Being in Spain

I´m flying back to the UK tomorrow after spending 3 days in Spain. I lurrve Spain. It´s the most beautiful country I´ve lived in and I love the women.

I´ll be in the UK for two days, then back to Asia to sort out affairs on Sunday, returning to the UK later in the week. I´m going to take at least a month off before pursuing new opportunities too aggressively, although I´ll certainly put the word out that Big Joe is Back.

Talking of women (I was talking of women wasn´t I?)...immediately after arriving in Spain things returned to their normal balance. Girls not returning my calls, me constantly chasing, several near crashes as beautiful spanish girls tantalisingly walk on the pavement beside me...THATS MORE LIKE IT. The role reversal in Asia was lovely at the time but let´s face it, it isn´t natural is it? Nobody in their right mind should be chasing me. Nope, show me a woman who won´t give me the time of day and I´ll show you the woman I love.

The events of the last 24 hours still haven´t quite sunk in. As most of you know, I didn´t like Macau. But I certainly was enjoying my work and we were just getting to a period where the real learning for me would begin, so it definitely feels like I have some unfinished business. I always knew how risky this project was and, privately, I admitted that its chances of success were less than 50%. Thing is, for it to be a successful career move didn´t necessarily involve the business succeeding. When I was offered the position I figured that even if I only got a year out of it, the experience learned of the Chinese market would be very valuable. So I quickly focused on how long I thought the parent company would give it up before they realised it wasn´t working. Given who they are and their very deep pockets, the size of their investment to date and their appointments, it was difficult for me to imagine a scenario where they would give it less than a year - so I took the job. Oops.

As you can probably tell from the tone of this blog I´m not devastated. But I am desperate to get stuck into a meaty project again , something that´ll keep me awake at night, something that I can bore my friends with by talking about incessantly and something I can take pride in. Gotta find that.