Drunk Glass

You know that old joke... What's being drunk feel like? Ask a glass of water! This is a video of Christmas day, from the perspective of a glass of cyder.

Christmas party

We had our work Christmas party last Friday. Was a whole lot better then last years...


This year we were in a club, looking out over the beach. Good food, free bar.
Thought I’d leave off posting an entry until I see what sort of fallout resulted.
Not a lot it turns out. Looks like all the wayward kids decided to ‘get a bit’ of discretion.

The thing I’ve noticed about a lot of Christmas parties is a desperate rush by a load of people to ‘get with’ someone from work. As though the rules are changed for one night.
Ordinarily it takes a couple of days for someone to end up with a 'post party rep' but a new record has been set by one girl who had started as a receptionist just a week earlier. The party started at one in the afternoon and she had a reputation by eight o’clock that night.
I think history is caught in a feedback loop that’s slowly tightening.

There was a fancy dress theme.
Some of the boys did it, as did quite a few of the girls, and everyone else dressed nice.
As usual, there was a guy who dressed up like a woman, and he won a prize for best costume.
Why is it almost always the guy that dresses up like a woman that scores the prize for best effort? The decision was made by a group of girls. Are women not bored of seeing men dressed up as parodies of women?

There were mechanical surfboards pitching young guns off into the scenery, video games, and a fortune teller booth. I lined up a fellow sceptic to accompany me into 'flaky land.'
Fortune teller reckons I’m going to have a close relationship with in six months. I pressed him for more details and it will be a proper relationship, not just copping off in an ally behind the pub. I said that if I found true love within the next six months, I'd track him down and write him a cheque for a thousand dollars.
Let’s call the end of June the cut off.

So how was your Christmas party?

Christmas party

We had our work Christmas party last Friday. Was a whole lot better then last years...

Link to last year’s party

This year we were in a club, looking out over the beach. Good food, free bar.
Thought I’d leave off posting an entry until I see what sort of fallout resulted.
Not a lot it turns out. Looks like all the wayward kids decided to ‘get a bit’ of discretion.

The thing I’ve noticed about a lot of Christmas parties is a desperate rush by a load of people to ‘get with’ someone from work. As though the rules are changed for one night.
Ordinarily it takes a couple of days for someone to end up with a 'post party rep' but a new record has been set by one girl who had started as a receptionist just a week earlier. The party started at one in the afternoon and she had a reputation by eight o’clock that night.
I think history is caught in a feedback loop that’s slowly tightening.

There was a fancy dress theme.
Some of the boys did it, as did quite a few of the girls, and everyone else dressed nice.
As usual, there was a guy who dressed up like a woman, and he won a prize for best costume.
Why is it almost always the guy that dresses up like a woman that scores the prize for best effort? The decision was made by a group of girls. Are women not bored of seeing men dressed up as parodies of women?

There were mechanical surfboards pitching young guns off into the scenery, video games, and a fortune teller booth. I lined up a fellow sceptic to accompany me into 'flaky land.'
Fortune teller reckons I’m going to have a close relationship with in six months. I pressed him for more details and it will be a proper relationship, not just copping off in an ally behind the pub. I said that if I found true love within the next six months, I'd track him down and write him a cheque for a thousand dollars.
Let’s call the end of June the cut off.

So how was your Christmas party?

Entry for January 07, 2007: New years message

Hiya,
It’s a new year and I’m back to blogging.


First up, Christmas.
I can be a 'grumpy old man' when this time of year rolls around.
I don't have a TV so I get to miss a big chunk of the commercialisation type thing, and this has helped reduce the degree of season surliness.
Some of the best Christmas’s I've had, was when I was travelling and living in hostels.
Christmas would be a coming together of all the strangers that were living in the hostel at that moment.
Not having friends and family around forced everyone together and it was simple and nice.

No baggage or expectation, Just food and fellowship.


This year I was a dirty whiner, and told everyone that I was sick of spending the Christmas/New year period isolated in my flat next to the beach in sunny shiny Sydney (yeah I know, I said I was a dirty whiner)
So I had heaps of invitations suddenly appearing (I will take anything from a ‘pity fuck’ down to a ‘pity dinner party’ or ‘pity meet up for a cup of coffee.’)

My immediate relatives and I got together the day before Christmas. Four generations sitting around a long table, the top of which was uneven as it was jerry rigged from a series of small table’s hidden beneath a couple of table cloths.
I think I made the comment ‘when did we become the Walton’s?’
All the girls were trying to out ‘domestic goddess’ each other. All the boys were trying to out talk each other.
At one point I visited the toilet which was down the other end of the house, and realising the I could still hear everyone perfectly, muttered to myself ‘gee we make a lot of noise when we all get together!’

The thing with ‘hanging out’ with family is that I don’t get a choice in who these people are. So I get to hang out with all sorts, including people with right wing political views. These people have started making comments like ‘what a disaster Bush has been,’ and I’m left weirded out that it’s taken them almost seven years to work this out.


Christmas day dawned grey, and it was real quiet out on the streets (I set fire to a couple of cars and no one noticed.)
A ‘quiet one,’ is where the family has disappeared off to celebrations with their partners families.
I detoxed by drinking a few refreshing G&T’s. Ate oven fries, crumbed fish, and drained a bottle of red for Christmas dinner.
Afternoon saw some golden rays bathing the city.


Boxing Day
Saw me arriving for dinner with my mates. A lovely couple who have a deaf little dog, a brilliant liquor cabinet, and who have finally found a sunny corner for their two ‘pot plants.’

Then there was a BBQ with an ‘inner circle’ group from work, so my commitment to building contacts within the industry is proceeding nicely.
There was the usual bitching about our respective employers.
Most of the people had bought their kids along, so in the future I will need to find a child that I can steal for a night.


Chilled out till New Years Eve, where I joined a billon other bodies in the city.
In Sydney a lot of people gather down at the harbour where we watch fireworks mounted to the high curving iron span of the harbour bridge, from barges floating down in the harbour, and from a few of the tall buildings in the city.
The fireworks started and the concussive shock of the ignitions, showers of sparks reflected in walls of windows, the spotlights mounted on the bridge, sweeping the swirling gunpowder smoke haze, was giving me World War Two flash backs, and I wasn’t born then!
One of the rocket platforms floated in the harbour twenty meters away from where I was standing.
My clothing shivered, and the wharf that I was standing on shook with each air burst over head.
Supposedly three tons of crackers where burnt that night.

I was standing close to a group of girls who were screaming in some sort of prepubescent multi orgasmic release.
I kept looking around to see if Robbie Williams or Johnny Depp had suddenly materialised somewhere nearby.
I left around two, and noticed on the way back home that lot’s of women were wearing really impractical footwear. Lots of minuscule-flappy-sandaled-heeled numbers. I reckon some would be cleaning out between their toes when they got home, what with all the debris lying around like mashed cans spilling puddles of beer, cigarette butts, broken glass bottles, vomit, possibly blood, and sticky discarded chips smothered in tomato sauce.

The only people more busy then the buses and street sweepers at two that morning, were the ambulance crews.

New years message

Hiya,
It’s a new year and I’m back to blogging.

I was hoping to get a few things finished off last year like the Spanish dolphins peice, but December has been pretty busy, so I’ll finish these items off in the next couple of weeks.

First up, Christmas.
I can be a 'grumpy old man' when this time of year rolls around.
I don't have a TV so I get to miss a big chunk of the commercialisation type thing, and this has helped reduce the degree of season surliness.
Some of the best Christmas’s I've had, was when I was travelling and living in hostels.
Christmas would be a coming together of all the strangers that were living in the hostel at that moment.
Not having friends and family around forced everyone together and it was simple and nice.

No baggage or expectation, Just food and fellowship.

This year I was a dirty whiner, and told everyone that I was sick of spending the Christmas/New year period isolated in my flat next to the beach in sunny shiny Sydney (yeah I know, I said I was a dirty whiner)
So I had heaps of invitations suddenly appearing (I will take anything from a ‘pity fuck’ down to a ‘pity dinner party’ or ‘pity meet up for a cup of coffee.’)

My immediate relatives and I got together the day before Christmas. Four generations sitting around a long table, the top of which was uneven as it was jerry rigged from a series of small table’s hidden beneath a couple of table cloths.
I think I made the comment ‘when did we become the Walton’s?’
All the girls were trying to out ‘domestic goddess’ each other. All the boys were trying to out talk each other.
At one point I visited the toilet which was down the other end of the house, and realising the I could still hear everyone perfectly, muttered to myself ‘gee we make a lot of noise when we all get together!’

The thing with ‘hanging out’ with family is that I don’t get a choice in who these people are. So I get to hang out with all sorts, including people with right wing political views. These people have started making comments like ‘what a disaster Bush has been,’ and I’m left weirded out that it’s taken them almost seven years to work this out.

Christmas day dawned grey, and it was real quiet out on the streets (I set fire to a couple of cars and no one noticed.)
A ‘quiet one,’ is where the family has disappeared off to celebrations with their partners families.
I detoxed by drinking a few refreshing G&T’s. Ate oven fries, crumbed fish, and drained a bottle of red for Christmas dinner.
Afternoon saw some golden rays bathing the city.

Boxing Day saw me arriving for dinner with my mates. A lovely couple who have a deaf little dog, a brilliant liquor cabinet, and who have finally found a sunny corner for their two ‘pot plants.’

Then there was a BBQ with an ‘inner circle’ group from work, so my commitment to building contacts within the industry is proceeding nicely.
There was the usual bitching about our respective employers.
Most of the people had bought their kids along, so in the future I will need to find a child that I can steal for a night.

Chilled out till New Years Eve, where I joined a billon other bodies in the city.
In Sydney a lot of people gather down at the harbour where we watch fireworks mounted to the high curving iron span of the harbour bridge, from barges floating down in the harbour, and from a few of the tall buildings in the city.
The fireworks started and the concussive shock of the ignitions, showers of sparks reflected in walls of windows, the spotlights mounted on the bridge, sweeping the swirling gunpowder smoke haze, was giving me World War Two flash backs, and I wasn’t born then!
One of the rocket platforms floated in the harbour twenty meters away from where I was standing.
My clothing shivered, and the wharf that I was standing on shook with each air burst over head.
Supposedly three tons of crackers where burnt that night.

I was standing close to a group of girls who were screaming in some sort of prepubescent multi orgasmic release.
I kept looking around to see if Robbie Williams or Johnny Depp had suddenly materialised somewhere nearby.
I left around two, and noticed on the way back home that lot’s of women were wearing really impractical footwear. Lots of minuscule-flappy-sandaled-heeled numbers. I reckon some would be cleaning out between their toes when they got home, what with all the debris lying around like mashed cans spilling puddles of beer, cigarette butts, broken glass bottles, vomit, possibly blood, and sticky discarded chips smothered in tomato sauce.

The only people more busy then the buses and street sweepers at two that morning, were the ambulance crews.

Entry for December 10, 2006: Crap, I feel like crap.

We had the work Christmas party on Friday.

Some genius decided that it would be a good idea to have everyone stand in a field next to a theme park (packed with children on holidays) for three hours, with the only cover being a tree up one end of the paddock.

A large group of us clustered around in the meagre shade, and we were accurately compared to a herd of cows looking for shelter.

Its winter everywhere else it would seem, so I need to set the scene.

Imagine somewhere really hot (Americans can think of Death Valley, Brits will remember Spain in the summer, and Eastern Europeans can use Chernobyl as a benchmark)

Now set a couple of tables out, and across the glaring white tablecloth, marshal regiments made up of bottles of beer, and plastic cups of cheap white wine.

Next door, line up a crew of minimum wage unfortunates (this is minimum wage in Oz so it's not quite as bad as minimum wage in the U.S.) to stand in the sun dressed up like penguins, to man the row of bain-maries filled with sausages, and sweaty chicken drumsticks.

The whole affair was pretty badly organised. It took me more then two hours to discover that there were bottles of champagne and red wine available behind the bar (at least red wine is tolerable when it is lukewarm.)

A work Christmas party, is made up of a crowd of people desperately trying to socialise, and the main thing we have in common, apart from drinking, eating, and fucking (pardon for the language Gypsy) is that we all work for the same company.

Which is why I was desperately trying to steer conversations away from work, cause invariably it would turn into a bitch fest (and I'm really tired of complaining.)

So being as I work in the more technical part of our biz, the conversation gravitated towards talking about Nintendo's new game console, the Wii.

One controls this new game console, by waving around a plastic wand.

It's very kinetic, involving for all ages, and hilarious to watch others play.

After three hours roasting in the sun (I have a touch of red today,) a group of us jumped on a water taxi and headed across the harbour to a boutique brewer over in the city centre.

Over the six hours, others appeared (word of mouth is an amazing thing) and hidden away in the bowls of a harbour side pub, we all allowed the alcohol and the dark closeness to take us under.

There arn't any photos cause I reckon it's a bit rude to take a camera to work functions where there will be booze (hidden microphones I'm ok with.)

I didn't score a snog but there were lots of emotional people sobbing into drinks, and hugs.

There were bosses declaring that they weren't bad people. I told the six foot plus-square jawed-Italian-sky diver, that emotionally he was a five year old, and that he had never suffered (it turned out to be a good call.)

And there was one girl, who was surround by a group of guys, soulfully consoling her about her break up with a boy in the office, who was now dating the blond that had snogged half the guys at last years Christmas party (a group of guys consoling a drunk girl is code for a group of guys jostling to be the one that takes her home.)

There is something about a work Christmas party, and a release of pressure.

Woke up Saturday morning to find a trail of clothes across the flat leading to the shower.

It was a perfect morning lucky. It's been really hot the last couple of days, but the sea breeze blew through the flat, cooling my forehead.

Drank lots of water, napped a bit (once on the floor,) wondered down to the rock pools to molest the crabs for a bit.

Another break from the Spanish dolphins.

I’m starting to view these as ad breaks :-)

We had the work Christmas party on Friday.
Some genius decided that it would be a good idea to have people stand in a field next to a theme park (packed with children on holidays) for three hours, with the only cover being a tree up one end of the paddock.
A large group of us clustered around in the meagre shade, and we were accurately compared to a herd of cows looking for shelter.

Its winter everywhere else it would seem, so I need to set the scene.
Imagine somewhere really hot (Americans can think of Death Valley, Brits will remember Spain in the summer, and Eastern Europeans can use Chernobyl as a benchmark)
Now set a couple of tables out, and across the glaring white tablecloth, marshal regiments made up of bottles of beer, and plastic cups of cheap white wine.
Next door, line up a crew of minimum wage unfortunates (this is minimum wage in Oz so it’s not quite as bad as minimum wage in the U.S.) to stand in the sun dressed up like penguins, to man the row of bain-maries filled with sausages, and sweaty chicken drumsticks.

The whole affair was pretty badly organised. It took me more then two hours to discover that there were bottles of champagne and red wine available behind the bar (at least red wine is tolerable when it is lukewarm.)

After three hours roasting in the sun (I have a touch of red today,) a group of us jumped on a water taxi and headed across the harbour to a boutique brewer over in the city centre.
Over the six hours, others appeared (word of mouth is an amazing thing) and hidden away in the bowls of a harbour side pub, we all allowed the alcohol and the dark closeness to take us under.

I didn’t score a snog but there were lots of emotional people sobbing into drinks, and hugs.
There were bosses declaring that they weren’t bad people. I told the six foot plus-square jawed-Italian-sky diver, that emotionally he was a five year old, and that he had never suffered (it turned out to be a good call.)
And there was one girl, who was surround by a group of guys, soulfully consoling her about her break up with a boy in the office, who was now dating the blond that had snogged half the guys at last years Christmas party (a group of guys consoling a drunk girl is code for ‘a group of guys jostling to be the one that takes her home.’)
There is something about a work Christmas party, and a release of pressure.

Woke up Saturday morning to find a trail of clothes across the flat leading to the shower.
It was a perfect morning lucky. It’s been really hot the last couple of days, but the sea breeze blew through the flat, cooling my forehead.
Drank lots of water, napped a bit (once on the floor,) wondered down to the rock pools to molest the crabs for a bit.