I haven’t been writing lately because (i) the PC is out of order and we’re waiting for PCs to start shipping with Windows 7 before buying a new one (but we’re getting tired of waiting) and (ii) I’ve been awfully, awfully busy trying to seal a deal which I’m negotiating on at work.

The deal which I’m working on was intended to be closed months ago.  Unfortunately, new issues arise every other week resulting in the parties having to get fresh approvals from their management and signing postponed.  More recently, we thought we might be able to ink the agreement last Saturday, which was postponed to Sunday, then Monday — all over the Hari Raya long weekend — then Tuesday and, well, I don’t know whether we’ll sign today. 

I’m told my colleagues that this process is like going into labour but being unable to give birth.  Or less elegantly, going to the toilet and being unable to discharge.

And I feel like the toilet bowl.  Or more elegantly, the grass which gets trampled on between the two fighting elephants negotiating the deal.

Although I’m (sort of) complaining, there has been good in all this.  To begin with, if the parties did manage to reach agreement in July or August as originally planned, it would be almost impossible for me to find the time to do the work.  Especially August when I was out of the country for about three quarters of the time.

In the past few days, I’ve also managed to help the parties reach agreement on issues which were potential dealbreakers, without any particularly clever drafting on my part.  There were also several instances when the lead negotiater requested that I meet up with my counterpart over the long weekend — something that neither of us were particuarly keen on; as it was I felt bad for interrupting his meals on several ocassions by calling him on the phone — when I received his e-mail agreement to my proposal.  I imagine the chief negotiator must have been impressed, though I did nothing much.

So while I have been pretty miserable these couple of months / days, I see the hand of God intervening at critical moments to help me work through difficult situations, and to appear better than I actually am at work.

"The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." (Psalms 16:6)

On the same day that the media reports that Iran intends to Islamise the humanities in Iran, because it is too "Western", also comes news that an Iranian couple was fined by the Thai police for having sex on a beach in Pattaya.