The aeronautical engineers’ christmas party
We pull our crackers and put our hats on. The man opposite me shakes a crappy plastic aeroplane out of the cardboard tube; one of the wings is bent in a manner incompatible with flight. I find this slightly amusing, as I am sitting eating taramasalata with a bunch of blokes who design flying machines.
The man next to me picks it up, and indicating the bent wing, delightedly says “anhedral and dihedral”. Everyone chuckles. Except me, having a congenital inability to do maths or physics, and no knowledge of aerodynamics. I smile, wondering whether we will be making engineering in jokes all evening.
“Split the difference!” quips my future husband. Everyone laughs again. It is clear that a fine joke has just been made.
I pick up my glass to take a gulp of wine, and find a small blue plastic frog in it.
Christmas parties in Namibia just aren’t the same.
December 20th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
We live in TWO COSMICALLY PARALLEL UNIVERSES!! My future husband is an engineer as well…only he designs the digital signal processing blah blah blahs that go into medical imaging devices…so when he asks me questions I need to politely remind him that I’m NOT a radiologist. (Or a physicist.) (Or interested!)
December 21st, 2007 at 12:33 am
Voilà reverse culture shock… Meanwhile, I’m headed back to Oz for my first family Christmas in very many years - the last few having been spent in Cambodia and Liberia. I’m altogether more stressed at the prospect of facing various relatives across the table, and so have volunteered to cook! I plan on staying in the kitchen and keeping the good wine close at hand. The next day, I’ll be flying out to Canada, romantic fool that I am.
Have a great holiday season, Rachie. What a remarkable year, hmmm?
December 27th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
I’d feel I had two choices: drinking myself into an immediate oblivion or knocking myself unconscious by smacking my forehead on the table.
January 1st, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Happy New Year from Portugal.
Literary Greetings
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:30 am
Oh bloody hell, you’re back and I only find it today.
I wish you a happy return and a very happy new year.
And I’m dead glad to read you again.