"Tender" Me Slow!

"TENDER" : 
Adjective : Easily chewed or cut
Noun: A formal offer, as a written offer to contract goods or services at a specified cost or rate; a bid.

"Tender" is a word i am being reintroduced to time and again in my line of business as days go by. 

I do not understand how a word meaning easily chewed or cut can be used in the commercial sphere as a legal term to find the best vendor  for purchase of supplies or services.

I presume the person who coined the term belonged from a culinary background ...he or she probably thought that the best way to get the desired result to any activity was just to cook the vendor on a slow fire..till he was TENDER enough to be served, just like a nice tender chicken.
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The whole process of Tender Notices, EMD's, Technical Specifications, Financial Bids....etc, resemble a bouquet of spices a chef would use to prepare a marinade.

The Negotiations,Formalities,Re-negotiations, The movement of the file form here to there... the endless wait ..imitate the chef grilling his dish on a slow fire waiting for just the right tenderness in it before being served.

The only thing common in both, the Cooking and the "Tender" process, is the end, the vendor eventually is left  resembling a pile of bones.... just the way a Chef would expect one of his tenderly cooked chicken dishes at the end of a meal.

Mother!

Just read this thought provoking post on facebook and thought it would be good to make it part of my blog:

In a mother's womb were two babies. One asked the other: "Do you believe in life after delivery?"

The other replies, "why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.

"Nonsense," says the other. "There is no life after delivery.

What would that life be?"

"I don't know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths."

The other says "This is absurd! Walking is impossible. And eat with our mouths? Ridiculous. The umbilical cord supplies nutrition. Life after delivery is to be excluded. The umbilical cord is too short."

"I think there is something and maybe it's different than it is here." the other replies,

"No one has ever come back from there. Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery it is nothing but darkness and anxiety and it takes us nowhere."

"Well, I don't know," says the other, "but certainly we will see mother and she will take care of us." "Mother??" You believe in mother? Where is she now? "

"She is all around us. It is in her that we live. Without her there would not be this world."

"I don't see her, so it's only logical that she doesn't exist."

To which the other replied, "sometimes when you're in silence you can hear her, you can perceive her." 

I believe there is a reality after delivery and we are here to prepare ourselves for that reality....