Photo: Peter ‘Joli’ Wilson

A short story

 

This wasn’t planned as a story, just a quick Sunday night LinkedIn post from a Brisbane hotel room. But it got the biggest readership of anything I’ve ever posted there so I figure it’s worth sharing here.

On the Brisbane flight, the sight-impaired guy across the aisle asked if I was going to luggage collection and if so could I give him a hand. If you fly Virgin, Row 3 is the nicest place in economy. So it contains a whole secret society of chronic flyers, and we help each other out.

Matt introduced himself as an Optus exec, but he also surfs. At Nazaré, one of the most nightmarish big waves in the world. With 3% vision. With his guide on a jet ski (Lucas Chumbo if you’re into surfing) blowing a whistle to tell him when to take off, and when to do a bottom turn. His movie The Blind Sea is on Netflix https://lnkd.in/g63a8En4.

That’s a shot of Matt at Nazaré above, running at about twenty feet. Wave heights are measured by the back of the wave, so you can double that for wave face height. For reference, anything over about five feet and I’m paddling my cowardly sighted ass to shore.

Matt’s getting into free diving now, stay tuned for another film.

After we got his luggage he asked if I could navigate him to the airport cab rank. Turns out we were in nearby hotels so shared a ride into the city. We had much to talk about.

The whole conversation was a massive and unexpected win for a Sunday evening. It made me feel good all week.

And it reminded me of the worst-ever review my book got on Amazon from Madeleine, who awarded one star under the title “Outdated and Impractical Advice”:

“… I was disappointed to realise it was a recount of how to revert back to pre-covid business practices such as avoiding online meetings and to travel across state borders for face to face meetings … As a millennial working in finance, this book wasn’t for me. The author comes off as arrogant, old-school and a marketing major rather than an a practical, experienced business executive.”

Each to their own. I cannot deny the marketing bit, but I’m saddened that Madeleine will never know the random joys the universe serves up when you travel … across state borders. Even internationally if you really want to roll the dice. Or, you know, when you just talk to strangers in public.

Anyway, lovely to chat to Matt. People are great.

 

 

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If you haven’t read the book, why not buy it? Click through on the one-star review below.