The Bullshit Economy

Wednesday 25th January. Afternoon.

The unfeasibly sexy Mustafa is going away to study in Sparta. Which, in open defiance of what I learned in Classical Civilisation classes, is no longer in Greece. Shocking.

Ah well. I should see him again in about three months, and maybe feel like a giddy schoolgirl again. Or a slightly dodgy old perv. I always get those two confused.

Meanwhile, an impromptu interview/presentation with, well, a businessman. The Montgolfier brothers were baloonist-papermakers. Benedictus Spinoza was a heretic-lensgrinder. This fellow is a cisconetwork-manager-coffeeshop-owner. Meaning, he wears a suit to give orders to young employees in stylishly ripped jeans to solve technical problems he doesn't understand, and they don't bother explaining the reality to him.

But, like all people who like to pretend they understand computers, he thinks matters like photoshop layering and database management are incredibly arcane and difficult to learn.

Actually, they can be, but not if all you want is a company logo or a payroll record.

And so, the fifteen point list of "things Kapitano can teach apart from English", which constitutes our company's mission statement, has to be translated into English, for purely legal reasons, for no one to read.

This list started life as my notes on the back of an envelope, which got translated into Arabic pseudo-legalese. So now we feed the result into google translate, and I edit the resulting mess into English pseudo-legalese.

Here's our first three promises:

1) Provide training in modern video conferencing and webinar presentation techniques, in both English and Arabic languages.

2) Facilitate effective communication with western charitable organisations, to present the client business organisation effectively, thus enabling smooth project development.

3) Contribute actively to sourcing of a suitable environment, to assist the client organisation in legally performing its activities in the United Kingdom, to remove obstacles to success in business.

Aren't you glad no one's ever going to read it?

Part of our well-deserved reward for writing the above.