My 1st D&D

12th January 2007, Friday

My block of flats which is in those extended V-design has only 3 elevators to service the likes of as many as 300 households, yet the town council decided to re-wire the electrical supply of the entire block, resulting in frequent trips in the power supply especially the entire column of 4 sets of apartments (ours included) which was unsatisfactory...

This faithful day when I took a day of precious annual leave to recuperate from a late night of partying the night before, but as posted on the communal noticeboard that it would be my apartment to suffer the brunt of their re-wiring process and I had to endure a good full day without the likes of my PC, my internet, my cable TV and even hot water for coffee, chilling under the fan etc...
Fortunately the skies continued to open up to douse our island with torrential rain, thus it was quite cooling the entire day but the overcast made visibility hard as I tried to prepare some of the min figurines I am selling this Sunday at CSC...
Living in this era, electricity sure as crucial as air and water...

Got to sleep till 11 this morning after a not-so-late for my inaugural Dinner and Dance, merely half a year since jumping ship and I am feeling this new organisation certainly cherish their staff more than my former employers...

The event was held at Holiday Inn and I had planned to reach there 6.15pm despite only got home to dress up by 5pm...
The storm surely did not help my cause, got me all wet and slowed down the train ride...
However I was still much earlier than many of my co-workers though the likes of KM, CS and Sigeeta had already made their presence felt at the lobby...

The rest eventually poured into the half-sized ballroom where the Recreational Club which organized the event were dressed for the theme of the party, "Masquerade" in rented costumes including Victorians including Hong Boon as a weird looking carriage-driver as well as a guy doing a very bad impression of Luffy from "One Piece"...
Our director was donning a shiny golden swallowtail jacket, doing a solid performance on the piano while another director was a cheap Walker Texas Ranger and some Swedish chicks from my lab came as a she-devil and some weird cockcroach figure with balloon-feelers on her head...most of us came in usual smart casual and the girls who you usually seen in shirts and jeans came well-adorned and strike a definite difference between girls and women...
The event management team that was employed included some cheap removable tattoos and hand-drawn ones to draw the crowd before the actual event began...

The games routine began with a quiz on TV shows theme jingles which I was quite enthusiatic to participate, perhaps reeling from the effect of 2 glasses of Tiger Beer though unfancied by the cheap chocolate prize...
Sigeeta was lucky to be one of the 5 early birds to get a $10 Takashimya voucher...
After some lacklusture performances I didn't bother to pay attention, those long-serving staff were honoured with the "5 years of service" awards which came in conjunction with the establishment of our institute... With many of the admin staff including the directors being on the list, we also seen a familiar face in His Beautiness who would be sore about being the one excluded from our table which was overcrowded anyway...

The buffet dinner wasn't fantastic at all and I appeased myself with the dessert on offer though I had better to be truthfully...

The table quiz got us buzzing to score with all the questions available though we had slightest idea Fella Bella is an Argentinian pony while Britney Spears' middle name is "Jean"..
We had intended to sabotaged our Shitty-Green Pants boss to participate in a initimate dancing game but someone jumped the gun which left us rued over the chance to see him make a fool out of himself..

We then volunteered ourselves for a cooperation game which we had hooked our boss up again but the scaredy-cat Jason was too chicken to play along with our superior and in the end I was the 3rd person for the team and won the stupid blindfoled-gong game for our team and won a bottle-opener which we come in real handy 2 weeks ago when my missus actually went to Carrefour to get one...

Not that I am a sore ingrate but a 1GB thumbdrive was like the last thing I wish to get from a lucky draw beside the Fondue set and some flimsy steamboat pot...
Sigeeta was real lucky to grab the 3rd prize of a digital video-cam, perhaps her red dress was a lucky dresscode, though we were quite disgruntled that most of the big prizes were won by the top management who were too wealthy to buy those items for themselves...

The kooky Scandanavian cockcroach went on to grab the best dress award and the party was coming to a close when the Dj started his turntable and CD collection and the lighthing was dimmed...
My colleagues were rather shy to hit the dancefloor and once again I had to be the one pulling everyone up and we were quite surprise to see our bosses indulging in their wild dance for rain...CS, who usually cooped up reading scientific journals was releasing himself into the music once he set his foot on the dancefloor...
Most of our colleagues had a bit of fit before calling it a night while we stayed a bit longer till we felt the dance was sapping much more energy than a normal gym session and hopefully we could still catch the last train home till we got stumbled by the continuous pouring rain...
Our knight in shining SAAB came though with face of ugly stubbles as Shitty-Green was gracious enough to send BY, KM, CS and myself home despite we lived everywhere on the island which was when we got to know our usually nerdy boss was into classical music and high speed on the expressway...

Nevertheless the D&D surely helped to bolster some relationships at work while letting everyone know that behind all the seriousness at work, even bosses can have a jovial side when come to play...

Japanese word of the day: 停電 (Blackout) I wonder what'll happen when there's a power trip at the D&D?