I sat in many meetings but one memorable one was a round table session chaired by Hugo Chavez and attended by many world personalities including Fidel Castro who at some point was chastised by Chavez! I will never forget how a bored Prince Albert of Monaco at some point after having fiddled with his unused microphone, turned around and looking at my direction made some snorting noises with his nose! Most unroyal I thought!!!
Our PM was here too for a few days with his lovely, gracious and motherly wife who always had something nice to say to me. PM surprised everyone by asking me, while waiting for his limousine, about a restaurant we went to in Rome in 1984, right after he made his very strong speech at the General Assembly!
The real work now begins as we break up into a plenary, six committees and several working groups and the working level debates on agendas and issues begin again. Mine is the plenary which starts tomorrow and ends on 23rd December! I foresee lots of interventions, lots of statements and lots of sponsoring of resolutions. Giddy just to think of them. And this time I have only one officer under me instead of four till now. It is rather intimidating to be in the thick of all this but it will look great in my CV later though - DELEGATE TO THE UNITED NATIONS MILLENNIUM SUMMIT AND THE 55TH SESSION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, September - December 2000!
I visited the orthopedist yesterday and he prescribed me steroids for my legs which had been in sheer agony these 3 weeks for all the walking I did - no car, no chauffeur, just a pair of weary legs and bad shoes. And another 3 months to go, walking daily back and forth from my apartment hotel to our office and then to the UN, and the rest of the Big Apple of course. On Sunday I bought my 6th (yes, SIXTH!) pair of shoes, in my quest to find the best one for my poor feet. And I think I found it, ugly and unfashionable as are.
Over the weekend I moved twice from the 19th floor apartment I'd been occupying all these while to a 24th floor one and then to the 8th floor in the same building! The 19th floor one had 2 queen size bed I did not need , the 24th floor one gave me instant allergy and I was scratching myself from the time I entered it - it was the most requested unit apparently and thus was tatty and overused! I spent only one night there. My present one is fine - so far, BUT, it's a disabled unit - thus more spacious, better furniture and lower. Who cares. Don't discount me moving yet again if things are still not right - at over RM1000 a night we are paying for the unit I have no qualms about changing units till I find the right one especially if I am to occupy it till Christmas.
Haven't had much chance to enjoy NY till now but my colleague Kamal and his wife takes me out of NY every weekend and that a fresh change. Once he took me to a lobster lunch at a friend's house in the country where I felt squeamish and rather shocked to see some 80 live Maine lobsters being put in boiling water in an old oil tank to cook! I managed to eat only one lobster and wondered how the other guests could eat so much...! Next weekend I'll visit my cousin Dan and his wife Maz for lunch, and it happens to be thanksgiving day. Dan has lived here for the last 20 years and has a house one and half hours train ride away. Haven't seen him since he was a boy, we had lunch together yesterday.
In terms of entertainment there are so much to offer and I am determined to attend as many shows as I can. So far twice to the Metropolitan Opera, first for Arrigo Biotto "Mefistofeles" which was a magnificent sumptuous production with lavish stage sets, except the lady who sat next to me I could swear had not had a bath for months and smelled like a pigsty!!! I also saw Camille Saint-Saens' "Samson and Delilah" with Placido Domingo no less in the lead, but in comparison it was a stark minimalist production with hardly any stage props. I also went to see "The Lion King" and there was a buzz in the theatre because Shirley Bassey was in the audience, sitting a few row in front of me!
Am also enjoying too much the food here especially Japanese and Indian, and Malaysian of course. The Malaysian restaurants in Chinatown serves authentic fares - anything you want lah, even pasumbur and roti canai. The city never sleeps , once at 2.30 am I woke up with a heartburn and went to a drugstore-grocery-cafe-snack bar-all-in-one just a block from my building for relief.
New York never stops either. Rafidah Aziz and a 30-member investment was here since Sunday and today left for Chicago. The 6 MPs are here for 3 weeks and three wives joined over the weekend . There is always someone or another in town at any time.
It's been raining all day since last night. I escaped into a cinema lat night and sat through Lars von Thiers' "Dancer in the Dark", Cannes 2000 Best Picture and Best Actress - Icelandic singer Bjork, but it has to be the most excruciating 2 and a half hour cinematic experience for me. If it comes your way, skip it!
Three more months in the Big Apple! Sigh...
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