I’m feeling mentally beaten today. It’s been a long , hectic day, and I have this feeling that tomorrow is going to be the same. My psyche is black and blue, and it’s not because of anyone doing something. It’s just the feeling that the trip is coming to an end and all the work needs to be wrapped up.
Last night I consolidated my bags a bit. I wanted to get everything organized so that I had a place to stuff everything I’m taking with me to London. I’m going to be your basic back-packer. That’s all I’m bringing: my backpack. If it can’t fit in there, it’s not getting a trip to London. I recharged all of my electronics last night. I put in two t-shirts, three pairs of socks and three pairs of underwear. I have to remember that I’m not going to have access to all of my clothes until Monday night, so I’d better remember to pack a collared shirt. Although, I could just wear the one I wear tomorrow again on Friday. I did just get some cleaned, so I should have plenty. I think I may do that.
Aside from just being long, work was the same as usual. I sat next to an Indian woman on the train whose kid kept kicking me on the way. Very annoying. The difference between the Great North East Railroad trains and DART trains is that the DARTers are little more roomy. Probably because they’re not as used.
We finally found a good place for dinner in Leeds. Too bad we had to go through garbage to find it. Nice little restaurant not even a block away from the hotel. I had duck a l’orange, which was cooked to perfection, a Waldorf salad (I expected lettuce on the salad, but I saw no lettuce), a limoncella martini, and a mojito. I’ve had more drinks on this trip than I’ve had in the last five years I’ll bet. It’s interesting. Our audit director doesn’t drink, but both of the audit managers do. One of the managers is always saying that he doesn’t know how you can be an auditor and not drink. I’ll admit that the job is sometimes confusing – I think I make it more confusing by trying to make it more complicated than it actually is, by the way – but I’ve never thought of auditing as a stressful enough job to make me want to drink much. Maybe I’m just really not that into alcohol. I think it’s funny that the time of my life when I might have really wanted to drink all I could afford was the crap (i.e. Beast Beer and Mad Dog), but now that I’m successful enough to enjoy some decent stuff I’m not all that interested. I wonder if I could get used to a sipping whiskey or something like that. Maybe I’ll give that a shot at dinner one night. As long as one of the managers is with me they have to pay for it anyway. Not that they mind. Every time we go out I hear about the glory days at this one company they used to work together at. I thought our $100 per day international per diem was nice – before I got over here and found out how much everything costs that is – but the way they talk per diem wasn’t even an issue. Dinner cost a 133 pounds. Stop and think about that. There were three of us. According to the desk at the front desk, the dollars to pound exchange rate is 2.04:1. That’s probably not the bank rate just the hotel rate, but we’ll just use that as our exchange rate to make a point. That comes out to $271 USD for dinner for three. Amazing.
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