thursday march eight - international women's day

 

happy international women's day to all my ladies. i was lucky to be spending it with women from all over the world. Am a bit squinty in this pic, having peaked too soon with the celebrations last night, which ended at 3am. Cligger bravely endured a whiskey-fuelled monologue from me while working in nice, until she had to go because someone started taking photos of one of her clowns smoking. (if i had a dollar.)

I'm wearing her beautiful linen dress and feel like an Englishwoman in Africa in the 1930s or something. Also: new shoes! Two-tone brown and white mary-janes, flat - just could not handle another day of conversations around my height. it hasn't really helped but i like them a lot anyways. They cost me 120 big ones; ringits, that is, which is $40. i feel like i am saving money just by wearing them.

michelle, who was suffering more than me today because she was drinking chilean wine with me til the wee hours. michelle is australian and the head of the consumers association in japan where she has lived for ten years with her chinese husband. she's wearing a scarf from forever 21 (and damn does that woman look fine for 50), top from zara, and pants from Oz. (you can't see them but she was wearing some, promise.)

Huimin from singapore, who left today, along with a lot of the peeps who were just here for the 3-day regional meeting. CI conference proper has started today and it's really good - on consumers in the information society. best quote i've heard is an ethiopian proverb: "when spiders unite they can tie down a lion".

H is wearing jeans from Singapore, $20 and a top from Taiwan, $7. She says she does most of her shopping online.

Helen, English, who is Director General of Consumers International. Her dress is from Wallaces in the U of K. 

Felicia is the Dean of the Law faculty at the University of Nigeria, which is where she and her classy suit are from. 

This is michelle tan, who works for the consumer's org here. she is really sweet. Trivia: the other michelle above's name is also michelle tan.

This woman, Indrini is the fiercest of us all - she runs the Malaysian consumers org and was the one behind the hostage karaoke on my first night here. we did more karaoke last night in a sport's hall in town, but more on that later. she also joined michelle, mohammed and i last night in the hotel bar - between us we had a hindu, muslim, christian and atheist which made for some pretty interesting discussions. mohammed is my age and a lebanese muslim, a lawyer who thinks he has pretty relaxed attitudes about women. i am rapidly teaching him that he does not, and he is teaching me about islam. it's fun. i am making him work for me today to celebrate how awesome women are, which he is enduring bravely. he smokes these elegant white cigarettes called davidoffs and as my tin is now bare i have trained him to come running when i shout 'davidsons'.

sahynne from korea.

this lovely lady from poland whose name i have forgotten.

Cherry from Un Zud.

These last lot of photos were taken at the night markets, on the fly, and regrettably my brain cannot store any more names. But this beautiful woman, and the next two are from India.

Malaysia

And the wonderfully warm Felicia from Nigeria. Different Felicia.

With apologies to a couple of women who I missed. 

SO. last night was hilarious. the karaoke was as shit as ever but some other events made it wonderful. firstly, there was an amazing electrical storm and tropical downpour that lasted for hours. i was standing outside under cover with my man Raji, who was telling me a story about how the night before he and a couple of dudes sort of got kidnapped by a cabbie and taken in the wrong direction. one of the indians was frightened and Raji - truly the man least likely to be violent - told him not to be afraid because he was a Gurkha. The gurkhas are the third fiercest fighters in the world, according to Obama, after navy SEALs and the Mongols. Anyway, Raji was relaying all this to me when there was a really loud crack from the fibreglass covering above us. we both jumped backwards towards the doorway, and then this indian dude, Sendrani, barrelled into me and pushed me back against the glass in what was i presume was intended to be a gesture of chivalry, however he is only about 5-6 had his face in my chest for what seemed to be an unnecessarily long time. a second later the roof cracked and broke and water dumped down everywhere, all over shouty alok who got drenched. it was fantastic and i would have taken a photo had i not been laughing so hard. 

the indians cannot drink. later, some of us got lifts home with some of the kind malaysians who had hosted the dinner for us. chris was in a car with sendrani, who by this time was completely hammered and who i last saw wearing one of the green towels around his head the staff had brought out to dry everyone off. chris told me today that they were waiting at the traffic lights a couple of blocks from our hotel and he felt sendrani start heaving next to him. he shouted at the driver to "go go go" when the lights changed. the driver looked at the pair of them in the back seat and calmly said "he is going to emit" right before sendrani vomited all over chris, and himself. 

i've seen sendrani several times today and he seems unfazed and remarkably chipper for a man who had the night he did. every time he sees me he comes up and says proudly 'i saved you. i saved you'.