This article was written on September 19th, I don’t know when it will be published.
This business trip does not have the same effect on me as the other-ones had. I may be a bit anxious about thinking of working so far from our headquarters, or perhaps it comes from all these bittersweet and even violent images that come to our minds when one says “Vietnam”, or “Indochina”? The word Vietnam generates inspiring imaginary thoughts and we do not remember if those come from our history books, from frightening movies, or from Marguerite Duras and her world made of worm rain and soft light filtering through bays.
The last few days before the trip I did not have any time to breathe and to prepare myself for what I expect to be a violent but positive shock. Yesterday I was busy in Frankfurt and in the 4 countries I went to in the last 3 weeks so I could not concentrate on my mental preparation. Virginie and Alex have got everything set for me. Virginie is still reading her documents and notes before landing. I am not. These lines I am writing are the ones that will help me preparing my mind for this first Asian experience.
But what am I looking for? Mircea asked me 10 times within a few hours in Frankfurt. I guess I didn’t know what to answer. “Because you are French!” he said. My father asked me the same question, some people from Pentalog certainly wonder about this but didn’t dare asking me, since I was so busy with the perspective of a new continental adventure.
After all, Pentalog’s low cost production system works better than most of the European software production companies and it probably offers one of the best quality-price ratios in the world. It looks like it has a bright future. I will go further than the classical answers about the research for competitiveness. I believe that each continent represents a mental territory in everyone’s mind. What I want to know is what I can build for you on your mental Asian territory. What I want to know is what your mental Asian territory, mine and reality have in common. And I will draw my personal conclusions from this. One of our clients, an amazing start-up company, has already stated its intention to join us in this project because, as its chairman said “our solutions are built on hardware produced in Asia and sold to Asian customers”, and “getting a bit of the Asian spirit will be good for us”. Apart from this trip, we will of course assess several things as we usually do and look for fruitful encounters, as we know how to do. And we talk about all this. Also, we will assess the common “synchronization” difficulties with Europe as well, I mean how fast we can get a plane ticket, how we can work with Orleans, Frankfurt, Romania and Moldova in optimal conditions. We have almost 2 weeks to get serious results and answers. In 99, when I went to Romania for the first time, I spent 8 days there and another 8 days 2 months later.
At the moment I am finishing this post, 20 minutes have passed since we flew over Rostov-on-Don. We are now heading towards the Caucasus, however the GPS is still showing Tbilissi and Georgia, which we are unlikely to fly over, but I am thinking of them. We are leaving the mountains to our right, as I thought. We are authorized to fly over Grozni, the ripped and pacified capital of Chechnya. Even Vietnam Airlines aircrafts must comply with the Pax Putina! There we are, our plane just entered the Central Asia twilight. I can still see the Caspian Sea under a steamy veil like the tulle behind the bays of Marguerite, who dreams and dreams.
