Building Babylon

Building Babylon: Adventures of a British Builder in the Orient by Jon Prichard.

WHAT DID YOUR CAREER CHOICE OFFER?

At his private boarding school, the career’s master suggested: banking, insurance in the City or the Guards. They would have been fitting, healthy fee-earning choices, even the Guards would have meant fresh air with a chance to travel and possible legal right to shoot folk.

But oh no… this silver-spoon-in-the-mouth twit chose to enter the hard-nosed, street-wise, ultra-blue-collar world of Construction. Surprisingly Jon survived the initial rigours of fitting-in and found that creating tactile large edifices to be rewarding and his thing.

What he had not expected was: exploding site offices, incidental Mafia reprisal shootings, London Plague victims, summary Bangkok local justice executions, Vietnamese railway ruin, outlandishly unfair Chinese negotiations, seriously non-PC bosses and Canada geese wrecking his Grade 1 Listed glass vaulted roof!

These humorously tailored tales cover the emerging life on a construction site and a brief attempt to describe the changes in that industry over the past thirty years. As a contractor Jon lived under the spiteful, power crazed Architect as the development God… only to evolve, slightly embittered, as the new breed of Project Managers who would rule over all.

It’s a must read for all career types and especially if you are connected in any way to construction… road builders may struggle with the long words but keep trying.

I DARE YOU TO TELL ME YOUR CAREER CONTAINED MORE OUTRAGEOUS HAPPENINGS OR INTRIGUE!