h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What happened?! You got back from the holiday and...?! c'mon - I'm on the edge of my seat here!

Did you live in Australia for a while? Or did our Army Reserves influence you in some other way??

Welcome to the guide, at any rate - if you've got any problems, give me a yell!

What happened when I got back? Much happened before I got back. Being a foreigner, I couldn't look for a job in Europe, even though plenty were offered over the next eight weeks...

One of my former colleagues was working at a customer's site on the other side of the country (you may think it's a long way to the Basingstoke roundabout ...) fulfilling a contract of my former employer on behalf of the liquidators. Another, who had been a director of the company and had placed it into liquidation, was on a "working holiday" in the UK (near the Basingstoke roundabout!) and was arranging to obtain "essential infrastructure" and intellectual property from the liquidators so as to support the defunct company's former clients.

I had my mobile phone with me and the former director asked if I were interested in forming a company to support former and future customers. Taking the path of least-resistance, I accepted the offer and she started the ball rolling by remote control - making making an offer to the liquidators through a local agent, for computers, company name, etc., while I telephoned former customers to appraise them of the situation.

As I mentioned previously, I'd made sure before departing that I wouldn't be left in a complete financial mess if my employer went under while I was overseas. Mortgage had been pre-paid for the next 5 years and I had at least enough liquid assets to tide me over the 10 weeks, as well as reserves I could draw upon if things turned really ugly. My mobile phone bill was enormous; but manageable.

Upon my return to Australia, I was able to get stuck right into work, whilst all the t's were being crossed and the i's dotted. There was plenty of catching up to do with backlogs of work, Y2K testing and fixes, etc just in Perth. Then there was another 3-month contract of work to do in Sydney; something that is "secure" but not very lucrative because of the high costs of being in that place; and then climbing back out!


Did I live in Australia for a while? Hmmmm.. archeologically speaking; no. Perhaps you missed the mention of 35 years?
Apologies for the terse prose.

Army Reserve experience was interesting. As in the Chinese curse. Well, it wasn't all bad. There was plenty of shouting. Pointing of weapons and shouting bang because there were hardly ever enough blanks to go around... and then insisting that you treat the entire matter seriously!

The unit I served in was one to build officers... and after six and a bit years, I'd struggled hard to remain a private. Military training is more than a bit strange. To turn people into leaders, you keep telling them that they're useless; and insist that they do extensive landscaping in the most-impossible terrain, but not to do so that anybody notice.

I also got very good at marching, doing all that parade ground stuff, did some intelligence and signals... and quite a bit of landscaping. You get to meet a lot of different people. That can be an advantage and a disadvantage.

My brother, who'd quite unlike me in many ways, had been in the same unit for some years before. Unfortunately, many of the officers couldn't grasp that he, was my brother and that I wasn't his clone. We had and have different interests and different priorities. This was apparently too much to comprehend and they continued to be disappointed in that I preferred to work with others and to lead by example.

There were plenty of egomaniacs trying to vent their frustrations, part-time. There were also a number of really good people who had somehow allowed their competence to prevail. They resisted promotion to a level of incompetence.

Thus came my understanding of large organizations and the political machinations we all love to loathe.

I'll have to look at what I've written later, to see what I can extract the interesting bits for my "Introduction".