hi i'm a volunteer

The 2010 AIDS conference attracted famous politicians, successful entrepreneurs and some of the greatest medical minds of our time to the little city of Vienna, and I of all people was given the rare opportunity to work as a volunteer for this conference. Wide-eyed and fresh-faced I stepped off the underground station into a flurry of press, delegates, protestors, free hugs and condom flies.

[Side note: A condom fly is a man dressed up in a giant fly suit advertising condoms, obviously.]

Transfixed in a state of confusion, frustration and fear I stationed myself in my assigned session room ready and willing to acquiesce to any bizarre request - from quizzing delegates as to whether they spoke Russian, to throwing a handful of condoms in the air. So warped was I by the idea of being in the same building as Bill Clinton, that it took me a good while to realise that the majority of these 'great minds' were just like the rest of us. It had taken a few days of speakers forgetting presentations, missing translations, numerically-inadequate delegates, and vuvuzela-blowing scientists for me to achieve that eureka moment - it occurred to me that potentially curing HIV aside, I had put the majority of them on a pedestal. We're all human after all, and to err is human is it not? Just because they discovered the positive impact of microbicides on minimising the virus reservoir, does not mean they don't enjoy a tranny-filled CONDOMIZE party with music blaring at a volume sure to make your ears bleed.

With that said - Bring on the CONDOMIZE PARTY.