Sunday, May 21, 2006

alcohol retreat

yellow. i'm back from batam. how was my sales retreat you ask? i liken it to a massive drinking party, or rather, an alcohol retreat...for a few of us at least. haha.

day 1 started out at tanah merah ferry terminal and 2 bottles of duty free absolut (one peach and one mandarin). we only just managed to resist the temptation to start the mixing on the ferry cuz most of us watched the champions league match the night before...and besides, it was still only 11am. this resistance came to it's futile end when we reached batam, unpacked, and went down for lunch. half of the absolut mandarin disguised in 2 evian bottles became our best friends during our group discussions throughout the afternoon and evening.

night 1 came, and after finishing the "mineral water", we managed to find a hotel bar / disco...beer is fucking cheap in batam. $10 / monster jug. needless to say, we had our fill of tiger and heineken for the night...which ended at 430am.

day 2 started off slightly better than day 1 (in that we didn't start drinking till late) cuz most of us were nursing either a splitting headache or bruising on various body parts due to unknown causes. i was part of the latter group, with a huge bump on the top of my head and another blue-black on my left hip. i vaguely remember it had something to do with my bathtub. anyway, let's just say that we were all hungover from night 1.

we struggled through around 9 hours of presentations from 9am onwards, before mr. thirst started knocking on our doors. again, the vodkas were put into the water bottles, brought down for dinner, and secretly mixed with the soft drinks at our table (the secrecy cuz the hotel would charge corkage if we poured our own alcohol openly). dinner came and went...before our ceo announced that he would be singing a song (as requested by the general public) downstairs at the hotel bar / disco, which we were all too familiar with...drinks were on the company...which meant, hehe...aiyah, you know lah...430am again lah. =)

day 3 also began slightly better than the other two days...mainly cuz we could sleep in...but the alcohol influx didn't stop yet. we still had about half a bottle of absolut peach and 6 cans of duty-free heineken. 3 cans were finished at the hotel lobby while waiting for our transport to come...2 more cans were finished on the bus to the ferry terminal...and the last can was thrown away by my colleague who didn't think that wasting good beer was a sin. the ride back to singapore was spent at the open area on top of the ferry, despite the rain...which made the peach vodka all the more useful...we were all pretty happy when we reached singapore...for various reasons obviously...haha.

what an end to the retreat. we should have more of these trips lah boss.

cheers. =)

(p.s. - i only bought 1 chivas and 1 red wine from duty free...no more beer / vodka for a while. haha.)

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