Hear ye, hear ye: She's showing signs of life!

For those of you who haven-t yet come to Geneva and thereafter taken the near-obligatorz-by-international-city-tradition UN headquarters tour, allow me to give you a quick idea. Let's put it this waz, the UN HQ Geneva looks and feels every bit the 1929-original-building-plus-five-million-add-ons-in-the-1960s-and-70s that it is.

Add to this, then, the usual human atmosphere in the day-in-day-out routine, and you get an old, unattractive building (albeit with fantastic lake and mountain views!) filled with frowns, stern faces, courtesy smirks/smiles, security guards and x-ray scanners, mounds of documents, loads of formal protocol, and all the politically-correct diplo-speak you could ever imagine. In fact, come to think of it, usually the most exciting thing in the vicinity are the free-range peacocks whose squawking can occasionally lend a comical air to the most serious of meetings.

And so, imagine my surprise - if not outright glee - this morning when I opened the main door, only to be blasted with the noise (a first in itself!!) of music, chatter, people - hundreds of them smiling, laughing and happily setting up stands according to country - and the amazing smells of foods from every corner of the world. Gone were the suits and ties - replaced instead with traditional clothing of each country, gone were the obnoxiously conspicuous ID badges - replaced instead with signs of people's true identity, and gone were the stoic security sentinels, who were instead intermingling and enjoying the good food and entertainment just as much as anyone else. Three cheers for the annual United Nations Women's Guild International Bazaar.

Even amid my pleasant surprise and the mariachi band beginning to close in around me for a morning serenade, however, I unfortunately could not neglect the fact that I was actually not there to indulge myself to my tummy's delight as I would have liked, but rather was already running late for a meeting. And as I (quite literally ) shimmied and shaked my way through the belly dancers, salsa dancers, small children and intermingling government delegates who were conveniently (strategically?) blocking the escalators, the awestruck smile on my face was surely betraying my thoughts ...

... once again, the women have got it all right - if only we'd let them lead the way in solving the world's woes!