He arrived in a 40-degree heat with no contacts, no means of electronic communication and a 1989 tourist map of the city. His luggage suggested a Boot-like blend of foresight and naivety – a roll-up panama, a compass, a gas mask, a bullet-proof jacket, three golf clubs, two tennis racquets and some Arabic language tapes.
His firm had supplied a Land Rover Discovery and a conspicuous canary-yellow van with DHL painted on the side, a potential target for every looter in Baghdad. “I threw open the doors of the van to look at our supplies,” says Bond Gunning. “It was empty.” In the back of the Land Rover were two camp beds, a tent, a laptop and satellite phone (both unworkable), some baked beans, two dozen bottles of water and an envelope containing $25,000. “That was it,” he says. “I couldn’t have written a more ridiculous scenario if I’d tried.”
Despite these woeful provisions, and an environment growing more hostile by the day, Bond Gunning, 33, went on to build up a multi-million dollar air freight business in the space of a year.
I need a guy like this to help me run my business… any takers?
Comments
Baghdad Business School
what do you do?
Re: Baghdad Business School
http://computerpoint.tv
Baghdad Business School
‘aadi. First off, mabrook – I believe your blog sets a lot of precedents, in terms of being a ‘blog’ primarily, and then being a bahraini blog, among other things – and that’s admirable.
Also – Ramadhaan kareem.
I saw the link – hardware/software/graphics solutions – very interesting. So I suppose you’re looking to pay somebody to manage the day-to-day affairs, while you oversee and ofcourse, stake claim to profits. Great idea, I’d do it myself if I were in your place.
Also, because I’m not in ‘your place’ (bahrain), I can’t be that somebody you pay to manage the day-to-day affairs.
Hopefully you’ll find some 33yr. old w/ the first name ‘Bond
Re: Baghdad Business School
As I’ve said before, there is nothing that would please me more than to expand my business, get it listed and run it as a proper enterprise. Sadly, in this environment it probably will never happen. The atmosphere here is not conducive for the growth of the small business.
Discovery
As a matter of interest, how did you discover this blog?
Re: Discovery
I discovered the ‘blogworld’ 6 months ago, saw it frequently for about a month after that, but then failed to keep in touch until as recently as early September.
So early September, upon ceasing to be a stranger, I decided to look into 5aleeji blogs specifically. And yours was the first one I came across. Well, you are the ‘computer guy
Re(1): Discovery
Ah ok. However I cannot and do not take credit for the google-ability of the site, that completely goes to the fine folk at Xaraya for creating such a solid and multifacetted engine. I do not do anything to increase the hits other than continue to write!
We’ll see how the F1 fairs, that now Cancun is on the calendar for 2006. That’s gonna make it 20 races!
And with the Canadian and Dubai outfits, they probably will take over from Jordan and Minardi, so the teams will stay at 17 (with the dropout of Jaguar).
Now let’s add to that the latest from the FIA:
and the next couple of years are going to be interesting. It’s a shame though that all the new regulations etc seem to have been put in place simply to trip Schumacher.
I don’t agree with Dubai with the F1 team though and I made my thoughts clear on that one. I really think that Bahrain is doing it better with the step by step approach. Anyone can plonck a truckload of money to buy a team, but very few can actually get their locals to own the cockpit.
I can however understand that they’re doing it as a publicity issue for Dubai. In that case, it doesn’t really matter who drives (and I wouldn’t be surprised if a bright spark was taken to be the primo driver for their team, as I’m sure they can offer Michael Schumacher a few million more than what Ferrari pays to entice him over) the end result is that the global name of Dubai will be strengthened.