Do you ever give presentations?

My presentation went relatively well, i think. There was lots of nodding and laughing in the appropriate places. That said, i spent the rest of the day nodding and laughing at presentations in Russian i only understood about 20% of, so that's not necessarily a great guide.

I wasn't nervous in the slightest, which surprised me. This may have had something to do with drinking a concoction that was equal parts double espresso and Moldovan cognac at 9:30am to prepare myself.

The chief presenter referred to me as her 'young and very handsome' colleague three times, which was over-egging the pudding rather.

Everything was going swimmingly until it turned out that they hadn't paid for the conference hall, the filming or lunch and i was expected to come up with roughly US$1000 in cash, which is not particularly easy to do at short notice in the middle of St Petersburg.