NFGI

Thanks for everyone´s kind emails, comments and SMSs, even got one from Jason although he´ll probably deny it. I am fine and there´s no post-traumatic-carpal-tunnel-syndrome or whatever they call it.

I think I´ll be leaving Colombia earlier than anticipated. Unfortunately, everyone´s going to think it´s due to Near-Fatal-Gun-Incident, but it isn´t. I´ve been going stir crazy at my friend´s house and there´s been some craziness that took me completely by surprise, so best leave, or maybe I´ll go on elsewhere in Colombia for a week or so, although I´ll be more nervous than before about travelling alone.

Have been thinking a bit about my reaction to the robbery. Strangely, I hold no anger towards the robbers, only the taxi driver. In case it didn´t come through in the previous post, the taxi driver was complicit in the whole thing. He drove me to a district where he knew his crew would be, then somehow signalled to them to come get me.

The fact that he betrayed my trust gets me a lot angrier than what the robbers did. As I see it the robbers were opportunistic, but professional, they just wanted their cash and buggered off. In my own weird way of looking at things though, what the taxi driver did was much worse, which was pretend to be someone trustworthy and then break that trust.

To take this a bit further. I´ve been drawing a (admittedly tenuous) line between what the robbers did and what I do for a living. Part of my job (let´s pretend I have a job for a minute) is to negotiate commercial terms with business partners. Now, I´d say 90% of the time there´s a range somewhere in the middle that would be, by objective standards, a fair settlement. However, both parties in the negotiation aren´t interested in being fair or objective, they´re interested in getting the best deal for themselves, even if it´s a million miles away from being a reasonable deal. One time in particular, I negotiated a deal which was obscenely lopsided in my favour. The partner should never have agreed to those terms and if he had pressed harded I would have relented and agreed to something more in his favour. Howver, even though I knew what I was signing wasn´t a ´fair´ deal, and that I was taken advantage of the situation (ie being opportunistic), I still signed it. I don´t think what I did then and what the robbers did are that far apart fundamentally. Sure, the weapons are different, negotiation skills as opposed to a pistol, but fundamentally I´d argue it´s the same thing.

Thanks to Rich for helping me out in the cash department. Rich, I don´t care what everyone says about you, I think you´re ok.

God, aren´t Liverpool looking good these days.