All Hail Plumeria

At our lil hub o' Virtucon, it's like working in the United Nations right now.

Our Annual Meeting is coming up and we're replacing all the flags in the auditorium. That means all the old flags are going to the garbage and all the new flags are being taken out of the small, conveniently sized shrink wrap packages and strewn about our offices.

And because they've been packed into tiny packages, the flags are all wrinkled. So we've got to iron them first. Especially so we don't piss off some executive whose native flag looks all crappy.

Yes, it was great to come into work and have to take our shift ironing flags. Yup, that degree is coming in handy, Mom. Should nylon be a low setting or a high setting on the old Sunbeam? And since some of our team are very domesticated (some would say housebroken), we threatened to take pictures of a few of them ironing.

Then we're having to put these on flag poles that are about 6 feet high so they have enough time to settle and hang properly after they've been ironed.

And because we've got about 200 flags which we can't even identify, we're also having to try to look some of these up on the internet because we can't tell which country they're from. Oh sure, we get the biggies like Russia and England. But would you know what the flag of Montenegro looks like? Us neither. I thought that was France by the way. C'mon, those are way close.

I also enjoyed making up the names and countries for flags that no one could identify. I had everyone convinced that this was the country of Plumeria. People kind of hemmed and hawed, but I kept asking where they thought we got Plumeria flowers from so everyone shut up. I finally had to tell people it was really Hong Kong before they made the sign and put it up and pissed off someone from our Asian office.

No one would fall for Freedonia which is the made up country in the Marx Brothers classic movie Duck Soup. But then I found the country of Freedonia online which is some guy trying to establish a new country. Of course, we're trying to score a flag and include them as our little inside joke.

I also couldn't convince anyone that Florin and Guilder were real. They're both from The Princess Bride.

Though one person fell for Molvania which was the subject of the parody travel book, "Molvania, A Land Untouched by Modern Dentristy."