Commonwealth Lecture

I was in the office today, because I had to get a bunch of papers together for my upcoming immigration application. Payslips, photocopies of bank statements, and just mountains upon mountains of paper. But at least it worked out well, for in the evening I was due to go to Guildhall, which is right near my office.

I was going to the 2012 Commonwealth Lecture, because my well-connected doctor friend had invited me. It was kind of random (and seemed suspiciously like a date, which I hoped it wasn't), but still I figured, "Why not?" Hence, here I was, making my way into this grand building for the lecture.

We listened to an author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, speak about "Connecting Cultures". There had to be about 200-300 people there, with a high percentage of Africans. My friend informed me that Africans often like to come out to "support one of their own", which I suppose made sense. She turned out to be a surprisingly good speaker, and I enjoyed one of the anecdotes of her speech:

When I was growing up in Nsukka, the university town in southeastern Nigeria, books were the center of my world. One day, I read an American novel in which a character ate something called a bagel for breakfast. I had no idea what a bagel was, but I thought it sounded very elegant, very exotic – I pronounced it “bah-gel.” I desperately wanted to have a bah-gel. My family visited the United States for the first time when I was nine. At the airport in New York, I told my mother that, as a matter of the gravest urgency, we had to buy a bah-gel. And she went to a café and bought one. Finally I would have a bah-gel. You can imagine my disappointed surprise when I discovered that this bah-gel, this glorious bah-gel from the novel, was only just a dense doughnut."

After the speech was over, we then went in to the cocktail reception, where circulating waiters brought us canapés from various commonwealth countries, so they included Indian paneer, Jamaican jerk chicken, and various other things with a Afro-Carribean flair that I didn't even recognise. Although I did get a good laugh when my friend asked the waiter where the champagne was from, and the waiter replied with surprise, "France, of course!" Not exactly a commonwealth country...

We then circulated a bit, and I was surprised at how hard it was to socialise in an entire room full of people I didn't know. But I got the feeling that was more due to their shortcomings than mine. For instance, I was chatting to one girl who was apparently the assistant of some bigwig. And then finally the bigwig herself took notice of me and introduced herself, and then asked what my association with the Commonwealth was. When I revealled that I was just the guest of a Commonwealth representative, she then actually walked away, having instantly decided I wasn't worth taking the time to talk to. I mean seriously, without a good-bye or anything. I was shocked.

Though I did get to have a fun time when my friend said to me, "Do you want to meet the Ambassador? Just remember to address him as 'Your Excellency' when I introduce you." And so he did, properly introducing me to the Ambassador, not the other way around (I always get the order of such things wrong), and I remembered to say, "A pleasure to meet you, Your Excellency." How cool is that?

Finally though, I hadn't been drinking (those damn meds!) and I was getting a bit tired, so I begged off and we made our way home. Luckily after all those canapés there was no need for dinner, and I was grateful just to get to go home after a most interesting evening out...