Company Dinner and ramble ramble ramble
Last night was the company New Year dinner. It was in a banquet hall in a big fancy hotel on the river. It was interesting to see the various states of "dressed up" of my co-workers. The Taiwanese staff all dressed up. Some of the guys went with slacks a nice shirt and tie, some of them went with a button up and their jeans... One did just show up in his every day clothes. I dressed up as best as I could with what was in my closet... (and a nice jacket that I "borrowed" from Elze.... What? She was probably still sitting in the airport in Malaysia on her layover, I couldn't very well ask her first could I?) I think my shoes could very well have made me the tallest woman in the entire room. After an entire evening in those things I have sore muscles in surprising places. There was a big buffet, but most of the dishes were very meaty, so I didn't actually eat that much.
Then there were raffles and games and such. All of the schools had to come up with a chant to say. We delegated it to the new guy and he came up with something set to the tune of "We Will Rock You". We never practiced it, (apathy!) at the last minute Jay gave us all a photocopy of the words, and the Taiwanese teachers gave us all pom-pons. It was hilariously horrible, I couldn't stop laughing through the whole thing. The other schools obviously put some effort into theirs. I love my coworkers, snide, apathetic, drinkers... My kind of people. Our table was pestering the wait staff for more beer well after they had basically stopped serving. We all got raffle numbers at the beginning of the night, and my coworker Lisa got called. It turns out in order to win the $1000NT prize she had to compete in a beer chugging contest with two other people. That was bad. Lisa didn't manage to win, but the tiny little Taiwanese TA who did win, spilled a lot of her beer on the stage. The Taiwanese guy who also competed lost his dinner on the stage... nice. And when I went into the restroom right after, the girl was in there being sick. Lisa won't have her Canadian citizenship revoked afterall, she's the only one who finished nearly the entire bottle (BIG bottle) without spillilng or being sick.
I had my own little Golden Globe moment. Also when we arrived, our names were put into a box, so later they would be pulled and we had to go on stage and get a balloon out of this little balloon hopper thingy. Pop the balloon, and inside is a piece of paper with a prize. So the ONE time I went to the bathroom during all of this... they called my name and my helpful co-workers shouted for everybody, "She's in the bathroom!" The awesome thing though, is that when I did return, I won a DVD player. That is quite awesome because I didn't actually own one, and I've wanted one for a while, just didn't really feel it was important enough to spend my money on right now. And I manged to find the hack that allows me to change the region. I set it to Region 1 since the DVDs I own are all from the US. I think I'll just leave it like that till I move out so that Kiari can't use it. She'd probably break it or something anyway.
Later the activties definitely seemed to be turning into public humiliation for small prizes. So when they started asking all of the single people to go to the stage for some sort of game, I said to Tom, the nearest single guy at the table, "Hey Tom, will you be my boyfriend?" He said, "For the next 20 minutes, sure." I'm glad I didn't go up there, it turned out to be a 45 minute ordeal that was incomprehensible since the hosts of the evening were speaking Chinese the whole time even though about 1/3 of the people in the room were foreigners, and the rest of them are still English teachers. Whatever. Tom had the good graces to look crushed when I said to him, "Tom, it's been great, but I think we should see other people. I just think our time has come."
Kiwi was there and he sat and talked to me until all the rest of the teachers from my school arrived so he had to clear off to his own table. But then he left extremely early in the evening (during that one fateful trip to the bathroom) and didn't even say goodbye. He only stayed long enough for the dinner. In my book, that's just rude. You say goodbye to your friends when you leave a place, especially when it's reasonable for them to think that you'll be there a lot longer. Or, if you really have to go, and they're nowhere to be seen, at the very least send a text apologizing for taking off without saying anything. I sooooooooooo need to find someone better to keep me occupied until I can get off of this blasted island and find a real man.
After the banquet finally finished nearly all of us went to Brent and Feras' apartment to hang out for a bit, then we went this place called Join Us where there was live music. It was pretty cool, the band that was playing when we arrived was awesome, I never caught their name though, and then Simon's band played. They were skilled musicians, but I didn't really like it. Not much in the way of lyrics, mostly just long, drawn out, self-indulgent, "lookit all the neat noises I can make on my instrument" music. And a band of pale skinny white boys playing Reggae is just funny... Simon is Australian, and I know the guy who was singing (thin, average height, blonde hair, blue eyes) is Scottish.
Around 2:30 or 3:00 Sunny started trying to reach me, but it was too loud in there to talk to her. She said she actually went to Join Us and went in, but she didn't see me. I was there, she must not have looked very hard. And she tried to call me again, but I didn't hear my phone over the noise. So then I suggested to Val that we go to LH to meet Sunny, and she and I and this guy that subbed at our school once, Luis, wound up sharing a cab with yet another guy who subbed at our school once (known as the weird guy, he got fired for being too scary... and replaced by a middle aged man with long hair and a facial tattoo. Yeah, he really is THAT weird.) But when we got there they were already closing up (very strange for them to close at 3:00 on a Sat). So I called Sunny and told her not to bother, it was closed. Val and Luis and I walked to a breakfast shop around the corner and had some breakfast, then we shared a cab back to our various homes which oddly enough aren't really that close together, but aren't that far out of the way from eachother either.
Then I came home, hooked up my DVD player and got the region thing sorted before I finally went to bed. Today I can't seem to settle down in one place long enough to finish anything. I keep stareting one thing, then going back to something else that I started a while ago and didn't finish, then on to something else, then just vegging out watching Eddie Izzard with my new DVD player, which I was supposed to be saving till it was time to mark tests. It's 7:30 and I still haven't started my marking. Ugh. So much to do in only three days this week.
Elze left Saturday morning, Kiari has been gone since the first. Kiari comes back in two weeks... I'm dreading it. Two weeks alone with her... *shudder* I'm still pissed off about the honey thing. I guess it's just the incomprehensible depth of her lack of respect for people around her that still shocks me. I can't wait till that lease expires and we can get out of here. I already miss Elze though. The two weeks where it was just the two of us were so nice. Maybe I'll stay in this area after all if Elze is willing to get a place with me still. It sure would be cheaper to split all the utlities between two people, and this area is a lot closer to work. I'll think about it. I'll have two weeks of having the place to myself to decide if I really want to live with someone anymore. I'm already enjoying the fact that I had some hot chocolate earlier, and I rinsed the cup and left it in the sink... nobody here to care if I wash it later, or think that if I can just leave my dirty dishes in the sink for a few hours then it's ok for her to leave her dirty dishes in the sink for days, even if it is the only one of that sort of dish that we have in the house and other people would like to be able to use it.... *grumble grumble grumble*