CALL ME THE GRINCH
Ah well, the season of Christmas and good cheer has descended upon us once again before the near financial ruin of the 2009 gift buying frenzy had been eradicated. I have no will-power. As soon as those funny persons dressed in red with fake beards appear in television ads by mid-September selling everything from lawn-mowers to apricot jam I have this irrepressible urge to get into my vehicle to ambulate to the nearest store to buy-buy-buy.
This result in penury and my house being stacked to the rafters with things I never intended to own. Imagine my grandson’s surprise when he opened his Christmas stocking last year to discover a box of rat-poison and a bottle of dish-washing liquid. Subliminal advertising is a scary thing.
On e-news last night I saw a snippet about a Father Christmas School in Japan where aspiring FC's are taught the fine art of not scaring kid’s silly and persuading parents to buy rubbish for their off-spring. They look worse than Elvis impersonators I swear.
Goodness greatness - since when has Christmas become a Japanese tradition? I suppose in the same year when Halloween became a South African tradition
It’s also the season of the dreaded Christmas parties and year-end functions where you have to mix with colleagues and their significant others who you have no wish to hang out with under normal circumstances. I have decided I’ll be leaving for Kyrgyzstan this weekend until the middle of January. I don’t think they’re into Christmas that much being mainly Muslim and all.
I didn’t even know it there was such a country until today when Baroness Mary Hogbin forwarded me a WikiLeak about Prince Andrew’s, inbred royal that he is, visit to the place in 2008. The leak includes the following juicy tidbit about doing business in Kyrgyzstan ;
After having half-heartedly danced around the topic for a bit, only mentioning “personal interests” in pointed fashion, the business representatives then plunged into describing what they see as the appallingly high state of corruption in the Kyrgyz economy.
While claiming that all of them never participated in it and never gave out bribes, one representative of a middle-sized company stated that “It is sometimes an awful temptation.” In an astonishing display of candor in a public hotel where the brunch was taking place, all of the businessmen then chorused that nothing gets done in Kyrgyzstan if President Bakiyev’s son Maxim does not get “his cut.”
Prince Andrew took up the topic with gusto, saying that he keeps hearing Maxim’s name “over and over again” whenever he discusses doing business in this country. Emboldened, one businessman said that doing business here is “like doing business in the Yukon” in the nineteenth century, i.e. only those willing to participate in local corrupt practices are able to make any money.
His colleagues all heartily agreed, with one pointing out that “nothing ever changes here. Before all you heard was Akayev’s son’s name. Now it’s Bakiyev’s son’s name.” At this point the Duke of York laughed uproariously, saying that: “All of this sounds exactly like France.”
Sounds a lot like doing business in South Africa, just change the names to the sons and lovers of the struggle heroes.
Until further notice please contact me by snail mail care of the Bishkek post office