One of my managers invited me to join the big wigs of our Segment's organization in Russia for a business review.  The meeting was to take place in a small cabin resort area outside of Moscow.  The reasoning i'm sure was to keep most of these guys (and myself) away from the distractions and temptations of the Moscow nightlife and risk us not making it back to the meetings in the morning....and it would have happened. 

The resort was a very nice setup deep into the trees about an hour from the city.  It was a bit of a town in itself, on the edge of a lake, log cabin accomodations, Russian security not letting anyone in or you out, and the option of quads, snowmobiling, paintballing...etc, all things that our company forbid us to do.  All that we were allowed to take in was 2 days of financial and operational review presentations.  So, although it was a nice resort there was no time to experience it. 

It was good to see the side of the business that I'm not used to dealing with so all-in-all it was a good experience until the very end when thye decided to send me to my one of my most favorite winter destinations of Pyt-Yakh to supervise a few engineers on the job. Since everything in the oilfield has to happen immediately, I was going to have to travel through the night to get to the location on time.  I wasn't looking forward to the flight but when I was checking in the ticketing agent mentioned to a coworker, and fellow traveller (Russian) that we would be sitting right behind The Maria Sharipova. 

I was happy he told us because I would never recognize her if I didn't know she was going to be there.  So, as I was waiting in the bus on the tarmac that was going to take us to the plane (don't ask) I was searching the crowd for the woman I thought would best resemble Ms. Sharapova.  I couldn't find a match but I searched the crowd so throughly that I found another celebrity.  I was now also going to be sharing the plane with Darth Vader.  He was standing right in front of me, I couldn't believe it.  Now, I had my doubts since he allegedly died a long time ago in a galazy far, far away and he's also rumoured to be a fictional character but the man standing right in front of me looked exactly like this...(minus the mouthpiece and scars)

In the end, there I came to the conclusion that it couldn't possibly be Darth Vader because he was way too young and Maria also didn't end up being on the plane so the whole thing was a bust and my 'Rescuing Maria from Darth's evil clutches and eloping together to Russian Tennis paradise' dream scenario was dashed.