AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 MISSIONS

Preface

by Jacques Tocatlian

What is the book about? It is about traveling, countries and people. It is about national characteristics and cultural differences and similarities. It is about funny situations and amusing anecdotes.

Jacques Dupont lives in Paris with his wife, Brigitte, and daughter Françoise. He works at Unesco - the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organisation - and undertakes missions to countries around the world, to attend meetings, raise funds for his projects, negotiate assistance programs and provide technical assistance.

By following Jacques Dupont around the world you will meet people, discover some of their idiosyncrasies and colorful manners and observe other cultures with curiosity and tender feelings. You will accompany him through various delicate situations and share with him his satisfactions and fears, his enthusiasm and procrastinations, his banquets and indigestions, his discoveries and fits of laughter. You will often smile and sometimes laugh.

With Jacques Dupont, and sometimes with Brigitte and Françoise, you will discover new horizons, visit Egypt, Russia, India, Kenya, Japan, Indonesia, Morocco, Finland, Mexico. You will bargain in the souks, taste exotic food, join a Safari, take a sauna, or worry about the KGB.

Our fictitious character, Jacques Dupont, joins Unesco in 1965, at the age of thirty and retires in 1995 when he reaches the age of sixty. No particular plot unfolds from the first to the last page. Each of the fourteen chapters of the book deals with a new country, a new mission and new adventures. 

Jacques Dupont helps us comprehend our differences in the way we behave, eat, work and live. The wounds caused by interethnic misunderstandings and cultural differences can often be prevented, or healed, by tolerance and better understanding of others. He helps us achieve this - with humor.

Copyright Notice

Copyright © 2000 by Jacques Tocatlian

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American copyright conventions.

No part of this book, text and drawings, may be reproduced or transmitted, in any forms or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Preface
    Chapter 1
    Chapter 2
    Chapter 3
    Chapter 4
    Chapter 5
    Chapter 6
    Chapter 7
    Chapter 8
    Chapter 9
    Chapter 10
    Chapter 11
    Chapter 12
    Chapter 13
    Appendix

Place your order! This book is the product of an interaction between imagination, experience, fiction, reminiscence and fantasy. A cocktail mixed in the environment of international diplomacy and tempered by a sprinkling of light humor. Place your order...