Management Consultant My Ass

When I started working for this conference company in Los Angeles almost four months ago, I was hired as a Management Consultant. However I am only 33 years old, I look younger, and I don’t have a diploma in Management Consulting or anything related.

So I wrote all my reports, a lot of it has been implemented, but none of the radical changes I suggested were. For that the company went to real high paid professionals, and now I know they are all charlatans.

Today we were finally told about the great changes which are supposed to build teamwork, make the employees happier and make more money for the bosses. I have to say, I was not prepared for what I have heard, I was certain my role and incentive report would have a huge impact on their decisions.

In fact, they decided on the complete opposite and even went further underground. I have no doubt it will fail miserably. This is the Dilbert Principle all over again, I think I need to buy them the book: The Dilbert Principle : Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads, and Other Workplace Afflictions, and hope they will read it.

I’m sure that consultant helped tremendously in defining that book, since he claims to have worked for many years in his field, with the greatest corporations out there. Well, these corporations must have been in Utah, and not even in Salt Lake City, but in the suburbs where people have no choice but work in the only company around.

Because the only way I will ever see a bonus, will be if I can keep that job for more than a year. And to be honest, with a turn over of staff like the one I have observed since I have started, this bonus scheme will so obviously failed, you would need to be blind or not want to implement one in the first place, to not see it.

In all, it is all very subjective. I may get a bonus at the end of the year if my Manager feels like it. Well, knowing me and my relationships with all my previous managers, I can already tell you that I won’t get a bonus at the end of the year. So why should I even try?

All I can hope for is a maximum of $2,500 before tax, out of a salary of $60,000 before tax. Do you think I will go out of my way and break my back for $1,250 more after tax at the end of the year, that my Manager might decide I don’t deserve? Are you joking?

I tried to explain to them that a quarterly bonus scheme would be a mistake. It needs to be monthly, especially when over a dozen employees have been sacked or have left since I started. Just to give you a good picture, this company only has 16 employees right now. No one will do any effort to make more money. We are too busy wondering about when we will get the sack, and questioning if perhaps it would not be a good idea to jump ship before then.

So now, all my hard work at selling sponsorship deals, and worrying about who would get the bonus, just went out the window. I am starting a new conference tomorrow, I am supposed to contact 30 potential sponsors. Somehow I think I will forget to call them every day next week, as I am supposed and expected to do. They can lick my ass, I am much more motivated in finding the speakers, get the brochure designed and move on with the next event.

And it gets worse. Not only a huge percentage of my salary goes into taxes, but on top of it something like $500 a month goes into health and dental care insurance. Now there are pushing me to spend another $400 a month on more insurance, because my $500 a month barely covers anything.

As if that was not enough, they have finally implemented a new great scheme supposed to make this company more attractive, that will cost me another God knows how much every month, probably $400. A pension!

I don’t need a pension for a job that I am unlikely to keep for more than a few months, if I am not laid off before I decide to go. I am so crippled with all those social securities that I need to pay, that anyway being Canadian I will never be able to benefit from, that I think I will be lucky if I have any money left to survive at the end of the month.

And to assess if we deserve a bonus at the end of the year, they implemented a wonderful little process that the consultant claims invariably makes the employees happier. Appraisals! Quarterly appraisals!

Apparently communications between you and your Manager is important, it helps build a bond and teamwork. I say appraisals are the tools Managers use to get you sack. The Valley Girl will certainly use it well. They are meetings where they can destroy you and tell you how incompetent you are, and that you don’t deserve your bonus.

Appraisals not only take a lot of time in writing reports and all, time that could be better spent producing events, but on top of it the results are definitely to destroy any remaining relationship you might have with management. It is painful and it does not help. It is like officially filed reports about how bad an employee you are, and will definitely be used against you one day when they no longer require your services. It de-motivates the employees.

By all means, communication is important. Meetings to discuss business are important. But not appraisals, where you Manager ask you how bad you have been, and if you are not honest, he will tell you how bad you are and how you could increase your productivity.

Simple, the only way I could increase my productivity would be to tell me: work on your conferences on week nights and on weekends. This is after all the only way I could work harder, because I certainly cannot squeeze more in a day of work than I am already doing. They have me under so much pressure, I am already stressed to death and work twice harder than I ever did in any other job I had.

The bosses are greedy. They don’t want to give any bonus, that much is obvious. They will only hurt themselves in the end, because by not rewarding me on the money I directly bring them from my extra efforts, I won’t make any extra effort on top of my actual duties to confirm one more sponsor.

It makes no difference to me if there are $20,000 or $100,000 in sponsorship on my event, it only means more work to coordinate all these sponsors and exhibition stands before and at the event.

For my own company, I will be willing to lose 15% to 20% in revenue on any sponsorship deal or delegate people will confirm for me. Otherwise, there won’t be any deal or delegate to speak of. Of course, this is assuming that they would be mostly commission based. Otherwise 7% for sure.

And what kills me about this Management Consultant, is that he came twice, talked with us for one hour, talked with my bosses for a few hours, made us fill a non-anonymous report about how we felt (like if we were to tell the truth in there), and then came back with stupid slides of a PowerPoint presentation that he already had and used in all these other companies he worked for before.

So in the end, not only he costs a lot of money, but on top of it he is laughing at us, since it is obvious that his questionnaire was useless and the talk he had with us was equally useless. He was not interested in any of it, he just came back with what you could find in any management book on the market. And only a few excerpts.

I thought I was incompetent as a Management Consultant, I understand now that I was more than competent. I actually did something, I wrote a dozen long reports, based on my real experience in conference companies. The other consultant did not even write a report, he discussed with the bosses for a few hours. He did not do any research in our company to try to understand it, and he certainly did not gauge the pulse of the office with his questionnaire. He was useless.

And yet, it is his recommendations which will be implemented. And it will take my bosses just a year to understand the failure of it all. Then they will listen to me, to my reports. So I guess it was not wasted after all, even if I will be miles away by then on the other side of the ocean.

In the meantime, I will resume my role of assistant for the Manager, despite my ten years experience in conferences at managing teams and whole departments. I won’t do anything to confirm sponsors and I won’t do any more overtime. They have succeeded in de-motivating me completely. Complete success!

In the meantime, the Valley Girl is working hard at getting rid of the new guy. She has repeated today how unhappy she is with him, how he creates more work for her instead of helping her. And what she had to say about him for when we will go at her conference next week in San Francisco, she could have said about me too. She did not, so it shows how unfair she is to him.

Things don’t change. That’s one employee, that new guy, who certainly won’t see any bonus in his lifetime. He does not even know it yet, how hard the Valley Girl is working at destroying him.

The funny thing is, he is ambitious. Listening to him, he wants to become Director within a year. He took the job because he thought there was place for advancement and promotion. He is only 22 years old, he never really worked before. You can see the problem.

He still thinks that people keep their job for life and become Director in no time. We never get the chance, we are sacked faster than any promotion could ever come. And incentives only create more work with no real and tangible reward. So in the end, they have the opposite effect of what they were intended for in the first place.

More stress at work

So, the conference that I thought was cancelled, with $25,000 already confirmed in sponsorship, which could reach $100,000 altogether in the end, despite that no delegate wants to attend, has just been moved to the autumn. Most probably I won’t be the one working on it, too much sponsorship involved. And my great conference in Europe has also been moved, and so I am not going to work on that anytime soon.

My next project is even more disheartening than the other two. It is the exact same event I just worked on, but instead of being for the West coast, it is now for the East coast. And the agenda is as bad as the previous one. And the sponsors I need to contact, the ones I have harassed non stop for the last few weeks, are also the same ones. So I need to go back and harass them all, all over again. It should be a lot of fun!

Because of that designer who cannot do her job, poor girl, most likely because she was not trained in the first place, I will have to work all weekend to write another 20 pages of comments to make my brochure acceptable. Same for the Valley Girl who is working with the same designer, her booklet should have been finished last week, and now she will work all weekend on it. And she made sure she told the whole office that she will work on it this weekend. How sad.

I also met the Accountant Director in the elevator, I remembered what the boss’ wife said last night when she left, about coming the next day with a better attitude. I asked her if she was OK. She said no. I said: well, I don’t suppose I can ask you why. She said no. I told her I will ask again in six months and maybe then she will tell me. It was a weird thing to say, but the answer was worth it. She said that I will find out much sooner the consequences of all of this.

Now, that is interesting. I don’t think it has anything to do with me. She either will be sacked as well, or she is already thinking about leaving the company. Funny, I had first assessed her as someone I would have trouble with, and for once, I was wrong. She has been nothing but nice to me, she likes me for some reason.

I would feel bad to see her go. And I’m pretty sure she is the most competent person we have in that office, she is a pillar. I’m not sure who could replace her, unless the girl who was helping her will now be promoted to that position. Somehow I doubt it, they will have to take someone from outside.

The Senior Manager said something nice to me last night when he left, and obviously, this time, not in front of everyone. He was pleased with my work on that conference and confirmed that it was great to work with people who knew what they were doing, someone with experience.

Considering that I am about to start my own conference company, I’m glad he was at least able to see that I could do the job very well, and that I had experience. I have to say, he might have not noticed, since I am doing exactly what his assistant with a miserable salary is doing. They have no clue what I am capable of doing. So far they put me on confirming speakers and sponsors on someone else’s programs. Great. Anyway, that’s encouraging, at least.

More tension at work

Tension has been terrible at work all week. And today was perhaps the worst of all, luckily I was not involved in any of it. A new guy starts on Monday, perhaps the one who never came back after his first day, the one I thought was badly chosen. Well, he may be the one starting on Monday with a salary of $50,000 a year.

He is already dead, I know that much. I give him one month. Why? Because the Valley Girl was so pissed off today, she talked about it all day with the Chinese girl. And at the end of day, she could no longer contain herself and she shouted that not only he is very young, but on top of it he has no experience, and has the same salary as her. Even though she will be his boss.

I was amazed she would so openly state that loud, in front of me (and the Chinese girl), how dissatisfied she was with that situation. It is clear to me that she will do everything she can to get rid of him as quickly as possible. And now I believe that the last one, the one who left two weeks ago because she had enough of the office, might actually have left because she was under the Valley Girl and she must have made her life a misery.

The future will tell us if I am right, it is clear that the newbie won’t last. And then, I have proof that it would be a direct consequence of what the Valley Girl said today.

And the interesting stuff does not end there. My boss’ wife came to the Valley Girl, and she said to her that she had to work him hard, because he was young and inexperienced, and she had to make sure he would be doing something. Considering his salary, I can understand.

I could not sleep at night if I had 20 employees with salaries ranging from $30,000 to $60,000 a year, and I thought that for one second they would not be pulling their weight. Then again, I had another proof that management plays mind games with us, and she is close enough to the Valley Girl to let her know: work him to death. Never mind if he leaves within a month.

There were many other problems today, of course I was not privy to it. When my boss’ wife left, she said to the accountant: I hope tomorrow I will find you with a better attitude! Or perhaps she was talking about someone else in the office, I’m not sure.

I had only one problem yesterday, with the Senior Manager. He freaked out because I did not stop everything once his latest brochure needed to be proof-read, and that a few hours later I still had not read it. So he made a big speech about it for five interminable minutes, in front of everyone else. I felt very humiliated, and I just said: OK.

Again, if I had pushed that one, and if it had gone further, to upper management, as I’m sure he reported me already, my bosses would have understood that instead of reading his brochure, I was in fact contacting one last time all my sponsors before my brochure went to print. Again I would have won. But it never reached that stage, because I did not argue. I said OK. That was the end of it.

It was the first time he felt the need to freak out about me. So I cannot really say that he is that terrible. I did not take it personally, he is a good person. He just felt that it was important that I read his brochure. Then again, he could have just said so very nicely, as he usually does when he tells me something that I still don’t know about the company and how we do things around here.

This panic attack from him suggested to me that the story was more serious than usual, and had already been reported to the bosses. And this is how negative stuff goes back to upper management, and positive things never get reported. And this is how your bosses get to feel that you are incompetent even when you work your ass off.

But who cares, this week this has been the least of my problems. I have a bigger one to confront tomorrow. I should have read my brochure and reported all the changes to be made already. Unfortunately I did not have the time yet. And I should have worked on that tonight. But Leonardo came here to pick up the film script and the DVD of the film I worked on, and hence, I did not do anything. Tomorrow will be again a big free for all.

I am also very unlucky, because the woman who did the design of my brochure, she had never done one before. And so everything is so wrong, it looks nothing like all the other brochures we have. I had to write 12 pages of comments to try to see how she could make it better, and I have not even yet fully read the first page! What a waste of time and money, for each brochure we get designed.

That is why that when I will start my own company, I will have a template, and I will use it every time, and I will do all the design of my brochures. And if I have to get my employees to do it, they will use my template, and it will look nice and it will take no time to produce those brochures, because I will show them how to do it.

I also noticed today that the two managers were getting closer to me. The two girls were trying to get me in their conversation, to include me, to get me to become their friend. Though it is nice that perhaps I have misjudged them, I had to work on my brochure, so I could not indulge. And anyway, it looked artificial and forced. So I went to the toilet, and when I came back they had disappeared.

It may be that, out of what happened this week, they will respect me a bit more. If it is the case, I am truly happy and surprised. We’ll have to see what happens in the next weeks to confirm or deny this new theory.

Oh, I also have to say, that after reading that brochure of my Senior Manager, I felt revolted. It had no sponsor, no supporting organizations, and it was so badly written, it was the worst conference program I had ever read in my entire life. I truly wondered who in hell would want to attend that conference. I did not say anything, I just observed and learned.

It is not his fault if the program is so bad. They don’t expect from him the big events that I am doing. From him they want as many as possible, as quickly as possible. When they claim that we produce 50 conferences a year, well, he writes at least half of them, and then he gets his assistants (which I have also become), to do the rest.

The result is a series of terrible events that no one will ever want to attend. I would be ashamed to have written a conference program like that. Considering that English is my second language, I have assessed that I was writing programs like this 10 years ago, when I started. No research has been made, I’m not sure if he knows what he is talking about, and most of his programs are made of bits and pieces of other conference programs, including his.

The language used, the expressions, it sounds very much like all the other conferences out there. It is the vocabulary and style that all newbie needs to learn when they first need to write a program. They read many agendas, and hop, they write something similar on a different topic. That is what I am trying to avoid. I want to make it interesting and more human, less mechanical and boring.

They put me on the worst conference program of all today. It was also badly written, it had no content, and it flopped many times the previous years. We still produce it because we have one main sponsor putting $25,000 on the table every year for it. And I saw the contract today.

I told the Director, when he asked me if I had already invited the speakers, that it was the first time I heard the full title of that event today. And jokingly I said that I guess they were waiting to have confirmed $100,000 worth of sponsorship on it before finally giving it to me.

Though I said it as a joke, I think I made myself clear: don’t expect to have contacted all the potential sponsors in the database already, and then get me to do all these cold calls to chase them up. If I am not going to get my bonus for these sponsorship deals, then I am not going to call any of them. You do it!

I said in his office, innocently: so I guess I can concentrate on the speakers for that one, I don’t have to contact sponsors. Within an hour the conference had been cancelled. I guess they realized that it was a touchy conference. The bonus scheme has not been implemented yet. I don’t even know if all my hard work with the sponsors on my actual conference will pay me a dime, since the Director closed all the deals, even if I had done all the hard work. They appear to have discussed that all afternoon, in my boss’ office. I guess I did not have to say much to make them understand how I felt. Good.

I have to say, I never thought for one second that the conference would be cancelled. Not after seeing a $25,000 contract on my desk. I don’t know what happened there. Things that probably they have not told me. Obviously the boss did not hear my own suggestions about this event, otherwise we would be going ahead with that conference now.

I suggested that we should research the subject, bin the agenda the Senior Manager had written at lunch time, and do a proper conference with this. With well identified topics. Of course, by saying that, I was in fact insulting the Senior Manager. So it did not go anywhere.

Now they want me to produce their first ever European conference, based on their biggest conference ever they have in the US. I have to say, I love the idea. And I love even more what the Director said about it. He said that I can tell him all about how to produce conferences in Europe, since this is where my experience lay. I told him that it was the same as here, but he said that it was not so.

Well, I hope he is not expecting any magic tricks from me, because producing conferences in Europe is like producing them in the US. Language is not even a problem, we do everything in English. No European database however is a troubling situation. It might very well flop. We’ll have to see.

I will propose to them to do two conferences at the same time. One in London in English, the same one in French in France. We can do a double bubble and confirm our sponsors twice at the same time. Let’s see what will happen then. Of course, I still have to do a lot of research, and many phone calls. So it is not going to be easy. I look forward to that challenge however. It might be finally what will make me appreciate that job.

Think about it. If we start producing conferences in Europe, it means opening an office there eventually. If I were to remain in that job for a long time, and manage to get my baby to move here and work with me, then we would open that office in Europe together. At the very least, all my reports must prove to them that I am capable. No one else in the company would want to move to London, they all have houses and family here.

I’m afraid I might have left them by the time the idea even goes anywhere. If they have anything planned for me, as they led me to believe when they lured me here, I suggest they tell me now or before the end of next month. Because then, it will be too late.

Human nature is a bastard

It is no longer a choice that I have, how long I will remain in Los Angeles. It is really how long it will take them to get rid of me. Could be before the end of the month.

I am now definitely on the black list of the Chinese girl, and she really went for it. At this time she is going around the whole office to tell everyone how bad I have been, and accusatory as she said. And her voice must be quite strong to have been able to get the sponsorship guy sacked overnight after six years, despite the fact that he was excellent at his job. I have no doubt I have not heard the end of this little altercation between us.

And all I did was to point out that the sponsor I am trying to sign right now, sponsored one of her conferences, and unfortunately after all this time their blurb and logo are still not online on our website. If they find out, they will quickly realize that what they paid for, we did not do it, and hence, why would they want to sponsor again, or perhaps they will want a freebee.

My god, the consequences of pointing out that a logo was not online… if I had known, I would have kept my mouth shut. Of course, now the Valley Girl is also involved, and took her defense, when there was no need to. I have no doubt what it is that they will be talking about at lunch time. How big a monster I am, a threat, and how quickly I need to be eliminated. Pretty sure that if they don’t verbally come to a plan to achieve that, it will be implicit and as strong. They will both work against me from now on, they’ll try to get me sacked.

Unfortunately for them, I am not working for them, or on their events, even if I am going to San Francisco to work on the Valley Girl’s event at the end of this month. I am pretty sure she will find a way to get back in the office afterwards with the most negative feedback about me. I will have to do everything she wants me to do without question.

Anyway, they might succeed in getting me sacked before then, who knows. They don’t waste time. They are so on edge, they have so much work to do, that the smallest hint that they could be incompetent brings the war on. And they have ammunitions, yesterday I add more problems with the Director, even if I can’t remember what it was about.

I have ammunitions too, she is explosive. I’m not the first one she was rude to, I was not the first one facing the sack because of her, the same for the Valley Girl. Surely by now the bosses will understand that they are the problem? Not the rest of the planet? Somehow I cannot count on that, a superior is always right, never the assistants or the ones working for the Managers and Directors. The low life ones, as I am right now from their point of view, are always the ones to go.

I’m surprised that the Hispanic guy is still working with us, being right under the Chinese girl. It is a tribute to his qualities, being not threatening at all, very laid back, nice guy, hard working and, yeah, a yes mam, yes sir type of person, which I’m afraid to say, I am not.

Let’s see how far she can go with this, when all I did was to point out that one of the sponsors did not have its logo and company profile online, and could lead to losing a sponsorship deal. Somehow I’m sure she will succeed and making quite a story out of this.

I wonder how fast it will happen, how quickly I will be called in the office. This afternoon? Tomorrow morning? I’m ready for it, I feel safe about it, I hope she will destroy herself in the process and free her assistant and any future ones from suffering her temper and behavior.

There is no denying that she is excellent at her job, and this is why she won over the sponsorship guy who just could not stand her anymore and must have exploded at some point, even if no one told me about it, and I only heard some rumors. But eventually, if we have to sack half the company for those two managers, as it has been so far since I have arrived three months ago, then being excellent and under pressure is no longer an excuse.

At the very least, if the bosses still want them there, they will understand that I am right in this matter, and she is just continuing her little game of getting everyone sacked as soon as someone crosses her even for one long minute, which is enough to create a story as large as a two hour film. And unfortunately, it will certainly not inspire me a film script. It would be the most common and boring story ever, happening every day all over corporate America.

I don’t feel like going back to work this afternoon, that much is certain. I did not need that stress today. When she talked to me, accusing me of something that was still unclear, I hurt terribly. I remained silent. I went back to my seat and understood that I played with the devil and was now in a terrible situation.

I saw it all before with the sponsorship guy, I saw him doing the exact same thing after he spoke to her and she lashed into him. I thought this could not happen to me since I am not working with her, I was wrong.

Maybe this time around I will get out of it unscathed. They will all talk about it, feel pity for her, see me as the big monster, since she is the one going around destroying me, whilst I am very much passive in all of this. It is not my style to try to get people sacked for banalities. But the next time around, that’s it, I’m finished. This is the joy of having a full time job that everyone hates, working with people who simply just cannot stand each other.

Maybe I am the problem, after all, I always had trouble with everyone I worked with in the past. That is why I need to start my own company, it is clear that I am just incapable of bending, be a yes sir type of person. Shut up and just do my job. Again it is leading me into trouble, and I feel powerless because it is unlikely I could ever change my personality.

I’m back from work now. When I left at lunch time to go back, I was already thinking that I had to apologize to her, even if really I did not have to. If anything, she is the one who should apologize to me, I thought. But this is not how it works, you apologize for an easy life and you do not expect an apology.

The only problem, I was thinking, is that I was apologizing way too late, she probably already had the time to destroy me completely in the hour I went for lunch. The damage had been done.

When I arrived at my desk, she was really active about the sponsors on that particular conference, as if suddenly she had been told to look into it. Of course, all that meant was she went to her assistant and told him everything he had to do.

She was kind of close to me while she spoke to him, and that reminded me of the Director when he felt guilty, and suddenly was going to Gloria hoping to get me in the conversation and show me that he could also be nice. So I could still think he was not a bastard about the fact that he shouted at me that it was too late to call the sponsors now, when he was wrong.

I was right, she was trying to speak to me. I was not interested. And for a second there I was wondering if it would be appropriate to apologize, it could make things worse. I kind of lost my guts and I thought that perhaps the best way would be to forget all about it. But not me, I set myself to go and apologize, and I did.

She was creamy and nice. She apologized herself for over-reacting. I could barely believe my ears. I was not expecting that. She thanked me for letting her know that this sponsor did not have its logo online and that I should always tell her in the future if I find such a problem. She only said that I could have been a bit more discreet and just come to her and let her know. Fair enough.

I was so amazed, I thought, my god, the girl is really something to be able just like that to understand that she was wrong and apologize to me. I’ve been used to people who would suddenly turn against you and would never give up until you were sacked.

Even the Valley Girl, her accomplice, who that morning told me quite rudely that I had to book my own flight to San Francisco at the end of the month, because she did not have the time since it was too complicated now that I had decided to remain there for the weekend, changed her mind in the afternoon and decided to book that flight for me.

Wonderful, these girls have a conscience. When I left for lunch as soon as I could, 11 am, they noticed and felt bad. They probably believed I was sulking. And then they took pity and changed their mind, and decided to be nice for a change.

That was my initial thought. But I’m not stupid. I know what really happened whilst I was at lunch. They both got together, they pumped each other against me, they went to see everyone in the company to let them know how bad I had been, and to get everyone against me. And when they reached the top management, they were met by a brick wall.

The bosses can only think in terms of money, and identifying that a sponsor’s logo was not online after weeks, especially when they were too late to even be in the brochure, means losing a lot of money. Not only we would have to reimburse them for that conference, but we would lose the deal on my conference, and God only knows how much money we would have lost with that company over the years.

In the eyes of any obsessed money grabbing person in the upper management, I was so right to point it out, they did not even want to hear her out. They must have told her that she was very incompetent and should make sure that all her sponsors are looked after. That is why she was suddenly feeling defeated and was making sure everything was done when I came back.

And why they were both creamy with me, must also be because they were told to be. They must have gone in there asking for my head, and they must have been told that it is their head that would be on a platter if they did not go back to work and did not realize that I was damn right to point it out.

Just as I predicted, she has destroyed herself in the process. This time, I knew they would not listen to her, even if I was not completely sure. Bosses sometimes can be so unpredictable and unfair, or blind. Not when it comes to money though. And the Valley Girl was just a bonus. She always is snooping around and getting mixed up in all sort of problems, creating them when it is not necessary, and she was also burnt. And then she became nice.

The way I described all this, you probably think that I enjoyed all that. It is not true. I had no idea she would freak out like that when I told her about the missing logo. That she would feel attacked and try to destroy me in the process. I know she is volatile, I knew she would be trouble one day, I did not think this would do it. Which means, she does not need much to go overboard and create a crisis.

And now that I remember it, the crisis with the salesman, that I thought I had not been told about, I think never happened. It was not a crisis, it was him responding back to her when she was freaking out. I was there, and to be honest, almost nothing happened. And it was enough to get him sacked.

I did not enjoy it, it was more stress than I needed. And it is far from being over. Now I am definitely on their black last. I won, but that is all there is to it. Now they will love to hate me. They will not miss a chance to cause me trouble. I knew from the beginning that it was inevitable, because I know how they are, and I knew I would not let myself be walked all over by them.

Less than a minute after I apologized to her, in hope that it would gain me a few days of peace before the big war, she was already talking to the Black guy to let him know everything that had just happened. He too was much nicer after that. He strikes me as a fair person, but he still must be quite strong. I don’t see him ever coming to me to tell me something, he will instead tell everything to the bosses and they will talk to me.

I don’t know if he was on their side. The fact that the Chinese girl when to him, is because it was to him that she first told the whole story. She made it sound like it was not only her that I was accusing of incompetence, but him also, because it was his responsibility to put that online. And when she told me how angry she was at my behavior, she also defended the Black guy, saying they were both very busy and could not care less about me and what I said.

So it is not him who calmed the girls down. If anything, he is the one who went to report it to the bosses immediately after she spoke to him. So for a moment there, I’m pretty sure she was able to get him against me. Until, that is, my apology.

As he is fair, for him it was a nice conclusion and I think the fact that he was overnice afterwards probably did not mean that he will hold it against me. I hope I am not wrong here. I cannot afford to not have him on my side, even if I am trying to avoid him and hide from him.

What do you think? Do you think my assessment of all that happen in my back for the hour I went to lunch sounds like it could very well be what happened? Of course, you would need to have heard everything they said that was hinting to all that, and I have not here told you all. I think I am very close to the truth. I have seen that kind of behavior way too many times in my past jobs to be blind to how far people are willing to go to get you sacked or destroy you in the eyes of others. This is human nature.

I can only thank myself for not being like that. If there is a way to turn my enemies into friends, I will always choose that way. If I can make sure any problem does not escalate any further, I will do everything in my power to make it so. And then, I will always forgive and not hold it against them if I can see they regret and want to be my friend. In this case, they don’t want to be my friend. They will now work very hard to make my life hell. Human nature, once again.

And now you understand why I can’t stand working with people in an office environment, why I can’t stand that job, it is always like that. Whether you are in Canada, in France, in Belgium, in England or in the United States. We are all the same, there is really only one personality for everyone on this planet.

That was only one situation that I described, many happens like that every day, and each day it is with someone else. And it does not only happen to me, it happens also between them all the time. Sometimes it is serious, other times it is not so important, and yet, it is enough to build a canyon between all of us. To the point that we are now going to work simply to get paid, and meanwhile we are trying to survive as long as we can before someone pushes us over the edge. And most of the time we are powerless to stop it.

Oh God, what will it be tomorrow?

I don’t see the point of writing anymore

I don’t see the point of writing this anymore. I left a comment in someone else’s blog, and two feedbacks were quite negative. I realize that I will never please everyone, not even sure if I can please anyone with my writings. Have I come to Los Angeles to finally understand that it was time for me to abandon writing altogether?

I know why it took me so long to start a new book of my poetry kind of things. I did not see the point then, and now that I have started it, I think I will abandon it. I will most probably continue to write this blog, but I don’t think I will continue to put it online. That is how I feel right now, I will make a decision in a few weeks, perhaps days.

I am not certain if I wish to have another book published. I certainly don’t want to read critics or stupid comments about how screwed up I am anymore. It is too destructive and saps all my small remaining energy and motivation. In fact, I am really struggling to find a reason to even continue living.

I don’t like this world, I don’t like the people in it, I don’t like what I have to do to survive, to pay for my rent and food, I don’t like this life. Leonardo asked me yesterday if I would lose my wish to die if I were to become rich overnight. Maybe, because then I could isolate myself completely from everyone else, this world, and I would no longer have to work 9 to 5 in a job I hate. Then maybe I could live a better life in my total ignorance.

But then, what would happen when I sit at my computer? I’m not sure if suddenly I would start liking life. I could very well be as depressed. Maybe it is time I start considering taking these pills that would put a plastic smile on my face. Help me pretend that life is wonderful and love is the glue that links everyone together. I’d rather die.

I am exhausted. Dead tired. I cannot do anything anymore. I spoke with Stephen today and he agreed that I should remain one more month in L.A. than originally planned. So I am here for two more months and 20 days. He also said that it was time I got my ass into gear, and start contacting people. Something I have been dreading, and I don’t even know where to start.

What is the point of coming to Los Angeles when no one knows I’m here. I’m so convinced that rejection is what awaits me everywhere, that I don’t even want to bother trying. I don’t want to be a wannabe writer in Hollywood. I think I must have landed here by accident. It could have been Denver or Cleveland, it is Los Angeles.

And that is all there is to it. Sounds improbable, and yet, it seems to be the only conclusion. Unless something happens before I leave, a miracle, falling from the sky, since it is unlikely that I will try to meet anyone or try to sell my ideas and scripts.

Well, now I have met Leonardo, God knows, maybe that is enough. And I got the determination to start my own conference company. If any of these projects go ahead in time, then it would not have been wasted.

However I can’t stop thinking that there was something more that was supposed to happen to me in Los Angeles. A firm contract or the beginning of something huge that should be instant and concrete. Not “possibly something might happen in years to come”. No. It makes no sense.

I know I have at least this blog, but then again, this will not be published. It might end up on my website one day, when I feel the people concerned are too far away from me in time and place to affect them or me. Was it worth coming to L.A. just to write a diary about it, for nothing in the end but hurt the people I have met?

Should I tell the truth to my boss? How I really feel?

Time to go back to work. It is 5h39 in the morning. Already I am in a panic state. And I have done nothing in my full day off apart from writing this blog. It is certainly not my most interesting entry either. If I had gone to work, crisis might have brought an interesting entry, but I’m glad that if any crisis was awaiting me yesterday, I skipped that altogether.

But now, crisis might be what awaits me. That conference I’m working on is late. I know my boss is counting the minutes I am working in the office, one day off must bring him to a state of shear horror. He’ll probably jump on me at the first opportunity and say: come in the office please. And then I better have a good explanation for not showing up yesterday.

Should I tell him the truth? That I just can’t stand the office anymore and the people in it? That I was dead tired of having him sitting in my back, observing me all day to see if I am working or not? That the voice of the Director alone was enough for me to throw up everywhere? And that now I work with the Senior Manager and it is getting worse because he sits with us, and therefore always knows when I am not working? And what about your little spy, the Black guy, always, always walking behind me looking at my computer screen.

Should I tell him that the thought of going back yesterday was just too much and that I would have preferred anything else but one more day with them calling everywhere to ask for money? I had enough! I needed a day off from all this! I needed a day off from you! I could not face seeing your face again, it’s making me sick. That’s why I took a day off. And I feel the same today, but I have come, so you should be grateful.

Or else I’ll do like the other girl did last Friday, leave you at one minute’s notice. In fact she is the one who has encouraged me to take a day off. If this job is just too much for her, despite the fact that she was quite strong and intelligent, than it is by no mean an easy or nice job. And one day off won’t kill anyone, and might prevent me from reaching the point she reached when she decided just like that, that she had enough.

And then, I think they hired another guy, and one good look at him told me that this guy was not right, that he would never last a day. And he did not. I have not seen him after that. They are so bad at choosing the right employees. And their main problem, compared with London, is that there are no other conference companies in town, and so no one has any experience in this job. Not a clue about what it means. And so, they get that job, they thank God for the money, and then realize that it is the Devil that sent them there. And once they understand their misery, poof!, they’re gone.

I don’t see what they could do to correct the problem. Choose their employees better I guess for a start. People who are desperate enough to keep their job, if they have a house, cars, kids, whatever. Or suffer from discrimination and can’t find a job somewhere else. If I start my own business one day, I will be facing that exact problem. But I don’t want to think about that right now. I’ll take a bath, I’ll eat something, I’ll try not to be late for once, and I’ll go and face the music.

The work day is over now. It is becoming alarming how I just cannot stand the office anymore, and especially the Director who now supervises me contacting those sponsors, while he does not understand that dealing with the speakers and the brochure is already taking a lot of my time.

I showed a lot of impatience, especially when he asked me in his office at 30 seconds notice to discuss the sponsorship situation. Well, I needed to print my files first, and I told him quite rudely. I had 130 calls to make today, sales cold calling calls, and I did less than 20, because I had to deal with the speakers first.

He came to me in the afternoon, three hours later, while there was lunch in between, to ask me how many calls I’d made. Well, five. He was not happy, and he said: don’t bother calling them, it is too late now! And then he realized that my calls were not for the East coast, but the West coast, and he kind of wanted to apologize, and he came around to speak to Gloria, trying to be nice, and I just left the office for 10 minute, hoping he would be gone by the time I came back. I think he got the message loud and clear.

I am beyond caring now. If they wish to sack me, fine, I don’t care. I am seriously considering letting them know in exactly 20 days that I am out of here one month later, at the same time that I will tell the apartment people that I am not renewing my rent at the end of March.

It is very tempting to leave the company in 20 days, and remain here for one more month just writing and getting ready to start my own conference business. At least, when I will make a call to a potential sponsor, I will get the $7,000 all for myself, to be reinvested in my future events, my own company.

It is ridiculous, at the moment I am the producer, the marketer, the salesman, the sponsorship guy, the list finder, brochure designer, everything! The only thing I am not doing is emailing the people in the database or finding the contact details of the lists I find. And emailing the database would only take me a minute, so in the end, I’m doing everything. I might as well do it for myself.

Well, I don’t know if I could make more than $60,000 a year if I were to produce my own events, especially in the first few years, but I think it is worth the risk.

I will lose Los Angeles forever, but I have to be realistic. Nothing will happen here, I never even had the courage to try to meet people apart from Leonardo. And that might be it, all there is to it. Maybe he was the only person I needed to meet and eventually it will bear fruits.

In the meantime, I don’t think I would have understood that I could start my own business without coming to L.A. This is something they taught me, convinced me that it was time for me to take the plunge, and for that I should be grateful, and this trip of a few months here will not be in vain.

I am ready to go back to London in two months time, but not to get my old job back, but to start my own business. And that is exciting. The only question remaining is, should I play it safe and produce those same corporate events charging twice less than my competitors? Or should I go for not much money, the risky world of paranormal? Maybe I can do both?

God, and then it will be to decide which events to choose from, if I am about to do this for money instead of for fun. Telecoms? Pharmaceutical? Should I try to identify domains that have not yet been exploited? That will take forever… a lot of market research indeed. And every time I would hop into another field, that would mean hours of research for database building and identifying sponsors. The truth, is that I would feel much safer with a good loan and hiring people to do the dirty work. But I have to start slowly, doing everything myself, without any loans.

It is not going to be easy with that financial company overlooking all my money entries and expenses, because of my bankruptcy. They will have a heart attack when I tell them that I am leaving my job. They certainly did when I told them I was leaving for Los Angeles. Only the fact that my salary was much higher dampened their crisis. How am I going to do this? I don’t know. But I have to, somehow.

Oh dear, I would need a real miracle now to prevent me from going back to London and keep me in Los Angeles. A real one. And I don’t see what could happen in the next 20 days to change that, well, in the next 50 days to be more precise. The thing is, I love Los Angeles, I would love to remain longer. But not at the price of a job from hell. What a failure! Nothing new here!

A writing career is not compatible with a full time job in the corporate world

It is now the morning, just got up, it is 7h30. I woke up not knowing where I was, thinking it was Saturday, and then the reality hit me that it was only Tuesday and I had to go to work for another four days.

I could not stand the idea, I called in sick. A four day week is more what I can sustain in my life at the moment, with all the other projects I am working on, film scripts, blogs, other books I am writing, that conference business I want to start, etc.

In London it was easier to be sick, or to miss a day, or to work from home once in a while. Poor Americans, here it is impossible to miss a day even when you are sick. I will lose $250 for not going to work today, it is a lot of money, and I will suffer next month because of it. But it is well worth it.

I have been working like a dog for months, five days a week, the longest hours I have ever done, lots of overtime during the weekends, no holiday over Christmas to speak of. And meeting Leonardo for one day over the weekend, is like another day of work. So I always find myself in a situation where I have only one day to decompress and hence I end up not doing any work on my own projects.

And the thing is, I feel sick today. It is not the salad that I blamed to the girl I just spoke to at work, it is those Molson Canadian beers I bought yesterday. I do like the taste, but it always takes me a while to get use to Canadian beers after a long time passed without drinking any. I’ve got 24 of those things, not sure how I will go through them. My stomach better get use to it fast.

So, if I am to lose that much money today, I better make sure I use my time wisely. I will sleep this morning as long as I can. I won’t watch any Star Trek or TV, I will either work on my latest film script or my conference business. I will not be able to use that excuse that I don’t feel like it because I am too tired, that I’d rather just die on my bed doing nothing. Tuesday is too close to the weekend for that, I decompressed on Sunday.

Today I should be fine. Even if I am sick. God, I’m going back to bed. Perhaps today I should stay in bed all day, contemplate the ceiling for hours. Maybe read a few Sherlock Holmes stories. I think I would need a whole week off to decompress from all that I went through the last few months.

It is so nice to take a day off. I was awakened by two Mexicans who wanted to test the smoke detector and change the filters of the air conditioning. Good thing I was here, I don’t like to have people in my apartment as if this was a hotel. And I would have forgotten to turn the switch so they could come in in the first place. Though I’m sure they would have been able to get in anyway, as they did when it was time to take all my domestic appliances when I switched from fully furnished to semi-furnished at the end of my first month here.

I am still very tired. I might go to bed again. It is so nice to have a day off without the guilt. I cannot feel guilty if I am not getting paid. I feel I have the right to take a day off whenever I want if I am willing to lose money for it.

Money is not everything, and it is useless at any rate if you are working all the time and cannot enjoy it. But yeah, for the first time in m life I took a day off work when I could have gone in, and I don’t feel any guilt at all. It is a great feeling.

The thing is, sometimes you need a day off for your own mental or psychological stability. When you are so wired into all these similar days, and at some point cannot see the end of the tunnel, a way out. It is a lot of pressure on your mind, and your mind can be as sick as your body. And a day off is all is required sometimes to calm you down. Help you continue with this routine the next day. Because you feel you had a break, you changed your mind.

And it is a wonderful day! If I were not supposed to be sick, I might consider going for a swim. But it is too dangerous, my boss’ wife plays tennis here sometimes, she could see me, freak out and sack me instantly. I would not want that now, would I?

It is now 7h37 pm. I slept all day. Perhaps I was sick after all, huge headache, surely it cannot be the three Molson Canadian I drank yesterday. Could it be a lack of sleep? I slept a lot on Sunday, in fact I did very much then what I did today.

So there you are, I did nothing today, no writing whatsoever, even if for one minute there I thought I was going to work on my theoretical physics theories.

This just confirmed what I was saying, that working full time in conferences is something I cannot mix with anything else. I can only work my 40 hours, do my overtime when it is needed, and then forget everything else. Writing is something I cannot even do in my spare time, because that spare time is spent sleeping and decompressing, if not getting ready to go back to work the next day.

I hope there will be better times for my writing career, because it is just about to get back to zero for a while. Until such time when I can work on it full time. I fear sometimes that it might never happen. I am killing myself right now over this, my health is deteriorating. I have headaches, I am a zombie at work, I feel overworked and stressed. Working on my way out is something I simply don’t have the time for. And it is sad.

Kiddo Blog in L.A. 22

Leonardo just left, again I thought he would never leave. We went to see Brokeback Mountain tonight, and funny enough, though I could not draw any parallel between our lives and the guys in that movie, he saw just about every parallel there is.

Once again he spent many hours talking about his childhood, and how screwed up he is. And I told him that he needed a good slap in the face to get back to reality, and forget about second grade psychology, and start looking at the present and the future.

He seems very much in love with me now, I could see he wanted to kiss me many times, and he did, and I blamed any reason I could find to explain the fact that I tried to avoid him sleeping here for many weeks now. When really it was more about how traumatic it had been the first two times.

He still sees us as a couple destined to something great, he also acknowledged that it was not his place at the moment to try to get more involved, while I had all these decisions to make, like remaining here or going back to London with my boyfriend. That I still very much love and would like to remain faithful to.

Our little trip to Santa Barbara, where he spent many years of his life, seemed to have had a big impact on him. Even though he said tonight that it is because he does not have money to splash on me that he is trying to make me discover the place, to show me that he has something to offer.

I don’t know in which century he is living in. I don’t understand why he repeats to me that he is genuine, that I can believe him, and all that stuff. He has obviously been hurt by many dishonest people in his life, and he is afraid I might think that he has some ulterior motives, when in fact, there is only genuine love. Well, I have not met that many dishonest people in my life, so for me everyone is fine until they give me a reason to believe otherwise, and that never really happened with any of my friends. So he is kind of wasting his time here.

In Santa Barbara, when I was looking at him that whole day, I did not think that I fancied him and would like to sleep with him again. Tonight I thought I would have liked to be in his arms. So I don’t know what is going to happen between us.

Tomorrow I will be a zombie at work again. I won’t be able to do anything. He is again responsible for this. Weeks are passing very fast, they turn into months, and yet we are not going anywhere, it takes forever. That film script will never be finished or be sold this year. That is why my second big idea for our next project, I have decided that I will be doing most of the writing. I cannot wait for him to finish the first one, I will be dead by the time he finishes it.

Anyway, the second script is very much about great dialogues, they are all in my head, and I need to write them. So I will even skip the long synopsis, I will jump right into the script. One thing I have learned through this, don’t waste time writing what the story will be about, just write it now. And that is what I will do this weekend.

And now I am going to bed, I’m dead. I might go to work an hour late, otherwise I will be so unproductive, I will be useless. Again I am risking my job, I could be sacked on a whim, but what can I do?

Los Angeles is a paradise, like a virtual world in 3D

I don’t know what the temperature reached today in Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley, but it must have been 35 degree Celsius, something like 90 Fahrenheit. I slept only four hours last night and so I did not do anything today at work.

I left the office at 16h (4 pm) and I simply feel electrified. A surge of electron cloud bursts filling my body. I feel like I just got out of hibernation and I could scream and dance and sing all night long.

It is not a sexual burst, it is a creative Big Bang. I am ready to write some great stuff, accomplish something huge, anything. I even forgo doing my laundry, I am already on the beers, I have plugged myself onto the Eurhythmics Greatest Hits full blast, I am ready for all the inspiration in the world to fill me in.

It is not the choice that is lacking, I can work on my theoretical physics ideas, a new film script, my blog, even on the long overdue update of my websites. I could also work on my poetry like book that I started some time ago but kind of forgot in the last few weeks. Dear, I could even start writing a novel! Oh, I am even ready to work on my own conferences, my future company. But I’m afraid, I might already be too drunk to care about that.

Gosh, I need to plug the computer directly to my brain, maybe some of those IEEE 1394 cables would do the trick, it needs to be an instant transfer!

But the day did not start like that. For the first time ever this morning, I so not could stand hearing the voice of the Valley Girl in full bloom, that I had to leave the office at least three times. She was also feeling the burst from the Sun, she too did not do anything, she went from person to person and talked all day.

The Chinese girl gave me some looks that told me all, she really does not like me. She can’t even hide it, and there is nothing I can do about it. Yesterday she attacked me for the first time, saying that one of my jokes was not funny. She was defending the Valley Girl.

They are closer together than I thought, even if everything about their personality tells me they should clash like water and fire. They are essentially the only two Conference Managers, and what the Valley Girl worked on the previous years, the Chinese girl is now in charge of. They both feel ostracized by too much management over their head, and not enough control on anything they are working on.

And the Spanish guy who is just the assistant of the Chinese girl, appears to give himself more credit than he deserves. He calls his Manager’s conferences his. And he could almost be right there, since apart from writing the conference program, he did about just everything else. Which makes me wonder what is it exactly that the Chinese girl has done in those last five events they produced together.

Give me an assistant any day, and that’s it, I will never do anything again at work! I will simply make the hard decisions, the decisions I have made all my life whilst doing my conferences, and then tell someone else to do everything else.

Well, all that might change soon. My last report states quite clearly that assistants should be something from the past. They should produce their own events, including writing the programs. That would please the Spanish guy, he wants to own these conferences, he does not understand yet the hell that comes with that. I would not be surprised if he were to leave after three months, the time I guess it would take him to have to write three conference programs. Careful what you wish for, it is a bastard of a job.

I stopped myself from telling them to forget about the huge fairs they are organizing, because it monopolizes the Valley Girl and two assistants for over six months, so basically she can walk around doing nothing all day, and it seems completely acceptable.

I just love my little reports I have written for that company in Los Angeles. Twelve so far I believe. All very insightful of my deep and felt experience in the world of conferences. I could turn them into a book, for a very niche market. They are a piece of art now, and they had a measurable impact on that company, even if for a while I could not see that.

Enough talked about work. I have two days to decompress and do something significant. It depresses me to watch Eurhythmics videos, so much greatness, reminding me that I am not out there making things come true. Just watched the video “You Have Place a Chill in my Heart”, and it was the Californian desert and mountains of the Valley. Even a Ralph’s grocery store. It is the first time I notice that they filmed that in L.A., and it fills me once again with energy.

And “I’d love to listen to Beethoven” and “I Need a Man” have always been my favorite videos ever, and great songs and words to back it up. These three videos are building a wonderful story, and I don’t tire of watching it. Is there a woman more powerful on the planet than Annie Lennox? I don’t think so.

God knows what we would talk about if I were to ever meet her. I fear I would disappoint. She is to me what Elvis or the Beatles can be to people from the older generation. And that they were British made me think they were reachable to me, but of course, they never were and will never be. I used to work in a café just under of where Dave Stewart lives, in Covent Gardens. Same building!

Genius in action, that song “1984 Sex Crime”, it is huge, it is the crossing in time of George Orwell genius work and one of the best songs and videos ever on the music side. Sometimes events can just reach perfection, and it is one of those times.

Wooah, killing me. I need to be doing that, I need to go down in history, I need to produce things, write things, write songs. Which brings me back to Leonardo. He can make it all come true, he can place me in a position to get my songs out, I need to concentrate on that as well.

I sent him all my potential songs, but he never had the time to read any of it. I can understand, it was 250 pages long, and that was only what I thought could do great songs. I could have sent him 1000 pages worth of songs. And yet, I am at zero on that point. I need to restart from the beginning. Sit down and write the perfect new songs that will revolutionize everything.

Even if I need to lose 2 stones and sing them myself with my French accent, even if I have to figure out his Roland piano synthesizer for him in the process. These pianos are such bad technology, even the instruction manuals don’t make sense. And compatibility and connectivity with computers leaves a lot to be desired.

I am now watching the R.E.M. videos from the DVD “Pop!”. Another string of well thought stuff. Killing me. Will I become someone thinking and talking more a about creating things, than actually working at producing things?

I am all over the place now, and I am just a writer. Books, films, theatre, theoretical physics, TV, music, videos, conferences… and what else? If I had been as talented as two of my ex-boyfriends, and my best friend in Montreal, it would be even worse. I might have thought then that I had some future in painting, drawing, filming, gardening, landscape design, cooking, and many other creative stuff as well.

At least I am only talented in one domain, writing. Not my fault if it reaches so many different kinds of media. Just need to concentrate on what might have a huge impact. And at this time, I just don’t know from where it will first spill unto the world.

Yes, I am already recognized, yes, it is out there, yes I have fans from every corner of the world, but that is far from being enough. It is the world’s attention I need to catch. Change on a massive scale, that’s what I want. And less for me than for the impact that it may have, that it will have.

I have dreams of changing the world, you see. No small challenge. So don’t be surprised to read my politico-philosophical treaty one day about revolutionizing politics and justice. This has already been on my mind for over 15 years. I might just write a film script about it.

And being stuck in the South-West of America with Bush as President, is feeding me just the right thing. If the Republicans win the next elections, I’ll be ready to write the book about what not to do in politics and how the system has to change to prevent such corruption. Oh, I can see I am already ready. Just add it to the list of things I have to write tonight. I might get there eventually.

Time for another beer! I’ll definitely need it. Because somehow this will need all the inspiration in the world that I can get. I might as well open a pack of cigarette at the same time. And god knows, are they now selling these cans of oil from Texas ready to drink, shipped directly from the George Bush Airport? I will need a few of those too… a keg would do nicely, thank you very much.

I understood today what it is that I like about Los Angeles. It is that it does not appear to be a real world. It is like a computer game, a graphic adventure, the ones that I have been playing for years. It makes me feel like opening up my old CDs and live in those magnificent and sunny places with palm trees and orange trees, that I have been used to dream about to escape my terrible reality.

Los Angeles is that virtual world I have always been searching for. My freedom to a better world that, until now, only existed on my computer. I finally live in one of those paradises I have been dreaming about and living in virtually for many years.

I did not even think that orange, lemon and grapefruit trees really existed, and yet last night at Leonardo’s place, I picked up some juicy fruits from his garden. Unbelievable! Orange and lemon trees are something, but juicy grapefruits? Surely they are too heavy to grow on trees? I have them on my counter now, they smell good. I just cut into the lemon to put in my Budweiser, and dear me, it is a dream come true.

In the morning, on my way to work, I have been so not observant. It took me weeks to see my first orange tree. And now I have spotted over 12 trees bearing gorgeous oranges, lemons and grapefruits. It is amazing, something that you would only see in a virtual world in your own computer. With the weather to match it. No need to dream of a better world anymore, of better days, it is right there in your garden, on your way to work, on your lunch hour when you walk at the back of your office. In January and February no less. That tells it all.

It is going to be hard to leave this place, I should really try harder to get my baby from London here. But how? America is so closed on itself, it is a miracle that I am here at all. My ex-Line Manager in London has tried all her life to move to America, and she never succeeded to this day.

I don’t think I can leave. It is anyway so much easier to stay. I was miserable in London, for over 10 years, I have to remember that. Oh please, I have written over 10 books on the subject, shouldn’t it be clear to me by now? I am in paradise, why can’t I see it? Why can’t I understand this?

I have nowhere else to go, I have reached my destination, my long search for the perfect sunny and virtual world, Los Angeles. Any moment now I will meet some virtual characters telling me some bollocks, and it will be my game to play, my choice to make, to go somewhere on the beach to find some old treasure buried there for millennia. I have a 100% score to reach, many magical objects to find, many virtual characters to talk to, many places to visit to find some clues, and solve the puzzles.

I have reached my ultimate destination. I cannot let love stop me, annihilate this dream come true. I just can’t. It’s over. My simple life in the Valley is what I have been looking for all my life. My little most expensive studio is just perfect. Not enough money to finish the month, but who cares? It is paradise.

So much to see, so much to get to know, standing in the Topanga Canyon is all I need to feel the inspiration coming in. The thousand different scenarios for the perfect story along Mulholland Drive, all the way to Malibu. That’s around the corner, how about that?

Santa Barbara a few miles down, even if I don’t have a car yet to reach it. Leonardo has, and will bring me there tomorrow. Not sure why he is dying to bring me there, I personally only want to reach the gate of Michael Jackson’s house. But perhaps he feel there is much more to inspire me there than MJ.

Mmh, the Sun in February, hitting so hard, the weird way those palm trees grow, the red bugs with some design on their carapace I observe at lunch time. I even saw an escargot today, this is just too much for my poor mind. Everything should be dead at the beginning of February, even I feel alive. Which is a first in my case.

Tomorrow I need to get lost in the mountains, a lake, Malibou Lake if necessary, but I’ll get lost believe me. I want to walk all over these mountains of the Californian desert. I want to disappear alone for one full day in the canyons. I don’t want to show up at work on Monday, I want to die there. And haunt the place forever and ever. That is my dream, and I might just reach it, as I am so close to that perfect video game graphic adventure world. Available on PC worldwide very soon! My PC-110 Sony DV camera will insure that, believe me.

I have never, never, ever, smell grapefruits and lemons like that before. What the hell are those distribution companies do to our fruits before they reach the grocery stores worldwide? Freeze them to death, until no smell or taste remain? I could live on grapefruits now, I tell you, and I might actually do just that, since the next Ralph is one mile away from me.

No need to be idealistic anymore when you live in L.A., you can now turn to the frivolities of life, write mindless comedies… I might just do that. Life has finally reached perfection.

I knew it! Tears for Fears are British! I knew it! And yet, for a second there I was afraid they were from New Mexico. I could not have loved a band so much, if they had not been from the UK. I’m watching their greatest hits videos now, like I was ten years ago, and I’m glad they reunited. This is not mindless stuff, it is real. Already I have forgotten all about the Topanga Canyon. I’m back on track, with the virtual world far behind.

Disturbing nonetheless. That neither Roland or Curt could find success on their own, like Simon and Garfunkel never repeated their greatest songs on their own. Dear me, am I linked to Leonardo until I die? Even before we have any of our ideas out there? Is it possible that sometimes genius only exist when two great minds collide? But on their own cannot go anywhere? Why is that? Oh God!

Just spoke with Leonardo. He’s supposed to read the first batch of supposed songs I sent to him. Right now. And if he is inspired, his instructions are to write music, melody, whatever.

So I started to read what it is that he is supposed to read now. I had to stop on page 4, I was already crying more than I thought I could. How sad I have become. Some girl I know would say I’m a pussy. Somehow this should inspire me quite a poem. Maybe I should get on with it right now.

A big spamming machine, here are our brooochuuurres

Today lot’s of stress at work. I think the Spanish guy went around all the girls at work to let them know that I asked if he was gay yesterday. I think they all had a good laugh about it. I can’t blame them, life is so boring in this office at the moment, despite all the background action from all these consultants they hired.

Maybe something will happen to change it all, and somehow I don’t think it will be for the better. Change is seldom for the better, which is why following changes in any office, many people leave right after. Especially if they have been there for years and were used to do their job a certain way that worked for them.

Today, despite sleeping for 9 hours yesterday, I could not stand the Chinese girl speaking, to even hear her say the word Brooochuuure with her accent is just too much for me. So you can imagine I was not in the mood to listen to the valley girl either.

And I managed to insult her badly, as everyone else in the office. When I told them about Bush cutting 40 billions in the social services area, and wanting to make the Terror Laws (Patriot Act) permanent. When I understood that the valley girl found all that very much acceptable, I said no wonder this country is going down the drain. I did not really thought that, it was meant as some sort of joke, but obviously it came out as a huge insult to all the Americans in the office.

So there were tensions, after the valley girl said that she will not discuss these things at work. I did not even feel guilt for saying such a thing, I felt disgusted and tired of this life. I don’t know what else to invent to get back on the train, to be motivated to accomplish anything. I would need at least three days off, not a weekend. Two days is just enough to decompress me and then I have to go back to work.

Dear me, I have to go back to work. Sending emails and call people for money. A woman called this morning to let me know that we were sending them too many emails and broochuuuurres. Which reminds me, that is what I will create with my conference company, a big spamming machine that will bother everyone that will have the misfortune to end up in my database.

I refused to spam people about my literary website, and now I will have to so for my company. This thought only came to me recently, and I don’t really like it. I’ll become one more big spammer on the net. I guess there are ways around this, that could make it a little bit more acceptable. Giving them the chance instantly to be out of my database, but will that be enough? I receive so much spam, if I were to want get out of all these databases it would be impossible. Especially that when you do request that, instead you confirm your email address and suddenly you are added to 20 more lists.

Real spammers have destroyed it for everyone. Not sure how I will live with all this, my conscience, bothering people, in the name of making a few bucks. Ah, if only I was selling such a great service that everyone would just flock to me. But that does not exist without great visibility. And that means marketing, telesales, publicity, other concepts I just hate and would gladly live without.

Like a young actor who has not made it yet in Hollywood

Oh, what a day. Nothing of any significance happened, and yet I am dead. I spent last night helping Leonardo, my new friend in L.A., figuring out his piano (for god’s sake, he has that piano since 1997, and he still knows nothing about it). After that I helped him sending me the film script we are working on, even though he does that almost every day, 24 hours is enough for him to forget how to do this. And then I tried to help him sort out his antivirus. By the time we had finished, it was past 1 am.

I took two hours for lunch, but I still managed to work 30 minutes more tonight, to send many emails that should have been sent days ago. So it looks good.

I also got the chance to ask the Spanish guy, who has been flirting with me for weeks now, if he was gay or not. He said that he is as straight as they come. I find that hard to believe, however I believe it. So that is at least sorted.

The last two days he came at work dressing like some sort of young actor who has not made it yet. Funky, shorts, bubble hat, whatever. I asked him if he had a date or if it was for us that he decided to dress like that. For us apparently. And the Valley Girl had another one of her comments to make, she asked: what have you decided to wear today? Ah, you’re wearing everything!

He knows he is kind of cute, and he will take any flirting from anyone, even men. At the same time, the guy is fatter than me, so he can’t brag too much! Well, I’m not that fat, and he is not either, so he still has his sex appeal.

Today he referred again to the fact that he knew everything about me, that everyone knew. As if somehow they were aware of my blog and were all reading it. It made me freak out. I probed him, and he mentioned the word blog, about other of my readers having blogs about me (I did show him I think some people blogging about my books in Paris).

I think he realized he said too much and at that point he would have had to tell me that they were all reading my blog at work. At that moment, I would have deleted it. So he concocted that other excuse, that he was talking about others talking about me.

I believe he might have been talking about what the Black guy can read in the files I am sending myself home sometimes. That’s also possible. God knows.

Well, if they are all reading this blog, let’s give them something to chew on. All the girls at work are quite fat, and they are all buzzing around him, probably in love, but he is not interested. Yet, he loves the attention, he needs them to feel better about himself. And now he is exercising to lose weight. I wonder why, something must have changed, perhaps he is interested in someone after all, but not me, that’s for sure.

The only girls who are not fat in the office are the two Chinese girls and the wife of my boss. One of the Chinese girls is so annoying and rude, it does not really matter if she is not fat, she kinds of cancel the fact that she is not fat by her behavior.

The other one is so lovely, I could take her as my wife quite easily. At least she could become a friend, but I just don’t know how to make friends anymore, especially in a work environment. Anyway, I don’t have enough time for friends. Leonardo is already stretching me to the limits. And I have to remind him when it is just too much.

Oh God, I’m bored, I’m sick, I have to go to bed, it is merely 8 pm. I only live to work, I don’t write, I don’t read, I had only a beer, and a full plate of god knows what, thinking it would make me feel better, but now I’m ready to puke everywhere. What a sad unproductive life. Please someone just shoot me in the head!

I don’t even look forward to the weekend. I used to be so excited to regain my freedom, but my weekends are so boring, they have become as routine as my daily job in conferences.

Something has got to happen soon, before they find me dead drunk in my flat, weighting over 15 stones. Because I would have eaten and drunk myself to death for leading such an uninspiring life.

Just shoot me.