Tornado Warning

Americans, they're everywhere, speaking, smiling, being polite. They love this shit, the conferences and the milling about aimessly saying 'Hi chuck' and 'Hi Ed' and waffling about kak that means nowt to anyone. Mz Pakistan eats for Asia and is pleasingly HM, like a dusky Fox she moos about touching fruit and alligators may break into her hotel room and other random nonsense that gives me a warm sense of nostalgia. We spend our first stand session, drinking an assortment of alcoholic concoctions and fielding futile questions of the 'what do you do?' ilk. No problems really, until a smug pair of indian boys sidle up and start hurling arbitrary queries about shite we should perhaps be familiar with but patently aren't. I larf at their obvious attempts to impress my co-worker and accidently on purpose pour a bud lite on their ugly corporate shirts so they have to scuttle off to change their nappies, children. Lunch time session, day two, exactly one person talks to us in two hours, he is utterly incomprehensible but very enthusiastic and I reward him with a pen and and three copies of the getting started book, which he clutches to his heart like the rosetta stone.

Evening session two, I am accosted by a journalist who pretends to know nothing about this smartphone business but is obviously highly clued up, I hedge madly, babbling with pristine confidence about global sales and waves of the future. He eventually realises I am a (poorly) trained stand monkey, with utterly nothing of significance to impart, and flounces away to gorge himself on sushi. The food is fabulous once again, pasta and cuban sandwiches and sushi this time as opposed to last night's prawns and fajitas and kobe beef. Obviously we all caned it a bit too much the night before and the bar tonight has been reduced to beer, wine and sodas. Mz P only drinks girly drinks with sugar/spice interfaces, and turns her nose up at wine and beer, despite this she still manages to hoover up two plates of pasta and a giant portion of risotto, I am in awe. Tomorrow we have a mid-morning session starting at 11.45am until 1.45pm and an evening session from 6 until 7.30, curtailed because of the big end-of-event party at the Hard Rock Cafe. Mz.Pakistan will be wearing black, I will be wearing thin.

B