Thursday, July 18, 2002



From my inbox, where humor has apparently gone on holiday:

I was reading the article that CNN wrote about your new book and I was interested in finding out if Amazon could sell me the book. At least until I got to the paragraph that stated Spain, home of the laziest people on Earth. I am very sorry to hear this statement because it is a bold lie. I am Belgian but living and working already two years in Madrid [Capital of Spain]. Since I am an international consultant that has worked in 6 European [Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Portugal and Spain] countries, visited about 30 countries and worked with about 30 nationalities, I think I can fairly state that my opinion has some value. My experience of working in Spain is that in general I am working more hours [all productive] then in the five other European countries were I was working before. Furthermore in recent statistics Spain is just behind Brasil and the United States in the list of countries where pleople work the most. Surely you have gone to the Spanish coast and found Spanish people that were on holiday or that had to work with 40 degrees celcius [extremely hot in farenheit], but this does not give you the right to generalize your findings to the whole of Spain. So I would like to know on what you base your opinion on calling Spain home of the laziest people on Earth. Lastly I ask you to remove this statement from your book and not express it any longer in public.