Well, Yes, Hello, What a Pleasure

You imagine it will be easy.  Take a call with someone you’ve never met with whom you have to review a few things.  You’ve also got to get a few things for dinner and visit the ATM.  You imagine yourself biking along happily, chatting, muting, unmuting and navigating what you need to and returning home easily enough to finish things up.  You’ll have time to set it all up in few minutes.  For now, bike over to the main building and visit the ATM like you intended to.

In reality the person calls in earlier than you expected.  He’s called on video.  That’s his choice.  You won’t be joining by video.  His voice isn’t coming through the on your headset.  Rather he’s a tinny sound coming out of the phone itself.  Why isn’t the wiz-bang blue tooth headset that had just been playing songs from the phone up into my ears now unable to do the same with this conferencing bridge?  With time I could probably figure it out but I’m pushing my bike along and trying to be sociable and I give up and put the phone to my ear.

Well, yes, hello, what a pleasure . . . I park my bike a roughly and head into the club house where the market is located.  I try to pick up a basket.  But someone has left some groceries in the top basket.  I see a woman with two kids in a stroller.  It all looks rather complicated.  I head back outside and try to chat on the couch.  This goes well enough until a Chinese ayi with two toe head kids walks in.  The younger one is bawling.  There must be considerable background noise.

I steel myself to reenter the store, as I only need a few groceries and once I have them I can get back home where the call can proceed with a bit more professionalism.  But once I head down the aisle to the back the connection begins to flicker.  I try another aisle.  The same.  OK then.  Not much choice.  I return to my outside couch seat.  No more multi tasking.  Let’s finish this properly.  “That sounds wonderful.  Hello?  Hello?”  My sweaty face seems to have managed to engage the mute button.  It’s remarkable, really that all of this is still such a messy matter to coordinate.

Thursday 05/11/17