25th March, 2011

The other day I was talking to a client of mine up in Scotland who was bemoaning the lack of talented undergraduates who could write and showed a broad interest in their surroundings. It so happened that I had just met such a person and was duly very pleased when they subsequently asked to meet him. It turns out that it was less to do with their confidence in me as a judge of character and more that they had “googled” him and discovered a blog he had maintained during his GAP year when he had ridden the breadth of China on a motorbike. It was a fascinating journal full of interesting, pertinent and critical observations about China and, furthermore, it was written in impressively good English! It rendered his solid, but stereotypical CV pretty much superfluous.

So, my parting words to Hen as she left last Saturday for Bangkok on her GAP year travels was that if she did nothing else she must try to keep a Blog and that it would be invaluable for her future employment prospects. She seems to have taken my urgings on board. Here is the first instalment:

23 March 2011 at 02:00
hey there family!, you alright?? im having such an amazing time! I AM SO GAP YEAR!!! ive got a dreadlock!!! it looks sick. i havent taken very many pics yet really but when i have i'll put them up for ya. ! the first night i got here we had to take sophie to the hospital it was mega lolz cos she only just bruised her ankle but she thought she had broken it. i also have so much stuffin my hair like feathers and braids and all kinds of rasta things cos that what i am.. so raasta. lol. there are sooooooo many lady boys and pros*itutes everywhere! omg last night we manged to pursuade sophie to get a moustache henna on her face!!! its going to be there for 3 weeks!!!!! lololllllll
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My daughter’s employment’s prospects aside I am feeling quite good about myself today. I broke my target of 1 h2 20 mins for the Crick although that is no big deal really I suppose. Staged at Rugby School this is the oldest organised cross country race in the world and if I had achieved my time in the race in 1869 I would have been beaten by a 17 year old boy called Bulpett. In addition I met the President of China Life today, Mr Yang Chao. A charming gentleman. Chatting to him before a meeting with an absolutely enormous long only institutional client it just happened to slip out that that I was Scottish. My, was he not impressed. “Oh” he said, “I admire Scottish people. They are like people from Shandong. Straight shooters.” He then proceeded to conduct the meeting virtually entirely in Mandarin, but I knew better!