IFLA Report #2

Observation: people at conferences love pens. As far as the free stuff that people in these booth hand out, pens are by far the best. One woman was insistent on taking my Bic disposable pen, even though there was no indication of my organization or anything on it. I had taken it from the supplies cabinet at work before I left. Odd.

That being said, this is the last booth day and I cannot say I am too disappointed about that. It has been intereting to meet so many different people from so many different areas, it is tiring to keep a smile glued to your face for ten hours a day.

My new sales approach:

Are you from Africa?
Our service is free.
Want to join?

Yet, remarkably that doesn’t seem to be working.

We are off to Pretoria in the morning via Johannesburg and it will be nice for a change of scenery. We want to an area for dinner last night that was borderline non-violent so that was pleasant. We ate Thai food which was good, but not very indicative of the local fare.

I am still in search of Bunny Chow and that will have to happen tonight if ever.

I do training at UNISA in Pretoria on Friday. I am not nervous necessarily; it is just a golden opportunity to get the word out for Aluka and I don’t want to miss it. It should be exciting. I finish at 3:30 and I imagine I will be in some sort of South African watering hole shortly thereafter, if not before.

I miss my wife considerably, but my Blackberry lets me see her messages come in and it is a joy to read them as I stand in exile at the booth.

More to come!