Columbia, South Carolina

Went there this weekend to help out with a recruiting event. Absolutely nothing to report.

A summary of the trip to the Balkans will follow shortly. I promise!

About Damn Time: Azerbaijan

No matter how old you are, naked mannequins make you giggle...

Jeez, I'm getting later and later on these posts. Anyway, next stop on the trip was Azerbaijan. Baku, the capitol, to be exact. 50 points if you can find it on a map. It is one of those rascally former Soviet republics. My first new country on this trip. Yay!

So we got in late. It was dark already, but after checking in a group of us walked from the hotel to the pedestrian zone of town. Mike and I tired of the committee, so we strayed, but then ended up picking the same place to eat that the committee did. I think I had lamb. It was good. And the local beer. Also good.

The next day we had school visits and whatnot. This one instructor, had she also been carrying a riding crop, would have fulfilled a long held fantasy. Didn't have my camera! The women here like their boots... After the school fair we were held hostage and forced to watch this crap. Yeah, I'm ready to have kids. Ladies, get me to an altar.

Afterwards, more walking about and eating things. And shopping for bootleg DVDs. They even had "300" already, and it had just come out in the states days before. As I found later, not the quality of the bootlegs that I saw in Russia. No interactive menus, scene selection, and often no English. Bummer!

Vote now for Joseph Humadi to take over the role of Lex Luthor in the next Superman film.

We had a big group farewell dinner at a "traditional" restaurant. Codeword for rip-off. Food was good though, and we all drank MUCH. Mike and I finally got one of the other reps, who we'd pegged as a dead ringer for an early Seinfeld guest-star, to say the magic word. See below. Name the episode and win a prize...

After dinner the brave hit a few bars. Ended up at an Irish pub, of course. One of our group ended up going home with a lady he met there. He swears she wasn't a hooker. Whatever. None of us believed it. If you didn't pay her, but bought her a microwave, she's still a pro.


The fair was a madhouse. I'm talking beyond India crazy. It was like a swarm of locusts let loose in the ballroom. Some tables were out of materials in minutes. I used my kung-fu to ward off all MBA and engineering seekers.

The point here was the hammer and sickle, above.

Now for vacation!