24-hour ordeal: no mobile, no internet (page 1 of 4)

Here is Martin's diary of what happened during the longest day of his life:

23:15 (the day before)
Just setup my Microsoft Outlook "out of office reply" making sure people will know that I will be offline the next day. Also printed off my calendar and relevant telephone numbers off the extranet, will be lost otherwise during the day. Emailed 8 clients asking them to call me on land line in order to discuss retainer contracts for 2006 - I know I will have lots of time for that.

00:15
Very tempted to check my emails before going to bed. Remember not to cheat in the first hour of my longest day in life, and start watching television. They show pampers advertising that does not interest me and I keep on switching channels. Realize that my television comes as TV signal over IP via the internet, and switch off, and go to bed.

08:15
Overslept, and woken up by my house mate. Realize that I don't even own an alarm clock; my cell phone usually does the job. Far too late in order to be on time for my first meeting at 9am, considering the traffic jam around 5th inter change.

08:34
Calling the office on land line, as I don't remember a single mobile number, leaving a message that I will be late. Voicemail, wonder if anyone picks up my message. Big doubts.

08:50
Traffic jammed up until second round about into the Meadows. During normal days, I would get out my laptop, plug-in the 3G high-speed internet access card and start working on my emails, syncing my calendar with my mobile phone and getting things out of the way before my first meeting. Today, I won't - instead I read the papers. Wonder why people pay for Emirates Today, where news.google.com is free, and decide to check 7DAYS (offline version).


08:55
My car has built in SMS, fax and phone. Lisa, my camera-girl for the day, takes a picture of me looking sad as she takes out the chip that keeps that feature running. Poor me.

09:10
Late in office for first meeting, and people wonder if I had an accident as my cell phone was off. Client meeting goes well, except that I can not show them examples of previous work online, as the Internet is off today.

09:55
Client leaves, and I head over to my office wondering how many emails I might have missed already. My secretary has in fact cheated and printed one important email for me that I respond in handwriting and fax back to the client. Feel really stupid. Have a new colleague that started yesterday and she looks at me not knowing if she started her career at one of the leading internet agencies or a circus directed by an old-fashion CEO. That would be me.

10:15
First phone call from James canceling the 11am meeting. Alright, why didn't you cancel it automatically in my online calendar and Maria (my secretary who has also access to my schedule) could have moved things around. Also just realized that I cheated again - I am using my land line which in fact is a Cisco IP telephone - all calls are being done via the Internet which reduces the costs enormously for Dubai Media City, we pay full price.

10:38
Sending a fax to Dimitri, asking him how he is doing. Telling him that I am bored as hell and tell him to look up 7DAYS newspaper on page 7 there is an Emirates Airline ad with the same promotion that his agency is handling online, the only difference is that you can not click on the ad, although it promotes ONLINE fares.