home / today's asian business strategy ezine / columns / blanchard index (asian business travel column) /

 

Blanchard's Oriental Travel Journal Acknowledgements and Disclaimers

Any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental although Blanchard insists that he really exists and quotes Descartes to prove this. Notwithstanding, the various people Blanchard meets are based on amalgams of real people he has met (though they insist that would never associate with such a person and their association with Blanchard is imaginary).

Blanchard owes his existance to a variety of people including Sam Orr, John Hepworth and Michael Leunig from the much missed Nation Review. Hortense is of course Sam Orr's ex-dinner companion who left Sam for Blanchard when she got bored with eating out at restaurants and Sam's superior attitude with waiters. Blanchard is a bit of Vasco Pajama (minus his direction finding duck), a bit of Larry Laffer of Lounge Lizard fame (the nice bits) and a bit of just about everyone you meet at airports and hotel lobby bars in Asia. Although his caricature bears some resemblance to a hotel doorman, Blanchard has never considered entering this noble profession. He prefers having doors opened for him.

Acknowlegements also to John Bunyan and the Pilgrim's Progress, Studs Terkel for his pioneering approach to "real people journalism" and also to the gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

Apologies to all those people who through overactive imaginations see a litle bit of themselves in Blanchard or his aquaintances.

The Blanchard pages and all other information on the Orient Pacific site is copyright. It may be redistributed on the Internet with appropriate acknowlegement to this site and inclusion of the URL. Permission must be obtained for republication in any other form.