A very short snippet from April #8

Raw and unedited as always – I’m not spoiling major scenes…

“You have to buy it right now if you want it,” Myat told Huian

“Myat, you have dealt with all sorts of people. Not just your clients, but I assume all sorts of business people. Do you go to market or do your servants all take care of that?” Huian asked.

“No, no, I can remember when I was little going with my mother and a servant to the market. She had a servant to carry the things to the car, but she dealt with the merchants herself. Not out in the zei picking things off of ground cloths like a peasant. The sort of custom she supported received her in a cool private room and the senior merchant offered refreshment and would have his man fetch little samples of what she wanted. Especially spices. She might ask a hundred kilo bag of rice and expect the quality to remain the same as previous purchases, but spices she wanted to see a sample from the lot she was buying. She always dressed to the hilt. One of her best outfits and enough gold to stagger a horse. When she finally took me along, after much begging, she insisted I dress well and borrowed jewelry for me, even if I was only nine years old. She said the merchants treated you better the more money you appeared to have. It’s one of my earliest memories of her trying to teach me something important. I…I’m babbling. What is the point of this?” Myat asked. 

“You know how to shop and how to bargain. What do you think when somebody says you have to buy it right now, and puts the hurry-up on you?” Huian asked.

Myat laughed. “My mother would say run! Hold your purse tight and run for your life!”

“Indeed. I’ll forward this information to Jeffry Singh. I’m sure he will present it to the group he’s organized to buy a ship. But the man is young, not stupid. And most of his partners are older and even more conservative. I can already hear what he’ll say: ‘If the market has crashed so bad they have a three year old vessel for sale at near scrap prices, maybe next month they’ll have one newer on the block.’ And that might be right,” Huian decided.

“I can see why the urgency is alarming. But my broker friend usually deals in vessels that need to be scrapped as older and obsolete. There may be some other modern vessels like this come on the market if shipping doesn’t recover soon. Just not necessarily through him. This ship is decent enough that someone may buy it to reflag and put into service, instead of cut it up for scrap. As always, the official predictions say this is a seasonal lull and the economy is sound. There are always a few who are easy to convince because they believe what they want to happen. Some optimist may grab it. You can commit as much of the funds I’ve sent you as is needful, if there’s a shortfall,” Myat offered.

“You’ve mostly convinced me,” Huian said. “I will present this neutrally. I’m a bit afraid of my own enthusiasm. We’ll see what the others without emotional attachments say.”

“That’s fair,” Myat decided. “I’m attaching a file with all the ship specs and photos and a history of it’s very short life. Let me know what sort of feedback you get. “Of course,” Huian agreed. “I have it. Two Terabyte and a little. Good Bye dear.”