My New Mantra

My mantra for the last couple of months has been, "it's not what you know, but who you know".

I thought that things work wise for me were slowing grinding to halt and that the whole point of me coming to PNG would be a complete waste of time (that is work wise of course, personal development wise - brilliant). Now it looks like things might at last be happening.

I mentioned before about an old ex-kiap that was coming to town, well I met up with him this morning and it looks like the future is rosy. He is the sort of person who can assemble all the required groups and entities together and get some of the fading dream back into reality ... and he is dead keen to use us and our study centres - it doesn't make sense not too. And all that just occurred through a chance meeting at the conference I attended in December. I won't talk too much about it until things kick off.

Another case for me of getting things sorted through your associations that happened recently, was after my laptop modem died - I had left it plugged into the phoneline over Easter while I went and scaled Wilhelm. Initially I rang up the local dealer for Apple and asked them if I could get it replaced under warranty, they said no because it was a spike on the line that ruined it. They wanted to charge me K600 (Au$250) for a replacement.

So I sent an email to an old mate I used to work with who has mates at an Apple dealership in Sydney. He got in contact with them, stitched a deal where I pulled my modem out of the laptop, posted it down there and they replace it under warranty. In the post yesterday I got the new replacement modem returned, all for the cost of postage.

And another case recently was when my colleague and author, John, needed an editor to help him edit some new booklets he is writing. I got him in touch with a certain white knight editor (aka Goroka volunteer) who is now looking after his editing needs, for minimal charge of two free books. I can safely say John is sufficiently chuffed.

Like I said "it is not what you know, but who you know". Of course it does help if you know a little as well.