Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Continuing the saga

Yep... my conscience tells me to cut out the juicier parts. Not officially separated yet and I have a daughter, which the most valued asset I posses and that I will ever have.

The focus of this blog are the "plagues" together with the diary of my life improvement that I hope will come after them.

As they say in Brazil everything ends well, if things haven't improved it is because you are still in trouble...

This is the feeling I had after coming back from Brazil, the Misses living life as if nothing serious was happening, both of us jobless. To my surprise the work that I had been doing before I left suddenly took off violently (despite the agreed finishing date had already passed two weeks before).

It was the normal thing, everyone stressed out, a pissed off, a merciless client, last minute cock ups. After receiving a ridiculous deadline I managed to deliver everything on time, to my total disbelief. Despite this it was now that the nightmare began (or continued); there was a misunderstanding and I was only going to be paid in a month's time.

I had counted on this money while I was in Rio, and even when I bought the ticket, so my finances became stretched to the limit.

One good thing that happened during my absence was that an application for me to do a photo exhibition at a hotel here in Glasgow was accepted. That kept me going. I spent o lot of time in the preparation of the event, the pictures looked pretty good considering it was my first exhibition. The outcome was a success in terms of people showing up and saying the pictures looked great but the sales were nonexistent.

Meanwhile the guy who was posing as my literary agent gave me a deadline to finish, and shorten my book. It was, and is, looking good but as I am not a writer it needed(s) some grammatical polishing. This is what he told me at least, and proceeded to ask for a fee to make it presentable to editors. I don't blame him for that, after all he must have been the only person to have the courage to read it (for free) and no one works for free, including myself. Still the fact is that this project also had to be stalled.

Anyway, when the time came for me to finally receive my money after receiving several overdraft fines from my bank, I phoned the guys up to confirm the date etc... To my utter disbelief, the financial guy proceeded to give me abuse and told me to phone a week later. I waited for a tight week and phone the guy up again only to receive more abuse.

This was a client I wanted to keep since, as I said, he was/is part of a plan to eventually open my own CG company. With the best of my diplomatic skills I contacted my friend who took me to the company in the first place and explained the situation. After a few days of silence it finally came out that the company was waiting for their client to pay, and only then would they pay me. At that point, with all the bickering going on at home, my worries with my mum's health and her finances, I took this as just another heavy brick on the wall. I ended getting paid but a lot of financial damage had been made.

Time to call the taxman. As I said in the previous post, I had this gigantic tax bill to pay. My accountant had negotiated a payment by installments with the authorities, but because I had had to travel to Brazil, the late payment, my mum's health plan etc... etc... etc... I failed to pay one of the parts of the agreement.

I called them up to try to explain my situation. Big mistake... I was treated as a bloody criminal. They have a naughty technique; at first they are really friendly and let you talk, once they suss you out they become like mafia extortioners. They gave me a real rough time, and said that I had basically two options pay the whole debt in a down payment or go to court. No mercy whatsoever.

It makes me wonder if they talked the same way with the bankers who lost all those billions.

Anyway that was the end of the introductory saga. No money, a dead quiet job market, no pictures sold, the book project on hold, marriage in the brink, my religiosity balancing on the scales and the big question, why and how did this all happen?

Now the blog will actually begin, this will be the saga of recovery against all odds from the bottom of the hole. A saga inspired by Lula and Barack Obama, similar to the one where Moses led the Jewish out of the land of impurity where people thought they were gods, Egypt, or in Hebrew: Mitzraim to the promised land.

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