Toilets, South Africans and green shots.

It seems like quite a while since my last missive. I have been a busy girl, which is always a good thing as we all know that the devil makes wine for idle hands.
The last few weeks have seen me trying to get approval for Madonna promotions, F1 sponsorship madness, putting together a new direct marketing strategy with a woman so dim it’s a wonder she remembers to breathe, as well as trying to initiate a new project involving a Vodafone product from South Africa. Of course I have not thought at all about the possibility of a business trip to Cape Town. No not once. I was also not at all swayed by the 6ft4 vision of lovely rugbyness that came to present to us. Do they all look like that in SA? I thought it was only on the telly and that the SA rugby team had been genetically modified. It’s the first bloke I have seen in months who doesn’t look like he’s been dipped in a bucket of pubic hair. Anyway I was disappointed to note that, when he used his wife’s ID to log onto an account and show us the product, that she was born in 1984. Biatch. It won’t last you know.

I also had some visitors. Pavel Jirat, who flew in from Kuwait, joined by Pavel Zingle and Petra from CZ. Pirat (as we call him) has been living in a dry state for a couple of years now meaning that there is NO alcohol. Not in hotels, not anywhere. And as Czechs drink more beer per head of capita than anyone else in the world, you can imagine that he had quite some catching up to do when he got here. His attempts at smuggling medical grade ether from the local hospital and mixing it with pineapple juice resulted in near blindness. Now he adds yeast to grapejuice and has made a variety of of different wines including a Kuwingon Blanc. He insists I come to visit but I am worried that the Nurofen will cost more than my flight.

So Thursday night appeared to be a race for the Czechs to cram as many pints, shots and Lord knows what else down their throats before closing time. I realised when I was up against forces greater than myself when they started dropping unidentifiable green shots into their pints of beer and necking them in one. I eschewed the shots and bowed out gracefully at about 11 by switching to tea.

The next morning, while they all were unconcious, I tiptoed to work, looking slightly worse for wear, because I had a very important meeting. A few minutes before it was due to start I went to the ladies only to break the lock and find myself trapped in the cubicle with no means of escape. Eventually the cleaning lady came who spoke absolutely no English whatsoever. Note to self, learn how to say ‘help’ in Turkish. So there I sat for quite a while longer until an English speaking colleague happened upon my predicament. She called security who tried brute force, then they called the handiman who started to dismantle the lock only to find that he didn’t have the right tools. Meanwhile the very important meeting that I dragged my sorry ass in for looked in danger of being cancelled due to my non attendance. I suggested, via a messenger, that my boss slide the presentation under the door so we could discuss the project on conference call, but he was too busy pissing himself laughing to consider it seriously. The worst thing was that I was trapped in there for so long that I started to need the loo again but was unable to go, oh irony, because I was afraid they might bust the door open at any moment and a small crowd had gathered to point and stare at the locked toilet door.

By Friday evening, after all that excitement, my guests and I were all too tired to do anything. We went for a nice meal with my boss and his wife, although I barely ate because they forgot my order. I realised that my czech is not as bad as I supposed and actually managed to grasp the nuances of the conversation most of the time. On Saturday we went to the grand bazaar and then to a BBQ at a friends house where we drank very expensive 25 year old rum. And Sunday, after they had all gone I went for a short 10km run, despite buying new fancy trainers to counteract my knee problem and running on the flat, it still started to hurt, will try yoga this week and see if I can cure it.

Next weekend I am off on a trip to Assos, a quaint little Turkish town by the sea with an Aussie, a German, a Frenchman and a Turkish mountain dog called Gin. I am very excited by the prospect.