Tonight our company invited to a Chinese New Year dinner.
I am not a friend of these dinners. First of all, it’s really nice the company spends all that money on us. Cheers for that. No, really: thanks! But well, there are always some lame games that each group sitting at a table has to participate in. I recall last time I joined one of these dinners tables could win “iPads” which for the winning team actually turned out to be an “eye pad” for everybody.
Phew…
The other thing I don’t like is that there is always some stupid theme. That’s also an Asian thing. Themes tend to be something like “black & white”, “glamorous” or other shit like this. Tonight was “1920s”.
Lamia: Ah, look – this is when you were born!
Leo: Ha-ha… actually I was 5.
Lamia had luck finding some feather accessory at a shop in the Far East Plaza mall. With some girl magic she totally fit the theme (here on a photo together with Marie Emilie):
I did not find anything that would have remotely fitted my height and stature (fat bastard that I am right now anyway). And if I had, I doubt I would have bought that crap. So dress pants and dress shirt it was (but damn I really need to lose some weight – I bought these 2 years ago and, man: they are tight!).
Before the dinner started people could entertain themselves with the inevitable photo booth, free flowing wine and beer and an artist who made amazing paper cuts of your silhouette in just a few seconds.
This guy is good!
He did an amazing job with the feather Lamia had strapped on her head. And he was also game when I put my fingers up on my head, so that my paper cut would look a little more interesting…
Really quite amazing!
Here’s another photo of the night Billy took of Lamia, Lillian, Linda (the three “L”s) and myself. He named it: “Wolfram and the three godesses”. Quite fitting.
And the rest of the night?
Well. Food was garbage not great. And I was bored by the speeches and the games. But I was rather impressed by the band entirely made of colleagues who really played some impressive versions of Beatles songs. I have to say, though, that despite the fact that the Beatles are legend, I’d wager nobody who has a pulse wants to hear their songs anymore.
Naturally I am wrong and the crowd went berserk. I left the room when the polonaise started…
Leo: … the fuck?! I need more beer!
So while I was once more a grumpy cynic, most people had a ball. I ran into a colleague who is currently here on an extended business trip from Germany:
Kollege: Mann, das ist ja geil hier!
Leo: Hm-hm?
Kollege: Ich bin jetzt seit 4 Stunden hier aber es fühlt sich null so an…
Leo: Ja, mehr wie 8…
Kollege: Wenn ich da an die Sachen denke die wir in Deutschland machen, da ist das hier ja wirklich super genial! Muss wohl die Kultur sein…
There you have it: a genuine feedback on how nice the evening actually was for normal people (looking at my Facebook feed, it’s full of happy people during the event). I thought it was rather taxing and I convinced Lamia to leave early, right after the entertainment program was finished, even though there were still two courses to go on the menu (but both of us did not look too forward to these). I will also admit that the prizes you could win in the lucky draw were actually quite good: it started with Starbucks vouchers, then stepped up to tickets for Universal Studios and the main prize was an Asus Transformer tablet. I wonder who would really want that, but to be fair: that’s a decent prize, more fitting for an event like this.
Well, all things considered, the conclusion has to be that I might skip this event next year, of course…
