Fed up and drugged up

This evening was the Christmas office party, an excuse to wear silly hats and drink and eat too much. And we were fed as much as we could possibly eat, and more. And so much more.

I stood there for a while, suddenly terrified that I worked for a company where one (regional) office had more staff than the entire company I worked for in 1999. The worry passed, I sat down and was fed about a hundred different courses, mostly variations on cheese. Some of the cheese was smoked, as if they felt the impact on my arteries would be improved by burning stuff. Well, burned stuff.

I know it was a traditional Italian meal (and Italian meals don't get much more traditional than when they're served on the 6th floor of a building overlooking Hong Kong harbour) but it struck me as a tactical error to have a series of ever-expanding courses, so that the final enormous steak arrived once everyone was full to bursting, stuffed to the gills, well and truly fed.

And then of course the dessert arrived, in the shape of an incredibly light, almost ethereal ... bread pudding. Perhaps it was an attempt to break a record, or burst our waistbands, or something. I slinked off 'early' at 10:30 lest I die from a surfeit of food.

'Early' means something different in Hong Kong, with a largely local crew, to 'early' in London, when staff parties always seemed to end up with somebody dressed as a camel, and me fleeing when I realised that if my boss was that drunk, I was probably twice as drunk. It would be too late for public transport so I'd skulk to the office and sleep it off on the sofa in the 'library' ("a room with books in" as I explained to an incredulous blind date one night - incredulous that her date would waste breath on a statement of such apparent obviousness - but we're digressing too much.)

I also wanted to get home to see what will happen with all this larium in my system. I'm off to a mosquito infested beach/a lovely holiday resort next week, and so I'm dosed up with anti-malarials. Psychotropic anti-malarials. The kind that give you weird dreams, disturbed sleep, mood swings and possible depression. And turn your pee neon green, probably. Although I'm not sure anyone will be capable of distinguishing my mood swings and sudden hallucinations from normal behaviour, so it's not the most enlightening of experiences. What I'm trying to say is it's nothing to write home about.

And I'm home now, so I'm going to bed.