Words of Silence...

Two days down...
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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!
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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
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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!
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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
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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!
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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?