23 June 2010 Wednesday

Meetings
It was a day of one-to-one chats with many different people. Started my morning with a meeting with two German folks, one of them was born in India but migrated to Germany since young. Rushed off to a conference session and then snuck out of it halfway to meet up with a French guy. Quite cute actually haha. Had lunch with a Dutch and two Belgians. Spent the rest of the afternoon in another conference session and before I found myself at dinner sitting with some Taiwanese, a Chinese, a Laotian, a Filipino, a Dane, a Greek and a Czech.

I love the international crowd at these ICANN meetings.

Gala Dinner
Voila, the gala dinner this time round was held in a chateau. Castle in French.
Le Chateau de Grand-Bigard. We were ferried in coaches and it took about 30-40 minutes to reach the place from the meeting venue. About 800 of us all were there.

We were greeted by men dressed in court jester suits of red, yellow and black, Belgium’s colours. Some were on stilts walking around, some were playing drums, some were on trumpets. Some were flame-throwers, some were with eagles perched on their shoulders. And all of them were there to greet us.

It was a lovely place. An old castle and its towers made of red brick and wooden beams, surrounded by a big lake. Within its compounds were smaller lakes with small rose gardens surrounding them.

We had dinner in a specially built marquee which had transparent see-through plastic ceiling and walls. Because it does not get dark till 1030pm at this time of the year in Belgium, we were eating dinner in broad daylight.

Sole with sautéed vegetables, cream of sea urchin and artichokes, grilled heart of turbotin, chocolate fondant with vanilla ice-cream and fresh mint tea. And of couse, red wine, white wine, still water, sparkling water.

There was a live band there and they sang oldies like “Peggy Sue”, “The Twist”, etc. But my favourite moment came when they slowed it down and sang Ray Charles’ “Georgia”. God that made me immediately wish K were there with me in that tranquil setting.

One of the best ICANN gala dinners I’ve been to.