Flashback

It seems that I have done the impossible and gone back in time:
I find myself once again surrounded by hundreds of Afrikaans people with bad manners, poor taste in fashion and a shocking lack of social skills. I am again wearing headphones and listening to meaningless presentations on “The Right Jockey in the Saddle will Make a Business Fly”, “Transformation in Agriculture: Mobilising and Inspiring People” and the much anticipated “Weather Outlook”.

But the sexy red netbook in front of me reminds me that I cannot have travelled back in time – so the only solution is that while I moved on, time in the agricultural sector stood still. And indeed, presentations on “Ten Lessons from the Future” and the odd Blackberry can not hide the fact that time has stood still in agriculture - not only for the past year, but probably for the past decade!

The same terrible organisation, the same ugly short-sleeved checked shirts, the same beer bellies (slightly smaller – signs of bad economic times), the same unstructured speeches and overly animated PowerPoint presentations and the same annoying switching between English and Afrikaans.

But fortunately l learnt my lesson at the last Agricultural Outlook Conference and now have a much better chance of surviving this one by following some simple rules: Bring a computer to get through boring presentations (like the current one on “Nasty People” – wtf?); don’t bother picking up any of the publications – they are all in Afrikaans; stay away from cupcakes - they only look nice, but taste awful; and avoid sitting next to people who look like their mother still chooses their clothes.

Tonight there will again be a Gala dinner, which is likely to be dominated by more speeches in Afrikaans, bad food and terrible music. There are only two ways to survive this – get drunk (unfortunately not an option, I am driving) or use it as an opportunity to catch up with a friend, get a free meal and enjoy the entertainment - provided on stage by Afrikaans singers with little talent and off stage by other dinner guests…


PS: I just want to give some credit to the only speaker who actually gave an interesting presentation – even if totally unrelated to agriculture. When he spoke about the challenges the world faces from an ageing population, he identified an often overlooked, but highly important problem “Would you like to live until you’re 150? Think of marriage...”