gimme a break

the sexism stared about as soon as i got up. i went down, at 645am, to use the hotel internet. at about 730, half-way through my backlog of email, a french diplomat asked me to leave as he need the sole terminal to do his “business”. i replied that i would be finished in about 15 or 20 minutes. he then slamed down his briefcase on the small desk where i was sitting and told me that his embassy “business” was more important than chatting with my girlfriends. i just looked at him like the idiot he was and kept working. he hummed and hawwed in the background, pacing back and forth, wearing a tread in the carpet no doubt, muttering loudly about his “official” work, his important “business” for the remainder of my time on line. if his business was so important, why hasnt his offce assigned him a laptop with all the bells and whistles of connectivity? codger!

then, at about 8am, i present myself to the front desk of the hotel to send an international fax. the front desk manager takes the two-page fax and makes an attempt to post it to the memory of the fax machine. after one attempt, he declared my fax number incomplete. at about the same time, a herd of business men arrive to check out, pick up messages and get the local newspapers. my fax is dropped like a hot potatoe as the front desk team (of 3 men) falls all over themselves to assist these new arrivals. my fax languishes for the next 20 minutes, is eventally returned to me in a huff.

and so on and so on and so on….