Montenegro - redux

Just spent another five days in Montenegro - the surreal, three-year-old micro state between Croatia and Albania - running civil society development events, and it's been an interesting few days.

I flew out on my birthday, along with three senior colleagues. I managed to shake them off in order to chat with a beautiful Aussie woman on our flight. Turned out she works on private yachts as a chef, cooking for the super-rich and their guests on luxury boats. She'd just finished five months cruising the Bahamas and was about to spend another five among the Greek islands. 'Sounds incredible' I said. 'It is', she replied. 'Must pay badly', I said. 'Actually it pays really well, plus there's no tax and no living costs', she replied... I considered changing career.

The hotel were we stayed, and the events were held, is an enormous Spanish-run all-inclusive resort, of the kind one would expect to find (but probably hope to avoid) in somewhere like Torremolinos. It's got an incredible location, in the corner of a stunning bay, ringed by high mountains and right on the beach. But the place had a prison-ish vibe: it has three buildings referred to blocks A, B and C; we were shackled in irremovable plastic bracelets as we checked in to prove our mighty full-package status and claim our free drinks (in plastic cups); and we had to eat when and what we were told. The food was atrocious re-heated buffet style. The chips tasked like cold cardboard and the stews were clearly drawn from the back of the fridge with a mop before being microwaved.

The music was also torturous. They'd clearly got the DJ from Guantanamo Bay. There were just four CDs to choose from in the main pool/bar area that formed the resorts centrepiece the least bad was a Michael Jackson compilation. But not the good stuff. Tunes like 'Earthsong', which I must have heard four or five times during my first afternoon. When I asked the bartender what he was playing at, he replied that he too would not choose such bile, but it was hotel policy to give the elderly and tone-deaf customers what they wanted: nice, pleasant, inoffensive love songs.

The most amusing thing about the place was the sorry looking staff's uniforms: bright yellow waistcoats with blue and white shirts, and a blue bow tie with the company's horrible yellow star logo on each drooping side. I could see the staff cringe as they wore this cross between Butlins and smurfland outfit, and I cringed with them. And sniggered a bit.

Of course I wasn't there to moan about the food or laugh at the uniforms, but to develop civil society in order to hasten the country's accession to the EU. Easy. Well although that's the sort of grandiose claims we were forced to make when writing the project application, in reality we had much more modest ambitions: to train 20 or so NGO leaders in how to make their organisations more sustainable, and then to hold a conference gathering people from NGOs, government, and the European Commission.

It all went surprisingly well. And although we had to work in a windowless conference suite while the sun shone over an area of stunning natural beauty outside, it was made much more pleasant by the fact that Montenegrins are famously relaxed (i.e. lazy) and refuse to work after 3pm, giving us all the best part of the afternoon to enjoy the sun and the cocktails we could order by waving our stupid bracelets at the friendly but absurdly dressed waiters.

After the second day I went to speak to a group of participants who were well into their third cocktails of the afternoon, and one of them tipsily asked me my age. '26' I replied. 'Oh, I thought you were 18 [giggles all round]'. (I heard from our local partner later on that a few participants thought I was too young to be running the event, tempting me into a complex). I smiled serenely (and soberly), and walked away. But later in the day I got my revenge as the teaser - who turned out to be just 20 - asked her friend to tell me to take her for a moonlit walk. I politely declined, using the speech I had to give the next day as an excuse.

The speech started with me explaining what my organisation does, but before doing so I clarified to the audience that although I may not look it, I was old enough to drink alcohol, so if they saw me doing so after the conference they needn't worry. After all it is a young country - what were they complaining about?

On work (while I should have been there)

I skived off work today to hear Alain de Botton, the pop philosopher and writer, speak about his new book: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.

It was pretty interesting. He started with a brief history of the topic. Apparently the notion that work could be anything more than slavery, and could even be fulfilling, only arrived in Enlightenment of the 18th century. (At the same time the thought that one might marry for love, rather than merely practicality, or prestige, became popular.) Since then employers have striven to help us find meaning in what we do for them, lest we become bored, de-motived, and under-productive.

In researching his book, de Botton spent time with people in a range of obscure professions - including biscuit makers and rocket scientists - as well as some fairly mundane ones, and found the most motivated employees in a multinational accountancy firm. I think accountancy must be one of the dullest professions going, but apparently the big firms are so aware of the risk of being boring that they spend huge sums on state-of-the-art HR departments that have endless ways of making staff feel stimulated, appreciated and fulfillled. Scary thought.

He also explained that the recession is making people happier about their work. The new catchphrase is 'at least I have a job'. This agrees with Rousseau, who defined happiness as the relationship between ones expectations and ones situation, and so to make people happier one either improves their situation or reduces their expectations. However as a friend pointed out, many people who hate their jobs now feel stuck there as it's so hard to get another position - hardly a recipe for increased happiness.

De Botton has been called a simplifier extraordinaire, and while he is a great speaker, some of his arguments were a little facile. For example he suggested that the working class take on employment was 'pre-Enlightenment', i.e. 'work-to-live', while the middle class view on work is more about meaning, i.e. 'live-to-work'. He admitted that this was a gross generalisation, but this caveat was not enough to spare him a particularly awkward question from a self-labelled working class Irish woman who pointed out his famously priveliged background, before asking hiw views on the notion that dull jobs for the masses was part of a conspiracy to keep the proles in their place. Both de Botton and the event's egotistical Chair huffed the question away with discomfort.

Another rash claim was to suggest that while most people work to pay the bills, many also work to 'make people happy', whether that's fixing a squeeky door or feeding a starving orphan. Feeling uneasy at the incomplete picture this painted, I took my chance the ask a question - what about the darker sides of motivation: greed, competition, megalomania? His response was that while they existed, they didn't matter as only the outcomes of their toil counted, because as Adam Smith argued, the 'invisible hand' of capitalism means that the market will always find equilibrium. Well yes, but hasn't he read the news lately?

And so, feeling proud to have delivered my question fluff-free to a packed and highbrow audience (my achievement of the day), I trudged out into the rain and considered going for a coffee to think through the various ideas I'd just heard. But then I realised that I should really get back to work.

Eager beavers in Newcastle

I used to spend weekends lying in, relaxing and recharging my batteries. Yet I've just spent my weekend, like many before and many to come, crossing the country to work two full days, for free. Sometimes I think I'm mad.

I was in Newcastle, one of 20 facilitators running a training weekend for 40 young people that we'll be sending to Africa for volunteering projects this summer, with an organisation called Tenteleni.

Every time I do it, such weekends confusingly leave me both exhausted and totally invigorated. The 'vols' are always good fun: their energy and creativity, born of youthful vigour and employed like its going out of fashion, make me feel increasingly, hopelessly ancient. Rather than mourning my loss of joyous naivety, I rejoice in theirs. They may be wet behind the ears, but they are a bright, sparky bunch, and they will go down well with our African partners.