Another day another reception

Good article in Economist on Palestinians

The amount of evening events I go to is mostly up to me. They aren't usually very fun and are mostly akin to when you go to a conference or training session where you don't know anyone and on one of the nights the conference organizers throw a cocktail party and you can't tell if the people who are talking to each other ACTUALLY know each other or if they are just making small talk.

Tonight I will be attending a reception held by the Central Bank (like the Fed but smaller and staffed by people who will answer my phone calls) in honor of a conference that is starting tonight on Islamic Banking. This means it will be a cocktail party without the cocktails - this is not necessarily a bad thing in Jordan where the wine is bad but the fruit juices can be outstanding. I still remember a particularly good strawberry juice at a reception in honor of some software launch at the Customs authority.

Last Wednesday, Dan and I both went to the residence of the Ambassador of the European Commission to celebrate Europe Day. During the reception Dan recognized the anthem for the EC (Beethoven's 9th or 5th) and I recognized the Jordanian national anthem which is big and booming. The party was weird in that it had very few Jordanians and mostly just a lot of European diplomats. They did have very good wine and pretty good appetizers which we ate as dinner.

On Thursday, we went to Bar Night at the Australian Embassy. This was not a formal reception but instead a monthly invitation to come hang out in their basement and drink Australian beer and grill your own lamb burgers. The lamb was from New Zealand - I thought this was weird but the convential wisdom seemed to be that New Zealand lamb is good and thus should be eaten.