Life is a Journey: Live it (Part 29)

The other autobiography
„Yes, you are right, Charles... a few days ago I promised to give an accurate account of how it came about for me to work for six months in Singapore. Now is the time to shed a bit of light on this matter. “The night was warm, and small insects flew around our heads to avoid the heat of the campfire. We were all very tired as the entire day we were walking for almost eighteen kilometers, found hospitality in an old barn turned into a restaurant for walkers, had one and a half hours to relax with delicious, simple meals, and one or two glasses of beer before we had to head off to our last stop and take the bus back to our hostel. The young ones still wanted to come together and have an evening story before bedtime. They lay on the warm grass, each holding another person close in their arms to feel more comfortable, while I was supposed to tell a story.

This situation reminded me of my childhood when my mother would enter our room, in which the three of us slept. We had one single bed and one bunk bed. Before she came to read from fairy tale books, we had to brush our teeth, wash our faces, and get dressed in our nightgowns. Patiently, we were waiting for her to enter the room, dim the light, and sit in the middle of our room. She would hold under a small lamp the book to read from, and we children would carefully listen. I imagined the story and saw it like a movie before my inner eyes. While others had their black and white TVs, we had no money to buy one. Brenda Neubert, the first girl I had a crush on, lived in Ole Enn number 6 right at the end, where we would watch Flipper an US series with a lovely dolphin, a dog, and nice children. When I was fourteen and lay in bed with a cold, my mother, out of the blue, would come and place a small portable black and white TV right in front of me. The happiness we felt that time, our own TV no longer having to feel ashamed and watch it at Brenda Neubert`s place, was unimaginable. With the TV, the storytelling of my mother ended from one moment to the next. Thinking back and comparing it with today, I wish more parents would tell their children stories before sleeping and drag them away from smartphones and computers.

„After three years of life in the UK, I returned to Hamburg in the summer of 1987. My mother had not altered the room I used to stay in; therefore, I was able to move in right away. In March the following year, I moved to Frankfurt am Main to work for the American conference organizer company IIR GmbH, which had its office in the Plaza Hotel and office building across from Frankfurt Messe, Frankfurt Fair. I found a one-room apartment in Maintal Wachenbuchen, just 20 km away from my office. The apartment was in a nice building with friendly people. With the apartment came a place to park my car just in front. Each morning I took the car to work, something I should not have done as the public transport to work was excellent and more comfortable, no traffic jams and no headaches to find a parking spot around the office.

We were young colleagues from various places in Germany, north, south, west, but not east. Our academic backgrounds were very diveres but we all had one, except the nice colleague responsible to run the office and administering the students, all females, to assist with the management of the conferences in the various hotels, mostly in the south or west of Germany. As conference managers, we were all sharing one large room, which made phone calls very difficult as others had to make their calls at the same time, inviting speakers and gathering information. One small extra room was used by Sigrid Bauschert. She was the only one of us with experience in the industry, having worked before for FORUM, a well-established conference organization. The German branch of IIR was under the control and supervision of IIR in the Netherlands. Sigrid Bauschert was mandated to establish and run the affairs of IIR GmbH in Germany as the Managing Director. Five months after the opening of the German branch, I joined the team. Most of my colleagues came right from universities only a few had previous work experience. What we all had in common no one, except Sigrid Bauschert, had a clue about the conference industry. Trained to be flexible in matters not having studied, we had four weeks to produce one conference. Like a journalist, we went to the Central Library and found other sources of information about the given subjects, which we had no knowledge of. I remember when, in Herborn, a heavy-duty truck filled with hazardous material in a curve rushed into a house and turned over. Politicians were quick to draft new laws and regulations to manage and prevent future accidents like that. Sigrid Bauschert mandated me to produce a conference on the matter and bring it out fast, as it was a hot cake. By that time, there was only a little information to go by. After one week, I had so much information and a list of potential speakers that three weeks later, the prospect to invite people to attend our event was out on the market.

One young colleague focused entirely on the banking sector. I saw her as a career woman making it big in the industry or in the banking sector. I recall paying her a visit in the newly rented apartment to have a party with others when I saw her pregnant. Instead of a great professional career, she became a housewife and mother. With another colleague, I became a close friend, and the friendship has lasted until today. She left the company after only three months to make herself self-employed and earn a good living.

To attend the conferences as a Conference Manager was exciting. I dealt with CEOs of renowned German and foreign companies. At dinner tables, we would sit together, share meals and stories. I learned a lot, especially to find the right professional words for subjects I had no knowledge of but had to learn in the shortest possible time. I witnessed a wide spectrum of speakers as speakers and professionals in their own fields. They never saw me as an amateur in their subjects and areas of interest. Speaking to people at the top is always easier than with the middle or lower management. As I asked questions instead of sharing my opion helped me to give these people the impression to really understood what I was asking. In fact, often I did not have a deeper understanding but imitated journalists whom I loved to watch going about their daily work. The food in the five-star hotels, which we used for our conferences, was great. Mostly it was in the form of a buffet, rather than in the form of a served meal. Two day conference and being responsible for the smooth running of it is a real challenge. Each speaker deserved to be cared for closely with their individual needs. And as the participants had to pay around € 1600 for a two-day event, they too deserved the closest of individual attention. Three or four young female students would assist us for the event a part-time job for them. One specific assistant I adored was going about her duties with passion, and as we rented cars for the event, I asked her to be my driver. She loved it! Not only that, she went brake neck speed in the executive cars even in the rain. Only on our way to Düsseldorf, the rain was too much, and she slowed down.

I made myself a name in the industry and in the boardrooms of some companies, like Siemens, which four years later came to my advantage. I remember after my return from Singapore, international terrorists were attacking high-ranking personnel, and my speaker from IBM, responsible for Human Resources on the board of the company, came with two bodyguards, telling me the company, for security reasons, did not allow board members to fly and gave them personal protection. The events held in Hotel Schloß Kronberg, the Castle in Taunus, where many Frankfurt bankers live, belong to my most memorable events during the four years that I worked for IIR GmbH.

Now, let us come to me flying out to Singapore for six months in the second half of 1988.

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