Linear Time Visualization

I much prefer this…

To…..

I discovered this by sheer chance today during a twelve hour negotiation with the millers either that or my brain had gone soggy as it was six against one – and they were taking turns drilling holes into my head – but let’s leave that to one side and just focus on my moment of epiphany….since a large part of the negotiations today was predicated on dates. It dawned on me linear visualization of time suits me much better, it may seem weird to some of you…but that I suspect may only be because our understanding of time may well be an acquired or scripted taste – as we’ve gotten so accustomed to circular, digital representations of time along with visualizing the month in pigeon holes with lashings of muscle cars, pets, and naked women.

Back to the negotiations with the millers – since I was outnumbered. I realized from the onset that I had to break their teamwork by throwing them into disarray and confusion. This could only be accomplished, if I came across as a unstable and possibly even psychotic character. The talks were characterized by moments of what I can only describe as monkey business and lashings of childishness – at one stage when one of them accused me of behaving like a guerilla. I deliberately slammed the table and accused him of calling me a monkey again – gorilla. To which he protested with guerilla and I in return gorilla….you called me a gorilla. This is a negotiation ploy that I regularly use when I am outnumbered and have very little in the way of bargaining power to leverage on during high stakes negotiations – I developed this technique by studying the methods of North Korean geo political negotiators along with my extensive experiments in supermarkets, where I would frequently stir up controversy to get an advantage. As it is, my distraction techniques were most effective in ruining the rhythm of the teamwork on the other side. At one stage I even took out a hanky and pretended to sob, telling them all that I did not want to be evil, but since I had been discriminated, marginalized and single out for bullying, I was really a victim and I told them since they were older than me, they should at least try to rehabilitate me from my evil ways….to which one of them murmured….ginah…and that was really my cue to slam the table again and demand either satisfaction or that he do me the courtesy of retracting his insult…to which he lost his temper and ranted..ginah..ginah…ginah. The reason why I am sharing this excerpt is merely to illustrate how psychologically complex the negotiations was, at one level it may appear like sandbox politics. But at a deeper level, it mask a very clear purposeful strategic intent where I was constantly deploying an array of negotiating techniques…deflection…misdirection…embellishment….and just out right fibbing.

To cut a long story short, when the other side finally offered me the concessions I asked for on the condition I stopped all transportation of fruit to other millers in the West…I feigned reluctance and nodded my head sullenly…what they all didn’t realize was this was all I wanted….as those lorries were all not carrying any fruit…they were empty….each and every lorry was just dressed up with a covered tarpaulin…in reality, a fully laden lorry could never had made it across those terrible plantation roads…it was just impossible.

But none of them realize it….all warfare is based on deception.