ACCOUNTANTS IN SPACE!

Today’s new’s that UBS Warburg has cancelled ex President Clinton’s forthcoming speech to their company, (Title; ‘How to Pardon the Rich, Furnish Your Home with Millions of Dollars of Taxpayers Gifted Furniture for Nothing! and get $150,000 for this speech !’)… couldn’t have come at a better time for the launch of my own new career as an International Public Speaker.( If you are looking for a speaker to put that extra oomph! into your company’s sales? Don’t call Clinton! call me !. .I’m Scandal Free!)

As all regular readers will know, for the last year my website www.rosengard.com has featured a huge button on the Home page, headlined.. with all the humility you have come to regard this column as embodying week after week, ‘INTERNATIONAL MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER’..which when clicked on, however, has been completely empty, apart from the enigmatic and frankly not very motivational announcement ‘Site under Construction.’

Come on! You all know how difficult it is to find really reliable builders who get the job done when they say they will and who don’t walk off the job for no reason at all after you have left them to get on with it while you went off on a well deserved holiday for a week leaving them with the keys to your FOUR bedroom house only to come back to find out you are now the proud owner of a stunning ONE bedroom house.. Don’t you!?

BUILDER: “But just think of the space you have now got for holding big mega rave parties..”

YOU: “Yes OK. OK.I can see that,.. but you do know.. we do have three young children don’t you..”

Anyway, I have now had three lots of builders working on my site since we completed over a year ago.. One lot of very cool young cyber dudes promised me the funkiest site in cyberspace but apparently I changed my mind about my ideas for the site’s interior design so often I drove them crazy and into the website designers rehab centre ( ‘Surely not you Peter?’ I hear you cry. Naturally all the time this has been going on, my career as an International Motivational Speaker has been on hold. For, in the crowded world of the International Motivational Speaker … a world where there is even an annual International Speakers Convention in America, where thousands of the world’s top public speakers go to listen to the Superstar SuperSpeakers; (a world where one Jeff Slutsky is the Speakers God!) ….who is going to book a man whose last recorded speech was at The Shepherds Bush Tennis and Cricket Club Annual dinner and dance in 1979?. (OK with hindsight, perhaps not the right place and time to discover whether LSD did in fact lead to a voyage of inner self discovery, and a new cosmic consciousness embracing a total love for all mankind. But I didn’t know that then did I? (Actually I should like to take this opportunity to apologise to anyone who was present, for my behaviour that night; and I’d like to claim once again that my attempt to crawl inside the Suckling Pig on table No1, was entirely due to a sudden panic attack, brought on by a fear of public speaking.)

However, when last Tuesday, I received an e-mail from Karine Kam, announcing himself/herself? as the Director of SCI 2001 in Sun Tech City, Singapore and inviting me to address their forthcoming SCI convention, in August, I wasn’t entirely surprised.

Excited, yes. Surprised, no. After all, having seen Close Encounters. And ET .. twice on video; I was clearly the man the Singapore Sci Fi community needed to hear from.

I had already started searching for my old copy of Isaac Asimov when my eye caught the paragraph of Karine Kam’s e mail, suggesting that my speech might enable the 1000 attending SCI Fi-nancial Planners to identify strategic areas in SCI Fi-nancial Planning practices that could assist SCI Fi -nancial Planners in formulating their clients financial plans.’ I replied immediately, accepting, and applauding them for breaking into the new and previously neglected area of Financial Planning in Space.

Perhaps ‘ Accountants in Space’ might be a follow up title for their 2002 conference I suggested. ( I made a mental note to call the Prudential before it was too late, suggesting an alternative scenario to this week’s shock announcement, which struck right at the heart of us all, the end of ‘THE MAN FROM THE PRU ‘. On Earth perhaps, but had they considered the opportunities that Space might hold for the 25 year with profits endowment salesman?)

I also mentioned to Karine Kim that I felt Price Waterhouse Coopers might well be interested in opening an office in Space specifically for the Coopers partners who had certified Robert Maxwells accounts.

I finally pointed out that they could rest assured that my unique analysis of the competitive challenges we all face in the new Global Economy in Space would all be encapsulated in my speech to their audience titled “GET OUTTA MY WAY.. YOU FINANCIAL PLANNING SPACE BASTARDS!” ( ‘Total assertiveness training in SCI FI-nancial planning for 2001 and beyond’.)

I went on to list my usual requirements; my standard $100,000 fee, two First class return air tickets, the Presidential suite at Raffles hotel for 5 nights accommodation… (I know the speech is only for thirty minutes but I get very bad jet lag,) Also a 1500 foot portable rope fire escape ladder, if my suite is located above the fiftieth floor, if there is one, and finally a copy of the new 2001 edition of ‘How to Prepare for an Earthquake.’ in paperback to be placed in every room.

This might seem overly cautious to you, but in 1962 my Great Aunty Annie Wynick got dragged into a cement mixer on Brighton Promenade, and is now propping up the West Pier. And she wasn’t expecting that to happen either; she had only popped out for five minutes for a breathe of sea air.

I know what you are thinking..but I am not kidding.

(On a Poetic note; readers might like to know that my late Aunty Annie was the sister of Isaac Rosenberg, the Great War Poet and was solely responsible for dragging him out from underneath Siegfried Sassoon, and putting him up alongside Brooke and Owen where he rightfully belonged.. Rosenberg also had a bit of bad luck himself, when he was blown up and died in the trenches just one day before the end of the War.)

Bernice, Karine’s assistant has just e mailed me back this reply:

‘Dear Peter, Unfortunately it looks as if we shall have to pass on your kind offer to participate in our SCI 2001conference.. as our budget does not allow us to’ ..etc.

I have just e mailed this reply;

‘Dear Bernice On reviewing my e mail to you, I see my finger appears to have stuck on the ‘0’ on my keyboard and typed $100000 for my fee, when it should of course have said only $10000!

Also please read one Business class ticket. not two First class ones..my keyboard again, ..it’s always trying for that upgrade for me; and if you can guarantee my room is no higher than the 10th floor just make the rope ladder 250 feet long.

P.S If you are really strapped for cash, forget about hiring a microphone..I can shout.

‘Singapore Financial Planners in Space… here I come!

I have just looked at Karine’s e mail again, and noticed that SCI apparently does not mean SCI as in FI, but stands for the Singapore College of Insurers. Now come on! Who would ever have thought of that?

COPYRIGHT. Peter Rosengard for Rosengardworld2001

ALL BACK COLUMNS ARE NOW ON THE SITE.