Yes, you heard me - Bill Gates!
Kat's got a pretty awesome job. To think, almost four years ago I turned down that job, and since then Shanks has come and gone, and Kat's taken over, with a salary about twice my current one, and all-expenses-paid trips to Uganda (in the middle of the civil unrest; how cool is that for a dinner story?), and next, New York (for New Years), DC, LA, and San Francisco!
Just yesterday there was a "top secret" visit from the world's wealthiest man ($40,000,000,000), and Kat and I were there to see it.
A very long story short (since I can be long-winded); I arrived at the complex with Nick Young-Thompson and we wouldn't have ever known that the wealthiest man in the world was there, since everything seemed pretty normal. I looked around for any fancy cars, and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. I did notice a group of about five men loitering in the parking lot next to two white panel vans, but I didn't think much of it at the time. I observed that the car boots were open and there were about five or six containers of what looked like petrol in them, so it really seemed a bit tacky and completely unbecoming of a wealthy person (later I was to discover that those were some of his bodyguards, and that WAS his transportation! Totally weird! I've driven one of those panel vans before!). There was also some fancy looking bullet-like Honda car parked next to them, but I didn't get a good look at what it was, and I don't know my cars that well (sorry, Graeme).
Anyway, I went inside and walked around a bit looking for Kat and couldn't find her - I walked past a group of Americans in the corridor a couple of times, not realising at the time that the African American I was passing by every few minutes was apparently one of the heads of the security detachment. After a while, I decided to settle down in the main foyer of the building with Nick, in plain sight of the afore-mentioned security boss. We waited and waited, and eventually a woman came up to me and very politely asked me to move out of the way because they had an important guest coming through. I insisted that I was just waiting for my wife, and after explaining who my wife was, she said it was fine, apologised to me, ushered us to a nearby corner, and said if we were too cold we could come back inside. Cool!
While we were waiting - IN THE PATH TO THE LUNCH VENUE THAT BILL WAS ABOUT TO GO TO - another woman came by and asked who we were and what we were doing, and I again explained that I was waiting for my wife; this woman seemed more concerned, and dashed off down the corridor. By now the entire area was pretty much empty apart from Nick and I.
Moments later, Kat came running out and said I had caused a high-alert status with all of my suspicious loitering and that we needed to get out, get out now. At that moment about ten HEAVILY ARMED guys in black suits (and some with riot shields) came bursting out of the elevator behind us in the foyer. They dive-tackled Nick and three guys surrounded me (two of them had HK MP5SD2's, I could tell). One of them spoke in an American accent, and ordered us to put our hands on our heads and drop to our knees. When Nick was still recovering from the dive-tackle, they grabbed his hands, put them behind his back, and cable-tied them together. Fortunately I was faster to comply, and I knelt down and placed my hands on my head. At this point Kat was hysterical, so two of the others quietly took her back inside, but I couldn't see where or what was going on.
In a matter of seconds we were both frisked and some dude with a metal detector had done a sweep over us and gingerly removed our keys and wallets. I was freaked out. Some dude over a radio said something about "question them" and we were bundled into some sort of canvas bags over our heads and arms (so we couldn't move or see), and dragged us out to some vans. I don't really know what happened after that since I must have been tranquilised by some substance and could barely stand, but I don't remember any needles or anything! So weird!
When we were inside these vans, we had the bags removed, and it looked like we were in some sort of sound-proofed room full of mirrors. A loudspeaker hailed over us "who are you? who do you work for?" and before I could respond, Nick shouted out "this is a violation of our rights! I remember Guantanamo! You get us out right now or I'm getting Jerry Springer as my lawyer!" ... to which we could hear chuckles and hoots of laughter from the other side of the sound-proof mirror, and someone said over the loudspeaker "that's Johnnie Cochran, you imbecile". At that point I had had enough, turned green with rage, broke the chair I was strapped to, jumped up to liberate Nick, when some burly guy armed with brass knuckles came barging into the room - I tripped him up with a deft pirouette and proceeded to gun down the entire US Army.
No, sorry, that was my imagination going on overdrive again. What really happened was Kat came running over to me and said I had caused a high alert for security and I needed to get out, get out now, and she quickly ushered us into a nearby office where we were told to wait. There were a bunch of other guys and girls in the office, but only the guys had cameras and seemed remotely interested in seeing Bill Gates. We waited, and waited, and waited, and by the end of it all, security were cautious about a guy that resembled me, so I had no hope of meeting him in person, since security wouldn't allow this "code seven" freak to come near to him, in case I intended to do him some harm.
After waiting for about thirty minutes or so, we gave up hope of meeting the wealthiest man in the world (I shall admit I had hopes I would have been able to speak with him, "Bob... Bill, right, whatever... Bill... what's up with VISTA?"); sadly it was just too tight a schedule for him and some idiots were creating such a disturbance that the rest of us honest people would never have had a chance to see him. Nick is also a MAC boy, so he just brought the wrong juju to the party. Faldie (Kat's old workmate) did manage to film Bill coming out of the 'loo - and I realise in hindsight that was my tactical error - I should have loitered in the bathroom section, and then maybe I could have intercepted Bill and got him to sign my toilet paper!
Kat was a lot more successful - she DID meet him, but alas had no time to speak with him because the other people in the lab took up all of his time with such meaningless drivel (we all know all he wanted to know about was how the MS Access database was going... which incidentally, he did squizz over on Kat's laptop - smart move to Kat for keeping it loaded up in plain sight!). To remedy her lack of conversation time with Bill, she did get to have a photo-op with Bill, and I'm sure hers will be the one they publish since she's so smart-looking :)
In conclusion, Bill never had the opportunity to meet me, which I am as sad about as he will be when he reads this blog post - but no matter, Bill, we have plenty of time, and maybe next time you can call ahead to let me know when you're coming and I can see if the time suits me - this time you were just lucky I had my staff function on the same day so I had time off to pop by...
(Kat snapped this photo in the lab without trying to seem too obvious, so cudo's to my lovely wife for that - if we can get our paws on the real deal photo, that should impress people a lot more, and we'll post it here if/when we get it!)
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