Corporate America

There were a lot of pretty girls on the street, a few good men, and a sense of a big American metropolis. It kind of filed me with energy, but now that I am back to the hotel near the airport, I cannot walk anymore (because my shoes that I never wear, and that I was wearing at the conference, have destroyed the shape of my feet). I wonder how I will be able to go to Alcatraz tomorrow, but I have to. I did not visit it the first time I was here, and this time I won’t miss it. On Sunday I will go to Mrs. Winchester in San José, using a CalTrain, and then it is my return to Los Angeles, my new home.
I tried to buy alcohol, but I was unable to. Just as well, I will go to bed early tonight and I already drank too much in the last couple of days. I am very pleased with myself, today I wrote a big chunk of my business plan, even if in the end it will serve no purpose, since I won’t be able to borrow any money to start my conference business. You never know, if someone comes out of the woodwork and ask for it, I will have it ready.
It is unfortunate that I am not asking for a few millions, I have met just about every venture capitalist in town at the conference this week. They would not blink twice if they were to learn that I only need £120,000 to start my business. They would send me on my way and wish me good luck.
Sad also that I got myself in so much debts in the last three years in order to try to succeed in films and television, a field that definitely does not pay at all, filled with opportunistic people ready to manipulate you until you can bleed no more. I’ve met a lot of them in Hollywood, the industry has been taking the piss for years, and the associations to protect the writers and actors does not appear to be able to help, especially if you are not already a professional with a high salary, in which case, you cannot even joined them. Makes you wish the government would come in and regulate that industry, they have been so good at regulating just about everything else to death when sometimes there was no need to. Well, not my concern anymore, it is unlikely that I will succeed in Hollywood in the net two months, and I certainly will never again work without a proper contract and assuring myself either some money, or the rights.
I have three conferences to prepare in the next two months, one about Paranormal Science, and the other two, I’m not sure yet. I thought it should be related, but I’m not so sure anymore. My business plan certainly had the advantage of opening my eyes to the fact that charging only £100 per attendee, will make it difficult to break even. I might want to work on other events for which I can at least charge £500 per place. But then I will have to provide lunch, and it will make it equally difficult to break even, since these hotels are very good at making money out of you. You can easily end up with a £50,000 bill just for the venue and lunch for a two day event. And that is without the marketing and sales budget. Got to be careful, I cannot fail with this business.
I need to establish a list of all national organizations and associations and pinpoint which industries have a lot of them, without having too many conferences on the subject. I also need to look at any emerging market, whether it is technology or space programs. I might end up producing events I care nothing about, and keep the ones I do care about as other events on the side. Who knows, in the end, you can never tell which will bring the most profit. It is also, I’m afraid to say, a business of hit and miss, and luck. We’ll see.
And now, as unbelievable as this might seem, instead of clubbing all night and pick up a good looking fellow in San Francisco Gay Village, at midnight I am actually going to bed. Tomorrow I will be visiting Alcatraz, even though I cannot tell exactly why I want to see that old prison, except that it was reported as haunted, and somehow that will probably not be the trip to learn much about it.
4 March 2006
It looks like I will never visit Alcatraz in this lifetime, there was no more ticket for today. I could not either take a boat and go around the island, so it was a bit wasted. I saw the Fishers Warf, a big tourist trap if ever I saw one. I stopped for a pizza at Boudin, which is a nice shop/restaurant. I wanted to try their bread chowder, but naturally none were vegetarian. I ended up visiting the aquarium, which I thought was very small and cost a lot of money. A saw a few clown fish however, and that made me happy, it reminded me of Stephen and our fish tank in London.
I went at the end of the pier, looking at Alcatraz, and I almost jump to swim to it, in my desperation to visit the island. Which is certainly the complete opposite of people who were imprisoned there and wanted to swim back to the shore.
I met a man who was one of the last prisoner in Alcatraz, for bank robbery, he wrote a book or something about his experience. I waited the right moment to ask him a single question, finally I asked if the place was haunted. He looked at me like if I was crazy. He suffered hell over there for 4 years, god knows how he was treated, threatened, and there I asked him the stupidest question ever. I’m sure in years to come he will mention it again. Well, I bet he would not have liked my second question, which was: how many times have you been fucked up the arse in Alcatraz and did you manage to enjoy it? He would have feel down his chair…
So I finally decided to take one of these cable carts to go to Castro, the gay village. No cable cart came though, and I had to take a normal bus with a driver who obviously was unable to drive a bus, we almost all died in there.
It was the second time I went to the village in San Francisco, the supposed worldwide Mecca of the gay world. And once again I was quite disappointed. I must not know exactly how large it is, because to me it looks small, and the bars have nothing special, neither the people in it. I drank two Coronas quickly in two different places and then I left as quickly as I came. Now I can say I went there, even if I was bored out of my mind. Must be because I was alone, and no one spoke to me. I was not expecting anyone to speak to me, but it might have been nice. I went to the bookstore, secretly hoping to come face to face with one of my own books, but of course, why would they stock French books? One day maybe they will stock one of my English books.
5 March 2006
This trip has been a real disaster. Did not see Alcatraz, did not see Mrs. Winchester’s house, did not do anything, did not go anywhere. I was too late to go to San José today, and going back to downtown San Francisco might have been cutting it too short.
So I am stuck at the airport waiting all day for my flight. Two hours and a half more, I just had a big and disgusting pizza with French fries, two Sprite from leftovers of the conference, and now a large Mocha Coffee which cost me $5, the most expensive coffee I ever had in my entire life.
Well, actually, I’m pretty sure the conversion from pounds to dollars makes it one of the cheapest coffee I have ever bought in recent years, however, it seemed expensive after the $333 I spent at the hotel when I checked out. And that is nothing, I have more money to give back to the company, for I what I did not spend of the $350 they gave me. So in all this little trip will have cost me close to $600, and all I did was to go downtown and walk around. This is so sad… and now I just don’t know how I will survive until the rest of the month.
Perhaps I should finally start a diet, but the problem is that Atkins is an expensive diet, not a cheap one. I have to buy low-carb products and they cost a fortune. Maybe I should stop drinking and smoking, I would save a lot of money that way. I might have to once I have calculated my budget.
Leonardo is going to be waiting for me at the airport in Los Angeles. He says he has great news for me, about the film script, however he did not want to elaborate. The only thing that could qualify as great news would be if he managed to either sell it or grab the attention of one of his powerful friends.
I immediately assumed it was that he spoke with his actor/producer friend and that after reading our script, he is so impressed, he wants to meet us. But when I asked him if he spoke to him, he said that he left a message, and was supposed to call him back the next day, blah blah blah… I’ve heard that before, too many times. So the actor/producer friend is no more interested than he was months ago. It is also probable that he never read anything that we sent him. Not sure if he watched the DVD of the film I worked on, which cost me a real fortune to order from the UK and took forever to arrive.
So I guess his great news can only be one thing: he wrote two more pages of the film script, or the book as he now calls it. If that is his good news, it will be really disappointing indeed. I can’t see what else it could be, unless he actually write four pages instead of two. I guess that would be better, and yet, very disappointing. He had a full week, I could have written the whole thing in that full week. Never mind.
Funny that you could be there at work and at home everyday for months, and nothing ever changes. But as soon as you disappear for a week or two, as if the people behind the scene were waiting for you to get out to change the decors, everything changes. It is also true that every time I said this out loud, after leaving for more than week, I came back to everything being the same.
I hope somehow everything has changed at work, just so it is not so boring, back to routine, etc. I’m not certain yet in how much trouble I am in and if I will be called into the office as a result of the Valley Girl destroying me because I dared to “shit all over her great idea” which cannot fail to flop miserably. I don’t think she has much ammunition, but with this kind of woman, you never know what she could invent or lie about to get you into trouble.
She did when she got rid of that temp we had for a day, saying that he could not use Excel, when it was pretty obvious that he could. And since on hearing this my boss said she would not pay for a temp who worked all day, if he did not know how to use Excel, the Valley Girl had to push her lies further to convince the agency that the guy was really not adequate, and they would not pay anything for his work that day.
The guy was competent, he knew how to use Excel, I think there was a clash of personality between him and the Valley Girl, and now I’m sure he is no longer working for that agency, and that he was not paid anything for that day of work which must have been a misery, cold calling people all day. God knows what he did after that, if he got into trouble for being unable to pay for his flat, etc.
So, never underestimate the Valley Girl, if she wants me out of there, she will succeed as she has no morale or ethic. And I am not even sure if she does it all consciously. I think she gets to a point where she can convince herself of just about anything in order to look better and remain in total control.
Must be some sort of survival instinct, which makes her annihilate the smallest threat to her own person or her work. And then she goes in a higher gear, she does not think anymore, she lies through her teeth, and once it is over, she simply forget it all and goes back to her wonderful little husband, to live another safe day. She will not be sacked this week, she is still worth something, she still deserves him.
So I was a bit worried when I had to take a place and pass the security. At least they are not asking for my passport, just my Californian driving license. But they are coming up with new machines everyday to check out if you are telling the truth or not, or if you are lying or not.
Hen I tried to pass, the woman must have identified me as some weird one, because she said: this one does not need to take his shoes off (thank God I thought), he will instead be used as our lab rat to test our new air machine (what?). What is an air machine?
When I came face to face wit the Air machine that I was to test, it felt like a suicide booth from the original Star Trek. The security guy must have read on my face that I was not willing to die just because Bush had become paranoid and that he would not hesitate to use new machines capable of reading our minds even if they kill you of radiation or cancer after only three uses.
He said that it was just air, seems harmless enough. It blows air on you quite powerfully and then it goes up in the machine and it can smell you. Not sure what it is supposed to smell, whether it is explosive, chemicals or drugs. I am just a bit worried for Stephen, that if these machines can now detect drugs better than dogs, then he’s really going to have to stop, because he will not be able to get away with it any longer. We all knew that technology would one day bring the Big Brother state to a perfection, and now we simply cannot get away with anything, we have absolutely no more freedom. I guess we are lucky that it was not so for so many years. Our children won’t have it easy, none of them will ever know what freedom or privacy meant. And these security people in the US, if no one stops them, they will eventually get you to pass in an incinerator before your flight. It would be practical, none of us would ever go anywhere else again. Wouldn’t that be the perfect solution?
Oh God, I am so unlucky, somehow every time I take plane, something goes wrong and it is either very late or cancelled. Is it that planes are that unreliable and it is always like that? Or is it just that I am unlucky every time? It rains a bit, so as usual the whole State came to a stand still. I would not want to see them deal with snow storms like in Canada, they would quickly realize that rain is not the end of the world and that planes can still fly through it. I just hope now that it will not be cancelled. And this is really putting me in a bad situation.
Leonardo is coming to pick me up at Burbank airport, and now I will arrive at 9h30. So I’ll be home at 10h30 or 11h, and Leonardo will take forever to leave, and tomorrow I’ll be dead at work. And if the flight is cancelled, and I am late to get to work tomorrow, you can bet this will be taking out my salary. Can’t anything ever go right on this planet?
7 March 2006
It was a hard day today. It still is, it is 2 am, I am finishing my laundry in an hour, and I still have to go through my old CDs and DVDs to find information about printers and mailing house, and costs, that I have used in the past in Europe. Just that, and I’m working tomorrow morning.
I asked my boss’ wife if I could leave one hour early to find this information (since obviously it would take me all night), but she ignored my message, so the answer was clear: work one more hour, search all night.
I have been debating if I should or not, I have such a headache. I guess I have to, no choice. And now, can you believe, I feel guilt for having asked to leave an hour earlier, I feel like I am a bad employee looking for any reason to leave early, when I worked until 4 am the day before we left for San Francisco, and the conference itself was days of 16 hours.
More guilt because I did not work on my conference today, instead I wrote another report about how to produce conferences in Europe, what is the difference, things to consider. I identified so many pitfalls, I bet they never thought of none of it. And yet, I feel that this report was badly received, because they asked my two innocent questions, and they hope for a two sentence answer. Like, what is the meaning of life in two words, please? (Fuck you?) So in their eyes I must have been wasting my time today, once again.
I don’t know what the Valley Girl told them about my behavior and work in San Francisco, it is quite possible that at the moment they don’t really have me high in their heart. She certainly tried to blame us for all her mistakes, today was her review or appraisal, she was in their office for hours. And as soon as she got out, she started her round of gossip to complain about whatever, how dissatisfied she is, etc. And I cannot stand this anymore. I was so silent today, I got her worried. I said I was busy, and busy I was.
Even I can recognize when someone works hard and I will go out of my way to thank them for what they did, even if it is not directly for me. It seems to me that it is the first law of any boss, being capable of freaking out when something is not done, all right, but also be able to recognize hard work as well.
I am in limbo, I don’t know where I stand, I never know if I still have my job in the morning when I get there. This is not a way to live. I won’t feel guilty when I leave them. God I am tired.
And just to make everything perfect, I am now being sued by an agency in France who claims that what a few lines some people wrote about them in one of my forums is defamation. Great! No more freedom of speech either.
7 March 2006 – 7 pm
We received today, everyone in the office, an astonishing story about a donkey getting out of a well that a farmer was trying to bury in there because the donkey was now too old. At the end it said:
“The donkey later came back and bit the farmer who had tried to bury him. The gash from the bite got infected, and the farmer eventually died in agony from septic shock. When you do something wrong and try to cover your ass, it always comes back to bite you.”
This came from the Admin Director, or Accountant, or whatever it is she is. She is the woman I talked about before, the one who in the elevator said that I would soon know why she was angry, the one that my wife’s boss said she wanted to find the next day with a better attitude.
Well, as it turns out, she has a death wish. She has crossed the line today, even I could see that. Either she has already been sacked and she does not care anymore, or else, she’s beyond caring and then, they will have to get rid of her.
She is cracking, she’s the one I thought was the most secure. The one in charge and frightening people in doing their job. She’s got too much to do, she has been working too much overtime, she has a young daughter that she never sees. When she requested an assistant, my boss said: why should I get her an assistant, if she is willing to do all the overtime possible? That was reported all around the office by the Valley Girl who was within hearing distance when he said it. She is the trouble maker, and now she will cost the job of the best employee of the office.
Not only because of that email, which is directly a personal attack on my bosses, but because tonight when she left the building earlier than usual, the Valley Girl said: congratulation! When I asked why? The Admin Director sworn and freaked out completely. Neither the Valley Girl nor I understood what she said, her face was deformed with anger. We heard the “fucking” though, and that is enough for the Valley Girl. Tomorrow she will have a field day telling everyone, and that will be the last nail in the coffin for the Director. I would not be surprised if she were to be gone by the end of the day tomorrow.
The most horrifying part of this story, is how the Valley Girl was the confident of the Admin Director. How she trusted her by telling her all her problems, and how the Valley Girl seemed to be a nice good friend in this office, when in fact, she is the biggest gossip around and strive on highly negative things until everything crumbles around us.
Today at work it was a game between her and I, of rebuilding after the war. She tried to be nice, I tried to be nice, so we can pretend that we love each other and the problems in San Francisco never happened.
In the meantime today she managed to pick up a fight with the Chinese Girl. I’m not one to enjoy when everything goes wrong at the office, but this is a relationship that I don’t like very much, because together they are very destructive.
The fight was again something very stupid. The Chinese girl is the only person in the office who actually recycles. She fills her bin up, she brings it home to recycle at a later time. The Valley Girl does not recycle, she said it costs much more in money and pollution to recycle than produce new stuff (god knows where she read that, I thought of asking, but I realized that I would be up for another big fight and I would have been too easy a target at this fragile moment).
She also said that she loves her dog, but if a bill of $500 comes in to save it, the dog will die, because she won’t pay for that. I stopped myself from saying at this point that we just spent £1200 on one of our cats who seems to have been run over by car. I guess this dog business is another argument they had today.
Which again attacks her integrity as a person, it could be construed as her being a bad person in a world of perfection that we live in at work, with half the office being hippies who want to save the world, working in the corporate world and fighting to get their sponsorship bonuses. There is no contradiction here, might I remind you. You may still want to save the planet, and yet, you are still part of that system, you have to live, and so, it is not possible to be green in a world full of shit.
9 March 2006
I don’t think I could sink lower in my career than I did today. The most embarrassing moment of my entire life. I was called in the office, mind you, I was expecting it since the Valley Girl and the Chinese Girl have been working so hard to get me sacked, no matter how nice I’m trying to be with them, and how hypocrite I am. I just did not know the angle they were going to use against me, I found out today, and I don’t think my bosses told me about all the complaints against me, because frankly, the girls did not have much against me to begin with. However I have to give them credit, they have more imagination than I thought.
I was told by both my bosses today that they had received many complaints against me, and that there are people who are not comfortable with the fact that I am gay. So I have to shut up on that subject, to not talk about my sexuality at work.
They named one person who obviously complained louder than the others, the Cool Spanish Guy who was still asking at the beginning of the week excitedly if I was going to speak about him in my next book. Yes Sir, but no longer as the Cool Spanish Guy, but as the biggest backstabber and hypocrite I have ever known.
There is not even one hour that does not pass without him making a joke about my homosexuality and even his. And suddenly he goes to my bosses to officially complain that he is not comfortable with my sexuality? It is pure bollocks. The girls made him do it, they convinced him to go and complain. And he is too young and too stupid to have realized that he could have just come to me and told me in private.
He officially complained about me, in effect destroying me in the eyes of my bosses, and seriously compromising my position in this company. This is first class backstabbing. What the girls were unable to do without good arguments against me, other than just see me as a threat and not liking it, they were able to achieve with him.
There is no doubt that I would have been sacked today, if not for the fact that I am working so damn hard and my reports are highly appreciated. So the girls have failed again. But they haven’t. I can no longer go in that office and be nice to them. I can no longer talk to any of them. Many people complained about me, and in all honesty I don’t know who, it could have been anyone or all of them. Which means I cannot speak to any of them anymore. What a miserable life I can now expect in this job.
And they all knew what they did, they have been quiet in the last two days. Isabella even told me yesterday, and I was surprised as it seemed to come out of nowhere, that she would never complain against me. In retrospect, I understand that she knew about it, she knew it was coming. And since usually she is not in the loop of any gossip in that office, I can only assume that the whole office knew and were expecting that I would be laid off.