The Personal Trainer

It began innocently, as these things do. But looking back at that beginning now, knowing the suffering and pain that was to come, that innocence is unimaginable. Like a forgotten Eden, forever lost, as so many of us have been, since that innocent beginning.

‘Physical exercise is good’; an unassailable truism. And so our team willingly submitted to the regime. Weekly at lunchtime we would exercise under Mark’s direction. It was as simple as that, as innocent as that. So the compulsory, regimented, exercises began, under our new Personal Trainer (‘El Persodente’). If we had only known the road down which that simple, innocent agreement would bring us; a road of terrible pain, a road of wretched suffering, a road around Farm Cove and Mrs. Macquarie’s Chair.

As the weeks passed Mark’s gentle encouragement gave way to demands that we improve our times. Mark, or ‘Che Cahill’ as he insisted we call him, became a brutal disciplinarian. Each outing was more challenging, more arduous than the last. Che branded all objections as descent and they were mercilessly crushed.

The objectives were inhuman. It was only a matter of time before the effort would overcome one of us. Aziz was first to succumb; Poor, gentle Aziz. The demands of our leader were simply too much for him. He always lagged the rest of us. With our support he persevered. But one day we looked back, and Aziz was no longer there. What became of him? Did Che execute him? Did he die of sheer exhaustion? Was he sitting at his desk trying to polish off a bug during his lunch break? Who knows? Who could know?

Undaunted, the Personal Trainer commended our loss as a sign. He declared it ‘Year Zero’, and pressed us to, and beyond, the limit.

Words can not describe the horror that Tuesday lunchtimes (or Wednesday if it rains or whatever on Tuesday) now hold for us. The agony is monstrous, but dread of our leader’s capricious temper and fear of his wrath keep us running.

Congratulations Nina

Nina was always willing to go the extra mile. Now she’s jumped through hoops and snatched her MBA from the ambition tree.

It’s always good to be proactive and touch base with the industry to get a heads-up on the benchmarks for fast-tracking your career. The bottom line is that a knowledge-based strategic game plan is needed to prove you are a goal-focussed team player who is in the loop. You need to play hardball to empower a win. The prevailing philosophy is to quantum leap over your peer resources by obtaining a superior business oriented academic enablement. Thus pushing beyond the parameters under which most of one’s career competitors operate, therefore enhancing your value while radically reducing internal angst, synchronizingly marginalyzing your rivals to a point where they are almost nil as a potentially competitive factor, thereby dominating, in a total way, all the marbles. That’s what Nina’s all about.

But it hasn’t been just about picking the low hanging fruit. Bilaterals with Nina have been at a premium while she’s been at the academic coalface. We’ve all had to adjust to the low-Nina-availability environment. That was a paradigm shift that required us all to re-solutioneer our collective social interactions. Often Nina was engaged in valued added initiatives and needed to skip opportunities to exchange discourse regarding matters that were not within the strategic MBA-box. This had a negative impact on all of our bottom lines. Happily, newly equipped with her MBA, she’ll have enhanced face-time for us all. (Though we may never again understand a whole sentence that comes from her lips).

Well done Nina!

Meta Blog

It’s been quite some time since I’ve made an entry here. The drought is finally at an end; I’m back, by popular demand.

The record will show that, after 24 successive entries over the course of a year, (an average of a blog posting every fortnight or so), this blog experienced something of a hiatus. Fully two months have elapsed since my entry bemoaning the evils of white ants and their voracious appetite for all things wooden (not least of which is my house).

The white ants are at least in part to blame for the cessation of my scribbling. Or rather the effort to expunge the imprint of their munchings has consumed my free time to the point that generating missives for recreational purposes has taken something of a back seat.

It would appear that the long, dark teatime of this blog has not gone unnoticed. The initial, lone voice of disquiet has been joined and lately risen to something of a chorus. Many of you are demanding 'the return of the blog' (sounds like a bad B movie).

It is gratifying indeed to hear you express this interest. I might have been forgiven for believing that this forum amounted to little more than me talking to myself. (A practise I reserve for my solo trips to crowded cinemas). But here you are in your thousands demanding fresh entries.

And have them you shall.