Hi Michael,
Okay, memorable meals of the past. This gets into what I USED to do for business. Something I don't talk about much...but I like your stories and thus need to give you one of my own. So one day I'm sitting at my desk in Somalia and my boss has already let me know he wants me to find out about weapons Aideed is shipping into Mogadishu from the small town of Afgooye across the river. One of the interpretors as it turned out had a father who owned a large farm in the vicinity of Afgooye, so a social call on the Dad appeared to be in order.
I contacted the Pakistanis and told them the lad and I needed an armed military escort to Afgooye. My main contact with the Pakistanis thought I was nuts, but then he was never much fun anyway. So he gave me a six man military escort with vehicle but refused to come with me. He never did want to do anything fun.
Well, we traveled the 20 miles out to Afgooye through the beautiful coutryside, much like Nevada where I grew up, and upon approaching Afgooye I had the option of either first making a courtesy call on the local Pakistani commander, or driving straight into Afgooye. I figured the Pak cmdr, stationed on the outskirts of town, probably would refuse to allow me into Afgooye so I decided to go straight into town.
The interpretor gave directions to his home to my Pak escort, we arrived there, spent time with the family...and had just sat down to a wonderful noontime meal of local stuff when the gunfire started outside. What a way to ruin a good meal! And they didn't even have tinfoil so we could take some with us. Needless-to-say, a Pak soldier came frantically beating on the door to the home and motioned that we needed to get out of there. So we ran to the vehicle, jumped in and drove off while exchanging gunfire with what must have been Aideed's people. We beat it out of there and made our way to the nearby Pakistani compound.
We made it to the compound, and the local commander was quite upset when he found out the shooting in the town was because I was there. One of those Moslem things: nice girls don't do things like that. So my initial observation that I should go into the town before asking his permission was a good call.
Back to reality. CPQ did well today which makes me smile. Please tell me more about what you do with computers. My 17 year old knows all about them but I am mainly a consumer...I've got using Netscape all figured out.
Sincerely, Denise
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