An Unforgettable Dinner

If ever the platitude "a picture speaks more than a thousand words" applies, it does so here. What in the world is happening in this picture?

We'll, we've been on the deserted island for way over a month by this time. Almost everyone's lost a lot of weight. The competition that preluded this (brim-)full-course meal involved oily liquid, as those of you with keen eyes can notice. We had to transfer a lot of melted butter in our mouths. Anyway, the two best competitors (Markku on the left) were entitled to -- get this -- a four-hour Roman style dinner on the beach under the evening sun, accompanied by a private chef (I don't know where they got him from), real chairs, a grill, and -- get this too -- the remaining competitors chained to a bench a few feet away from the table. They had to witness the entire feast without a bite (we offered the meal to them, but the production crew didn't allow it). The women -- Jasna, Mira, and Elena -- were really good sport about it. In fact they gave us some culinary suggestions.

And boy did we have a lot to choose from. You can see rye bread, white bread, cheese and other toppings, eggs, beef and pork and chicken in various different forms, olives, potatoes, sausages (HK sininen all the way from Finland!), fish (silli etc.), rice, sauces, most fruits you can name, and so on. For drinks we had water, beer, red wine, white wine, mineral water, club sodas, and (naturally) whisky and brandy. For dessert -- well we started the whole meal with strawberry ice-cream so it wouldn't melt, but in addition to that we had chocolates (managed so smuggle a few for the women), cakes, and Cuban cigars.

Every fifteen minutes we'd take a "break" (=run into the jungle, our bodies weren't used to food), and all through the next night I wanted to throw up but refused to on grounds of "not wasting it". Really, an unforgettable experience. One of the many we experienced during those 44 incredible days (summer of 2005).