I've got a confession to make. I think I told you my blog had never previously been publicised. This is not strictly true, but in my defence it was an honest mistake and not of my doing.
I was enjoying lunch and a glass of rose yesterday in the slightly chilly, albeit sunny garden of a friend who lives down the road. The occasion was a reunion of three old Rowe & Pitman stockbrokers and I was invited along as I had known them all in Hong Kong. I'm not allowed to say this according to the powers that be as it is apparently an instant turn off to anyone I am trying to lure onto my client list, but I used to work for Barings as a fund manager. I was continually bombarded by at least two of these present today as a soft touch for a chunky order in Cheung Kong or other more esoteric Asian securities.
I digress. One of them said how happy he was to see the re-emergence of the Bodhi Tree. I felt a slight shiver down my spine. It wasn't the brisk north easterly. It was the troubling recollection that many years ago my blog was brought into the public glare by a headhunter who, as part of the due diligence he was doing to check the suitability of the very man I was sitting opposite for a role as non-executive director of a China investment trust, had typed in the guys name and hey presto....up had popped a story I had written about him in Under the Bodhi Tree. I hadn't been looking for fame, but I had to admit I was rather proud when my friend told me that my blog had been found. Alas I was very quickly brought down to earth. I will not recount the whole thing all over again, but it was a story about how we had gone duck shooting in Inner Mongolia and on the way home had stopped in for the night in Harbin. Groups of young British men carrying shotguns across north east China were rare in those days and for dinner we were joined by the Chief of Police of Heilongjiang Province and the Mayor of Harbin himself. The Mayor, if I recall correctly, later fell foul of the authorities himself, but that night he was in fine form and between rounds of Tsingtao and shots of mao-tai became rather taken by my friend. They both shared similar physiques. Short and perhaps they could also be described as rather portly. Every now and again the Mayor would put his arm round my friend and give him big smacking kisses on the cheek.
You wouldn't think there was anything particularly untoward about this story, but this potential NED role was very important and my friend ( I'd love to use his name, but once bitten twice shy ) was excised by the thought the board of the investment trust might consider his daliances at all controversial if my blog got any further prominence. I removed his name immediately, but the old version stayed on line for some weeks after and his repeated searches to see if it had gone shot the Bodhi Tree right up to the top of the rankings at least for a few weeks, which truth be told I suppose I was rather pleased with. Keep clicking and have a good one
No comments:
Post a Comment