Where is Victor when you need him?

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.

Impossible missions: adventures in apothecaries abroad

Here I was thinking that having to mime constipation in a small Brazilian pharmacy up in the northeast a few years ago in order to make the apothecary understand that my friend was in pain and indeed in need of medical assistance to help her to pass her … product, would presumably be one of those “once in a lifetime” type of moments when I found myself in a similar situation in Jakarta.

(Why (and how to) mime constipation you may ask. Apparently our pronunciation of the portoguese word for it was not convincing enough. 15 minutes of performing a la Marcel Marceau did the trick to entertain the crowd (yes, there was a crowd ) and to get my friend the medicine. Which, by the way, is probably the most efficient drug I´ve ever encountered. The moment she touched the package, she had to go. To my knowledge it is still unopened.)

But back to Jakarta. A couple of weeks ago I had to leave for Jakarta quite unexpectedly on a business trip. The departure was so sudden that I did not have to time to check my calendar for my next expected visit from Aunt Flow. As luck would have it, of course I got my period (not to talk about the cramps) while in there. And of course I was not sufficiently equipped in the feminine hygiene products front. That is to say, I had not packed my mooncup with me.

(I have been using mooncup for a good three years now and I absolutely love it. It is hygienic, environmentally friendly (as it is reusable) and in the long run it saves you a lot of money. Ladies reading, if you have not heard of mooncup before google it now and try. Or if you have heard of it but are hesitant, google it and try. I warmly recommend.)

Even though I suspected that mooncup might be hard to come by in Jakarta I decided to try. After all, they have Dior, Chanel, Vuitton et al. in every self-respecting mall (obviously not a backwater joint then), so I thought there might be a small chance of acquiring one. (Mooncup that is. Although I did come across such a beautiful red leather bag by Dior that my heart skipped a beat. For a second or two I toyed with the idea of submitting myself into a imprisonment by a debt and buying the bag, but I came to my senses quite quickly.)

So I there I was, trying to explain a) what a mooncup is b) what it looks like and c) what are it´s benefits to a fascinated (or perhaps i was mixing politeness and slight embarrassment with interest?) crowd (yes, there was a crowd, again) of pharmacy workers dressed in pink uniforms while my colleague & friend (male) was laughing his arse off behind the shelves. (His moment of miming would come later when we tried to find a place that would cater for male waxage as well.)

After having to explain the principals of mooncupping for the umpteenth time both verbally & with sign language I decided to surrender to the circumstances and buy “regular” sanitary towels. But either they have not heard of the size zero pads that fill the stores in Europe or my choice of pharmacy in Jakarta was poor but the selection of the sanitary towels was slim whereas the towels themselves were not. (The thinnest things I could find were more reminiscent of a cushion that anything else. Why, tape one of those pads to  your neck and you´ll have a handy neck pillow that supports your head and doesn´t slip on long flights!)

Lessons learned: when traveling always, always pack for all kinds of leakage (or lack of it as was shown in the case of Porto de Galinhas) or be prepared to mime for your, or for your friends medication.