An uncivilized routine

conrad_black.jpgFormer Hollinger International chairman and CEO Conrad Black‘s daily routine these days is not quite as civilized as the one followed by Winston Churchill, wouldn’t you agree?:

I get up just after 7 except on the weekends and holidays when it is possible to sleep in. I eat some granola and go to my workplace where I tutor high school-leaving candidates, one-on-one, though sometimes I have to deal with up to four at a time, around my desk, and talk with fellow tutors and other convivial people. I lunch around 11 with friends from education, work on e-mails, play the piano for 30 to 60 minutes, return to my tutoring tasks by 1, return to my unit at 3, deal with more e-mails, rest from 4 to 6, eat dinner in the unit then, and go for a walk in the compound or recreation yard for a couple of hours, drinking coffee well-made by Colombian fellow-residents, and come back into the residence about 8:30, deal with e-mails and whatever, have my shower etc., around midnight, read until 1-1:30 a.m. and go to sleep. On the weekends it is pretty open. [.  .  .]

The days and weeks tend to resemble each other. Time does go by quickly but a bit imperceptibly. I have quite a lot of e-mail and correspondence and limited telephone traffic. Essentially, I try to keep as well in touch with people and events as possible and I am lucky that many friends outside want to correspond. I psychologically live outside this facility most of the time.

One thought on “An uncivilized routine

  1. The irony is that Conrad Black is an admirer of Franklin D. Roosevelt. So much so, that he even wrote a highly favorable work on the New Deal president. What’s wrong with this picture? Black is serving time in prison mostly because of the hostility generated towards the business community by Roosevelt’s ideological thugs. Oh well, perhaps he will have time to read Amity Shlaes’s, The Forgotten Man.

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