Our Christmas party was Thursday night and it's taken me until now to recover. No ... just kidding ... my blog was down so I figured I'd wait until it was back up to recount the event.
Let me just say that a little humiliation goes a long way toward making new friends. :)
We were told to meet in the reception of our building at 18:00 sharp. A video was shown making fun of our director ... it reminded me of the time at CCG when we all dressed up as JP and wore JP face masks. The video was in Swedish and everyone was laughing so hard they were crying. I couldn't understand a word but got a pretty good chuckle out of it. Then we were loaded on buses and taken to an undisclosed location. Actually, it was a big decoy. Once we were 10 minutes out, the buses turned around and headed right back to downtown Älmhult. Pretty sneaky.
Once inside, some band from Las Vegas (of all places) performed '70s music, which was a big hit. Then it came time for some kind of competition among the different ICOM groups. I got pushed into representing our catalog group. I knew I was pretty much going to publicly embarrass myself in front of 200 or so of my new coworkers. Then the competition was announced ... a little Norwegian karaoke. Not familiar with that type? Neither was I. What makes this different from regular karaoke is that you have headphones on and can't hear yourself singing. Kind of like when you sing with your iPod on. It's pretty much guaranteed that you're out of tune. So one by one everyone got up and started singing popular Swedish songs. Luckily for me, the dude had some American music to put on when it was my turn. Unluckily for me, it was When a Man Loves a Woman. Why couldn't it have been Madonna or something? Anyway, I saw some grimaced looks from the audience when I belted out the chorus, and a lot of laughing. But the coolest part was when I walked off stage everyone was patting me on the back as I made my way back to my beer. It was if everyone was saying "you're alright."
The rest of the night people introduced themselves and offered to "initiate me" into the group with shots of vodka. I think my boss took a picture of me in my moment of humiliation, so I will be sure to post it here.
The evening was fun, and all I can say is that these Swedes know how to party. It reminded me of a college party or something ... everyone was dancing, whether they were 25 or 55. I left at 2 a.m. but the party didn't end until 3 a.m. and I heard that it actually continued in some woman's apartment until 5:30 a.m.
Needless to say, I pretty much laid low this weekend. And I'm also getting everything ready for Lewis' arrival. Just a few more days!!!
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