What an over­whelm­ing expe­ri­ence.

There was bare­ly any time to explore; we took one walk and pret­ty much stayed with­in a 10km radius. Too much read­ing, test­ing, and meet­ing to do any­thing else. It felt like the time went fly­ing by, yet dragged on, the longer I was from home.

As an intro­vert, you fall back on mem­o­ries and past expe­ri­ences, and it dri­ves reflec­tion and re-eval­u­a­tion.

I’d be lying if I said that it did­n’t affect me. I learned more about myself in the last two weeks than I did in the last year, and I’ll be writ­ing about it for weeks, if not months.

A Change of Personalities

It was the peo­ple who had the most impact on me. There were the ones in my lit­tle clique, a group of client spe­cial­ists in train­ing. All con­fi­dent, extro­vert­ed, empa­thet­ic peo­ple. There was much to admire in them.

Then there was the upper ech­e­lon. Vice-pres­i­dents, lab pres­i­dents, big-wigs who spoke with weight in their words. You thank them for tak­ing you to din­ner, and they thank you in turn by telling you that your com­pa­ny was a plea­sure. It was inspir­ing to observe how effort­less­ly they car­ry them­selves with grace and charis­ma.

There was one in par­tic­u­lar, the nation­al sales man­ag­er, a true gen­tle­man about 60, who real­ly stood out. At first, he was the most intim­i­dat­ing per­son there; one of those exec­u­tives whose time is worth gold. His wingtips were always pol­ished to the point of reflec­tion (“you have to sell your­self before you can sell your prod­uct”, he would say).

“What kind of busi­ness are we in, Jeff?”

“An annu­ity busi­ness.”

“BINGO!”, and he’d put his fist out for me to tap.

Maybe it was because I was by far the youngest in the class. He had the abil­i­ty con­nect with any­one, regard­less of their age, expe­ri­ence, or sta­tus. He did­n’t just teach us about per­son­al empa­thy, he lived it. At the very end, I had the plea­sure of a lit­tle one-on-one time with him.

Compliments

The nicest thing that any­one said to me was that I should go into sales.

He also did­n’t know that it’s some­thing that it drains me rather quick­ly, but it was nice of him to say so.

Another per­son saw my pho­tos in my screen saver and said that my can­did shots cap­tured quin­tes­sen­tial moments and emo­tions. Then he start­ed telling oth­er peo­ple about them and show­ing them off, which was espe­cial­ly com­pli­men­ta­ry. I inspired him to take up pho­tog­ra­phy, he said, so I gave him a small course on the basics.

A New Friend

There was one per­son, more than 15 years my senior, with whom I got along espe­cial­ly well, to the point where we were shar­ing old sto­ries and con­fi­dences. Part of it was the fact that I could make him laugh. Humor is usu­al­ly how I relate to peo­ple. While we were wait­ing at the air­port, he thought some­thing I said was so fun­ny that he had to call his friend to tell him right there before he for­got it. He had the con­fi­dent, peo­ple-per­son ener­gy, and I drew from that. It was only when we trad­ed per­son­al con­tact info before leav­ing that I felt as if my trip was com­plete.

Misplaced Luggage

My suit­case was nowhere to be found on the lug­gage belt at the air­port on the way back. I was rerout­ed because of a bunch of air traf­fic delays, and the suit­case was mis­placed in the process, although they found and deliv­ered it yes­ter­day. My favourite dress-shirts and sweaters were in there, and I was com­plete­ly depressed when I thought they were lost.

I had a ton of stuff packed in that suit­case — includ­ing a beau­ti­ful cK toi­letries bag that was giv­en to me as a gift, and the per­fect DKNY groom­ing kit I haven’t seen since pur­chas­ing it — but I did­n’t care about any­thing else except the shirts and sweaters. It’s frus­trat­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for me to find ones that fit my style and frame. And when you dress based on mood, los­ing part of your clothes is like for­get­ting your favourite mem­o­ries.