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December 20, 1999
The Fat Guy Dressed in Red is Coming.
It has almost been
365 days since Santa came, jolly as ever, with his squad of industrious
reindeer, squeezing himself down the billions of chimneys around the
globe, rewarding the nice children with cowboy suits and wooden trucks.
Just like last year, the streets of Vancouver have been transformed with
the glorious colours of the many twinkling Christmas lights.
Christmas functions have been plentiful and the constant flow of eggnog
has led me to establishing a disturbing addiction to the creamy festive
drink. It has been a pretty busy time, and to add to the
excitement, I’ve made a change in plans for the new millennium.
Net Nanny will be moving its offices down to Seattle at the end of
January next year. I originally planned to go, but after weighing
up the pros and cons, I’ve decided to take the severance package and
run, not knowing where my adventures will take me next. At this
stage, I may end up with the army of kiwis in the motherland, England.
It’s quite an exciting feeling not knowing what will happen next in
the odyssey.
Halloween on the 31st of October was a night to remember. It is
one of the biggest nights of the year in North America, and people go to
a lot of trouble to decorate their houses with jack-o-lanterns and other
spooky things. I had the sensational costume planned and was going
to go as cereal guy, sticking a honey flavoured breakfast cereal all
over my body. It was looking like a terrific plan, I even had some
clever pickup lines planned, but alas, the substance that I had selected
to stick the cereal to my skin proved to be insufficient, and after
stumbling around the house in a drunken state, banging into things, I
found that the majority of the cereal had slipped off.
In desperation, I had to resort to plan B, dressing up as a disco sex
god, but it still turned out to be a superb night. The following
morning I realized that in my semi-conscious state the night before, I
had crunched breakfast cereal into the floor all over the house, which
took some cleaning up. Honey loops were showing up in the
strangest of places for a couple of weeks.
It was down to Las Vegas last month, courtesy of the company, with a
convenient stop off in Los Angeles for the weekend on the way home.
Vegas played host to Comdex, the largest computer show in North America,
and Net Nanny was showing off its stuff. Since I was last there,
less than a year earlier, four huge hotels had been built on the hotel
strip, each one grander than the last – no expense was speared.
Two of the new hotels cost over NZ$2 billion dollars to build, with the
most expensive one costing more than 8 times what Te Papa cost to erect
on the Wellington waterfront, and it showed.
Vegas was so much fun - A lot of people in one place, all there for a
good time. I used my daily allowance to help pay for some of the
extravagant, entertaining and glitzy nightclubs filled with almost naked
ladies. Unlike last time, I wasn’t restricted to eating $7
buffets, although one night was dedicated to this in memory of the
glorious eateries.
The discovery of a vibrating chair in the hotel lobby, ended up becoming
the meeting point for the nights to follow, which included drunken
evenings of blackjack and dancing.
No trip to the City of Sin would be complete without an evening of
Karaoke, so it was had, in true Vegas style. After a tip off at
one of the neighbourhood bars, we were given accurate directions to a
local hangout for Karaoke enthusiasts, The Irish Porker. We
quickly made friends in the fine establishment, and were crowd
favourites for the many tracks that we hollowed throughout the evening.
But as the night pressed on and became the early hours of the morning,
the singing stopped. Disappointed by the premature closure of the
bar, we plodded onto another of the 90 karaoke bars in the municipality
of Las Vegas, a Chinese Restaurant/disco/karaoke bar. Teaming with
our newfound friends, a short, chubby and extremely drunken American and
a newly wed, yet flirtatious showgirl, we sung up a storm, although not
receiving the same positive response we had become accustomed to at the
previous bar. Up against some tough competition, we managed to woo
the crowd, but as the patrons started to trickle out, leaving only the
local lounge singers to share microphone time with, we and ended up
departing after a stunning rendition of Dream Weaver.
On came the weekend as did Los Angeles. Tinsel Town proved to be
quite the destination, with its blue skies and abundance of palm trees
and valet parking. Due to some fine hospitality, I was taken to
some of the spots seen on TV including the Santa Monica Pier for
margaritas, Venice Beach, Hollywood Blvd, Melrose and dinner at Sushi on
Sunset, some tequila bar and then an Irish pub drinking with some guy
who beat up Cameron Diaz’s brother in the Something About Mary movie.
Sunday proved to be an unusually clear LA day, so it was spent riding
horses high up in the Hollywood Hills on a slow, old and stubborn
stallion looking down on the City of Angels below and out to the
Pacific.
December has been a busy month with the Christmas thing and all of the
changes going on in the office. I had a brief, but nice visit from
Ben Wheeler’s sister, Jane, who replenished my diminishing Watties
Baked Beans and Sausages supply and provided some fun company for the
weekend.
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