My Year as King Dingaling

by Martin Jpxhong

This is the story of the first year I spent working for one of Europe's largest travel companies as an Overseas Representitve in Las Americas, Tenerife. It was a job I knew nothing about when I applied for the position and new little more when the training course ended. But by then I had already fallen in love with the potential the role offered. This book is based on the work diary I kept that year so follows the chronology from arriving on an Island I'd always wanted to live on, to leaving nine months later. I'm a perfectly average human being who was looking for an exit from life in Blackpool, Lancashire and found myself in a job that changed my life, tested my endurance, rewarded me beyond compare, but took my soul in exchange. The book follows my path from useless no hoper constantly falling over myself as the lifestyle and culture enveloped my senses. Charts the growth made as both a Rep and a person, good and bad, to become the companies top sales person, Airport Controller and random magnet for the disasters that happen to companies while dealing with the Great British public on holiday. Bus fires, robberies, trips to hospitals, lunatic asylum's, Police station's, and to the Boss' office made for a year that changed my outlook and personality completely. That is the main theme of the book, the changes in the individual as seventeen hour days in pressurised, surreal circumstances created a character lost in a sea of excessive indulgences with the job creating the backdrop. There is several strands to the story as the individual battles the Rep turning my back on love, happiness and self control to ultimately lose myself as the partying, sex, drugs, alcohol, wild guests, wilder Reps and locals claimed the person who arrived. This is not tale after tale of youthful plundering, it's about what can happen when you get everything you think you always wanted, but only shows you what you lost in chasing what you already had. It's funny, tragic and you will both love and loathe the main character whose unyielding bad decision making taught me the meaning of loss, consequences and of happiness. As a job the opportunity for may mayhem is all around you, and for this young man the bright lights and overwhelming capacity for indulgence from those around him carried me from zero to hero to zero. A long way from home I charged at the opportunity the role offers to become, King Dingaling

386 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 21, 2015

Reviews

[Steve Parcell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable read. The author brings his time in Playa de La Americas in Tenerife as a Club Rep to life vividly. Its not all about sex drugs and alcohol though. The author describes clearly the mental health issues the lifestyle creates and how his behaviour burning the candle at both ends affect his personal relationships. When he gets home he tries to assimilate back into society which is very difficult. The best of this genre that I have read.

[christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

So true to life

Absolutely brilliant and so true for a rep life. Being an early 90s rep myself it was so real to what our lives being a rep was like from the constant alcohol in your system I never did the drugs to the long long hours you worked hard at and how you still managed to party even harder for the full season with very little sleep.