Company Parties Suck

Last night was the the official christmas party for my contract's group of people. We were *strongly* urged to attend. Since I had managed to avoid all the other parties, I decided to show up for 1 hour (7-8pm) as I had to get next morning and wanted at least 6 hours of sleep. It was at the Hilton Hotel which is actually very nice here, so my expectations were quite high. It was a pretty big disappointment in terms of food (the only thing to look forward to) and of course I am horrible at these functions. I was the first one there, and after almost 45 minutes some people I knew finally showed up so at least I wasn't standing in a corner looking awkward. 8 o'clock quickly rolled around and I left with only a few nuts and some dorito chips eaten (the rest of the food hadn't been brought out yet). I found out later that they ran out of food and only some people got to eat at all. I don't usually eat dinner on weeknights so I wasn't terribly hungry, but got a small kabab sandwich on the way home. And some moutabal, which I finally found out is baba ghanouj the way I like it! Anyway, after I left I heard there were the usual speeches by management about what a great year it had been and how we were gonna have another great year, blah blah blah. Apparently the party went on til 10pm and they told those who had stayed that they could arrange to come in late the next day if it was ok with the team leads. Bah. Still, glad I left when I did. Since people are getting time off, my boss let me go home early today, and I finally bit the bullet and bought a little fridge which will be delivered in two days on my weekend. It's hard not to buy things right now as there are great sales on for the holiday season. Some items as much as half off.

By the way, I'm writing this post using my Wii. Recently they updated the Opera browser to support USb (weird can't make that last b capital) keyboards, so at last it's practical to check email and do other stuff. Still wish for tabbed browsing and such, but hey, this is still pretty cool.

Kerri and Rowan are off to Disney Land for Christmas so I won't be talking to them for a week or so. This weekend I hope to get the visa thing figured out and also register my car and get it insured.

On a slightly more...delicate subject...I've been experiencing, shall we say...a frequent need to visit the bathroom at work for the last few weeks. I bring this up only to note that when I first got here I had no such trouble, but I *think* I may have figured out why. I was buying the yoghurt drink you can find in all stores here called Laban. It's not salty like the stuff I really love, but still it's basically yoghurt in a drinkable form. Anyway, since I moved into the new apartment, I haven't bought any as I have not had a refrigerator to ensure it doesn't go bad. Well since I've thought of that I'm going back to that habit of drinking one each morning, and I'm hoping it will take care of my "personal problems." I'll be sure to let everyone know...

On that note, gnight...

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