Tuesday 28 August 2012

Travel within travel?

I always tell myself that I shouldn't mix business with pleasure! however, our life is so intertwined these days that there is hardly any clear demarcation between business and pleasure. Think about it, I work with my husband, my son, my daughter, my sister in law, and the rest are like family.  So, say we meet for a gathering, or during dinner? What is the first thing we will talk about? Believe me, it is not going to be the weather or sports! It's going to be when is the rent due? are the salaries done? did the website get changed? did we do the advert that the school is asking us for? and so on and so forth. In Ramadhan, our gathering was about the magazine, and if we handled the last lot of students with care! i.e. we lost all sense of family and discussions around our holidays, our shopping and our lives. 

Of course it doesn't stop there. When we travel, we also have both business and pleasure happening at the same time! Say for example we are in the airplane, sitting next to us are total strangers, of course we talk don't we? Suddenly business comes barging in like a lightening, soon you will find your self talking about what you do and the person next to you happens to need your services, so you exchange cards and hope for the best.  

What I don't like though is when I have to take a flight when I am already travelling, yesterday for example I had to travel for work, and being in a hotel, I forgot about my passport, credit cards and the lot, as I normally do not have to carry them around during shopping? Or else you will max it out, won't you!
So half way to the airport I realised that I am traveling without my passport? Aha, all my negotiations with the taxi went out of the window; in my broken Turkish I asked him to return to the hotel, and avoid traffic or else I will miss my flight.  Off we went back, took the passport and the credit card, in the taxi and to the airport; the queues were tremendous, and I had no luggage, so I thought that I have to find the place for online chech-ins or travelling without luggage, viola found it, only three people were in the queue, so I got my self checked in and dashed to the gate as they were boarding.

I landed on my seat, feeling so exhausted so I thought I will sleep a bit, as I needed it, but there comes this girl with a cute little boy who was so adorable and held my hand as soon as they sat next to me. He was barely a year and a half though, so we both talked and handled the baby, helped her with the milk bottle and what not, tried to sing for him till he fell asleep. Guess what happens next? We talked about work of course. Is this something that we have to do? Should we not talk about the weather, the movies, the shops, where to go and what to do? Or did the Internet replace this human touch so we find those things there and only talk about work when we meet other people? Well, I don't like that a bit, I must do something from now on to sway the questions and direct them towards more human nature type of questions. 

I guess since small businesses became the fact of life in this century, and a small business consumes all the time of the owner, plus the fact that if he or she don't think about it all the time then he or she will not be able to pay the bills at the end of the month, so all discussions will only pour in one direction! that would be in making another sale, or the hope of making another sale.  I don't like that. I want a total separation of life and work, I want to have a quite meal with my husband discussing where our next holiday (what holiday???) would be? And how much we love each other and so on and so forth ( see I even forgot what husband and wife talk about, oh my god, that's not good at all!!!!)

See you guys soon, I will figure out a way and let you know.

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