An International Conference

This past week I've been home alone. My husband was out of town last week and three weeks ago. This week he wasn't out of town, but he was definitely not home. He had an international conference to host in DC. Back in November (Thanksgiving) he attended a similar conference in Australia. This time they came here.

The international conference included delegates from US, Australia, Canada, UK and New Zealand.

Every single night this week they've invited him out for Happy Hour or dinner, and he'd come stumbling back home after 10pm.

He's out at Happy Hour today, as well.

As I enjoy my time alone, I've been surfing the blogs and trying to catch up with old posts, when I came across Colonel's post from this past weekend.

Since this post had several very funny jokes, I'll post the one I liked:


Last week we took some friends out to a new restaurant, and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket. It seemed a little strange.

When the busboy brought our water and utensils, I noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. Then I looked around and saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.

When the waiter came back to serve our soup I asked, "Why the spoon?"

"Well,"he explained, "the restaurant's owners hired Andersen Consulting to revamp all our processes. After several months of analysis, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel are better prepared, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift."

As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he was able to replace it with his spare and said, "I'll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now."

I was impressed. Then I also noticed that there was a string hanging out of the waiter's fly. Looking around, I noticed that all the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. So before he walked off, I asked the waiter, "Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?"
"Oh, certainly!" Then he lowered his voice. "Not everyone is so observant. That consulting firm I mentioned also found out that we can save time in the restroom. By tying this string to the tip of you-know-what, we can pull "it" out without touching it and eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39 percent."

I asked, "After you get "it" out, how do you put "it" back?"

"Well," he explained, "I don't know about the others, but I use the spoon."


I liked this so much that I decided to email it to my husband, knowing that he checks his crackberry every two minutes, and told him it's a good joke to share with his international friends at Happy Hour.


Half hour later, this is the response I got back from him:

They loved it. Had to explain that fly was a zip. Also had to translate that Australians do not know how to use a spoon, the UK does not know what a spoon is, and that the Canadians have outlawed spoons in the current healthcare system as drug paraphenelia.


Edit: My husband just got back home and asked me if I understood his response. I told him I don't understand why an English joke requires translation to English. He said, "we're five nations separated by a common language!"