After three weeks of guest-free strike-induced time-off I'm starting to feel a little disoriented. It feels a lot like someone just pulled the floor out from underneath us! And there was me feeling comfortable, or maybe even a tad smug, the business was ticking over nicely, and I was thinking we could finally feel confident that we had guests enough to see us into the high season, I guess that showed me! We might be our own bosses, something that I've always adored, but it's abundantly clear now that we are also 100% at AirTahiti's mercy for our business. The strike is now officially in its third week here, and the situation seemed to be getting more not less difficult, over the weekend the syndicates and directors spent their time insulting each other and apportioning blame, rather than seeking a solution. So we were just watching impassively as our livelihood goes down the drain! It is an odd experience, but I'm not panicking yet, as I guess I still hope they will find a solution, and SOON! Yesterday the ex-President Gaston Flosse, and incidentally the father-in-law of the current President Edward Fritch (which sums up nicely the 'keep it in the family' spirit here, even if they're less than friendly), sent a letter accusing the President of non-intervention, in a situation which is clearly getting to be unacceptable. Edward Fritch openly defended his position, but it may just have worked, because yesterday negotiations started again, and more positively, so there might just be some space to be quietly optimistic.
I also have a lot of other things to be grateful for, not least my three fab kids. Sunday was French mothers' day - yeah don't ask me why it's not the same as the UK or US, it just ain't. Anyway they're the perfect age right now, so I had a huge array of different handmade art projects as gifts, I am truly lucky! I've also just started doing some translating work, so while we aren't making money at the guesthouse, I'm actually making up a little bit of the shortfall that way, keeping busy, re-discovering my love of the English language, improving my French and also brushing up on my grammar and vocab, beats the pants off doing the online Guardian crossword, which is what I had been doing previously to avoid brain rot.
After three weeks of guest-free strike-induced time-off I'm starting to feel a little disoriented. It feels a lot like someone just pulled the floor out from underneath us! And there was me feeling comfortable, or maybe even a tad smug, the business was ticking over nicely, and I was thinking we could finally feel confident that we had guests enough to see us into the high season, I guess that showed me! We might be our own bosses, something that I've always adored, but it's abundantly clear now that we are also 100% at AirTahiti's mercy for our business. The strike is now officially in its third week here, and the situation seemed to be getting more not less difficult, over the weekend the syndicates and directors spent their time insulting each other and apportioning blame, rather than seeking a solution. So we were just watching impassively as our livelihood goes down the drain! It is an odd experience, but I'm not panicking yet, as I guess I still hope they will find a solution, and SOON! Yesterday the ex-President Gaston Flosse, and incidentally the father-in-law of the current President Edward Fritch (which sums up nicely the 'keep it in the family' spirit here, even if they're less than friendly), sent a letter accusing the President of non-intervention, in a situation which is clearly getting to be unacceptable. Edward Fritch openly defended his position, but it may just have worked, because yesterday negotiations started again, and more positively, so there might just be some space to be quietly optimistic. 
No comments:
Post a Comment