NZ Embassy Brunch; the way to avoid making friends.

Today I was the only member of the new arrivals to attend the NZ Embassy brunch. I somehow scored the invitation via email before I’d even left NZ, long before any of the others had even told the embassy that they are here. I was feeling under a bit of pressure from the other newbies to make new friends, particularly those who live outside our compound, can link us into social events and have good-looking male friends, but I bravely took on the challenge. I shared a taxi with a fellow kiwi-lass who is due to return home in a month, and an Irish gent who I’ve nicknamed “embassy-tart”. He’s been here in Doo for 6 years. He has never attend the Irish embassy or any of their functions but seems to get a ticket to all events at the NZ, Australian, South African and US embassies, even those that are sold out an hour after release (a fairly common occurrence here I note) and when most natives have been unable to get tickets. He was fairly worse-for-wear at 9:30am this morning after attending a Halloween ball at the US embassy last night.
I was grateful to have instant friends at the function as it ended up not being particularly social. We sat at our table the entire day and only moved to replenish our drinks (yes, those not allowed elsewhere in Doo) and plates (including the forbidden food and many other delights). Two kiwi blokes and their respective Irish and Australian wives joined us. I managed to offend one of the kiwis and both women by the end of the day, so it was a classy introduction to society in Codoo.
I told one of the men that he might know my Dad from high school, suggesting by implication that he was in a similar age bracket. That went down like a ton of bricks and resulted in regular comments during the day about his old-man complaints and need for a drink from my drinks card. Later, Canon in D was playing and while we discussed it, I noted that it was used commonly for the bride walking down the aisle at weddings. Both women turned and said in a rather flushed and teasing-tone that it certainly HADN’T been common when they were married. I’d barely recovered from that when I commented on one of the lady’s nails and asked where she had them done. She asked if I was suggesting they looked fake. Hmm, is there a good answer to that? Of course I was, but nice-fake! I think I’ll be missing from the party lists for a while. Not exactly what the newbies had hoped for. Or maybe they’ll invite me back as the entertainment.

The other interesting part of the day was that it rained, actually, spat large drops. Not exactly what the outdoor-brunch organisers were expecting. Until last week, it hadn’t rained since April 2007!! It’s rained twice in my first week here. Go figure. Postscript: It's now rained at least once a day most of the last week. I'm convinced I brought it with me.

I end with the highlight of my day. Driving home, and this is what we saw




……apparently, the Bedu still mistrust motor vehicles so they often take a camel with them on journeys in case the vehicle breaks down!