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OF GUNS WITHOUT BULLETS

T e Minister’s Special Of cer did his best to comfort me but to no avail
as I was too ‘traumatised’ by the experience. Anyway, I did have the black
pepper steak that evening but obviously it did not taste that good. In fact it
was tasteless! I was not able to get any sleep that night either! T e next day at
work, some people were making jokes about what had happened, but others
were very understanding and tried to console me.

Suf ce to say, it was the most harrowing experience for me at that time in
my young career, and I told myself that I would never want to go through
that again. Yes, everybody would agree that it takes time for young of cers
to gain experience and knowledge, in order to sharpen their skills/tradecraft,
and acquire the conf dence to carry out their responsibilities well. However,
being new and green at my job was not an excuse, and I had made too many
assumptions that things would go according to plan.

What I did not know then was that the protocol order of precedence was
just a guide and not rigid. For example, f exibility is allowed in not placing a
female guest at the end of the table even though her position is lower in the
order of precedence than male guests. Well, that was the protocol practice
at that time as it was regarded ungentlemanly to place a lady at the end of
the table.

While I was upset with myself mostly, and embarrassed by the experience, I
had learned a valuable lesson. I told myself that I would never again go into
‘battles’ without fully preparing myself. As duty of cer at the dinner that
evening, it was akin to me entering the battlef eld carrying a gun without
any bullets!

From this experience, I learned very early in my diplomatic career not to
make any assumptions, and to ensure that I make adequate preparations
for any task and to acquire the skills needed – even on matters as simple as
setting up a dinner table or writing a diplomatic note. I needed to know my
stuf , learn and do more, sharpen my skills, read more, ask questions, take
the initiative and anticipate problems in order for me to be a better of cer.

In our line of work, mistakes have consequences, and are basically a result
of not being fully prepared, and by making too many assumptions. I had to

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