LONDON (2003) & NEW YORK (2005) -- Rule: When offered the chance to attend an event hosted by an Azerbaijan Embassy, where Lebanese food (Lebanon = close enough to Azerbaijan) is catered and business folk, suited journalists and ex-pat Azerbaijani swirl beaujolais in a cramped lounge... YOU GO. So when I lucky enough to be second-handidly invited to the London embassy in 2003, I lept. Blokes chuckling about Baku-taxi woes and hangovers from a visit in '97. Multi-colored slides displaying tourism and industry pie charts shown on too-small screen next to the Azerbaijani flag. Squeezing between ex-pat chats for another glass of wine. Worried hummus was lingering on a lip or nostril. Loosely linked with travel journalism, I was invited the next day to attend a three-day conference in Baku to promote their budding tourism industry. I said I would, and they explained the HUNDREDS of dollars I'd need to spend for a costly London-Baku flight. They'd throw in the hotel, and the ten-hour day meetings for free. It takes a confident nation to charge for promotion, but I declined. Two years later, I heard detailed tales of life in the streets of Baku from the man who put Sesame Street onto Bangladeshi TV screens. He spent two years there, working for CNN. 'Great place.'