My New Tobacco Mate

Wed 25th Feb 09

Budapest and other places….
I got up early and shared a cab through snow covered Budapest to get to the airport. In the lounge after checking in for my flight to London that would get me home to Melbourne via Hong Kong, I picked up a copy of the Jerusalem Post. (Should I say that again?) I’d never seen one before.
My professional eye got a first and favourable impression, scanning the quality of print. Well balanced and sharp coloured photos, perfect register and good solid even black text. But as I was about to start reading it, my new friend from the conference arrived and we fell into conversation. He is a very affable and warm voluble American, an expert in the tobacco industry. That’s why he was at the conference on Tax Stamps, the reason both of us were in Budapest.
I don’t recall the sequence that had me talking about my database project, but soon we were. He is in the business of gathering, analysing and using data about the tobacco business. I have enjoyed some incidental learning about that industry’s structure and function through various presentations at the conference. Prominent among them is the huge amount of money that criminal elements make by subverting government systems to collect excise taxes. The same is true of liquor. But back to the database project…
I explained that (but not how) I’d found a way to define and quantify the demand and supply for commercial printing, which in any economy is probable the most over supplied and most fractioned industry of all. Right there after sole-trader hairdressers and bakers, but with a quantum of investment that puts it in the big leagues. Despite the enormous risky investment, there is no data available about supply and demand, or much else, that printing business owners can use.
The elements of my project do not take long to explain. We quickly got to a point where he was quizzing me not about the principles, but about the practicalities of gathering the data. His questions were concise, valuable and interesting because they reflected his experience in a similar venture. He started an information service for the tobacco industry a long time ago. It’s now so large he employs nearly 30 people in Hyderabad to do the “back end” stuff of data entry and software engineering. He’s going to London on the same flight as me, to transfer to Hyderabad.
Isn’t it interesting how a casual conversation with a complete stranger, well almost a stranger, can be seriously valuable. There’s value for a few reasons. First, it reinforces a flagging conviction that what I believe is valuable and doable, probably is. Second it gives me added confidence and impetus to push ahead when my focus and enthusiasm has waned or at least been diverted to less exciting and more immediate things – like earning a living! But most of all the value is to re-kindle my imagination about where the project might go.
It is that aspect that gives me the proverbial kick in the butt to get active and focused again. And I realise all this while its happening; while our discussion is taking place. That’s a good feeling.
He talks about data gathering on the web. How he reads a few specific blogs as a way of watching and learning what is going on around his industry. I tell him about the new site I found that matches pro and con articles about global warming and he wants to know what it is. I’ve forgotten but it’s listed in my Google favourites so I can send it to him next time I connect.
We talk about other stuff. I’m always proud to talk about being a family guy with 4 kids. He has 3. Dads are all the same. We spend 10 minutes echoing each other. The only thing that changes are the gender, age and jobs they do. And we talk about the recession. He has an interesting perspective which I haven’t heard before: “If the government is putting up all this taxpayer funding, where’s the matching contribution from capital?” A reasonable question.
I mention the feature article about manufacturing in this week’s Economist. He thinks, as I do, that The Economist is the best thing he reads. Although I think he was about content and I’m about content and also the use of English.
We’re called to our flight. The skyway (what a stupid word) to the plane is cold, a fitting farewell from snowy Budapest where I left the hotel just once since checking in because it was so cold outside. We’re both sitting up the front of the plane. I hand him the Economist, saying, “I’ll get it back at the other end.”
For a moment I’m amused at the incongruence of Hungarian announcements on British Airways, but it is a small world after all, and nowhere smaller than Europe where all those countries that used to, in living memory, war against each other, but now trade and travel and call themselves a union.
I start reading my Jerusalem Post but nod off to sleep. I’m awake in time to look down on England as we arrive at Heathrow. Leaving the plane my new tobacco mate returns the magazine with thanks. We wait to disembark.
“Good luck with your projects!” I say, a Melbourne-flavoured farewell, “I’ll send you the website address as soon as I get home.” We’re off the plane and he’s headed into a line for transit at T5 while I go the other way to T4. I know I’ll be in touch, and so does he.
It’s a small world.
I still didnt' get around to reading the Jerusalem Post - maybe next year...