November 8, 2000
Dear Everyone:
One more word about the
ARMA Conference last month.
Although it is the “International Conference”, it
is almost always held in either the
United States
or Canada.
This is because there are more people in the
North American
chapters than in various parts of
Europe,
Australia and the
Far East; and
because, while the Americans would probably love the excuse to visit
Paris or
Rome, their budgets
usually only go as far as
Des Moines
or Toronto.
(Next year:
Montreal.)
Nevertheless, wherever the International Conference
is held, a certain number of people from the Tokyo Chapter always
attend. And they almost
always enter and leave the United States through
San Francisco.
And they almost always contact the president of the
Golden Gate chapter prior to the
Conference in hopes that someone in the Bay Area will host some kind of
Records
Management related event that they can attend after the Conference,
on their way back to Japan.
This affords them an opportunity to see what
advances in Records Management the San Francisco chapter has to offer.
More importantly, it affords them an excuse to stay in San
Francisco over the weekend following the Conference.
In the past few years, I’m afraid the Golden Gate
chapter wasn’t doing too well and frequently had nothing to offer, or
didn’t have enough advance warning to set anything up.
But this year, the nominal head of the Golden Gate chapter sent
out a message to the members of all three
Bay Area
chapters. And several
chapter members offered to give some kind of presentation, including
yours truly (after my boss suggested that we could show them our
relatively new database).
What this all boils down to is the Japanese ARMA
members were at my office a week ago last Tuesday for about 2½ hours,
seeing some things that our international company is doing with
electronic records, as well as our database.
Something like this had happened some years ago,
back when I was working in downtown San Francisco, and our Project
Manager at the time just happened to be the current president of the
Golden Gate chapter. So I
was aware of the importance of exchanging business cards and gifts.
I discussed it with my boss and we decided to order
golf balls (with
Company logos) for our
guests. As I knew that there
would be eight to nine business persons, plus a possible translator, I
ordered a dozen tubes with two “Top Flight” golf balls, some
tees and one of those
little place
holders, each for about $2.50.
(The next item up was a dozen balls at over $10 per package.)
While I was at the Conference, I actually attended
a session on “Business
Etiquette”, where the presenter said the easiest place to find
advice is on the
Internet. So, when I got
back into the office, I did a search on “Business
Etiquette Japan” and got some pretty impressive hits.
I also found out that gifts should always be wrapped, and never
give white flowers.
So the morning before our presentation, I got some
wrapping paper and ribbons (in red, white and blue) and, with the help
of a couple of coworkers, wrapped the tubes.
When the Japanese arrived (15 minutes early), we had the gifts
and business cards all ready.
The presentation went very well, followed by a brief tour of the
warehouse. I must say, the
Japanese were gratifyingly impressed by the two-story-high shelves of
boxes and took many pictures of themselves in front of the shelves.
(They were probably appalled at so much space being given over to
mere boxes.)
Then we exchanged gifts (cards are exchanged at the
beginning of the meeting) and they went away and I went home.
I hope they can find a use for the golf balls.
In other news…
I didn’t really have time for a movie this weekend,
but I did have a free “readmission” ticket and “Jeannie” agreed that I
could go and see
Bedazzled
without her. This is a
remake of the
1967 comedy
by Peter Cook and
Dudley Moore,
which completely ignores the fact that it's actually based on
Christopher
Marlowe’s play,
Dr. Faustus,
1588.
Brendan Frasier
plays the hapless Elliot, a complete dweeb who gets the offer of seven
wishes in return for his soul.
Elizabeth
Hurley plays the
Devil.
Elliot makes one try after another to find true happiness with
his heart’s desire, Allison; but each attempt ends in complete failure,
thanks to the Devil’s fondness for loopholes.
“You wanted to be rich and powerful.
Colombian
drug lords
are rich and powerful.”
Until someone tries to kill them.
It’s about 90 minutes of pleasant diversion
watching Hurley vamp and Frasier constantly changing comic gears.
Good for a rainy weekend once it comes out on video.
Speaking of which, are you aware of how much video rentals cost
these days? Almost as much
as a matinee, only without the sticky floors.
Love, as always,
Pete
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