Last Minute Dinner with South African

I was scheduled to go to the movies with Neighbour Guy tonight, but was sufficiently suspicious of it actually happening, given the number of times that we'd had confusion about dates and his weird way of making plans and then backing out of them at the last minute. Hence when I saw in the morning that I'd had a missed call from him the night before, I knew something was up. So I texted, "Are we still on for tonight?"

To his credit, he called (no hiding behind a text for him) and explained that he'd been planning on visiting his brother and sister in Vancouver later in the year, but they'd called and said that with the Olympics going on, he really should come out right then. Hence, he was looking at plane flights and thinking about flying to Vancouver that evening or early the next morning. Told me he wasn't sure if it was going to happen, but he'd let me know in a few hours. Indeed, by 3 PM, he texted to make his apologies.

I wasn't really that fussed, because of course I'd suspected something like this might happen (although I doubt I could have predicted that I would have been thrown over for the Olympics! Although to be fair, if faced with a similar choice I probably would have done the same thing).

Hence, with an unexpected free evening at my disposal, I started IMing with a South African friend of mine who was in London on a consulting assignment. At first he wasn't free for dinner, then he was, then he wasn't again. Apparently those darn consultants were messing with his schedule constantly! It was funny though as we talked about when we might be able to grab dinner, and I mentioned I was free on Friday, he exclaimed, "How on earth is a girl like you free on a Friday night? What is wrong with the men in London?" Made me laugh, as it was quite the nice thing to say!

At the very last, he IM'd that he was once again free, and was I up for dinner at 8? So I went and met him at his office, and we wandered a bit finding a place, before stumbling into the Texas Embassy, a Tex-Mex style restaurant near Trafalgar Square. In the end we had a lovely chilled out dinner, and it was so cheap that he was able to put the whole thing on his expense account. So free meal for me too! Definitely a good recovery of an evening!!