Sunday, June 10, 2007

Rule 8: No drinking on the company premises

Hello everyone!
Again I apologise for my complete lack of updates, however I have continued to strike that amazing balance between being too busy and not doing anything interesting! The last few days have been rather eventful though. Thursday was a deadline day and so Shaun and I didn't escape the office until around 9pm (it was around 8:50 when I made my final code check-in) and decided to go to the Vietnemese Noodle restaurant "What the Pho!" for dinner. I had the usual "Beef" in a rice noodle soup and it was really good. I didn't manage to get a lot of sleep and I was really tired on Friday morning, I think it was because I was working late I couldn't really switch off but it didn't matter all that much as the deadline was dead and buried so Friday's work should be easy. Right? Well thankfully Megan, the intern I've been teaching, was on form and saved my skin by doing some amazing work throughout the day. The situation wasn't improved by the SNAPin Mobile Bar being created several yards from my desk at around 2.30pm! Naturally I had to get a picture and inflict it on my loyal readers!



Dianne, the office manager, had asked Dave to get rid of a large shipping crate that was no longer needed. What she probably meant was move it out of the office and in to the service elevator where it would be taken to a dumpster somewhere (did I just say Dumpster?). It's doubtful she meant for it to be used as a stand for an impromptu bar, but it was. We relocated a desk on to the tipped crate after finding it didn't roll well enough to race around the office and wasn't bouncy enough to mimic professional wrestling moves on. Amazingly the desk became the perfect height for a bar, and the crate served as a very comfortable foot rest. It was only a matter of several minutes before Dave landed a half bottle of gin, a half bottle of Vodkat and a full bottle of Grey Goose on the bar followed by a stack of tumblers, a tray of ice and six cans of tonic water. Probably one of the fastest bar set ups I've seen. As all good marketeers and tele addicts will know: "Location, location, location". The bar was set up at a potential-fire-hazard angle in the middle of a corridor meaning everyone in the office at some point had to walk through and needless to say, join in for a drink. It was pretty impressive how Dave managed to intoxicate just over half of the companies work force in a matter of hours! People from Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Test and Management all huddled around the bar, oblivious to the fact it was 4 in the afternoon right in the middle of the company headquarters just out side Max's office. The afternoon turned to evening and people came and went. In the end there were only a few of us and it all wound down by 10 when peoples respectful other halves came and drove them home!

On Saturday Shaun and I went in to the office to tidy up and find those little trinkets of evidence that spark entire recollections of the evening. We got some pictures of the impressive bin of empties which consisted of three bottles of gin, a bottle of grey goose, a bottle of vodkat, a bottle of regular Jameson, a bottle of 12 year Jameson, a bottle of Jagermeister and probably more spirits. Pretty good party!

Saturday afternoon flew by pretty quickly and at around 8pm Christina, one of our colleagues came and picked us up for a night out. We got something to eat first and got some cash out before heading to The Ballroom in Freemont. It was a classy bar that served as a club as well. We got there early and didn't have to worry about queuing for entry or drinks. We met a random guy called Chad who was apparently a comedian (he didn't say one funny thing all night so I guess he was a comedian). Christina's friend Jason came straight from work to the bar too. It was a fun evening (despite Christina having her jacket dropped in a puddle of beer on the dance floor :( ) We got home pretty late after staying till closing. I think it was about 3am when I couldn't stay awake watching Enter The Dragon anymore and went to bed. It was the cut version anyway and didn't show "The Nun chuck Bit" with Jackie Chan.

This morning didn't happen as it was noon when I finally surfaced. Shaun has already been out around 11.30 and went to Starbucks. Like some kind of miracle worker, he had picked me up a coffee and a bagel which was greatly appreciated!

It's early afternoon now and I don't intend on doing a whole lot until I start worrying about dinner. Think I might get some adventure gaming in as it's been a week since I touched Myst 3 and I've already completely forgotten what I was doing in it!

I'll be flying home on Friday so there's still a lot I have to do while over here. In particular taking Dave and Christina out for Ladyboys!