Last meeting in VOGUE House.

After having a good night sleep due to time zone difference with Moscow I woke up, took a shower and took off for a long meeting in famous conference room decorated with photographs of various celebrities taken by celebrity photographers. Boring looking IT directors from all over the world gathered and muttered around breakfast snacks and coffee table. To delicately handle all offered saucers, spoons and cups you supposedly should have grown few more hands.

Meeting organizers had planned everything according to the rules of "good meeting" -- a moderator and a scribe had been assigned. In the kitchen next door few cooks started preparing a delicious lunch.

IT directors pulled out presentations covering broad-ranging topics. We occasionally made jokes, but most of the time stuck to monotonous IT issues. Germans were, as usually, prepared the best. Italians -- becomingly dressed. Spain office rep was severely overweight and he was the only one to bring a interpreter with him. I was still the youngest among IT Directors.

None of the proposed/discussed solutions really inspired me. Overall meeting made me sleepy and I wanted the meeting to be over. Tension in the room got looser when French delegation left to catch a train back home to Paris. I was jealous -- I still had to fly to New York and back to London before I could head back home.

After the main meeting had been over, I stayed for another one-on-one meeting with British Conde Nast directors to discuss deployment of some flat-planning software which I hated for it's incompleteness. When the very last meeting was over I finally broke free from grayish corporate jail.

Next thing on the schedule was to get to New York, spend a night there and head back. I felt butterflies in my stomach every time I thought about passing immigration control in JFK airport, I had to lie to the office about period of my absence from the states. Even though I had done that about 12-15 times before, I still couldn't get used to it. Too much was at stake -- lying to an officer in the states is considered a crime.

London streets were wet after light rain. I walked the streets and took some pictures in downtown. London struck me again with it's luxurity and richness. I remember thinking that VOGUE magazine was a perfect fit for London. Obviously expensive boutiques were part of everyday life here, like electronics stores in Moscow.

After my "high-speed internet" 24 hour connection lapsed I went to bed anticipating a mandated trip to New York. My London trip was getting to an end.