|
  |
|
|
You're Still You, No Matter Where You Go
From many years of owning a wholesale travel company -- a travel company that designs and puts together tours and packages, unlike most retail agencies, which only sell wholesaler's tours and packages -- I learned a few important lessons about human personality. I used to take small groups of up to twenty people to the South Pacific and Asia. In my offices in California, I sometimes heard prospective clients state some version of: "Oh, if I could only be in such-and-such a place, I would be happy." These people suffered from the illusion that where they were determined the pleasure and happiness they would receive in life. In reality, their personalities and unhappinesses reminded me of briefcases handcuffed to their wrists. Wherever these people went, they would carry their personalities and attitudes with them. No matter where, they would still be themselves. I remember one strange family of four who were members of a group I accompanied to Indonesia. The husband and father was a psychiatrist from New York, It was said that his wife, a lawyer, worked for the mayor of that city. I later heard rumors that he worked as a sort of spy. He allegedly had a lot of clients from United Nations missions of foreign countries, and it was claimed that he passed his patients' secrets along to the CIA. This couple was accompanied by their son and daughter, two teenagers. The first thing I noticed was that the two children were almost never more than thirty or so feet away from the parents, and were never out of their sight. After a certain number of events, you would not only think that the husband and wife were cursed, but you would have been certain that they carried with them the seeds of their curse wherever they went. They collected valuable Ming dynasty porcelain. In the Celebes, they went into the shop of a dealer in antiquities who read them instantly after they began demanding this and that. The dealer had a bunch of beautiful Ming Dynasty pieces in his back room, but as he told me later, as much as he wanted to make a sale or two, he instantly disliked them so much that he decided not to show them his real treasures. The husband was totally demanding. For him and his wife, nothing was right. They wanted the best room in any accommodation. They didn't like the Indonesian style food. They wanted western food. They didn't want a view towards the road. They wanted a view towards the rice paddies. Nothing was right, nothing was good enough for them. At one point they didn't like the areas we were traveling through, so the husband came to me with a demand that I travel the next day back 90 miles to a hotel we had just checked out of, and check us back in there ,totally changing the itinerary. I told him that I knew the hotel was full, and there was no way anyone was going to get in there without a prior reservation. The manager himself had told me this. "Well, give the man a bribe and have him throw some group out," he responded. By this time we were near the end of our three-week tour. I had really had enough of him. "I don't do windows and I don't do bribes," I responded. In Bali he went to a tailor and ordered a half dozen shirts to be made to order. When he returned a few days later to pick them up, he discovered that the buttons were on the wrong side. What he had not realized was that in Bali there are two kinds of tailors, ones for men and ones for women, and he had gone to a tailor specializing in women's clothing. I must have laughed myself to sleep that night. It couldn't have happened to a nastier son-of-a-bitch. When we checked into an extremely expensive and luxurious beach hotel, we were all given our own bungalows. The family of four had two units in the same bungalow building connected by a door in common. Late at night there came a banging on my bungalow door. It turned out that of all the units in this expensive, chic hotel, the one the psychiatrist and his wife and been given was inhabited by a rat ! There were no other empty bungalows, so they had to lie awake in terror all night long. I began believing at this point that they carried a curse on themselves caused by their nastiness. Wherever these people went, locals turned their backs on them. This was because they projected anger and imperiousness on everyone they encountered. At the end of the trip, as I was seeing everybody off the plane in Los Angeles, I was tipped by most of the clients. The psychiatrist and his wife, who had been thorns in my side every mile of the way, pointedly stiffed me. That was okay because I had designed the tour myself and marked it up enough that they were already paying me adequately for my time and services. And my revenge was that they were returning to New York City, where they would undoubtedly continue to be as unhappy as they had been during the entire trip. |
Beautiful gifts based on beautiful flowers.
| bodybuilding photography
| Decades of bodybuilding photography by a creative artist
| Chocolates, beagles, Komodo Dragons and much, much more
No reactions yet.
Please login or sign up to rate this intel.
Please login or sign up to add a comment.
The copyright for this content entitled "You're Still You, No Matter Where You Go" has been specified by the contributor as:
All Rights Reserved
This content may not be copied, distributed or adapted by anyone under any circumstances.
|
 |
May, 2012
2008
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2009
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2010
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2011
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
2012
January, February, March, April, May
|
|
Not a member yet?
Qondio is a powerful network for making it online. If you have a website to
promote, we can help.
Sign up and get in on the action.
|
|
Welcome to Qondio! Discover the awesome power this network can deliver by going to our About page. Or you could skip straight to the Sign Up form.
|
|
