Skip to main content

Another Hard Day at the Office

Last night after another fine dinner at King House - highly recommended - I ended up at Tirana's trendiest nightclub, Lollipop. There were five of us there and I think between us we raised the average age considerably.

I'm not a nightclub person, but there was a live band playing and a friend arranged some tickets for us. We arrived just as the band were playing Gloria - a taste of home. For those who don't know, Gloria was a song by Them, whose lead singer was Van Morrison before he got famous all on his own.

Van Morrison is a son of my own home town of Belfast - and is the person they should have named Belfast City Airport after instead of drunken wife beater George Best. Then we could have flown from Van Morrison airport to John Lennon airport.

We also had The Monkees, Elvis, Robbie Williams and a few others I can't remember or didn't recognise. I thought it was interesting that all the songs were in English and the few words the singer spoke between songs were also in English.

Today we are having a treasure hunt. Thankfully since I helped organise it I don't have to join in myself. For the last few days it has been blisteringly hot and blindingly bright so I can sit in the AC at Flares - also highly recommended - while the participants fall over from dehydration and sunstroke.

After the treasure hunt it will be time for the post treasure hunt barbeque, which will be followed almost immediately by the other barbeque. Unfortunately, the other barbeque coincides with the opening party for Tirana's newest cinema, which you can find in the Sheraton complex, so we are going to have to miss that one.

After the other barbeque there's always Lollipop again for a second night of live music, or the beer festival in the park. Though I might leave that for tomorrow. I might even remember to bring my camera to something.

Labels:

Comments

ak said…
Don't get caught in the routine. Try to enjoy yourself more. Get e suitcase, a shirt and a necktie. And two cell numbers, and an ugly secretary that reminds you what Darwin said about man and chimp and all of that. You'll see that life will look different.

Envy you. Regards.
3:11 pm
Anonymous said…
Cool!.. I didn't know he was from Belfast.
11:51 pm
Anonymous said…
poor you, they make you work on Saturdays...
11:18 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Albania and the Perils of the 21st Century

Another article on religion in Albania appeared yesterday. Patrick Poole, writing in the American Thinker , argues that Saudi funding for the construction of mosques and the training of imams is a threat to Albania, since these mosques and imams reflect the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia.
34 comments
Read more

Kamëz Part 3

For those who want a lengthy detailed report into the election there will, undoubtedly, be a range of them to chose from. In the meantime, here are my brief reflections on the last few weeks. At the heart of the problems around this election is the unwarranted influence of political parties on all aspects of the electoral process. Every institution responsible for organising and facilitating the election is under the control of political parties. The Electoral Code itself was heavily revised only days before the original date for the elections and only weeks before the actual date (Law 9676 13 January 2007). It was these revisions, specifically Article 181/2, that created the overly complicated identification requirements that caused so much confusion, and undoubtedly disenfranchised some voters. Let's be clear though: these revisions were not designed to protect the interests of the electorate. They were drafted primarily because the political parties do not trust each other. The ...
27 comments
Read more

Big in Albania

Ask me how much I knew about Albania before coming here and my list would be a short one: Enver Hoxha, bunkers and Sir Norman Wisdom. I have no idea when or how I acquired this extensive body of knowledge, but the association of Norman Wisdom with Albania was by far the most interesting part of it. I remember watching Norman Wisdom's old films on British television. My parents were fans of his wholesome, slapstick comedy, but apparently missed the ideological significance of Pitkin's relationship with Mr Grimsdale. Pitkin, the downtrodden and oppressed representative of the workers, triumphed every time over his capitalist oppressor, Mr Grimsdale - and he got the girl. It took a theorist of Hoxha's insight and profundity to discern this deeper political message. It always seemed tremendously unlikely, yet the story of Sir Norman's fame in Albania has been reported in worthy sources like the BBC , the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph . According to the Guardian, when Wi...
22 comments
Read more