BUSINESS NEWS

One of the highlights of TUPNews' recent travels was the acquisition of the Economist’s most recent city-by-city guide to business etiquette. This will always turn up some quaint insider take on the proper handling of business cards, acceptable levels of lateness, tipping customs and so on. Don’t talk family and football in Berlin; talk of nothing else in Johannesburg, that sort of thing.

It’s worth tracking down a copy just for the Moscow entry, which is focused almost exclusively on how not to become violently drunk. It reads like advice you would give to a seventeen-year-old before freshers’ week. Sample:

On business trips to the provinces, a valedictory feast punctuated by frequent
toasts may be unavoidable. If you know you are in for a marathon, trying lining
your stomach with fat first by eating a large chunk of butter, perhaps spread
thickly on some bread. You will stay sober longer, and in extremis can go and
make yourself throw up the booze before it penetrates your system.

Elsewhere, it advises you to pretend that you are on antibiotics. The Economist, ladies and gentlemen.