Perils of online translation

This is brilliant. Obviously the owner used an online translator to work out a name for the restaurant - unfortunately assumed the error message that was returned was not an error...

Terrific.

Woo for the internets

I've finally got around to buying a domain name - rather wish I'd done it years ago but there you go, every day's a school day, isn't it? So I've gone and bought my first name last name dot co dot NZ, and currently there's nothing of any real worth there but just owning it is immensely satisfying. I've just got dot net as well, and am considering going to the arse who's parked surname dot co dot NZ and seeing how much they're going to charge me for it. Imagine how cool that email address would be...

Anyway, beyond my absurd geekiness, stuff is definitely good right now, although the Kiwi and I looked through the diary to try to find a spare weekend before we leave, and horrifyingly didn't find ONE weekend we can fit anything else into between now and then. We've got the whole of November free to do moving stuff, but other than that it's pretty much full, which in many ways fills me with dread - apart from anything else it makes it all seem so very close...

On the moving front, things continue to fall into place. HSBC have just added NZD to their supported currencies on their international current account, and the job trail is warming up, I think, as the housing market is cooling down, which is precisely the way I want things to go. It's almost time to start my visa application too...

On that note, my train's just pulling into Cambridge, so off I go to bang my head against the client's wall for another week. What fun.

Houston, we have a sore head

It's the last day of the conference and I'm hiding in the main hall, pretending to be working so that no one will try to talk to me - I'm suffering a bit from what's basically been a three-day bender and am in no fit state to talk retail strategy. It's been a lot of fun though and, despite the lack of sleep, insane heat and the occasional moment when I realised I was completely out of my depth, I'm really glad of the opportunity to do this. I'll be coming home with a sheaf of business cards, a pretty good understanding of how partnering with Microsoft works, and a firm resolution to detox next week.

Naturally, the thing I'm looking forwards to the most is getting back to my London, my flat and my Kiwi, but there's a whole lot of time in between now and then; two flights (including that horrible connection again) and hopefully not too much stress. What I want to do right now though, is just go... to... sleep...

Houston, we have a conference

A bit of a day of firsts for me, yesterday (or at least, the past 36 hours or so, thinking in terms of days is challenging at the moment). Getting into the Virgin Atlantic lounge was one, all lovely and great and all but somehow not quite the land of dreams I'd hoped for. Perhaps, because we only had about 30 minutes in there, I didn't really get the full effect. That said, it was a damn sight better than the alternative, fast track security and free wine and all.

Second on my list was actually flying Virgin, which it sort of surprises me I've not done before for some reason. Although the promised upgrade to Upper Class didn't materialise, I was in Premium Economy, which is better than it sounds. I spent most of the flight in the bar being force-fed red Bordeaux by the barman.

Third was actually being late for a flight. I know how anal this sounds, but this is something I just. don't. do, and haring through Newark airport trying to negotiate the (irritatingly chatty) immigration and customs people, pick my bags up, re-check in, go through security AGAIN (this time with the plebs) and get to the gate isn't really my idea of fun. Travelling's mental enough without that sort of stress, and to top it all we proceeded to spend the next hour on the tarmac. Fortunately, for some reason I was in first class, which meant there was a lovely lady on hand to make sure my wine glass didn't get empty. So much so that I had to pretend to be asleep so she'd stop.

So after all this, we got into Houston at about midnight-ish, which as far as my body was concerned was 0600. Getting a good 6 hours' sleep meant today's been reasonably ok, but I'm not sure how tonight's going to be - a networking cocktail thing followed by a dinner we're hosting for some people or other. I'm currently wearing a pink striped shirt with a frankly enormous collar, which I'm rather enjoying - most Merkins are so excruciatingly dull and conservative with what they wear that I'm standing out as if I was wearing a clown suit.

Fortunately we're taking cabs everywhere. I don't imagine they like pink shirt-wearers here, it's still very much a moustache and cowboy hat sort of place*. Over lunch, I was introduced to the various forms of the contraction 'y'all': 'y'all' refers to one person. 'All y'all' refers to more than one person.  And, dear god, 'y'all's' means 'your'.

Needless to say, my accent has moved into the sort of RP register of which Laurence Olivier would have been proud. I might even start drinking tea.

 

*yes, the irony hasn't gone unnoticed. The Village People are probably seen as 'good hard-workin' decent men, 'cept for that injun' by those who remember them.

Sore head, busy week ahead...

I am physically destroyed. We went to a wedding reception last night, which was brilliant, danced like fools and drank like bigger fools, and wore a lovely new suit which I'd bought the previous week at Ted Baker as part of a horrifying splurge of clothes-buying. Tremendous event it was, both bride and groom looking superb and very happy indeed.

But this morning was a bit of a challenge. In fact, the whole day has been, and I'm a little concerned about the impact this is going to have on the week to come. You see, I found out on Tuesday afternoon that I'm being sent over to Houston (yep, the one in Texas) for a week to attend a conference over there. I'm flying out on Sunday afternoon, back on Friday morning, mental schedule in between and hopefully I won't have to present.

Now, today should be the day on which I print out all the stuff I'll need in order to get onto flights and into hotels etc, and although I'm fairly sure I've done all I need, I'm also acutely aware that I turn into a bit of an idiot whilst hungover so I'm bound to have forgotten something crucial. Ah, well.

So there we are, little me representing my company's retail function to lots of Merkins. It's either going to be REALLY REALLY GREAT or horrible, and I've decided to shoot for the former. If there's interweb access at the Houston Holiday Inn Express (I know), I'll see if I can squeeze out a blog entry or two whilst I'm there. Wish me luck...