Clinton arrived Tuesday night at the Eurasian University in Astana and was greeted by two young girls in traditional Kazakh dress who presented her with flowers.
Eighteen days later Mr Flowers had acquired a controlling interest in Enstar, a small firm in Alabama that had two big attractions: a stockmarket value beneath its cash holdings, and a tax-loss to carry forward.
Let's put this in context: just a few hours before, one of my Timorese colleagues was telling me how he wanted to lay flowers today for his nine family members who died during the struggle, but how they only knew where two of the bodies were.