I don't post or come on here much anymore, much less get emotional at things. But your latest updates almost had me in tears. However...I am SO happy to hear that there may FINALLY be a silver lining for you. You seem to not need shortening surgery, and that's great!!! Maybe these doctors finally got it right for you. And I do have a great a feeling about the trauma nail replacing your G-Nail. I can tell you from experience, I almost needed a bone graft, but when I had a screw replaced, it somehow triggering my body into finally healing itself (or continue the healing, as it seemed to have stopped at 50% on my left leg). So I think replacing the nail will have been a great move for you.
I am so sorry to hear about your cat. From one animal/cat lover to another, I know how hard that is. I'm keeping you in my thoughts and prayers. I actually feel happier knowing that you seem to finally be entering the final phase of this nightmare. If I were you, I'd write a book about this. Or go on TV and tell your story. You probably have THE story to tell as far as LL is concerned.
UNICORN - Dr. Guichet Internal Femurs 8cm - Summer 2016
stay strong Unicorn! You are the best writer ever!!
hug
OBG
Hello night owls,
Woke up in agony again because now that we've timed it, the OxyContin lasts exactly 7 hours and takes about 15 minutes to be effective. These become very important stats if you want to turn painkiller pro.
I've been off grid for the past 2 weeks and just learnt that one of my influential bosses died last week, Stanley Ho. He used to have the sole monopoly of gambling, casinos and sports betting in Macau/Hong Kong. He was an inspirational man who's primary creed was keeping everything simple (with the small exception of his 4 wives and 17 kids...).
I was the COO of his online gaming company in 2000 when I was 24 and didn't know the first thing about casinos. This little annecdote popped up in my Oxy fog head when I remember him, so share I will.
I'm a big believer in Occam's Razor which predicates that the simplest solution is often the one staring you in the face. So here goes...
Our online gaming site was phished by hackers in 2000, yes, when dinosaurs roamed the land and Nigerian princes weren't even conceived yet to share their wealth with you.
Basically, the hackers duplicated our casino website with every possible permutation/spelling of our company name. That way, in the offchance a gambler makes a typo and logs onto a copycat website, his login/passwords/accounts/personal details get stolen.
The hackers courteously sent me an email at 7am in the morning asking for a daily extortion of USD$10k in order to keep our security breach silent, how considerate. It wasn't a king's ransom and I could forsee the 'expenditure' being swept under 'GOODWILL' by our creative accountants. However, little hacker might tell his friends and before you know it, we'll have more extorters than we do gamblers. So ok, need to nip this in the bud, but how? The world wide web was so so wide and anonymous... then.
One thing's for sure, he's Italian from his email handler, tiscali.it So that narrows something down and my ever helpful PA was Italian, red headed, hot tempered, heavily pregnant and her maternal instincts kicked in prematurely. She picked up the phone, called Tiscali the telecomms company in Italy and shouted her way into getting the exact name, address, telephone and shoe size of the poor hacker. The schmuck stood no chance when he hatched this evil plan that morning.
So now, we have the hacker's name, address and telephone. Thanking my PA for her resourcefulness, my COO self took over with my executive management training... I called the FBI and reported this criminal hacking incident like a good citizen would. This is when Occam, were he alive, would make an executive decision to switch our PA and COO roles respectively. Not only did the FBI not care about webs of fishes in Italy, all they wanted to know was whether there was a bomb somewhere. TOTAL FAIL on my part.
Ok, it's now afternoon where I was and close to midnight in Italy. How do we get rid of an anonymous evil villain who pre-dates trolls and the dark web? I mean, Google was struggling in a garage and my most advanced tool was Yahoo Maps (yes, this was the equivalent of cave paintings).
Nevertheless, ignorance can be bliss and dumbluck effective. Yahoo Maps produced a local map of the 2-goat town in which the hacker and his mother resided... and I felt like a CIA operator with advance satellite imagery. The map also listed all the restaurants in town and one caught my eye, Palazzo di Giada, stuck out like a sore thumb between the A-Zs of Aladdin Kebab and Pizza Napolitana. So I called the chinese restaurant, bonded with the chinese owner who sympathized with our hacking dilemma and offered to send his toughest cook to beat up the hacker. NOT REALLY.
We placed an order for dinner delivery to the hacker with a sweet note, 'Complimenti da Stanley Ho'. Not sure if the food was that bad but the hacker disappeared and was never heard of again. Occam would have been proud.
Not sure why I'm telling you this story but this is the one anecdote that sticks out most in my PTSD brain when I think of my mentor boss' passing. The simplest solution is usually right in front of you.
WOW! Italy, hackers, FBI and a cool young girl chasing some bastards and leaving a message in italian at the end mafia style. I felt like I was reading Codename Villanelle. Awesome story!
I'm rambling again but awaiting discharge decision (yay?)...
In the meantime, my drug fuelled delirium is responsible for my insomnia and reverse deja-vu. In non-crazy speak, it just means I'm experiencing flashes of memory so vivid in the little sleep I get that they're not actually dreams but big chunks of my pre-LL life that I have forgotten, due to the last 4 years of trauma.
So, I was sent to work in Moscow in 1997 and at that time, capitalism was a new new thing. There are 2 books I love about that era called The Oligarchs and much later, The Red Notice. Before I drone on and on about meso-capitalist Russian life, you've to remember that I was a naive 22-year old bushy tailed summer intern for a Russian oligarch.
Of course, I don't speak Russian and I used Excel purely to enter numbers neatly after doing the math on my handheld calculator. Remember the Texas Instrument calculator? The one that can calculate IRR and NPV in under 3 hours on a good day? Anyway, those were my high finance days.
So the first thing about Russian life, you'll find tons of people at the metro station selling blackened (used) lightbulbs. Why would ANYONE even piss-poor in post-communist Russia buy a burnt-out lightbulb? They're sold for the equivalent of about USD$0.02 but what use was there?
I found out why eventually. Everyday when I get to the office and flip on the lights, nothing happens. It's not because there's no electricity... it's because the savvy locals have switched out all the good working lightbulbs for the burnt-out ones that they had bought for $0.02
Its SHEER GENIUS that Thomas Edison himself hasn't even thought of. No wonder western companies initially failed to survive in Russia, they got outsmarted by every layman and their babushka.
Yup. You should definitely write a book
I am really very happy indeed to hear that you are on the mend. It's good to see your humour in your writing again. I wish you a speedy recovery.
Thats wonderful, well deserved good news, Unicorn!
Insomnia again...
When I was working in Paris, our summer internships were a thinly disguised beauty pageant because the interviews were conducted by our lecherous male bankers. So I've seen my fair share of beauty & brains and then, not so much. This one takes the cake!
Hot intern emails our F/X trader requesting a currency exchange quote...
Trader: Best I can do is 1:1.27, in USD
Intern: What is USD?
Trader: U Should Die
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