Skip to main content

Christmas party 2005

Friday (December 2) was the company Christmas party. I have been to one before this for this company. The party was pretty tame the last time around. I was fairly new as well. This time around however, it was a lot better. There were more people I knew and the venue was closer to the office. There was even a fellow in a kilt. That makes for a fun evening.

The food was reasonable, the DJ was surprising on account of his age and the music he played, the company delightful. Around 9pm, the developers went to bed. Really. It was as if an inaudible WebCT developers only alarm had gone off; all of them picked up and left. That left behind Support and part of IT. One of the IT fellows was celebrating his birthday as well.

One of my managers started to dance. I was thoroughly entertained. There was plenty of video footage to take and I did. They shall entertain me forever.

I had to drop some people (including my date, who is a co-worker not invited to the party on account of the fact that she is not a full time employee of the company which is silly if you think about it) off at the office and pick up my stuff, so I did. With my manager's vehicle. My manager had promised himself he wouldn't drink. Fat chance.

The rest of us went to a place called 'lucy mae brown' (in lower-case as per their signage) and had a good time there. Having made the bar-folks richer for the evening, we left around 2am, only to go to a Chinese restaurant on Davie and Granville known for its good-food-when-drunk reputation. I think most of the lot sobered up there. The only thing that got to me was their incessant tearing apart of other people at work. It was ad hominem at its very best. Alcohol sure does bring out the best in everyone. I resisted the urge to go for a walk on account of the entertaining stories and the cold outside.

Food done, a couple of them walked home, I drove a couple more to their car, left a few to get a ride off someone else. Got close to home, had a disagreement with my manager on how I was to get home. He woke his parents to drive me home. At 4 in the morning. Needless to say, I was not pleased. Got home safe. Went to bed at 5. Was woken by the alarm for Whistler at 5:25am. Didn't end up going there.


The crowd at the Christmas party. The god father sitting out back looking very serious. Dave showing off his pearly whites. The rest of them are just milling about.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Summers are getting hotter in Vancouver

This shouldn't be a shock to anyone, but summers are getting a lot hotter here than it has been since I started living here. It used to be that in summer, it would be in low to mid 20s and reliably sunny between mid June to about mid August. Perhaps the sunshine stayed till September. Somewhere along the way, there would be rain as well. But that was 2+ decades ago.  In the past few years, there has been many days where wildfire smoke dominated the skies and air. Rain is rarity now in the summer. And it has started to get hot. It is not unusual for days when the highs are over 30C.  This is starting to cause homes to get very hot. Most apartment buildings in Vancouver are covered in glass. While it makes for great views, it also turns apartments into little ovens. My apartment faces West and it regularly goes over 30C by the end of the day. And it barely cools down overnight. The outside is a lot cooler in the evenings. A few years ago, we had something called a heat dome - ba...

A few thoughts on the current state of Canada and US relationships

 It is easy to demonize the current US president for a myriad of reasons. Some have called him by the alleged tint of his skin (orange), some have called him a threat to democracy and used words like dictator, fascist etc. I am not going to delve into all that. He is, as far as I am concerned, the legitimate leader of a large country, duly elected by a majority of their voting population. What those people where thinking while voting for him in a majority, I question. But that is not the point of this post.  I live in Canada. I am a citizen of the country. I get to vote for an MP in my riding federally. The party who elects the most MPs is usually invited to form government by the head of state or (now) his representative. Our democratic norms are pretty simple and straightforward. There are plenty of things to criticize our electoral system for and the governments that come as a result. Anyway, all of this to say, we in Canada do not get to vote for a foreign leader. But we d...

How to make a good thing go bad quickly in tech

I haven't written a work related post in what seems like ages. I am currently living through the aftermath of a third M&A in my career. The company I currently work for is in its third incarnation - from a small tech startup 15 or so years ago to something that was sold to a large software company - one of those lumbering giants that have their hands in all kinds of technology driven fields - where they invested sufficiently in it to grow it in its current location - to now finally being acquired by an even larger technology company - one that its hands in all kinds of technology fields.I came along post the second phase but I have seen 2 other US tech company acquisitions, one that made me quit fast and the other that took me around the world but made me leave anyway. The difference from the previous take-over of the current place and this one is stark. While there was a lot of churn up top in the previous acquisition and differences in what you paid for benefits etc, for...