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I can proudly attest that I am indeed doing my best to live up to the second part of this maxim.
On friday, I went to the company’s holiday party – taking place in a warehouse in the port of San Francisco. There were several different areas, some with live music, some with DJs, as well as plenty of food and booze. I am still amazed at the scale of this party – though if you want to accomodate several thousand employees in Mountain View, as well as their dates/spouses, nothing less would have done. The only downside: The party closed down at 12am, after only four hours. I’d have expected something like this to go on until the wee hours of the morning. After all, isn’t the purpose of a holiday party to get utterly wasted, get to know sides of your coworkers that you would never have expected, and have deep philosophical discussions with your team leader/manager/VP/CEO? (NB: A friend of mine in Saarbrücken was exceptionally good at this. At every university event, he had the uncanny ability to get at least one of the professors or other higher-ups completely drunk, hold long and deep discussions with them and become their best buddy.)
But fortunately, some people had the foresight to organize an afterparty, which took place at a club in downtown SF, and kept us going until about 3am. And since I didn’t have to drive, I could even imbibe alcohol with impunity. Thanks to Lorenzo, our driver!
On saturday, it predictably took me quite a while to get out of bed, but the next evening’s activities were already afoot: I went to SF with a friend to watch Shortbus at the Lumière Theatre. Definitely a movie worth watching. It was released unrated in the US, and if it had not, this could possibly have been the ratings board’s shortest job ever: Yes, there is lots of sex in this movie, but I don’t feel that it is gratuitous. The whole movie is about sex, and the rôle of sex in modern relationships. It has some very sweet scenes, and amazingly funny at times. (Quote from the movie: “Was that the first time someone sang the Star Spangled Banner into your ass?” – “No.") (Check out Jay Brannan’s music as well.)
This was followed up by a trip to the usual place. Well, not quite the usual place: This time, it was The Bar instead of The Café. What makes people choose so completely ungoogleable names for places? We ran into some friends from the previous weekends, and were quickly introduced to other people around. I was wearing a Google t-shirt (when everyone around you wears them all the time, you kinda forget …) and it turned out that there were at least five people from Google in the bar! Talk about a small world…
After stopping by one of our new-found friends’ place for further drinks, we finally made it home by about 5am. Oh, and since I was the designated driver, I didn’t have any alcohol that evening – but I increasingly find that it doesn’t matter. As long as there’s good music and nice people, I don’t need alcohol to have fun.
