The Traveling Salesman

For the past couple of weeks, I have been traveling up and down Peninsula Malaysia meeting representatives of State Governments, in a role I'm not entirely comfortable with - salesman. It's a necessary role, and I have no problems with going through the motions - the travel, the prep, the pitch - but I have never enjoyed the process. It's also been surreal - traveling long distance, mainly late at night or early in the morning, driving in shifts, breakfasts and breaking fast (it's Ramadan) at highway rest stops. Things I have learnt : - probably the most valuable lesson this time around is that civil servants are not quite what they are usually portrayed as - so far they have been accommodative, friendly and even downright efficient. - I am not a night owl. I need my sleep, and I need lots of it. - my palmOne Zire 72 PDA and Sony Ericsson T630 mobile phone work really well together. DiGi had excellent GPRS coverage throughout my journeys. So I was able to check email and browse websites quite easily. I found out that Bush won the reelection at 4.30 in the morning, at the Tapah rest stop. What a way to start the day.