My family is back from Thailand . . .

At 6:30 this morning, I’m awakened by the dog pawing on my bedroom door. I get up to see what’s going on and find my son — who is never up at 6:30 in the morning but is still operating on Thailand time — playing a video game in the family room.

“Rise and shine, parental!” he says. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for work?”

“I was up till 1 a.m. getting you home from the airport so I was planning to sleep until 7.”

Meanwhile, the dog is trying to get someone’s attention by jumping around next to his food bowl.

“Why is he jumping around like that?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” the boy says.

“Has he eaten?”

“No.”

“Mystery solved, Encyclopedia Brown. I’m going back to bed.”

A few minutes later, the boy inexplicably shows up in my room.

“Mom,” he says, “when the clothes are done in the washer, do you just put them in the dryer?”

“Did I mention I wanted to sleep till 7?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “Don’t set it on High though. Set it on Normal.”

A minute later, he’s back.

“There is no Normal,” he says.

“You’re telling me,” I say.

My father-in-law died today. Or, maybe, tomorrow; I can’t be sure because of the time difference.

He’d been sick . . . my wife was planning to visit him one last time this summer, but it was always one more week, too much work to finish, and finally he couldn’t wait any more.

I cried a little when she told me, even though he lived in a far-off country and I never met him, because all of a sudden she seemed like a lost little girl, and I wished I could do something for her and I couldn’t, and for all the other things I’ve wished I could do for her and I couldn’t . . .

My wife is talking about the possibility of a Christmastime family trip to Thailand. She’s from Thailand, lived there through college, and still has relatives there.

I’ve never been to Thailand — I hate to travel, for one thing — but our son has been over there with her on a few occasions.

Here’s his reaction, punctuated with frantic screaming:

“AHHHHH! It’s people who can’t speak English in 170-degree heat!”

I don’t think this boy has a future as a travel agent.

“They haven’t seen you in a long time,” my wife tells him.

“Can’t we do a video conference?”

Sweet Jesus, I followed a link to another Tom Peters e-paper this afternoon: The “PSF” is Everything (or: Making the Professional Service Firm a “Lovemark” in an Age of “Managed Asset Reflation”)

After reading the title alone, I’d already overdosed on the trademark Peters abbreviations, coinages, scare quotes and extraneous punctuation. BUT . . . I have to admit I was curious about Managed Asset Reflation. What is that?

Here’s how Peters introduces the term in his Tourette’s-inspired style:

Hence the story that I read on 4 March 2004: Thailand’s Prime Minister, a businessman, Thaksin Shinawatra, on the day before had just opened “Bangkok Fashion City.” It’s a monster facility that aims to help make Thailand “cool” … to create Thai … LEADERSHIP IN FASHION! (Fashion = Cool = Value Added.) Economists have a way of sterilizing everything. And they managed to sterilize this one, too. The PM’s new economic approach (dubbed
“Thaksinomics,” after “Reaganomics”) amounted to what the local economists dubbed … “MANAGED ASSET REFLATION.”

Peters’ take on managed asset reflation?

(SCS.) (Seriously Cool Shit.)

To give you an idea of how out of touch Peters is with his surroundings: Thaksin took political corruption to new levels even by Thai standards, and last week was ousted in a military coup, thus bringing to an end the Seriously Cool Shit of Thaksinomics.

What the paper is really about, though, is what all of Peters’ work is about: Tom Peters.

He uses the word “I” 386 times, “me” 93 times, “my” 120 times, the phrase “Tom Peters” 11 times, and the neologism “Tom-message” once.

The poster boy for self-aggrandizement.

From Reuters:

PHUKET, Thailand — William Robins vowed Monday to change his life forever after the professional golfer from California and his new bride, Amanda, narrowly escaped death in the grip of a tsunami.

The newlyweds were honeymooning on Phi Phi island — made famous by the film “The Beach” starring Leonardo DiCaprio — when a giant tsunami wave slammed into it Sunday.

Continue reading Tsunamis: Another Reason I Just Stay Home