Night of 7th May 2010 - Partial...

... and the three of us get in the elevator. It's an open topped square car, the sides made of wood - like garden fencing/paneling - and we sit slumped on cushioned benches. The elevator does not travel directly up, it travels around the outsides of the square skyscraper; bumping vigorously as it rounds each corner speedily. We must hang on tight.
I seem to have done this before and appear to be the guide. The others have tagged along on this overseas trip and I'm at pains to explain each step of the journey—I try to appear calm on the elevator ride, as though I did this last time, but I have no experience of this particular elevator and hotel.
We get to the penthouse and enter our room. Once here it's time to huddle and brief for the trip. It's a business trip that I would have made alone, but as mentioned, the others have tagged along. The Boss has come too: a petite asian lady. She looks 40 in the body of a 14 year-old; however not nubile, there is something aged about her childlike frame. Her face is not overtly asian, just nuanced enough though to say she was asian. She wants to know who we're seeing; what business is to be done.
I have no plan. I'd intended to just wing it.
The Boss is incensed by this: we came all this way, payed to come all this way, took a room in an expensive hotel, and I had no formal business meetings lined up or on the cards. I feel ashamed and angry. They knew my trips were speculative, intended to build contacts in the first place; and they weren't supposed to come anyway—it annoys me that I have to chaperone them. But I am embarrassed by my total lack of fore-planning, and how having no contacts (I've been before) makes me look.
My Boss begins to chastise me about the cost of the trip and begins to condescend about how a business trip works. I interject that we have one person who will meet—at a cost of 10s of thousands of dollars. My Boss is even more angered. As I've said the words and received her anger, I feel how stupid an idea the meet was too. I wake.