Lunch – last day of project

Early in the week the client invited me to have pints at lunch on Friday. Well today is Friday and I was quite looking forward to the pints after two very successful meetings where I discussed my findings from the week. As it turns out, I get quite a lot of work done in my hotel room when Joni isn’t trying to drag me to bars named “the bugle” every five minutes!
So they drove me to this small town called Sutton that is just east of Reading. We stopped at this old british inn that also has a restaurant and pub attached. It is myself and 3 other guys that work for the internal audit group for this client. They were gentlemen and asked me what I wanted to drink first. I tried to get them to surprise me, but they weren’t budging on that one. So I asked for a pint of Kroenenburg. Slowly the director who has taken us all there goes around the table – orange juice, tomato juice, and water were the other three orders. I was certain I was about to be fired. I think I still hear them across the way making fun of my reaction (and we’re back at the office now).
I can’t believe I got bamboozled like that! They distinctly said “pints” for lunch…and it was reiterated this morning. “are you still up for grabbing some pints for lunch?” Luckily one of the guys changed his ordered after he saw how big my eyes were. I’m not quite sure how the exchange worked…because I saw both of the other guys turn to him and then he changed it…I’m not sure if that’s some sort of british version of “not it.”
So all of the excitement this week is centered around the Tour de France starting in London. I should probably look into the logistics of this race, because last time I looked…England was an island of sort that is not connected to France at all. I wouldn’t want to sound silly in a discussion about how they will get from England to France.
The poor chap who lost the game of “not it” mentioned something about a cycling movie that was just made. He said it was about a guy who broke a world biking record with a bike that he made out of washing machine parts. He drew a lot of blank stares from the other brits, so I felt comfortable when I made fun of him once no one said anything in response. It went something like “Did you guys say you let him drink during lunch every Friday?”
He vowed to google the story when he got back to the office. I told him he was going to get a response from google’s search that says…did you mean…I have no idea what you meant!”
One of the guys piped in and said that when you type “French military victories” into the google search, it comes back with “did you mean…French Military Defeats?” So clever. I’m going to wrap this up quickly now, because I’m certain I just lost my audience to google!
Lucky for him though, he did just walk over to my desk with a story printed out. I will have to re-google it myself though, because it doesn’t have any markings as if he grabbed it from a website, and I’m fairly certain he might have just merged three different stories together. The story he printed doesn’t really flow that well…I’ll let you know what I find.

Vigilant

I haven't been very vigilant at blogging...but that's because i've been vigilant at watching for terrorists. That's what the british news keeps telling me, anyway. Here's a little story about my last day in London on Sunday...i'm in Reading, UK now which is a London suburb for the most part.

So I thought my life was over….
Of course we arrive in london right when terror plots are set to go off…I’d expect nothing different. I go back and forth between these feelings of “I’ve really taken a bite out of life, and any time is a good time to go” then I jump to “Something could really happen…oh crap!”
Those internal dialogues haven’t really mattered though, because deep down I’ve never honestly thought that I’d fall victim to something like that. I can say this with certainty after an experience I had on Sunday.
Security was ripe, especially since we were staying in the very area that the two car bombs were set to go off in. Those were discovered early Friday morning, and it was now Sunday afternoon. There had been another similar incident; however that happened all the way in Glasgow. You might venture to say I was a bit laxed by the time Sunday had rolled around.
We had just checked out of our hotel, but we were going to grab a quick bite before heading to Reading. We walked across the street at our hotel (Trafalgar square) at the cross walk with a bunch of other pedestrians. A car was approaching as the rest of us were finished crossing the street. As we step up to the curb to get out of this car’s way, we hear a thunderous explosion. My eyes pressed closed as a profanity spilled out of my mouth. My body was paralyzed by the sound of the explosion, and my mind was tingling as I processed other people’s screams around me. That round of thought process happened within 3 seconds perhaps. Next we started walking again, staggering as we processed that the car had merely backfired. We caught our breathes and took a few steps forward when we saw two foot police running frantically straight toward us. I still do not know what they were screaming, however I saw the look of terror in their eyes. They were pursuing the explosion they had heard from across the square, but they weren’t aware it was only a backfire. Kids were following the police screaming the whole time as well…I’ll admit that even though I knew what was going on…the look in those cop’s faces scared me to death all over again.
I realize now I was lucky to have been on the side I was on…because then at least I knew what the explanation was. I will say that while my eyes were pierced closed, my mind thought this “So THIS is it?” I honestly thought my time was up. I’m so glad I processed everything in 3 seconds!