to keep Edward Scott in the Poor House for 14 weeks.
In 1745 there were sixteen paupers in Ryton Constablery (sic) and we know their names and how much they were given to get them through the year (it wasn’t much). Turn to the parish registers and there they are lined up for us: the year of their birth; the year they were baptised (not always the same as the birth year and there’s a story there, too, for anyone who cares to look); the names of their parents; who they married (and when); what children they had; and when they died.
What about Richard Evans, imprisoned and sentenced to hard labour for being “a loose disorderly fellow of ill fame”. Evans was convicted on no more than the oath of a churchwarden. Who is going to tell his story if not me? And what would that churchwarden have made of the man I saw sixty years ago trying to get the key into the door of his miserable cottage while concealing from this small boy the fact (actually quite unconcealable) that he was as drunk as a Lord? Why does this woman who abuses me by email and steals the fruits of my labours by reading and then not paying believe that the Lord’s story would be more worth telling than the labourer’s? Those shabby cottages were knocked down years ago—is every trace of the people who lived there to vanish?
Not if I have anything to do with it.
August 7, 2014
Goodreads Giveaway of A Just and Upright Man starts today
A Giveaway of 20 paperback copies of A Just and Upright Man begins on Goodreads at 08.00 this morning, UK time and ends on Wednesday. No restriction on country—you can be anywhere in the world. Click on this link: http://tinyurl.com/klk6mc5 to enter. Good luck J
