After the room
What was said once the sitting was over
These notes are from people who commissioned a sitting. They are specific because the work is specific. We asked each person if we could use their words and their first name with a role.
A longer account · Board Narrative Sitting · 2025
The linen contract in a hotel group
Omar Farouk looks after the numbers for a hotel group with houses in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. The board was meeting to approve a shared linen contract. His draft speech opened with occupancy by house, which is the table he trusts and the table the properties like to see.
In the opening conversation Kanya asked what the room was being asked to approve. The answer was the contract, not a rate. Arthit moved occupancy to the appendix sheets, drawn on the same paper, clipped so the hand could find them, and left them out of the standing sequence. The spoken line stayed with the contract: what it covered, what it cost against the previous arrangement, and what it did not decide.
The contract was approved in the hour. Occupancy was looked at afterward, in the same room, once the decision was made. Omar wrote to us the next week. He said the line was shorter than the speech he had drafted, which he was glad of, and that he still missed seeing the occupancy table stood up. We did not put it back into the sequence. The appendix was the agreement.
I wanted the cash figure on the first sheet. Kanya would not put it there. She put the patient-day comparison first, because that was the argument the doctors would actually have. I was annoyed in the taxi afterward. In the room, the cash figure landed once people had already agreed what the month had been. I still think she is stubborn.
The harvest sheet did not hide the thin yield. It put last year’s yield beside it, same scale, no decoration. My cousins argued about the rain, which is what they should argue about, instead of arguing about whose slide had the larger type.
Ninety minutes felt short until I saw the page. Three comparisons, and a list of eight numbers we were told not to stand up. Our chair used the page in his own words two weeks later. I had hoped they would also draw the sheets that afternoon. They did not, and the note said they would not.
The spoken line was shorter than the speech I had drafted. That was the useful part. The sheets left out the occupancy table I am proud of. Arthit said the table could sit in the appendix because nobody was being asked to approve a rate from it. He was right about the meeting. I still miss the table.