Thursday

We arrived at the Presentation Event Tuesday night at six-something. It started about a half-hour late at seven thirty. We had to talk our way through five security checkpoints along the way. These were operated by the police, on the road between the town and its airport. I was hot in my three-piece suit. The ticket had specified "formal" dress, devalued to "cocktail"--whatever that means--in the second draft. Walking down the dirt track beside the road, where the taxi let us off, I noticed most of the people around me were wearing jeans and T-shirts. It's the first time in my whole life I've felt overdressed, something I might have relished in a different climate. Throughout the show, the emcees kept telling me how well the AC was working while I sweltered. The people around me seemed fine in halter tops and shorts. Many of them were from other areas of the auditorium, moved into more expensive forward sections to fill unsold seats. Nice idea; only people in the back were advanced to unfilled seats in front of us, meaning that we'd paid significantly more for worse seats. I still wouldn't be complaining, except we couldn't see for the first twenty minutes due to people milling around in front of us. The giant TV screens weren't working. The tickets said "no children under six," but there were screaming kids everywhere. Same with "ringing phones" and "flash photography." There's more, but I'll skip to the end: because the police were stopping anyone without a ticket at five checkpoints, no cabs were available to pick us up after the show. We ended up having to walk a dirty, sandy mile--in "cocktail" dress--to where all the cabs had been forced to pull over and wait for us. [Cavin]