It’s been a while and apart from the last few weeks, not much has been happening. The last few weeks however involved helping to organise a mass visit of colleagues including the MD and CEO, from various corners of the globe to Brisbane for meetings then a series of mine and port visits. If you can imagine what planning and implementing a cross between a royal wedding and D-Day is like, that was it. Herding cats doesn’t even come close.
Airport transfers and meetings on the first two days went swimmingly. But just so you know how seriously I take these things, I MC’d the MD’s dinner on day 1 when he hosted a bunch of dignitaries and …ugh…coal suppliers. My commentary commenced as follows:
“Please take your seats, ladies and gentlemen” (obviously not a government function or this would have been “birthing people and scum”).
“Thankyou, I wish my children were as obedient.”
“Thankyou for coming. I am hosting tonight. My name is Chris and I’m the Australian representative for the company. My pronouns are “golf’ and “beer”. I have another but choose not to bring it out in polite company”
And so it went.
Then on the first day of mine visits it all went to shit, starting with my airline ticket which had been cancelled by the booking agent and I found out an hour before the flight. I had 13 people, most of whom had never been to Australia before, in two groups heading in two different directions and for a while it looked like half of them (my half) would be on their own. The other group were on their own anyway as I am only able to be in one place at a time, much to the child bride’s chagrin.
Fortunately I was able to secure one of the few remaining seats on the Hi-Viz Express with my group and the fly-in fly-out or FIFO or fit-in or fuck-off (an intolerant bigot would say) mine workers. On landing in Emerald it took more than an hour, for various unfathomable reasons, to check-out two hire cars. We could have bought them quicker. And now I have to sort out the mess as both cars have been invoiced twice. While all this was going on the other group missed the guide I had organised for them in Gladstone so confusion reigned. A long first day became even longer – a 4.30am start to get the flight, two mine visits and about 4 hours of driving. No wonder Dysart thought the zombie apocalypse had descended upon them when we arrived that evening.
As I’m writing this, I’m also writing my weekly report for the above-mentioned people. Who said white, heterosexual cis-gendered, privileged, middle-class sperm donors can’t double task. And I’ve just inserted a link to the Rolling Stones song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in my weekly report. This is also the somewhat tenuous link between the mine visits and said weekly report.
Firstly, why is a Stones song in my weekly discussion on the status of the coal and iron ore industries in Australia? It’s because I insert songs and cartoons and occasional pithy comments to make these reports more interesting to the disinterested reader. While not detracting from the legitimate stuff I put in there, the various non-sequiturs do give the reader more incentive to open the report if only to check out the cartoon on page one. Here is one of my favourites from a couple of years back:
I worked at a copper mine for a few years about 15 years ago and got into this habit there – one report for the board and one for the staff. The last one I did for the staff explained the copper and gold prices using a Pink Floyd theme. I was particularly proud of that one.
But back to the Rolling Stones connection. I had two young tech savvy Indians in my vehicle and it took them about two days to work out how to pair their phones with the sound system in the car. It took old tech dinosaur me about ten minutes. So I had a couple of relaxing days of the Rolling Stones (there’s the connection, if you missed it), Led Zeppelin and the Pogues before being assaulted by a musical genre which, to be fair, I was very familiar with. I have spent more than a year of my life in India thanks to numerous (around 80, last count) business trips so am quite familiar with Indian cultural proclivities. I have also seen their movie. I know they make hundreds every year but it’s basically the same one with a few minor variations on the same theme – hero rescues heroine from moustache twirling villain while being assisted by numerous chest shaking, pelvis thrusting dancers. Their movies are like AC DC records. So I spent the last few days being subjected to a never-ending procession of Indian hotel elevator music.
Having almost missed my flight at the start of the trip, it was only fair that I almost missed it at the end. Having to return to our starting point because the hire car company wouldn’t allow an A to B hire, only an A to A, we were faced with a four and a half hour drive back to A after a port visit in the morning and retrieval of a left bag at our hotel which required a one hour diversion.
I was struck by how relaxed the usually officious security people at the airport were when faced with the bottle opener and spray can in my check-in bag which wasn’t being checked in because check-in was closed when I arrived at the airport half an hour before my flight. I guess they realised it would be taken off me at the foot of the plane’s stairs and put in the hold. Either that or imagining hijacking a plane with a bottle opener and deodorant was a bridge to far for even these people. Dear reader, you should try this because it guarantees your bag will be first off the plane. Not good for the blood pressure however.
The actual motivation for writing this was that the CB and I will be off on our travels again soon but I got side-tracked, as usual. But now that borders are open despite covid still being rampant throughout the world we are free. Fortunately politicians can’t think of any other ways to squeeze political advantage out of it so have lost interest. We’re off to Nepal so expect a series of Himalaya Hike stories. Actually it won’t be a hike. The CB doesn’t do camping or tents or hikes unless it involves one of these:
Good luck to you if you have managed to escape the what are now proving to be useless restrictions placed on us by our public servants. The CB and I are about to get our fourth dose of a vaccine that was once guaranteed to prevent us from catching covid (remember “the pandemic of the unvaccinated”). And we’ll have to wear a mask that’s now only good for robbing banks when we get the vaccine. And we’ll have to stand 1.5 metres away from the surgery receptionist before we get on a plane with a couple of hundred other people.
This covid thing will be right up there with the Y2K bug, catastrophic man-made climate change and rap “music” as the biggest frauds perpetrated on the human race in the last hundred years, IMHO.
