Tubulaaaar bells
===============
So, the more I come back to london the more I like it. I love the tube. Even though it makes me claustrophobic, I love the way it works. People switch to automatic pilot and they all have this "look at me and I will kill you" expression on their face. Everyone (except us out-of-towners/village people) does something to occupy themselves so that they never have to make eye contact with anyone. Whereas me, I sit there like a kid at a sweet shop and study every single person in my carriage and wonder where they've been and what they do with their lives.

Rule Britannia, Brittania rules not much....
==================================
Amsterdam is pretty multicultural, but in London, you can go pretty much all day and not hear anyone speak English. This is good for me because the more often I come back here, the more I realise that I simply just do not get England anymore. I find all the different English accents hard to understand (scary!) and I simply cannot stand queuing anymore. Tonight, we waited about three minutes "to be seated" at a restaurant and I almost had a fit. I also find myself laughing out loud like Jane Eyre's mad -woman-in-the-attic at the continuous announcements everywhere you go...in the lift "doors are closing/opening/lift is going up/down/do not smoke in the lift/doors will open shortly/press button to go up or down" (no SHIT! Really? Thanks!!!). The best sign I saw today was "There are 192 stairs down to the Northern Line. Anyone caught urinating in this stairwell will be dealt with by the police". I almost felt like dropping my pants and seeing how fast the coppers came running. Ahem. But I am a Lady. Apparently. So I didn't do it.

Amsterdam meets Cheshire
======================
Randomly, Tim (B (from BAD) is also in London for a course and it's his birthday so I met up with him at Canary Wharf and had dinner with Lou and Swirly...which was quite odd, since I have known Lou and Swirly since I was three years old and the three off us spent the entire evening ripping the piss out of each other as per usual. Tim dealt with it all very well though, and we had an incredibly garlic fueled meal at some investment-wankerish-Italian restaurant to celebrate Tim's birthday. Almost came to blows with the ginger one about how to pronounce something in Italian and then asked the waiter for confirmation (and had to admit I was wrong. Grrrrowl). Then Swirly claimed "jet lag" and went home. Lou, Tim and I went to another bar where I promptly and predictably spilled an entire glass of vin rouge over Louise's expensive corporate-whore trousers. Oops. But you know what, I bet my wine cost more than the dry cleaning does. HAHAHAHAHA. I was well pissed off. Six quid down the drain. Or on the floor. Or actually, all over ONE of my brown boots. Now it's a different colour than the other one. Humph.

London Calling Saturday - Monday
============================
So here I am on my jolly travels again. Nothing exciting this time. Just in London. Halfway through my trip already and I have learnt several things: heathrow is a criminal blot on the landscape which should be firebombed immediately (hmmm, it's probably risky to type such stuff in this climate of paranoia but stuff it), I am really, really bad a poker and there are more wireless connections in London than I have ever seen in my life (people!!! Be smart about just get one and let everyone use it AHHAHA). I feel my brain frying as I type. frrrrrzzzzz.

BM ICE ICE-BABY
===============
There I am, happily reading my femi-nazi literature on the plane, trolly dolly has tried to sell me a criminally priced cup of char for about 5 quid or something and suddenly I hear this panting noise. Hmmm I think. WTF is that?! Then I hear a dog barking and I think. COOL! Doggy on a plane! But no. Directly opposite me is a Dutch woman, about 60, on all fours on the seat (have you ever tried to do that in a plane? She must be double jointed or something) barking like a dog in the face of her husband/keeper. I am not joking. It was the most bizarre thing I have ever seen in my life. Husband/keeper ignored her, and kept reading his book. Dog woman panted for a while then sat down with a toothpick and proceeded to pick her teeth very loudly for the rest of the flight. Bizarre. It takes about 25 minutes to fly from Amsterdam to London but then we spent an entire hour flying round in giant circles before we could land. VIVE LA EUROSTAR! Passport geezer was very interested in my passport for some reason: I've still got one of those that have a piece of plastic over the picture. He was bending it and picking at it but I passed the test and they let me back into my own country. Hurrah...I think...

Poker face? Poke 'er in the eye more like
=================================
So Vanessa picked me up and drove me off into the burbs and I arrived at a full house ready for dinner - not sure how I managed to escape cooking duty but this was probably best for everyone. One of Tony's friend's girlfriend comes from Argentina and I delighted in practicing my standard spanish lines on her ('joder!', ¿Dónde están los servicios?") which worked very well until she actually started trying to have a conversation in espanol with me....and I had to ashamedly say my other standard phrase "OY, YOY OY mi espanol esta muy mal". After dinner, it was decided that we were going to play poker instead of going to the pub. No one could be arsed to walk the three steps down the road to the local. I tried to hustle them all into a game of scrabble instead... "Honest, I've nevah played before in my loife, guvnor, lets have a game of scrabble, I can't spell, I don't know the meaning of the word 'zo ' really..." but there were no biters. So poker is was. Bloody hell. WTF kind of game is that. Anyway, needless to say I lost all my chips pretty quickly and sulked in the corner for the rest of the night muttering about scrabble until someone thrust a bottle of bailies in my face and told me to shut up.

Sealife Centre
============
It was a full house, so Tony gallantly vacated the marital bed and slept on the floor, leaving me to share with Vanessa. And now I know why. Cos his wife snores like a walrus with a blocked nose when she's consumed two bottles of vino. Bloody hell. HA. Sleep? Not much. Not even my cough/dog-bark disturbed her. Next morning, after a propah english fry up, we all piled into la voiture to walk the dog. Vanessa was looking particularly yellow and promptly graced the countryside with vomit the moment the car stopped and proceeded to huff up her guts for the next hour or so. I almost dislocated my arm chucking the ball for the dog ( I used to be deep fielder at rounders, I told them all, so had to try and not throw like a girl) the dog tripped me over with a giant stick, I saw Windsor castle in the distance, I realised I hadn't walked in the countryside since enforced christmas day walks when I was a kid, I stood in a giant pile of dog shit aaaaaargh etc etc. Once we got back to the house, Vanessa fell asleep and I hitched a ride into london with Veronica and Tom (cheers guys!) and went off to meet Lou at the new st PancrEas station....

Organic Internet
==============
I've come to the end of my giant bucket of coffee in the "organic Wifi zone" cafe (seriously, WTF is an organic wifi zone? Methinks the sign writer needs to go on the plain english course) and now I am off to dump my bag somewhere and go to the science museum to pick off where I left off when they chucked me out last time (history of medicine ... got up to 1960!), don't worry girls, I shall look longingly into some shoe shop windows on my way, just so you don't think I have become someone completely unrecognisable. So anyway, there's a huge sign saying "happy Easter" outside this cafe which I thought was pretty funny, but mainly I came in here because it said "(organic) public wireless" and I thought it was free. But it's not. GRRRRRRR. So I'll have to upload this later.....

Monday Evening
==============
Right, here I am, in my super exec corporate apartment. HAHAHA. It's bigger (and nicer) than my own flat but the bloke next door has a serious bladder problem (all I can hear is him pissing every 5 minutes). Mental note: shut curtains before getting changed - there's more glass than a greenhouse here.

So, to continue, last night I met Lou and we trotted off to find some sustainence in the form of wine. Found a great pub just round the corner from her place and parked ourselves in these massive old armchairs and there we stayed for a while until the cravings for cheese on toast became too much to bear and we went home. I tried to install Lou's wireless connection and, to my horror, failed. ARRRGH. The shame, the shame, so there was nothing left to do except go to bed defeated.

Crazy psycho bitch from hell
========================
01:00 am and my phone starts buzzing. I'm a bit bleary, pick up the phone and I hear nothing. Hello? Then someone says "I'm looking for meneer Swijnhuis...I hope this is the right number." I'm thinking, swijn...that's pig in Dutch, Swijn huis = pigsty. Hmmm. I know the cloggies have funny names but this is one I've never heard before. Person repeats herself and I start thinking, hold on, hold on, I know that voice!!! It's Lasazulu!! OH MY GOD. WTF? For those of you who don't know, Lasazulu is a crazy, psychotic bitch who threatened to kill me/firebomb my house/murder my family about 2 years ago (all because I refused to go shopping with her...and I am not joking). EEEEEHK! She's STALKING ME!!!!! But you know what? Given the most random and bizarre couple of weeks I have had, I am simply not surprised. Anyway, I hung up and had crazy, random, cheese-induced hallucinogenic dreams and fortunately, I've not heard from her again!

Tapped on Oxford Street
====================
Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the Science museum :(. I got trapped in a book shop (seriously, took me half an hour to find my way out) on Oxford Street (which is HELL on earth...think Kalverstraat x 100 more shops x a billion people x mindless consumption x perfume x buses x 45 starbucks x 56 pret-a-mangers x 34 H&Ms = mind numbing confusion and that's almost close). Signing off now, as am off to meet Lou and Swirly and all the other investment wankers, er I mean bankers, over in Canary Wharf. More later, if I have not had to sell my laptop to survive (14 quid for two glasses of vino tinto... SQUEAL!) Am also suffering what I think can only be termed as "Phone-battery-almost-dead-might-lose-contact-with-world-soon-paranoia". AARRRRRGH!

Estonia Wednesday - Friday

Wednesday!
----------

Check out the week's photos here!

Halfway through
================
The meeting chugged along again, with only one disaster: the network was down for a while (=panic!) on Wednesday because of an apparent DDos attack and so people actually had to listen to the speakers instead of tappety tapping away on their lappety tops. I was on webcast duty and so didn't even notice as I was too busy pretending I was a director and zooming around with the cameras.


Google schmoogle
================
Wednesday night was the Google party. Because wandering through a tense and riot-prone city in a group of 200 plus people is not really a good idea, and given that the Estonian police have rather large batons and menacing looking cannisters of tear gas, the location of the party had to be changed at the last minute. Instead of a short walk from hotel to venue, we had to get on a bus and zoomed off to somewhere on the coast. It was a very odd-looking place...looked a bit like a swimming pool from the outside. Anyway, I snagged myself a couple of freebie t-shirts and scoffed some rather tasty wild salmon and was having a jolly old time.


Flaming heck, where are her knickers?
=======================
Then the Cabaret showed up. At first I thought it was just a bloke singing but then out came this girl, dressed like a 1920's German hooker and it just went downhill from there, with thongs and erotic dancing all over the place.
Given the fact that at least 85% of the audience is male, I think the party organisers made a very good choice. In fact, I have never seen such concentration on so many faces in my life. And, the number of cameras and phones around was unnerving.


Sing it, baby!
==============
We got the first bus back to the hotel and descended upon the Karaoke bar where I proceeded to monopolise the stage and microphone as per usual when Karaoke is involved. Unfortunately, some poor Finnish bird croaked her way through MySongTM (Britney Spears hahaha) so I had to do some renditions of songs I don't normally do. Nick and I did a brilliant version of Angels and then Uptown Girl, but I Think the piece de resistance was 'summer nights' (well, you gotta do it on a karaoke haven't you?) with Chris, Jos and Random attendee. There were 342098957234723 songs in Finnish and about 15 in English, so there were some repeats during the night. Nick did a fabulous version of Elvis.

Someone fire the Karaoke man!
=============================
We all got in trouble with Karaoke man, who was the meanest, grumpiest, most miserable pig on the planet. I'm not joking: "Stop dancing over there, my remote control won't work. I mean it, get away from there. BEHAVE YOURSELVES." He was rude and nasty when anyone asked for a song. I mean good god, he was about 65 (or maybe he was only 30 and that's what drinking too much Estonian voddy does to you) go get a less stressful job. Bah. Anyway, I didn't dare get close to him to take a picture, so the quality of this one is a bit shite. It all got pretty raucous and I left at 2am, and the dancefloor was still packed. There were more than a few bleary eyes this morning.

Thursday
---------

KGB Surprise!
======================
When the Russian's were around, the hotel we are staying in was the first (and only) hotel for foreigners.
The KGB had a listening room on the top floor. When they left, they left in a hurry, leaving all their equipment behind. The room is still left in the same state it was when they left it. The girl from the the hotel took us up there and told us that, when any 'interesting' foreigners came to stay, the hotel staff would be told which room they had to be put into and the soviets would set up camp in the room next door. Even the restaurant would be in on the deal and would give the suspects a special table...even the plates were bugged apparently.

The RIPE Dinner
===============

The infamous RIPE Dinner took place on Thursday night. There was a random old bloke with Albert Einstein hair from Estonia who stood up and talked for about 25 minutes. His speech was totally inaudible and after 35 seconds 99% of the audience were scrabbling around their tables for the vodka shot glasses and hoping he'd shut up very soon. By the time he did stop talking, there was much loud applause and cheering in relief that the annoying noise in the background, er I mean the really interesting history of Estonia had stopped. Then the fat swordsman came on stage and did a bit of prancing around with his sword and two skinny companions which culminated in fatty being stabbed through the armpit and pretending to die. It was pretty dire. Then there was a little traditional medieval band with a woman yowling like a cat in pain and a bloke with a very concentrated face banging a drum every now and then. The woman was totally cross eyed, poor cow.

I love cheese
=============
Fortunately, there was enough cheese on the buffet to keep me occupied and I wolfed down copious amounts of smoked cheese. Yum, washed down with some shots of voddy for good measure. I liked this tradition of putting bottles of voddy on the tables at the beginning of the night. After drinking nothing but water for the next three hours, I simply couldn't understand why I felt like a combine harvester had driven over me a few times in my sleep...until I remembered that actually, all that water was interspersed with several shots of rough-as-you-like local vodka. hmmm.


IPv6 forever!
=============
Being someone who carries an enormous bag full of crap everywhere I go, I decided that tonight was the night to travel light and I didn't take my bag or my camera. Oh how I wish I had. Once the dinner and 'funny' entertainment was over (thank gawd Sandra cancelled half of the entertainment at the last minute, notably "host will entertain guests with humourous activities that guests can participate in". I shudder at the thought of what that could be.) The dancefloor got rocking as per usual at these events. My favourite memory of the evening was Jordi Palet jumping up and down like the energiser bunny shouting, in his wonderful Spanish accent, "IPv6 Forever!!!!". ARF ARF ARF.

WE go to nightclub, oh yes, we go drink and dance
==================================================
So, after the vodka had run out, we clomped back to the hotel and decided to hit the nightclub in the basement along with the Russian whores, the drunken Fins and some random meeting attendees. My god what a meat market! Filiz and I managed to sneak out after half an hour...got halfway up the stairs when we heard a song that we simply had to run back to dance to...I won't tell you what that song was for fear of reprisals and the tarnishing of my already impeccable reputation. Anyway, I got to bed at 3am: most people were still going strong.


Friday
------


Do you know the way to "eooough"
================================
The meeting closed at lunchtime without a hitch and so it's over for another 6 months. All the RIPE NCC-ers left over met up for dinner and some of us decided to go to restaurant "eoooogh" ('o' with an umlaut) which we'd heard was the best in town. After trying very unsuccesfully to find it, we finally got directions from someone who actually knew where it was, arrived, and found they didn't have room for us. So we went to the Garlic restaurant, which was the original plan anyway, and scoffed lots of garlic. Om Yom. Chris had garlic ice cream which was, hmmm, an acquired taste.

GaAa rruaAAAGRH uunhhgh RAAAAG (that's Finnish thrash metal band)
===============================
So, as we are eating our lovely civilized meal with live violin and guitar music playing in the background, we were rudely interrupted by the most amazing bass I've ever heard. A rock band has set up a stage on the main square and is playing a free gig. By all accounts, these blokes are popular with young and old alike. One was dressed in a medieval sack dress and was playing bag pipes. The rest looked like typical long haired thugs. The music was actually pretty ok. I used to like a bit of a headbang in my distant youth and, as it was a bit chilly, Laura suggested we go into the mosh pit to warm up. Didn't fancy getting covered in Estonian sweat and hair from the great unwashed though, so we stood and shivered on the sidelines. I got some great video of a six year old girl absolutely loving it and dancing her heart out. aaaaah.

"I love Peeing"
===============

At the dinner on Thursday, De-Cix, the sponsors, gave out stickers that said "I love peering" [note for non-geeks and geeklings: it's a techy thing, not a synonym of the word 'look'].

It didn't take long for the comedians among us to rip up the stickers and make hilarious new stickers, saying "I love pee" and "I love peeing" etc etc. As I was wandering around the town on Friday, what should I see on a random lamppost?

Hello Kitty ... #2!
=============

So, as always, I try to find a supermarket and peruse the shelves for UEO (unidentified edible objects) to take back for the ganets, er I mean lovely colleagues. I only found one unidentifiable thing (pictured - my guess is that it's some sort of Turkish Delight) but I also found some funny named chocolate. I absolutely LOVE the one with kitty on the front. Mmmmm, the "creamy pomade candy" is going to be a hit at work. Let's hope it really is candy and not actually cat food..


Interesting observations #3
===========================

1. Eheheh, saw this cafe and thought the name was dead funny, as it sounds like Dr Evil doing his silly laugh. Mmuuuuuah.

2. Check out these flags.



First step Estonia...next step the UN....then....THE WORLD!

3. Look, look, look, LOOK! I found MOOMIN chewing gum :):

Words of Silence...

Two days down...
=================
So, I have two days' worth of reporting to do. The meeting started yesterday and everything went well. The welcome drinks got off to a flying start, and I've never seen so many attendees supping their ales on the first day of the meeting. Obviously, the lure of cheap voddy has not overshadowed the 'domestic disturbances' here in Elbonia and put people off coming.

Big big piece of meat!
=======================
Then the 'entertainment' arrived and things went a bit wrong. Poor entertainment bloke, bless him, tried his hardest but no one was really into what he was saying. He kept screaming about "In Estonia, we eat big piece of meat, big big piece of meat, but before that we drink big big glass of wodka!" SO, all of us had to down a shot of vodka and waited in anticipation for our big big Estonian meal, which never arrived. Then some quite alarming, er I mean charming, traditional Estonian dancing ensued and then came the audience participation. And of course, one of the dancer blokes came up to me to try to drag me to the dance floor (curses, curses, must remember not to sit near the front in future). Anyway, he was quite insistent and even when I told him I couldn't possibly dance because "I have concussion" he said, in perfect English, "Concussion or not, you're coming to dance, it will only take 2 minutes". Listen sonny Jim I thought, I don't DO audience participation and after an awkward stony silence with me looking at him with arched eyebrows, he got the message and moved on.


Chubby chick
============
The poor entertainment bloke carried on, though, with good spirit and introduced a young lady dressed in traditional Estonian costume by saying "In Estonia we have beautiful young ladies...er, although this one is a bit fat". I am serious. Poor cow was smiling serenely and obviously didn't understand a word, which is strange, because every where here seems to speak exceedingly good English. Check out the bloke's jumper: it's hilarious!


Look at those lips!
===================
After a while Nick, Sandra, Chris and I went off to find some nosh. Nick was in tour guide mode and gave us all a nice tour of the medieval walls and showed us round the city. I don't know how he does it; he only arrived 12 hours before me and yet he's giving me a guided tour. Hmmm. Off we trotted in the rain (yeah, the weather has turned wet and nasty after such beautiful sun on Sunday) and found a really nice restaurant. Nick took a shine to the waiter, who was about 12, and even Chris (happily married) had to admit that the boy had the most amazing lips. He shoulda been a lipstick model...because he's er, worth it. Maybe it really is mabeline. Hmm. Losing my touch aren't I?

Must...play....Scrabble
========================
I was almost asleep in my dinner so we wandered back to the hotel and one last drink in bar Amigo. Ran into Arno and Alex and some young first time attendees they'd, er, 'picked up' and had a final drink. Saw the hardcore drinkers among my colleagues going downstairs into the nightclub and poked my head in to find out what was going on. Seemed a bit dead so I went off to bed to, er, play scrabble, yes yes I know, I know, no comments about my habit please but I hadn't played for at least 48 hours and I was getting a bit itchy, kept on counting the number of letters in all the long words I was reading to see if I could add them to my repertoire...but the crappy connection in the room is really crapola with a capital C and so I couldn't connect. Grrrr.

Simon, you're green!
====================
Apparently though, it turned into a raucous night in the club. This morning I had breakfast quite late. Simon Jan came to sit at my table. My god, I said, what the F happened to you. The poor boy just groaned. You're looking a bit green dear, I said. He moaned, it's my green shirt. Oh no, dear, it's your skin. HA HAH. I've honestly never seen anyone look as hungover as he did. In fact, I couldn't even see his eyes, the skin around them was so puffy. The deal was sealed when after a few minutes of laboured chewing of bacon, he muttered "I woke up this morning, and found a beer glass in my toilet". AH AHA HA AH AHA AH HAHAHAAH.

The rest of Tuesday
===================
So Tuesday rolled on and I had a couple of hours spare in the afternoon. I went to the mall (and didn't buy anything. I'm still too enamoured with my lovely new shoes, I think, that nothing else can compare to such lovely leathery specimens. Yes Nichola, I'm bringing them to work on Monday for you to stoke, lovingly...) and then went exploring for about an hour. I tried. Honestly I tried to find something that I hadn't seen, and I really did walk miles but there's just nothing else to this city. It's so cute and tiny, I'm quite sure I now know every knook and cranny there is.

Broken Glass
==============
Off we went to the Tuesday social, which was in a really old building. It was quite a nice evening and we all wished that the caterers would give the hotel chef some tips. There was a corridor in the building with a children's art exposition. There I saw the most disturbing piece of art I have ever witnessed: check out that frighting 'sculpture' in the picture and remember, it was made by children! Yes, it really is two very scary dolls on massive shards of glass. Shudder. Nothing much happened there, except they ran out of booze far too early and so we had to leave.

I just can't get enough
=======================
Off we trotted to the DM bar. It's the Depeche Mode bar. Yes, really, it is a bar devoted to Depeche Mode and all you can hear there is Depeche mode, not surprisingly. Anyway, this bar is located way down in a cellar and is actually quite quaint, if not a little claustrophobic for a "where the hell are the exits? Oh my god there's no windows and only one way out and if there's a fire in the doorway (like, cos that happens ALL THE TIME) I'm never going to get out)" person like moi. But it turned into a really good night, with loads of ncc-ers and attendees alike. Left around 12 because my (not so comfortable) bed was beckoning and I was gagging for a game of Scrab...but there's something going on with my connection at night because every time I've tried to log on after about 22:00, I just can't. Grrrrowl.

Practical jokes
===============
On the way home Erik and Franz (my favourite geeklings) got up to mischief and thought of a funny prank to play on one of our colleagues. I'm not quite sure how funny it actually is, but they seemed to think it was hilarious and their giggling made me laugh on the short walk home. They had to enlist my help to ask for the room number because they thought that it would be better coming from a lady arf arf snort (the bloke behind the reception didn't even question why I was asking for someone's room number with several rather intoxicated blokes behind me sniggering into their jackets like naughty schoolboys) - aah, to be young and easy amused!

Interesting observations #2
===========================

1. The streets are some of the cleanest streets I have ever seen. I challenge anyone here to take a picture of rubbish on the street. There just isn't any.

2. The no-smoking laws here really are anal (as mentioned in my previous post). I took this funny picture of the smoking 'cabin-tje' at the hotel. look at 'em all crammed in there, HAHAHAHAHA.

3. Outside the hotel there is the cutest thing: a mobile burrito shop. It's called the "Burrito Buss". Everytime I see it I chuckle. It's painted red and I think I might die of laughter if I saw the Burrito Buss chugging away down the motorway. I'd simply have to shout..."BURRITO CON SOMBRERO" at it.

4. I've eaten the nicest, creamiest oh -my-god-straight-from-the-udder feta I've ever tasted here in Estonia. Top tip: avoid all other food (really, believe me, avoid all other food) and go straight for the feta. Om yhom yhom . I knows my cheese.

5. There's a coffee bar in the mall called "Wayne's coffee". Doesn't quite have the same ring as "Enrico's coffee" or "Francesco's coffee".

6. At the coffee break today there were these enormous balls of something...oooh, I thought, another UEO (unidentified edible object) of which I am very fond. Turns out they were GIANT rum balls. Yummy. I snarfed three in a row and felt quite dizzy but they were good. I even wrapped one up in a napkin and took it to my room ("for later") and now I can't remember what I did with the F-ing thing. :s. I hope it's not mashed up in my bag...

7. I really am the worst photographer in the world. I've only ever taken one nice photo in my life and that was of the Turkish flag on a boat in Istanbul. I mean how hard can it be? My camera is advanced enough to boil a bloody egg if it wanted too...:(

8. Adrian noticed that the Fanta in this country is the most orange Fanta he has ever seen and made me take a photo of it for the obvious hilarious factor that it looks like it was bottled in Chenobyl. Geiger counter anyone?

Estonia here I come!

Off to Elbonia
==============

So here I find myself on the 9th floor of a non descript tower block hotel in Estonia.

Flight over was uneventful and made slightly better only by the fact that I had cleverly downloaded Friday's Eastenders. On arrival, we sought out a taxi and sped off towards the old town. Only then did I read the helpful handy hints on the taxi window that told us we should have agreed on a price before we set off. Hmmm. Anyway, what was supposed to be a 5 minute, 4 Euro trip was doubled on both counts, but was still cheap as old chips compared to Amsterdam prices.

Shoes Galore
============

After dumping my stuff and then helping out with some last minute meeting preparations, Rumy, Filiz and I trotted off to the mall which is located below the hotel. Within 30 seconds we were in the biggest shoe shop I had ever seen. It was huge and was loaded with, er not surprisingly, shoes. Anyway, within 2 minutes I'd scouted out about 50 pairs that I wanted. Within 3 minutes I'd realised that actually bying 50 pairs of shoes is a little extreme and quite impractical given that my little old faithful suitcase is bursting at the seams already (I couldn't even fit my travel scrabble set in) and so I narrowed down my choice a bit. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I left with only one pair but will probably be back to see what other leathery delights I can get my grubby paws on by the end of the week.


Sparrow-sized portion
=====================
We were getting a bit hungry and went into the old town for some grub. All was quiet after the recent riots, although there were a lot of policemen milling around. There were a couple of groups of English-blokes-on-stagnights milling about, one group was dressed as startrek characters which was quite amusing (although never having actually ever seen an episode, I only know they were dressed as startrek because someone told me).

We found a really nice bar off the main square with lovely comfy red armchairs and settled in for some cocktails. After a couple of coffee flavoured white Russians, I was well on the way to the land of nod (something in the back of my mind was nagging me that people with head injuries shouldn't be driking alcahol but I ignored my sensible nagging and quaffed some more. Dinner was nice but, after having not eaten all day, it just wasn't enough so we went off to another bar and had dinner number two. There was a giant aquarium in the restaurant with a very bored shark swimming round and round in circles, which reminded me of my poor ugliest-fish-in-the-world starving to death at home...hold on for a few more days fishkins! Arf arf arf.

The Private Life of Chairman Mao
================================
So, the Estonians are a bit anal about their smoking laws and in most places, smoking is only permitted when a designated room is available for smokers. In the second restuarant we went to, there was a little smoking room set up...it looked like a sort of gentlemans' club, with a couple of armchairs, cigar cabinet and bookshelves. I was rifling through the books, most of which were not in English, and found the Private Life of Chairman Mao which made me laugh my ass off. It was HUGE!!! How on earth could they have written a volume that large about his private life. eheheh. The other English book on the shelf was Sherlock Holmes, incase you're interested.

Sweating
========
After laughing at Chairman Mao for a while, we went back to the hotel and got an early night. I couldn't get the bloody airconditioning to work and was sweating all night as if I Was kipping in a sauna. Anyway, now I realise that there's underfloor heating in the bathroom which belts out continiously. Once I shut the door, the rest of the room became suitably frosty.


Interesting Observations
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1. The local girls in one of the bars last night were drinking pints of beer through a straw!

2. Yes, yes, I am obsessed with toilet, but the flushes on the toilets here are always located behind the toiletseat so you have to close the seat before you can get to the flush. Gnuuuuuuurgh.

Entering the world of video

After years and years of having a highly old fashioned and out of date mobile phone, I finally got round to buying a new one. Well, I only bought it because the one that Elke gave me to replace my crumbling old Nokia finally gave up (er, when I accidently ripped the insides of it out while it was charging...). So anyway, I've got this brand spanking new phone that does god knows what, could probably boil an egg and feed my fish if I programmed it right. Today, I thought, I'm going to learn me some gadgetry! Off I trot to watch Elke dance the salsa at Cantinero for Queen's Day with my phone in my sweaty palms. And voila. Here's my first attempt. Unfortunately, I held the phone the wrong way round for most of it. Oh well, live and learn eh.

My first Scrabble tournament

So, after weeks of telling slightly amused/bewildered/astounded friends and colleagues that I was to enter a 'proper Scrabble' tournament, I've finally taken part in it.

Watch the movie
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Yes, there really is a movie! Watch it here.
Strategic sneezing
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Last weekend, orf I trotted to Amstelveen's European Go Centre (see below), equipped with printouts of every acceptable
three letter word in the English language and sheets and sheets of front and end hooks*, none of which I actually got round to learning of course, and the best cold remedies that money could buy to stave off my stinking cold. I was feeling pretty lousy but thought that my constant sniffing and sneezing might put off my opponents and give me an advantage. Failing that, half of them might succumb themselves, not turn up the next day and then I would win all my games by default. Alas, my cunning plan backfired. They're tough, these Scrabble players.

Scrabble's, like, really cool man
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The journey from tram stop to location was uneventful and I am glad I overruled my own inner monologue which was telling me "you don't need a map, you'll find it" and printed out a map. Good job I did, as I had convinced myself it was going to be right next door to the tram stop for some reason, which of course it wasn't. Once I arrived, I was quite surprised to see a people of my age as well as older people there, having convinced myself that my opponents would all be retirees. Not so! Scrabble really *is* cool after all.

Did I win, did I win?
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There were two leagues. Needless to say I played in the one with the lower ranked and unranked players. Day one got started, and I lost my first game. No matter, I thought, I'll win the next one...which I didn't...waaah. Anyway, to cut a long story short and to prevent myself repeating "and I lost game number x too", I played 12 games over two days, won 4 and lost 8. I did however, pull off an amazing win in my last game, and scored my highest ever number of points, 504, and my highest ever number of bingos (7 letter words) in one game: dingier, stealing, beloved and remains. I was dead proud of myself, hurrah!!!

Muff-tastic
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On day one, the theme was 'flowers'. Anyone who played a word related to flowers could put their word and points on the board and perhaps win a prize. There was one entry for this competition. But on day two the theme was 'sex' and my god, the number of entries for this competition was huge and there were some pretty bizarre words. I had three entries but I didn't win... the winning word, with the highest points, was, ahem, fistings. HA HA HA. Although I think my entry of 'muff' was much, much better :).

Online Scrabble vs face-to-face
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As someone who plays online a lot, playing ProperHumansTM is quite different to online games. When you play online, the software adds up the scores for you. My biggest worry going into the tournament was knowing that I've got a problem calculating the scores. I find it really difficult to add up quickly, well adding up at all whether slow or quick to be honest. I blame it on my Tory-dictated education you see (that- bitch-Maggie forced me to use a calculator)! I never really did much mental arithmetic. Fortunately, most of my opponents were well practiced with totting up numbers and helped me out a lot. Playing with 25 minutes on the clock was never really a problem either being that one of the things that really hinders my game is playing too fast. It's my guppie-sized attention span: can't concentrate on anything for very long! Give me a ten minute game (and an adding up assistant) and I am happy :) Anyway, if anyone feels like playing online, give it a try!

What's this Go stuff?
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The tournament was held in the European Go Centre which is a rather odd place. It's stuck in the middle of a residential area and is full of poky little rooms and a bar - if you ever have the pleasure to go there, don't get the tea unless you like it lukewarm (me, I prefer it to scald a bit on the way down as I seemingly posses a teflon coated gullet). Apparently, this game, Go, has enough of a following to warrant its own headquarters (I bet they are in Holland for tax reasons ha ha ha) and is some complicated pastime of Chinese origin. I can imagine the Stereotypical-Chinese-Guy we met in Hong Kong playing it in the evening with his chums after a long day convincing all his clients that he really is the cutest old Chinese tailor on the planet. I don't know the rules and will probably never bother learning them, so if you're interested, take a look.

What's next in my career as a Scrabble player?
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Well, to get an official ranking I need to play in another tournament and then keep playing in order for my ranking to go up (or down as the case will probably be). I'll definitely play again if the tournament is in Holland although I'm not sure if I could be persuaded to travel to the UK yet...but who knows. I've mastered all the accepted two letter words so now I'll move onto the threes. My gawd, there's LOADS of them...

* For non Scrabblers, this means the letters you can add to the beginning or end of a word to make a new word. See, the gems of wisdom you learn from me. Keep that one in the mushy folds of your cortex for retrieval at dinner parties.