..for having successfully wrapped up the project of the week. Waiting for Friday. Reason to be happy, happy, happy. The congress I have been busy preparing, organising and supervising for the last couple of weeks is finally over. The participants from all over Europe are back to where they belong, giving the latest procedures in soft tissue surgery a shot. The first one to proudly report back to me was a Greek guy, letting me know that he had already had the chance to employ one of these new techniques. Ok, the poor animal had passed on anyway - despite or on account of the new technique was not quite clear - but at least he had tried and that is what counts, no? He was very optimistic that next time he would succeed with flying colors. He also inquired if there were vacancies for a 3-month practical at the Clinic of Surgery and Ophthalmology (so impressed with myself, that I am finally aware of the fact that there is an "h" both before and after the "t") here in Vienna in the summer. Greek pride. First butcher Austrian animals before hitting the Hellas dog and cat population.

Preparations for the congress were tough. Particularly if you start them too late since after all, you had done it once before in August. A child´s play. Unfortunately the other participating children - among others my genius French boss - had failed to inform me in time that they had updated their lectures. Am I supposed to smell that or what? Just when the stick with the lectures was about to be sent to the printer by cab I happened to ask him if he wanted the final part of his mini-invasive lecture unchanged or since it appeared sort of weird to me. He looked at me with big, round eyes: "THIS is not the latest version. I gave you the CD with ALL the updated lectures weeks ago. YOU are even messier than me." (I almost thanked him for the compliment since I love having an edge over the competition, no matter in which respect). To cut a long story short: I told him to go back to his own office to look for it since I had not clue what he was talking about - and he eventually discovered the CD after a wholehearted forensic search - which would have left the protagonists of CSI pale with envy - in the middle of several medium-sized stacks on his desk. I could not suppress a triumphant "Seeee??!!!!!", looking demonstratively down at him (which is less a gesture of superiority than a anatomical necessity since he is about 12 cm shorter than me with no imminent growth in sight).

Miracles happen. Just as shi. happens. Though not as frequently. I got the prints back in time to prepare the proceedings for all participants. That sounds easier than it actually it. Ok, it does not require a triple academic degree to sort lectures according to titles and numbers. But after you do it for one hour you get so giddy that you develop serious doubts whether 5 comes before or after 6. I hate to delegate things. When someone screws up my project, it had better be myself. So I know at least whom to blame and come up with an adequate punishment (such as sentencing myself to a House-marathon - which I served voluntarily yesterday!)

But there was no reason to doubt myself (as if I do that now and then..), everything went smoothly and I feel like on cloud number 9. I am exhausted but all keyed up simultaneously. Adrenaline. Endorphines. Who knows. Who cares.

Plus I have a new item to put on my CV. Herd management. Among several other things, I was responsible for herding the flock of vets through tourist-infested Vienna and pie-piper them to the places where our dinners would take place. That was fun. As far as I know I have not lost anybody - felt a little bit like a mother cat making regular inventory of her litter to ascertain that the dwindling occurred has not exceeded a certain tolerance level. I have not read anything about recent floaters in the Danube in the papers. That is unmistakenly a good sign. They found a dead granny in a park the other day, though, but I am quite positive that this had nothing whatsoever to do with me and my management skills.

So now my life is back to normal. No more gobbling up calorie-packed welcome or farewell dinners. My scales had a word with me. Or it was rather a whole phrase. When I bravely climbed on them the day before yesterday I overheard them cursing: "Only one person at a time"...

All the mirrors are covered. But not for religious reasons. I am not sitting Shiva. (well, actually this is wrong - I have been sitting Shiva for 18 years since "Shiva" is the name of my oldest cat. So I could be accused of dual blasphemy, since after all "Shiva" is also the Hindu God of destruction - which she takes very seriously, btw. The cat, not the god.., well, perhaps the god as well, beats me.)

The scales are in exile and gather dust. On vacation, animal conservationalists have tried to roll me back into the water. In the wardrobe there is a keen competition between the "L"s and the "XL"s. Could it be that my volume has started to distance itself significantly from my ideal weight?

Let´s do the following test. Stand upright. Do not suck anything in which is not supposed to be sucked in. Ignore any sex-specific topography. And now comes the crunch question: do you see your toes? All of them? And not only the ones which might be oversized due to some anatomic anomaly?

If you can answer the question with a clear "Yes", then go on eating. There is no immediate need for action. Since after all you do not want to look like some model who marches on the catwalk on skinny skeleton legs and big, hungry eyes so that you are almost tempted to look at the left hand corner of your TV screen to check if a donations account is mentioned.

"There are three billion women who do not look like supermodels. And only 8 who do" was the advertising slogan of the Bodyshop years ago. Of course it could be your turn now to ask curiously "And who are the other 7?". But if we are a bit realistic, it seems absurd to want to be a statistical runaway in this respect. Nature is the best example for that. Throw a glace at the sky after extended food binges at night. Does the moon look like a twiggy-look-alike? We could not be less interested. Not a bit romantic. But once it has overcome its anorexic phase and is chubby as can be we are all enthusiastic and cannot stop looking at it and are literally moon-struck. Coincidence?

On of the sentences with the highest frustration potential in the German language is doubtlessly a well-timed "You are looking good!!" which only in very rare cases means "You look good", but rather "OMG, have you grown fat. I hardly recognized you".If you have enough self-consciousness, you can of course embarrass the questioner now by probing "Do you mean beautiful or fat?", teaching him/her a lesson to be more specific in future.

Never sit next to people whose silhouette differs significantly from yours. It tends to trigger and encourage undesired comparisons and remarks from your friends.. Apart from that, people who give a damn about the ideal weight usually have all sorts of munchies with them to prevent starvation - and the urgent desire to share them with somebody with a similar addiction.That helps you to save a lot of money, since it slows down your inventory turnover of chocolate, chips and other "healthy" munchies immensely.

I seriously wonder if there are self-help groups called CH.A. Chocoholics anonymous. I would be the perfect candidate. If an invitation comes up, it is wise and far from altruistic to buy the candy you are planning to bring along a couple of days before actually going there. Chances are good that the chocolate-dynasty will be in its 3rd generation before it eventually finds its way to the recipients it was originally meant for. Since you happened to "come across" it when feverishly ransacking your apartment in the middle of a "chocolate cold turkey".

Buying clothes is a quest. However, I always manage find something appropriate in the "maternity section". Stretch is the perfect solution. With some logistic know-how you can squeeze every inch of your luxury body into jeans which - if they were not made out of stretch material- would barely be large enough to house one of your buttocks.. Still, the resulting visible spare tires - whichmakes you feel a little bit like an alien in the stage of pupation - would easily qualify you for at least a three year contract with "Baywatch"..I am sure downing booze with Mr. Hasselhoff is not very calorie-conscious, but great fun!

Advertising people are stupid. Especially the ones in the cosmetics business. You see women on TV commercials and on bill boards with no more than 1 square meter of skin to attend to. Takes them probably half a year to use up a tiny bottle of Nivea. Girls like me are done with it after three trips to the gym. Is this reasoned sales-promotion?

By the way, I herewith declare the holy war on the idiot who has come up with the idea to print "nutrition facts" on food and drinks - sometimes you just "don´t wanna know"!

That was the advertising slogan for Swedish railways years ago. Very creative. Still, it backfired ever so slightly. Since soon after the campaign was launched, there was a major train crash with quite a lot of casualities. Bad luck.

Flying is considered the safest means of transport - still many passengers are deeply worried that it is just a question of time until the gravitational pull of the earth (or is it the centrifugal force?) will lose its duel against gravity. A good way to keep track of the progress in this respect is a well-balanced mix of thorough auditory,visual and olfactory supervision. Are we still flying parallel to the horizon or is the angle getting sort of awkward? Do we hear any sounds which are - according to our experience - not supposed to be here? Does it smell funny - or is this just the yummy meal we are about to get served??

That´s how you can help: if you notice that the plane is getting into a slight bank, lean you body towards the opposite direction to achieve balance. Helps tremendously. Or start communicating with a higher being of choice (in the course of which you discover that you have forgotten huge chunks of "Our father"), promising that you will become a much better person in the future if you only survived that. (but suffer immediately from RDD - remembrance deficit disease - as soon as you are on terra firma again).

Or distract yourself: be delighted, that the passenger who had been sitting in the seat before you had obviously been more obese than you since you had to tighten the seat belt. Makes your day!(or pisses you off big time if it is the other way round..). If you happen to have a window seat, you can watch "live" how your luggage is loaded onto a Qantas plane while you yourself are headed to Jakarta.. A window seat also allows you to brush up on your rusty knowledge of probability calculus. You can for instance try to figure out the likelihood of survival if you drop from a certain altitude. Or you can check at regular intervals if the wing is still there, if there is another plane on collision course in sight, if you are getting too close to mountains and other topographic obstacles. Size does matter. Occasionally.

Safety is a big issue. Generations of nail scissors and nail files have been confiscated since I had left them in my hand luggage by mistake But then meals are served. And what do you get? Knives and forks made of steel. In case your weapon of choice had been confiscated when checking in. Makes sense. Totally. On my way to Madagaskar I was sitting next to a native who was evidently a member of some sports team coming back from a competition in Europe. When dinner was served, he unpacked the cutlery - and from the way he looked at it (and afterwards used it) I jumped to the conclusion that he had not had a lot of prior hands-on experience. Now that was scary. I was praying for a turbulence-free dinner - since stab wounds - no matter if accidental or intentional - are cool if you are a gang member, but they look sort of stupid on a tourist in economy class..

When flying Austrian Airlines to Iceland, they let me board with my hiking poles, although it was obvious that I was a danger to myself and others. Obviously "hiking poles" was not on the list of things to confiscate. By the way, Iceland is really, really great - one of the most beautiful European countries. Sensational scenery and great trekking - hence the poles. A lot of river crossing and poles come in really handy (also afterwards for drying your clothes after you have not only crossed but also fallen into the rivers in question). Lots of opportunities.

Middle Europeans (or is it just the Austrians, I do not know) - particularly the Mallorca crowd - have the nasty habit of clapping their hands once the plane has landed safely. Now, this is embarassing. Deny, deny, deny - you are anything but Austrian. Hide your passport. Speak with a Lithuanian or Hindi accent.

A couple of years I was flying Singapore Airlines and a short time prior to the landing the pilot´s voice suddenly popped up on the loudspeaker, announcing: "In your own interest, read the emergency instructions once again now" The plane was suddenly very quiet.. THAT is not a relaxation method!

The crew always tries very hard to please. They explain everything in detail, with sign language and all, to make sure everybody knows what to do in which situation. So I was sitting on a plane from Mexico DF to Guatemala City, next to the coach of the Argentinian tennis team (after I had b....ed long enough - can´t remember about what - they had put me in business class), really excited and trying to get all my tenses and endings right - when the stewardess started to explain what to do in the case of an emergency landing on water,showing us cute floaties and everthing.. I asked innocently "que agua??" She rolled her eyes and answered "Well, we could land in a river, no??" Yeah, how come I did not think of that...

And if you are afraid of bombs, there is a really easy trick to beat the odds:

"There once was a man who went to see a psychiatrist, crippled by a fear of flying. His phobia was based on the belief that there would be a bomb on any plane he boarded. The psychiatrist tried to shift the phobia but couldn´t, so he sent his patient to a statistician. The statistician prodded a calculator and informed the man the the odds against there being a bomb on board the next flight he took were half a million to one. The man still wasn´t happy, and sat there convinced that he´d be on that plane out of half a million. So the statistician prodded the calculator again and said "allright, would you feel safer if the odds were ten million to one against?" The man said, yes, of course, he would. So the statistician said "the odds against there being two, separate, unrelated bombs on board your next flight are exactly ten million to one against" The man looked puzzled, and said "that´s all well and good, but how does it help me?" The statistician replied: "It´s very simple. You take a bomb on board with you."

(The Gun Seller, Hugh Laurie, p. 205, Arrow Books, first edition, 1997)