Wednesday
==========

...The forums started on Monday morning and all went smoothly. The venue is huge. Our 'office' is located near the press room which is at least a 10 minute walk and 3 floors away from the rooms were the sessions take place. Consequently, I have walked miles and miles. In fact, on Tuesday, I woke up feeling like I had run a marathon. Monday went well. We made some films, got the press releases out and did general meeting-y things.

The place where the meeting is being held is built above what is reported to be the biggest underground mall in Asia. Once the day was over, we decided to hit the mall to buy a microphone for the camera because the one that I bought for it did not fit. arrgrh. Of course, in a mall that big, finding anything is a nightmare and we didn't manage to get one. We realised that the 'welcome dinner' had started and we hurried back. I was expecting the dinner to be some sort of buffet affair but no, it was a three course sit-down dinner for 500 people. Wow. I have never seen so many tables in my life. Amazingly, the entire thing took only just over an hour and the food was great. They tried to split us up stick us randomly on a table somewhere but we found an empty table right at the end of the hall and commandeered it.

Wot no hangover?
----------------

The organisers had nicely placed about 10 bottles of traditional Korean booze, mainly rice wine, on our table, with little cards explaining what they were and where they come from etc. One of them guaranteed no hangover. Unfortunately, although it tasted pretty good, it smelled so bad that it was rather unpleasant to drink (the reason why you don't get a hangover is because drinking it isn't much fun)! There was some pretty cool entertainment in the way of loads of girls playing traditional harps while a DJ played together with a beat box boy and the breakdance world champion team performed.

All of a sudden, I realised the hall was empty and the only people left guzzling the free booze were of course, me and my colleagues. Surprise, surprise. None of us were really sure whether we should take the bottles home...so we did anyway. We sat and had some more drinks in the hotel and then Philip decided to finish one of the bottles of the stolen-booze. Unfortunately for him, as he realised the next morning, it wasn't the anti-hangover version.

Tuesday
=======

The actual ministerial meeting started today. Protesters lined the hotel. There seemed to be two protests going on and the protesters were intermingled and shouting about the president of S. Korea being a dictator and about stopping beef imports from the US. Koreans eat a lot of beef. The police lined up three people deep around them so they were pretty much hidden from view. After a hard days work I decided to venture over the road to the visit buddha in the Bonguensa temple I can see from my window. I thought it would be nice to get some fresh air too, but I soon changed my mind when I tried to breathe in the thick, wet air. The temple was really nice, and felt like it was a million miles away from the noise and mayhem on the street only a few meters away. I wandered around a bit and then headed into the city.

My dinner is moving!
=================

So, I randomly picked a place to go, which turned out to be Itaewon and was full of hookers and expats, KFCs and Pizza-sluts, and got us there on the subway, only taking the train in the wrong direction once. Hurrah! The subway system is HUGE. The trains are LOOOOONG. It's really CHEAP! But the last trains go around midnight, which is not very handy.

Random fact: the subway stations have a cabinet containing torches and smoke hoods incase of EARTHQUAKE!

We tried to find some Korean food and a young boy and his girlfriend stopped to help us when they saw us with a map and pointed us in the direction of some Japanese restaurants (after telling us he'd leave his girlfriend here and drive us to a good barbeque restaurant...er, no thanks). We ate at a tiny Japanese place and the food was amazing, except the raw abalone which is the most bizarre and disgusting thing I have ever tasted and should be banned, or at least force fed to evil people. Talking of bizarre, take a look at this video...



Yes, I ate it, and no it wasn't alive. It was wafer thin makerel shavings that were curling up in the heat.

Wednesday
=======

Pishy!
--------

At the "closing lunch" today, the Minister for Communications for Russia sat next to me and we had a random conversation about Cuba and not understanding the language of the "youth of today". Very bizarre. Blaise told me he'd seen him on TV a few times. I had a sign on the table that said "fish" so that the waiters would know not to serve me any meat. A plate full of shrimp was placed in front of me. Yummy, I thought, until a boy whisked it away from me, gave it to Blaise (after I'd half poked around at it and squeezed lemon on it) and then gave me two huge crab legs instead (squeal, GET THOSE LEGGIES AWAY FROM ME!), pointing to the sign and saying "Pishy!". He did the same thing with the next course, after I had eaten half the bowl of brocolli soup! The wine I consumed made the rest of the day hard bloody work and I was really glad when it was over and went to have a nap. Later that evening we realised that Koreans are not really night-owls when we tried to get some dinner at 21:00 and found it pretty hard to find anywhere open. Went to the sky bar for a few more drinks and found that someone had flown in my little guppie fish as a surprise.


Thursday
========

For the first time ever, I slept through an alarm and didn't get out of bed until almost 2pm, screwing up my body clock good and proper. I had had a vague idea to go and visit the DMZ between S. Korea and N. Korea, which is 50km away, but realised that my concept of distance and my estimation of the time it takes to travel distances is way to warped to consider anything so foolish! I decided to make my way to Insadong. I spent about 10 hours out and about and I saw less than five other westerners, which surprised me because I thought there were lots of Americans here. I am not sure whether Koreans are friendly or not...they just seem indifferent to me. A tiny old man wanted to help me when he saw me looking at my map on the subway, asking where I was from, but the lady in the cafe I went to for dinner did not seem very pleased that was there at all.

Tea for one please, I'm so Rooooonery
-------------------------------
I wandered around Insadong and bought useless crap as I do (handmade paper...yes, like that's really useful) and then found myself a tiny traditional tea house, where the lady barked "TEA HOUSE TEA HOUSE" at me when I walked in, and where I sat for about 45 minutes and drank jasmine tea. It was lovely, and quiet and very, very relaxing. I ate funny tubes of rice with sesame seeds and a distinct bubble gum flavour.

I am obsessed by smells (and toilets, but not smelly toilets) and I'd been wondering what the ever-so-slighty floral smell with an underlying hint of disinfectant was every time I was near a Korean person and realised, when I went to the toilet in the tea house, that everyone must use exactly the same soap. Seoul does not have the same intensity of smells as Hong Kong. Restaurants generally smell spicy and there is the odd waft of stinky drain, but other than that, the smells are quite pleasant.

9000 km From Home

Rum, glorious rum
---------------
After a hectic day running from one side of Amsterdam to the other, I made it to the airport. There was a very scary moment when the girl at the check in desk asked me if I had a visa. Visa?! What F-ing VISA? Fortunately, I didn't need one and she released me from her evil clutches and I was on my way. I had about 20 minutes before I had to get on the plane, so I went to the lounge to stock up on free rum and cokes. I poured myself a triple Bacardi from the optic (nerves, you see), whooshed in a dash of coke and started slurping it there and then as I scuttled around the bar, grabbing handfuls of whatever snack was on offer. The man-in-a-suit standing next to me looked at me like I'd just slaughtered an entire litter of cute, fluffy puppies with a sharpened paperclip. So I slunk off with my booze to a quiet corner, gulping it down as quickly as I could before running off to the plane.

Flip-flops
--------
The flight was long and boring, and uneventful. There wasn't even any turbulence which would have at least provoked people to look around the cabin worriedly and grip their armrests etc etc. The most exciting thing that happened was getting given KLM branded flip-flops to shuffle to the toilet in. I must have been really, really tired (or completely drunk) because, for the first time ever, I managed to sleep for a couple of hours. I filled in my "customs declaration" card and was surprised to see that it's illegal to bring diet pills into the country. Not that I have any of course, but I just thought it was a funny thing to explicitly state. And, since Koreans are, on the whole, a nation of whispy-thin people, either the whole country is shovelling down illegal diet pills on a regular basis or the pills have been made illegal to stop the already whispy-thin people from becoming even whispier and thinner and falling down the slits in the drains on the street, which would be very dangerous.

In quarantine
----------
We arrived at Seoul's airport and I made the fatal error of going to to the toilets as soon as I got off the plane. Fatal because I was one of the first off the plane and by the time I'd finished taking pictures of the funny signs in the toilets and marvelling at the rotating plastic covered toilet seat, the entire plane had unloaded and there were 400 people in front of me at the immigration queue. As we got off the plane, we had to walk past a desk that had two bored girls laughing at their mobile phones behind it. There was a big sign saying "Quarantine" and a video camera pointed into the crowd, which I guess they use to spot ill and sickly people. I thought that everyone looked ill and sickly when they got off a 10 hour flight, so I hope they have highly trained spotters who can tell if you have bird flu from a grainy video picture. You've no idea how hard it was to resist falling to the floor in front of the camera and start frothing at the mouth.

Spoke me fleeeunt Kroean
---------------------
By the time I got to pick up my bag, the poor thing had been getting dizzy and lonely on the carousel for almost an hour. The customs officers eyed me suspiciously but I guess that as I don't look anorexic, they decided that I probably wasn't bringing in a consignment of contraband diet pills. Out in the open, I spied the big cheese in the distance renting a Korean mobile phone. Our GSM phones don't work here. Of course, even though I knew this, I was in denial about it until I got here and saw those horrible words ("no network coverage"). So, I rented myself a phone. It is a singing, dancing, beeping, annoying thing with way too much functionality, although it does have a very satisfying sliding mechanism that is nice to click open and shut and which has been entertaining me in moments of jet-lag-weaknesses (metamorphose into coma patient). Handily, the phone's language was set to Korean. I had to ask someone from the hotel to change it into English for me.

This time next year, we'll be millionaires
---------------------------------
I queued up to use the scary looking, highly advanced ATM and very worredly chose to remove 100,000 Won, which I had calculated to be around 60 Euros by using the little cheat-sheet (i.e. how to convert Wons to Euros and Dollars simplified so that a three year old with a bad case of stupid-itis could make the calculation) that Vee very patiently made for me. I probably should have got more, but removing something with that many zeros on the end of it from my bank account makes me feel queasy. Anyway, so far so good. The machine spat my card out. There I stood waiting for my money. Nothing. Panic. PANIC. The screen was displaying a message in Korean and two buttons were blinking. I pressed one. The receipt came out and I deciphered that I had just removed 100,000 WON from my account. I turned round to the man behind me, who was Korean and couldn't speak English, while 25 jetlagged and impatient people behind him twitched and stared at me like I'd not only just slaughtered an entire litter of cute, fluffy puppies with a sharpened paperclip, but that, to add insult to injury, I was wearing their bloodied fur as skirt.

I flapped my hands about in a 'why/help/what' sort of way. He said something, which of course I couldn't understand, but which could have been 'HA! Now you know how I feel when I try to read your stupid language'. Then, just as I was about to run off (to do what, I really don't know), a little compartment on top of the machine opened and there was a huge pile of notes, ready and waiting to be stuffed into my wallet. I'd mastered the Korean ATM. I was FREEEEEEE!

Zeeee Chermans!
--------------
We took a bus from the airport to the hotel. It took well over an hour. There are mountains in the background and everything is very green. The atmosphere is slightly hazy but it is not smoggy. There are lots of SUVs on the roads, which are 8 lanes wide, and most of them have these funky little 'help-you-to -reverse' mirrors on the back window. In my part of town, the skyscrapers are interspersed with what look like traditional buildings and there is a temple right opposite the hotel (which, for some reason has a very big gong, that someone took great delight in smacking continuously for 20 minutes at five o'clock this morning. GRRR). There was a very annoying German man at the back of the bus who was talking very loudly. About five minutes into the journey he fell asleep and promptly started snoring like a wild boar with a blocked nose, which, together with sleep-deprivation-hysteria prompted me to start cackling like a crow on a bad hair day.

I. Have. Arrived
------------
The hotel is truly huge, full of marble, and rich people. Koreans are very well dressed. I have yet to see a scruffy local, which makes me look and feel like a complete slob, even in my posh, best, trying-to-look-like-a-corporate-whore clothes. I am on the 27th floor with a great view over the city. As per usual, I entered my room and my bag exploded. Not literally you understand, although it would be cool to have some sort of explosive baggage. Unpacking would be revolutionised! Within five minutes the place was covered in stuff, I'd made coffee which I had promptly spilled coffee all over the bathroom and I'd blocked the toilet. Er, yes. Korean toilets are not designed to take large amounts of toilet paper. Or small amounts of toilet paper. Mental note: two sheets at most. There I was, marvelling at the difference in design of toilets around the world (yes, it's a bit of an obsession of mine) and thinking how low to the ground this one was, and how small the actual hole in the seat is, and had a very funny vision of a very, very fat person trying to sit on it and suddenly, I realised that the water was almost overflowing. CRAP. The toilet paper (which, incase you are interested, contained nothing more than the coffee that I had spilt) was totally stuck. SHIT. I looked around for a poking device and the only thing I could think to use was a coat hanger. That's right. I unblocked the toilet with a coat hanger. Just call me the queen of solutions. Mental note: don't use that coat hanger.

By about 16:00 on Sunday, I was pretty much ready to sink into bed, or fall asleep in the chair/bath/on the floor but knew I had to stay awake as I had a meeting at 18:00. I amused myself for two minutes by trying to take a picture of myself in the floor to ceiling window with the cityscape behind me, but only succeeded in taking pictures of the sky and making myself look like I a) had 16 chins and b) was about to be attacked by a rabid dog. So I gave up and took a shower. The bathrooms are made for midgets. I am pretty small but I could almost see over the walls and door of the shower. The bathroom is huge, and there's plenty of room for what we would call a full size bath but here, there is a piddly little thing that you can just about sit in. I did battle with the Internet connection for a while and then went to meet with all the other stooges. We then went off to eat sushi...

...Right, that's enough for now. I have to go to a press conference now and schmooze with the other paps! The jetlag has hit us all like a brick wall at high speed and no amount of the crappy stuff they call coffee is helping, so I will also go on the hunt for something that actually contains caffeine. Wait excitedly for the next installment. Or, er, don't...

Friends, it's been many days since I updated this blog because I have simply not had a single moment's break. Yes, blame my boss, he works me like a dog eheheh ;)

Sponge Suuuuz Square Pants
------------------------------------------

Because my brain is a bit like a sponge (it absorbs loads, but when you squeeze it, everything drips out as rapidly as it got sucked up), I tend to write random things down in a notebook so I don't forget them and so I can write about them later. Totally off track and besides the point, I've also discovered that writing random things in the aforementioned notebook whilst eating a meal in a restaurant is a cunning trick to get free drinks/excellent service (or, depending on where you are, spit in your food). Anyway, I left my notebook at home so had to improvise all week by furiously scribbling on a napkin. Disaster struck last night, when I Iost my scribble-filled bit of mouth-wiping rag en route from the hotel reception to my room. Sigh. So, the following entries may be a little bit patchy.

Tuesday
==========
After a hard day's slog, I met up with a few people and went for dinner before the evening's social at the Sky Bar. We ended up at a fantastic Italian place, which was, incidently, located right next door to a botox shop. How random!


The lovely old Italian waiter convinced me that I must have the dish of the day, Sole, and very kindly said "You no, worry, I prepare it all nice for you!". This was after he had listened to my list of questions: "Does it have bones?"... er yes, you fool, it's a F-ing fish! "Does it come with it's poor little head with it's poor little dead eyes stating at me and its tail and fins and all other bits that make it actually look like an animal instead of a lump of flesh?" Cue: horrified look from the waiter. Embarrassed looks and shuffling noises from colleagues.

Cheese pride
------------------
So, I ordered the Sole and was very pleased when it arrived on my plate completely de-boned, de-headed, de-tailed and ready for me to eat. I couldn't make up my mind about desert because there was an ENTIRE LIST OF CHEESE as well as some tasty Italian sweet delights, so I struck a deal with Chris and we decided to share tiramisu and baked feta. The waiter almost had a heart attack there and then when I ordered cheese for desert. He realised that I was not quite normal when he arrived back to the table and found out that I'd been entertaining everyone with my "dead napkin-chicken" party trick...


Nipple-tastic
-----------------
Off we went to the evening's Social which took place on the 20th floor of some office block. The view was amazing (photo from Ruben!)


The sponsor had hired four anorexic girls to walk around naked and painted in the company's corporate logos. Tasteful. The bar was boiling hot, probably because they had to ensure that the naked girls did not catch pneumonia. These girls duly posed with the geeks/freaks/semi-normals (huhuhhuh and me) and otherwise spent the evening looking totally bored and smoking cigarette after cigarette.


The DJ was playing uber-cool tunes which didn't go down very well with the audience, until he started to play Nevermind, by Nirvana. Then everyone realised that it was some crappy remix and slunk off the dancefloor. Then the DJ realised what he was dealing with and played the real version, which prompted mass hysteria and screams of utter delight from everyone. The dance floor was packed, hair was flying, and there was the unmistakable smell of happy, sweaty, dancing geek.

Wednesday
=========

Release ME
-----------------
I finally got out of the hotel for an hour on Wednesday morning. The weather was beautiful. Look at the colour of the sky! This was the view from my bedroom window. Sorry about the angle on this photo but the bloody suicide prevention windows are really bad for photo taking purposes.


Berlin feels wide and spacious and very relaxed. When you live in Amsterdam, it's amazing to see how used to the cramped and confined-ness of it all you become. Berlin feels like a different planet compared to Cloggie Land. German people are very friendly and genuinely interested in where you come from and what you're doing here. I wandered around for a while, ducked into a few shops and then had to get back to work way sooner than I wanted to. As I walked back to the hotel, I noticed that the sign on the side of the hotel was a bit broken and, instead of "Hotel Palace", read "Hot Palace". huh huh huhuh huh. I had about half an hour spare later in the evening so I legged it to the Hotel Spa to get in the sauna. Imagine my annoyance when I found the sauna locked. So I had to settle for the whirlpool which was attached to the pool and freezing. Stayed for about three minutes until I had to get in the shower to warm myself up. Gnurgh.

Burn baby burn
---------------------
Wednesday night's offering was a BBQ/Cocktail party which went down rather nicely, although it was a bit annoying to be shoved into a dark sweaty club by 22:00 because we were making too much noise in the garden. Geeks + steak + mojitos = noise. There was much joy and frivolity on the dancefloor as per usual. As seems to now be a bit of a tradition, the dancefloor exploded into a sweaty heaving mass when Nirvana was played. When the party was over, we walked back to the hotel and found some of the hardcore boozers propping up the hotel bar. It was only polite to stay and have a few more drinks with them and so that's what I did. I offended a random Belgian attendee by telling him what I always tell Belgians, which is not actually very complementary at all and involves the words most and famous and person and is and Marc and Dutroux. Huhuhuh.

Thursday
======

Attack of the Paps
------------------------

The day came and went and I cant remember what happened. Thursday night is Dinner night, which is basically a posh party that costs a lot of money and is generally pretty un-atmospheric or exciting etc. The dinner took place in an old chalk factory which was pretty cool architecturally and many of the ladies had put on posh dresses. Most of the geeks hadn't showered since Tuesday. The geeks seem to be really into cameras, and the bigger their toys are the more proudly they show them off. All of the ladies at these events know that they are going to pretty much spend every evening being stared at through a telescopic lens. I think I almost had an epileptic fit from the flashes going off (and I don't even have epilepsy). So, to prevent utter boredom from creeping in, I decided to take pictures of every geek taking pictures of me. Kept me busy for a few hours, until the novelty wore off.




Die, Bert, die ['tis not "Die, bert, die", but "The, Bert, the in German"].
------------------------------------------------------
I set off in search of more entertainment which was pretty hard to find. Olaf has a Bert doll which he takes everywhere he goes and photographs it in various positions. No one seems to find it strange that a man who's over 40 has a doll that he takes everywhere with him. In fact, the geeks love it and there's generally a presentation filled with Bert pictures in the last session of the week. A very, very, very strange American guy (from here on known as Freaky Yank (FY) ) who had infiltrated our table decided to kidnap Bert. They're so funny, these guys. Anyway, Olaf called the FY an "Annoying bastard" and strode off. He came back an our or so later and asked me, "Has the annoying bastard gone". "Well, you're back now," I said without a moment's hesitation. Olaf looked at me deadpan and walked away. Adrian, who by this time was totally drunk, was almost wetting himself with laughter and kept saying, "I've never seen one of your jokes go down so badly in my life." HAHAAH. Meanwhile, the FY really WAS kidnapping Bert and sent a ransom e-mail the next day.

Look at my telephone
-----------------
So most of these attendees cannot have any kind of conversation with anyone, unless its about something geeky. In fact, I really think that many of them try as hard as possible to try to confuse the person they are talking to as some sort of my-brain-is-more-full-of-boring-technial-crap-than-yours test, a sort of mental 'dance off' with technical terminology. YAWN. I got stuck next to someone who got out some sort of phone that opens up and looks like a mini computer, who then proceeded to tell me, whilst looking mortified, that he left his model E3234242 BHW 4445552345 UTHHH7777777 RTRTTT444444444444 PZW somewhere and has had to resort to using the old model E3234242 BHW 4445552345 UTHHH7777777 RTRTTT444444444444 PZY instead. ARRRRGH. Like I care?

It wasn't me
-------------------
There was a measly sum of people dancing on the dance floor, and after while most people were outside in the courtyard because it was a warm night. I was wearing a white top and, being the clumsiest person in the world, I spent the whole evening being uber careful and trying not to spill anything on myself, a quest I completed, to my own complete and utter shock. Miguel, however, did not have such a lucky escape when Adrian smacked my elbow and sent my red wine flying all over Miguel's posh white shirt. I was mortified because no one saw what happened and of course, I have a reputation where it comes to spilling things that are red on things that are white.

Hurry, hurry bring us cocktails
------------------------
Once the party was over, we decided to go to a nearby club, until we found out that it was a hardcore techno club and so we ended up in a posh cocktail bar instead, where I had the biggest tequila sunrise I've ever seen. Unfortunately there was more sunrise than tequila which was rather annoying but, as it was 3am, I didn't actually care that much.


We decided enough was enough and went back to the hotel in a taxi that had two tiny seats in the back. Of course, I had to sit in the back and thought that it was highly amusing to pretend to be a dog. No one else thought it was that funny though. As I wandered down corridor after corridor to find my room, I came across the funniest thing I'd seen all day and was upset that there was no one there to share in the hilarity with me. Someone had left a table smack bang in the middle of the corridor. I was laughing to hard I actually had to sit down on the floor to stop the pain. Poor lonely random table!

Berlin Bound

Yeeehaaaw. It's Berlin this time folks!

Sunday, 4 May
=========
Aye-oh, let's go
-------------
We arrived en masse at the hotel about 17:00, which is right next to the Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm Memorial Church and got straight to work as per usual, packing meeting packs, sticking signs up and familiarising ourselves with the meeting room layout. The usual pony-tailed/bearded/be-sandled suspects were already milling about the reception, laptops under arms, waiting for their buddies to descend.


Welcome to the Hotel Pa-aaalace
---------------------------
The hotel has had a huge new wing built onto one side of it, and some idiot architect neglected to add any lifts to the new part. So, you end up wandering around in circles and squares and bloody octagons down thousands of corridors that all look suspiciously similar. Every time I try to find my room I get the song "Hotel California" in my head, specifically that line "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave...". With every corner I turn, I keep expecting to see that scary kid from The Shining cycling down the corridor on his tricycle.

Wo ist mein kase schnitzel bitte?
-------------------------
By about 19:30, I was deliriously, and annoyingly, hungry and muttering to myself about finding a kase schnitzel and scoffing more kartoffelen than most of Ireland in a whole year. There was a huge group of people going off to some grill house, so a few of us formed a break-away republic, split from the mainland and slunk off to a good old fashioned CHERMAN restaurant. I was desperate for cheese schnitzel; fried cheese, baked cheese, sorteed cheese, raw cheese, old cheese, any kind of bloody cheese actually, but I was out of luck. The only cheesiness on the menu was deep-fried camenbert (bleeeurgh! Tastes like old socks after a hard day's shopping) but, as I was desperate, I even ate some of that. I ordered cold, pickled, fried herring which arrived on the table, headless but with a tail which I swiftly removed from my sight and then felt instantly better, and smothered in fried potatoes. Mmmmmm. I washed down this fine CHERMAN cuisine with a massive tankard of fine CHERMAN Warsteiner beer.

Bitte Bitte Bitte ( I just like saying it)
-----------------------------
Everyone seemed to be a bit knackered after this huge chew-fest and so we ended up back in the hotel bar. When we found out that a beer cost almost 6 Euros, we quickly legged it next door to the Irish bar, which was full of drunken old, red faced CHERMANS dancing to the cheesy tunes the live band, which had a collective age of about 890, were playing. We bumped into Franz and Erik, the geeklings, in there. The ceiling was mirrored and the boys discovered that you could see down the ladies' tops by staring at the ceiling. Ah. Those boys.

Rubbery jubberly
--------------
We all trotted off to bed an hour or so later. I thought about checking my e-mail, but when I saw that one a one hour connection costs a whoppingly shocking EUR 10 per hour, I thought better of it and watched the measly depression a.k.a news on BBC world. My bed is huge. MASSIVE. Imagine my disappointment when I excitedly dived in and found that there is a bloody sweaty rubber sheet on the mattress! I mean what's that all about? However, since my enormous bed has two enormous duvets, I broke all rules of hotel protocol and shoved one between me and the mattress. The nest was prepared in one small corner of the bed. I still slept like crap though because the room was like a sauna. The thermostat read 26.5 degrees this morning and no matter how long I keep the airco on, or how long I leave the window open, it doesn't get any cooler. I reckon that it's a cunningly cunning ploy from the hotel to make you excessively warm, and therefore excessively thirsty, and therefore excessively stupid enough to pay an excessively ridiculous price, such as 5 euros, for a 200ml bottle of water from the excessively overpriced and understocked mini bar.

Monday, 5 May
======
The meeting started today and I seem to have been so busy I can't actually remember what I did, all I know was that I didn't stop until I got to the Hippo House in the Berlin Zoo at about 19:00. More about that later.

Jabber-itch syndrome
------------------
Today I was monitoring Jabber during one of the sessions. For those who don't know, this enables people to participate in the event, by using chatrooms, if they cannot actually get to the venue. They type their question, the Jabber monitor gets up and reads it out to the presenter. We broadcast all the sessions live on the Internet. The seat for the person monitoring the Jabber is located right next to one of the microphones. When someone in the room wants to make a comment, they stand up at a microphone and the cameras zoom in on him...or very rarely her...or sometimes a him/her he/she hybrid... but that's pretty unusual.... What this means is that the person monitoring Jabber is smack bang in the line of camera fire. Why is it that I get an uncontrollable urge to pull stupid faces/readjust my underwear/pull out my eyelashes one by one etc. whenever someone is standing at the microphone and being broadcast live over the Internet? On this day, horror of all HORRORS, I suddenly developed an uncontrollable itch and ended up scratching like a dog with a bad case fleas. Once the itch on my shoulder stopped, it started again on my knee, or my foot, or my back. Argh, I think I need help. Or at least some itch-relief.

Hungry Hippos
------------
So after a full day, we legged it off, late, to the evening's social at the hippo house in the Berlin Zoo. Yes. You read correctly this time and the time before: those crazy CHERMANS organised a partaaay in the zoo. Hippos are cool. I want one. I don't care if they weigh 3 tonnes and could bite me in half with one lazy chomp; they are SO CUTE with their little ears and their big hairy noses. I want one. He could live on my balcony. Oh, if only he'd fit on it. The keepers threw the Hippos slices of bread and shot water cannons at them for their dinner. I never knew hippos liked bread. I mean it's not really the sort of thing they find out in the wild is it? So after all the hippo-ey excitement, I realised what a bizarre situation it was: there we were glugging fine wine and CHERMAN beer and scoffing posh snacks, while some girl played lift music on a piano in the corner, while behind 20 cm thick glass, 6 hippos were providing 300 geeks, er and me, with entertainment. Poor hippo-tjes :(.



Knut-ter
--------
Then someone said, "Did you see Knut?" Knut was the little polar bear that was rejected by his mother when he was born and hand-reared by the zoo keepers. He caused mass hysteria in CHERMANY, mainly because there's not much else going on here, but also because some militant animal activists sent him death threats and said that he should be murdered because, in the wild, he'd die anyway. After seeing that poor bear in his enclosure, so desperately miserable, I am inclined to agree with them. The poor little bear, who is actually not very little anymore, just wanted some company. At one point he put his head on his giant paws and looked at us with such a look of complete and utter forlorn-ness that I wanted to cry.




LGS + CCCC
-----------
We decided to go and get some food, but there is always the LGS (large group syndrome) problem and the CCCC (coveted company credit card) problem when you travel with work. The former refers to the annoyingly arduous and complex task of trying to do anything or go anywhere in a group of more than about 6 people. The latter refers to the fact that everyone tries to huddle close to the colleague who is in possession of a CCCC. This means that you don't have to fill in a bothersome expense claim form when you get home. Hurrrah. Anyway, after much to-ing and fro-ing, and hushed whispering, and raised eyebrows, and head jerks, and hiding around corners and in bushes, another small breakaway republic was formed and we went to get some food. Ok, so I lied about the hiding in bushes and around corners bit, but you get the idea.

Sake-tastic
---------
We decided on Japanese food. I was a bit worried about this, since the $Sushi_Incident_TM (when I had a bit of a nightmare with sushi being ejected, almost whole, from my stomach rather rapidly and violently a few months ago). But, when we got there, I was relieved to see that it was a Teppanyaki restaurant, which was a good thing in general, but I forgot how bloody long it takes. It was 22:00 when we arrived there, and after an hour or so of faffing and knife-chucking-about, we finally got to eat.

Suse offends the entire country of Japan with one small chopstick
---------------------------------------------------
It was hot in the restaurant and my hair was annoying me, so I took a spare chopstick and wound up my hair in it out of the way. A few moments later, a waiter ran up to me and told me to take it out, like, NOW. I was a bit startled and said, sorry, I wasn't going to use it to eat. He repeated himself and then said, "This is a JAPANESE restaurant..." ...um, like I didn't know? "Das Macht NIET" (excuse lousy CHERMAN spelling, I just wrote "dat mag niet" in Dutch with what I think is a CHERMAN inflection). Yikes. I thought he was going to samurai-sword me into tiny bits and elaborately fry me on the hotplate there and then, or at least poke me in the eye with a sharpened chopstick. So I duly removed the offending chopstick from my hair and rethought my trip to Tokyo next month. Then I remembered something I read about never leaving your chopsticks sticking up vertically in a bowl of rice because it resembles something that the Japanese do for dead relatives. CRAP. I've managed to insult everyone in the restaurant within the first two minutes of entering. Nice one. Then I thought, hold on hold on, my chopstick was horizontal in my hair and I am pretty sure that my head does not look anything like a bowl of rice. Hmmm.

Hermaphrodite bear
----------------
Halfway through the meal, which I must say, was pretty amazing, I noticed the scariest statue of a bear I have ever seen. There are statues of bears everywhere in Berlin but this one was the weirdest thing I have ever seen. It was twice as tall as me and was wearing a sombrero, which is pretty weird to start with. It's face was all lop-sided and twisted in some sort of agony, like some naughty little boy had just shoved a burning firework up its rear-end or something. As if this wasn't enough, I noticed that this bear had some boobs. Aha! A LADY bear. Then I looked further down and realised, WHOA, THAT AIN'T NO LADY BEAR! So, there was a bizarre statue of a giant hermaphrodite bear, wearing a sombrero, watching over me while I munched on my noodles. How bizarre.





Sky-high geeks
-------------
So, I've just arrived home after the Sky-high party, which was, er, high in the sky, and have caught up on the last two day's worth of blog material. Tuesday passed without much excitement, unless you count the moment where one of les fromages grandes got very angry with someone in the audience who tried to interrupt him and shouted very loudly down the microphone. Magic. Ah. How exciting these meetings are :). More tomorrow. I'm off to the rubber nest now...

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
========================

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.