Christmas Party Re-Cap

It's Paaaaaarty Time

Well, what can I say...last night was absolutely epic. I'm tagged in some photos on facebook and I'd recommend flipping through them to see the carnage that developed over the night.

It starts when one of my flatmates and I meet a couple of friends at home, get picked up and arrive at the Caleta Hotel, a hotel I know well from my interview out here. We're greeted in reception with Champagne and mingle eating fingerfood for a while before we're seated. They run out of Champagne at one point, so it's straight onto the rum and cokes for me.

I'm dressed in a suit without a tie, as are most of the blokes, and the women are mostly wearing cocktail dresses or so. There's an air of sophistication around the whole affair and rapidly (post wine with dinner) the sophistication turns to pure hedonism and debauchery. 

Pre party, all the talk had been about the seating plan that had been made for us and everyone was trying to work out what the best tables might look like. As it happens, I end up drawing a pretty sweet table with Nicola (our senior HR person and really nice/friendly/find better adjective), her husband, Cristi (Romanian CSR and cracking lad), Johannes (Pads' future boss who is awesomely degen) and Anett (Finance something or other, I don't really understand, but also class banter) and Phillipe (QA Team Lad and one of the coolest guys I've ever met tbh) and his missus amongst others.

I get through a couple of glasses of wine at the table whilst waiting for dinner to be served and am chatting with away and generally having a good. time. By the time dinner is served everything is in full swing (even the obligatory speech from the CEO has been made!) and I'm having whales of times.

But then....

As I'm tucking into the food, which, to be honest, was average for me (great for those that didn't order Turkey tbh) my face explodes and my tooth begins a war of attrition. It is desperate to ruin this party for me and I'm in hellish amounts of pain. Not to be beaten, I calmly move to reception and ask them to call me a cab. 15 minutes later I'm back at my apartment and having asked the driver to wait, return before dessert with Ibuprofen and Neurofen in tow. I throw a couple of those down my throat washed down with another glass of wine.

Health Notice:

This is not super recommended. paracetamol and alcohol is generally ok (think what you do when you're hungover...take paracetamol) but ibuprofen and alcohol can be really bad because it can cut your stomach up, thus making it far easier for you to ingest the alcohol.

Back to the plot....

I decide to pass on dessert (which did look good) because there was no way I was going to give my tooth another opportunity to ruin me and about 30minutes later I feel no pain whatsoever in my mouth. I mingle with lots of people, mainly with Daniel (Editorial) and David (Content/Education) and we're having insane fun. By the time dinner is over, the fun really begins. Hard liquor is now the order of the day and I move back to rum and cokes from wine. In ordering two at a time I tell people that I'm using rum as a tranquiliser, because I don't want my tooth to get back in the game. In truth, that's pretty much how it was. And I don't like queuing at the bar. Once Graham (Education), Joerg (B2B, flatmate) and I find a secret bar upstairs I switch back to ordering one at a time because there's no queue ;).

From here on out....

It would be impossible to recount everything that happened. Let's just say that the party was epic and ended at around 2:00am before everyone piled back into taxis and made our way to Ocean Village where a) the casino, b) Savannah's (club) and c) my appartment are. At first we end up in the casino because it's generally considered to be 'too early' to go clubbing so we have a couple more rum and cokes and such at the bar. Melvin (Community Manager for Dutch, insane good dancer, hero) runs sick good at the slots so we keep drinking. We decide, between the two of us, that we'd like to go to Savannah's now, so we finish up drinking and leave for the club. This is at about 4am.

I know this because...

We arrive at Savannah's to see a ridic queue and a packed out (mainly men) club (glass fronted so we can see inside). We wait for about 5-10 minutes but the bouncers are really shit at not letting people cut into the front of the queue so don't move anywhere and we find out that for some reason they'd like to charge £10 for entry, when it's usually £5. Fuck that for a game of soldiers, we decide, and head back to the Casino (about 1 minute away) where we can't get in. They shut the doors at 4am and won't let anyone else in. Completely ridiculous policy, but whatever. We then headed to another bar and had a couple of drinks but there wasn't really much going on so decide to head home. On the way, Melvin almost decides to head to the office to play poker. He had the idea of playing $5k NL HU for a spin up but in the end doesn't. *Phew*

When I get home...

I almost play the MiniFTOPS Stud H/L event because I see it's starting in ten minutes (and Pads even offered a stake!) but decide against it because 'you don't realise how fucked I am Pads, I'd be dead money'. I then fall asleep. Saved Pads some money there ;)

The Aftermath...

I wake at about 12 and head for lunch with Joerg, Hannes (German Community Manager) and David. I have Llantio Campero (basically a Gibraltarian mixed grill breakfast thing) and it hits the spot. Arriving home,  I catch the football (great games today, although fuck Alan Pardew, that was Hughton's team!) on the internets and then sleep for an hour or so before heading out for steak with Hannes, Joerg and Melvin. We then head to the casino and I leave to come chill out after about an hour when they decide to play cash and I really cba.

Right Now...

I'm headed back to the casino (it's almost 3am) because I want to watch the Khan v Maidana fight in better quality than the dubious WLAN in Gibraltar can offer. I'm predicting Khan to win, but it will be really close and Maidana could knock him out for sure. I quite enjoy that I can make a snap decision to go to the casino at 3:00am and be there by 3:02am. I could never do that in Newcastle!


Hope you've enjoyed the recap and the amount of blogging I've done lately. I'm hoping to keep up the rate of blogging, but only if I think I have interesting things to say!


Keep it funky and glglglgl to all those still grinding miniFTOPS,


Peace,


--huzz