Thursday February 2, 2005 - Updates to some of the Cast of Characters

As the type of people was going to be working with was a total “crap shoot,” we continue to be delighted with the wonderful selection of people we’ve come in contact with. We luckily haven’t yet come across the “typical” auditor that causes so many people to leave the firm. Here’s a bit more on the characters we’ve been working with, although I doubt it will be anywhere near as funny if you were experiencing it in person.

Kane: loves pop culture, karaoke, and breaks into a muted song if even remotely relates to the topic at hand. Whenever we discuss “middle America” he does his redneck impression with “You all come back now, ya here” – in a Malaysian/Chinese accent. Usually on every other dinner he is poked fun at for sharing a tight-quartered room (bunk bed and no bathroom) with Sarah Jane (see below) on a cruise to Syria and Lebanon. She decided to go on the cruise last minute, the ship was full, and Kane nicely offered up to share his room to give him credit. The other night I suggested he start singing “Sarah Jane is not my lover, she’s just a girl crazy about me…” – sung in the tune of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” We all know “nothing happened” but it makes for a good laugh.

Sarah Jane: used to be on the project, lived in our apartment before us, and hailed from the UK. She wasn’t adored by the Cyprus team (far from it) as she was here for two months and apparently didn’t get much accomplished. She is a sturdy big boned blonde rugby playing Brit and possibly the previous resident whom installed the pull-up bar in our second bedroom (???).

Inigo: seeing that he speaks three different languages extremely well, it’s not really fair to critique it, but… he overuses the past tense, tacking on “-ed” arbitrarily to verbs. He also displays his enjoyment or approval of something always as, “You know, I think it is very nice.”

Aldriene: continues to suffer technical difficulties in the office. Recently, he needed to print out a table he had put together in Excel for discussion with the team. "C" overheard him busy on a construction project at his desk – folding of papers, taping, stapling, etc. After a few minutes, "C" wandered over and found that he had diligently adhered together six A-4 sized sheets of paper (and even more impressively all the Excel columns lined up). "C" taught him the “wrap text” feature and reprinted the sheet on one page.

Aldriene and “Elaine:” Ellen is one of the big chiefs/head honchos at the firm and is the top dog in charge of the project. She grew up in Arkansas, but has lived in Dallas for the last 20+ years. Consequently, she is pretty much “don’t mess with Texas” through and through, but very nice. We have heard stories about the end of her previous trip (B.PC – before P&C) in which she was mildly annoyed Aldriene. His unintentional offenses included smoking his Cubans too close, putting used toothpicks on her plate, and his inability to say her name correctly. No matter how hard he tried, Ellen came out as “Helen, Elaine, or Hellaine” in his British/Cypriot accent. The week prior to her second arrival Aldriene had been practicing her name by just pronouncing the two letters “L – N.” He was doing quite well until two nights ago when trying to convince Ellen to eat the last mushroom, said “Look it has your initial on it, H.”

Since he is also relatively outspoken on all subjects with nothing being taboo, when he found out where Ellen was from, he said “Isn’t that where Clinton (his favorite U.S. president) is from.” Her answer was “don’t remind me.” At lunch yesterday when there happened to be a clip of “W” on BBC during the State of the Union, Aldriene stated, ““I don’t see how he can stand up there in front of the whole world when he lied about the pretenses of going to war…” Ellen’s stern response was, “The two subjects not to be discussed in a work setting are politics and religion.”