28.9.06

Little Black Bag, Where are You?

I left Basel at 4:30 AM yesterday. What started out as a 6 hour trip turned into a 12 hour journey (damn you Amsterdam). I missed my meeting and had to reschedule 40 highly stressed and overloaded people for later in the day. I ended up at a different airport than intended, spent 100 pounds on a taxi ride through the English countryside and showed up 30 minutes before the newly rescheduled meeting flustered and sans suitcase, which had been launched into the abyss. KLM somehow sent the bag to Geneva, then couldn't figure out what to do with it when I changed my flight plans.

Despite the whole bloody fiasco (I'm learning Brit english), the presentation went well and I got a lot of satisifaction out of seeing a completely frazzled group of people look visibly more relaxed and motivated after the session. Today's presentation also went well.. I strategically called the biggest heckler last night and let him vent for an hour so he was well behaved in the session today, which kept the others from getting worked up. Tomorrow is the one that I worry about the most but we'll see. All my supporters have abandoned ship.. no one wants to come in as reinforcement so I'm on my own.

On a side note, England and Scotland are cool. I stayed with a coworker in Manchester last night in their cute row house. It felt a lot like home - similar style to the houses in Washington, Philly or Boston. We had a great dinner at a pub and many laughs - she is French and her fiance is Irish, so we were sharing expat and cross-nationality relationship stories. Maybe I can talk M. into living in the UK. :)

Anyhow, I'm dead tired but the end is in so sight. I can't wait to show my parents around Munich and see Vienna with them. A break from the pressure cooker will be good too!

Posted from Glasgow

4 comments:

J said...

I'm also in need of a break and am heading to Spain in about 6 hours.

Berlinbound said...

Your post was exhausting!

I hope this finds you in the midst of a very relaxing weekend with your parents in Munchenland ...

Unknown said...

what an exhausting journey! Sounds like English and Ireland is so beautiful... I so want to go there and keep nudging my half Irish husband about that too!

christina said...

Blimey! What a trip! But you mastered everything beautifully and lived to tell us all about it.
I haven't been to England for ages and would LOVE to see Ireland some day.