Went last night. A few thousand of us seated at round tables this year for dinner and entertainment in Taiwan World Trade Center II, a fancy name for a huge, drafty warehouse. Over four hours of speeches by our top managment, off-key singing, dancing and magic shows by employees and by half-bit local professionals, with giant video screens on either side of the stage, all held together by the raucus screeching of some unfamous TV celebrity in a puffy, shiny dress, shouting gleefully into her microphone along with her cohort, another unfamous celebrity, in baggy jeans and hawaiin shirt, while constant geysers of smoke and bubbles surrounded the stage (while they were all bad, the worse a singer is it seems, the more smoke and bubbles they pump out to distract the crowd).
Fortunately I sat with some nice coworkers who helped pass the time, as we ate our standard 8 course meal of buddha jumping over the earth and the other regular dishes, because we all couldn’t believe the show just kept going, and going, and going, an hour past the 4 hour mark, everyone ready to go home long ago, but just sticking it out in case of the one in a million (ok, maybe just one in 5,000) chance of winning the free car, which of course they raffle off at the very end, just before everyone streams out the door to fight over the taxis. No car this year either, but at least NT500 in 7-11 coupons as a consolation price. Woo hoo.
We were done in about 3 hours, when everyone was finally drunk; Kampei with red wine. Gladly no karaoke this time, well, except the noise from the neighboring room. Food was the standard Chinese 10 course menu (had better before). To sum it up: Boring as usual.
It’s funny, when I worked for a smaller company and we’d go out to a restaurant somewhere I hated how they forced me (the special foreigner) to drink so many glasses of gaoliang. But now that I work for a huge company that can’t afford to buy gaoliang for its thousands of employees (or some excuse), I kind of missed the stuff. I really should have brought my own bottle to make it through the tedium.
I didn’t win the car either. Boy, that was one lonnnnnng Weiya. Luckily I was seated beside the magician, which was cool. He was probably the best part of the show.
Prizes this year were noticeably down compared to a year or two ago. In fact I’d say they were about half of two years ago (can’t remember last year, and not cos I was drunk. I was just so bored).
Good grief! A sunday night weiya? The last thing in the worl you want is Kaoliang on a Sunday night! It takes a weekend just to get that stuff out of your breath.
I desperately tried to get drunk with only one bottle of Argentinian “Santa Sylvia” Cabernet Sauvignon. I had almost made it, even recalled an ancient girlfriend (before the age of maturity) called “Sylvia” and then boss of boss (boss boss) showed up and drank the rest.
Later, they had belly dancers and a “superstar” said my wife, kinda Brittney in younger days in Taiwan version.
Again, I won nothing. The beautiful Volkswagen Golf for a Million NT went to some fat toad without a chin, sniff (only envious).
Damned, wait a minute, Sylvia was 15 and I was 13, … good the boss boss interrupted me…
Ha, I know what you mean. The only alcohol we had was a peach sparkling wine that tasted like dish soap (peach scented dish soap), but I shamelessly bogarted the bottle like a wino with his brown bag of medicine trying to kill the pain. It didn’t work.
There ended up being plenty of good alcohol at ours.
I even ended up with 12 yr old bottles of The Famous Grouse and Dewer’s at the end of it.
And I won 2000nt to boot.
Ours was at a Japanese buffet restaurant, with free beer. No speeches, no karaoke, no boring shows, no bland multi-course Chinese banquet food. It was GREAT!!
I don’t want to sound like a sourpuss but I avoided mine this year because the last time I went, there was a table full of fluent English speakers using only Mandarin the entire night and basically making me feel uncomfortable. So…no thanks!
I understand their desire to speak in their native tounge of course. But there was nary an effort to speak to me in their very good English and I think it was a little rude. But whatever…Taiwan is as Taiwan does.
