It seems that I have a knack of getting myself into awkward situations. (Situations that  perhaps would not be awkward to most people, except me.)

A while ago  I was lucky enough to be sent on a work trip to lovely city of Lisbon. (My work duties were over in a couple of days so I decided to take couple of days for myself and see the city as I had not been there before. ) While enjoying my days of freedom I had to participate in a work related teleconference call as I was to be headed to another work assignment to Damascus quite soon after I would come home from Lisbon, and some details of the project needed to be checked and decided on.

(Ah, Damascus, an intriguing city, full of history, with friendly inhabitants who treat lanes as mere suggestions, who have understood that horns on cars are not for decorative purposes only, who enjoy cheese on everything (the cheese is just delicious) and… the list could go on and on. Damascus and it´s people were a very pleasant surprise indeed.)

As the teleconference had been scheduled to take place during mid morning, I had already left my hotel and was happily traipsing around the neighborhood of Belem, famous for it´s cream pasties, in a pouring rain. When the time drew nearer for the aforementioned meeting I decided to find a cafe where I would enjoy a well deserved cup of coffee and a sweet delicacy, also well deserved.  Of course, my chosen cafe (the most famous cafe of the area thanks to their flans) was full of clattering of dishes and happily chatting tourists and locals. I managed to secure a table though and a steaming cup of coffee in front of me I dialed the number. (I was feeling slightly important with my pen and notebook and fancy telephone.)

After a while, our international team was on-line. My colleague called in from Rome, some called in from Finland and of course our customers from Middle East joined in.

Everything went as well as could be expected with somewhat bad connections, a bunch of non native English speakers and a noisy cafe in the background. Until I needed to check a very small detail concerning an abbreviation.

Our customer asked us to deliver the products (in this case videos) in two formats: MP4 and something else. It was only a question of one letter really, but it had to be solved. I could not quite make out was the format in question VLV, SLV or FLV. (The lines were really bad, the cafe was noisy and the pronunciation of all the parties involved was not perhaps quite up to par.) So after repeating all the options over several times I decided to resort to spelling using the phonetic alphabets.

I started:  “Is it V as in…” Then it hit me. Complete and utter blankness, it was as if all the words had left me.  I could not remember a single word in English that begun with a V. Appropriate words that is. All that came to mind was: Is it V as in…Venus? V as in…Vixen? Vulva? Vagina?

All very proper words in their own rights, but let´s face it, it was not a booty call or a call to my gynecologist that I was making.

As I was continuing to stutter V as in…V as in.. etc I felt like I was the only (and lonely) participant in a naughty Wheel of Fortune.

While I was mentally kicking myself for not bothering with properly learning the phonetic alphabets I was trying to will my colleague to read my mind to jump to my aide from other side of the southern Europe. Sadly telepathy seldom works, and as I was left to my own devices I finally managed to mutter a mumbled (and humbled) V as in the letter, followed by a slightly hysterical giggle.

Lessons learned (again): pride comes before a fall and V is for Victor.