Three pain killers, coffee, a shower, food, exercise, more coffee and still the headache remains.

Yesterday was St.Patricks Day and while it is a great day for the Irish, it is also a great day for the Guinness drinker here in Dili. The usual Guinness available in the shops is made in Malaysia and I am afraid it bears little resemblance to Guinness at all.

By absolute chance, I came across news that the Irish Embassy had shipped in a special consignment of genuine Irish Guinness in cans with a widget. Next mission was to get an invite to St.Pats Day as I had absolutely no doubt where that consignment was going to end up.

As Dili is so small, its actually not that hard to arrange these things but I felt a little out of place initially. It didn’t take long to work out that half of Dili had been invited.

Now when you have been pining for a Guinness for a while and the genuine article is put before your eyes (not even the Australian-made version) and the Irish government are paying, well, you take your chances, don’t you ?

I managed 6 pints of the good stuff, talked the leg off a chair, danced like Fred Astaire and possibly made some new acquaintances. But I blame the 2 glasses of red wine after all that for the headache this morning.