She came and sat down in the sofa and told me that my apartment was very nice. I subtly reminded her that these were some of the perks of working for a world-class strategic management consulting firm like Dufresne. No expense, I told her, is spared to keep the best talent happy and satisfied.

She said that Lederman was putting up all the interns at the five-star St Edmunds Hotel just behind the office.

Now I didn’t want to make it a competition, but I asked her if she had access to a pool and a sauna like I did.

She said that St Edmunds had a full fledged health club and gym facilities including massage that all the interns had full access to.

Then I counter-attacked by saying that I will definitely highlight ‘Intern expenses’ when I meet Tom and the rest of the Lederman board for our next project coordination meeting. She giggled as if I was joking.

Diary it might look like she laughs at me always, but her giggle reminds me of that beautiful Silver Cascade waterfall that you drive past on the way to Kodaikanal from Coimbatore. (This is where Mercy aunty slipped and dislocated her hip in 1993, but we still took her with us to Kodaikanal because our hotel room was nonrefundable.)

At 7.40 p.m. Alex called me up on my phone. I picked up and told him that the ‘meeting was going ahead as planned previously and that I was in the middle of it now and didn’t have time to talk’. And then I cut the phone.

Five minutes later I told Jenny to start as there was no point in waiting for Alex and wasting time.

Jenny is an expert at event management. Within thirty minutes she gave me a comprehensive idea of what are all the costs involved in doing a stand-up comedy type of show, how much we could hope to recoup from tickets and how costs escalated in proportion to size of venue and cost of artistes. I was very very impressed.

Diary, this Jenny Huang might look like a pretty, fragile, vulnerable angel of a woman who needs a strong, caring, well-educated man with a sense of humour to take care of her. But in reality she seems extremely capable. Superb.

Then for another 5 minutes I told her that my role in the group is to estimate costs, obtain funding from Lederman, and then oversee spending. Once I am convinced that the respective leads know what they are talking about then I am not going to interfere in what they do with the money. She said that she really appreciated that I was going to be a hands-off kind of guy who let her take care of her business.

I told her, in my trademark smooth voice, that I maybe hands-off at work, but I am quite hands-on at home.

Silver Cascade again.