Adventures of Mr.Behi

The Masculine Engagment

I have learned so far that I shall not make my hopes high (or even a little bit shorter than high) to get invited to a wedding in Libya as a couple with Mrs.Behi. Apparently separation in weddings is so widely practiced. But as a person, I have already received a couple of invitations to weddings and engagement receptions. This has been a busy summer for people in my department, at least four of them got married and this one was the latest to which I got invited a while ago.

The place was near, address was clear and it was not weekend so I decided to go and did so together with some other colleagues. After shaking hands with the groom and his father, I was guided to a big conference hall with rows of chairs set for people. In the front facing the audience, there were four senior guys dressed in traditional Libyan robes. I heard that one of them was supposed to be the father of the bride and the one in the center, the clergy to announce the marriage. The others were the witnesses and they soon were joined by the father of the groom who was wearing a suite.

Waiters of the hall started to bring glasses of a milky drink for the seated people. It was a mixture of sweetened milk with flavor of almond with which we also had a traditional sweet like a coconut cookie. The hall was almost full when the ceremony started and I could see that the men in front were saying things. Unfortunately, I could not hear a thing because people in the hall were all talking to each other as if nothing formal was going on in front of them. My friend beside me told me that this was the moment when the father of the bride accepts and declares that his daughter would be the wife of the groom who was represented by his father. The groom was by the main door waiting for people to come out and I heard that the bride is normally in another room with close ladies of both families.

In one moment, we realized that the ceremony was finished as all the men in the hall rushed to the exit doors and made a long queue in front of the main exit where the groom was standing to thank them for coming. Some who were not that close went without shaking hand and I waited with friends for the line to get less busy. Almost at the same time, two traditional musicians started to play. One with a drum and the other with a pipe. This did not last very long and they stopped playing right outside the main door.

It was now my turn in the line for shaking hands and congratulating my groom friend.It was a big basket besides him with small silverly diagonal boxes and we each received one. There was a traditional sweet in each box.

Link: A good link about Libyan customs

My interesting clients

Oil business is booming in Libya and you see oil companies pouring in from all corners of the world for acquiring exploration licenses in Libya. Almost all of these companies are considered potential or current customers for the services that my employer offers. My job is show certain innovative technologies to these companies through demonstrations, pilot projects, technical workshops, presentations etc.

The fabulous things about what I do is that I have the chance to see how different people/companies express their needs/concerns and it is more interesting to see how difference in cultural background influences the way they perceive you and your offer. I do not want to judge people here, not at all. Nor I am trying to see which approach is better or worse.

The other day, I had a meeting with a Norwegian manager. He asked us to go to his office, 10:00 a.m sharp to discuss a technical training we offered for his organization. Normally we would start explaining our offer in details to encourage the purchase. This guy know exactly what he wanted, what he did not want, what was enough and what was extra. He was very content about the timing for the delivery of the service, people who need to attend in training and what he wanted from us. It was the most precise and up to the point meeting in many months.

I recently had a very successful pilot project with a group  of Italian experts that resulted in a new sales after a week. I found them very emotional and at the same time very friendly. I walked into their office one day and soon enough, the talks diverted to cool things about the city, where to go and see while in Italy etc. Rather than telling me what they needed, they waited to see what I had to offer and were intrigued by any new thing they were seeing. The cool part was joining them around their coffee machine.  One of them told me that in his home city alone, there are 6 different version of coffee specific to the district and he explained how Italians are in favor of experimenting new things and how much they dislike branding and standardization for their food items. Once after lunch when I was with them in the elevator, listening to them talking in Italian, one of them turned to me and said: "Don't worry we are not fighting" :)

World citizenship

I am back from a fantastic human resource training where I was joined by fellow colleagues from across middle-east. I found tones of things about different business cultures and also we had many role plays for good ways of managing people, motivating and appraising them. The trainer himself was a big thing to explore, with a Ph.D in Psychology and a MBA from Harvard, he was a real professional in human resource training! He is married to a lady who knows 12 languages and is certified by the UN as official interpreter of 5 of them. They have 8 children, 6 of them adopted basically from places they visit (two of those are HIV+ from Thailand).
From the course itself, I particularly like the MBTI test and his lectures about business cultures around the world. Great stuff to learn! Being a world citizen...I should change the definition of this blog, This is not a blog of an Iranian for himself and others, it is better be "memoirs of a world citizen"...