After work that day, a few of the teams from AMP, including my team, met up for a big dinner and movie outing. About 15-20 of us ate dinner at La Porchetta, an Italian restaurant just two blocks down from my flat. In Australia and New Zealand, many establishments have a “BYO” (Bring Your Own) policy, which allows customers to bring their own wine for a small corkage fee. La Porchetta was one such establishment, so many of my coworkers took advantage. It was really nice to be in a casual setting with people from work though. I sat beside my friend Jess and another woman Donna who runs the phone team. I had never really had the opportunity to speak with her previously, but she was really sweet.
Dinner had some comical moments too, including when a few of the phone team members told stories about amusing calls they’d received. One guy, Scott, had us laughing quite a bit when he described one particular call from a client: Scott- “Welcome to AMP, this is Scott. How may I help you?” Client- “Umm..yes..what was your name?” Scott- “My name is Scott.” Client- “I’m sorry..what?” Scott- “Scott.” Pause….no answer from client. Scott- “My name is Scott.” Client finally answering, in a confused manner- “God???” Hahaha. Anyway, the New Zealand International Film Festival was going on in Auckland at the time, so some people from our group had planned to see one of the films after dinner and had already pre-bought tickets. I wasn’t too keen on seeing a film that was a complete wildcard when I could instead save my money to see something in theatres that I knew I’d enjoy.
However, someone from the group backed out of going to the film after pre-paying for the ticket, so I took advantage of a free movie opportunity. The movie was a Japanese drama called Norwegian Wood, and it was playing at The Civic theatre. The Civic itself was INCREDIBLE—upon walking inside the theatre, I felt like I was walking into an opera house in Europe or something. The architecture was absolutely gorgeous, and the “ceiling” was not a ceiling at all. Instead, it literally looked like a brilliant night sky, with stars, and even wispy, moving clouds. Very impressive! The movie, on the other hand, was quite the opposite. Although its description mentioned unrequited love, I had no idea what I was in for. Two suicide stories later and a lot of mental breakdowns in-between, the film was 133 minutes too long.
At one point, the main character (who didn’t end up killing himself) was mourning over the loss of a girl, sitting on some rocks at the ocean’s edge. There was no joke a 5-10 minute scene of JUST him sobbing on these rocks, including a lovely time in which he had a large string of drool hanging out of his mouth AND flapping around in the wind. Uh huh…that’s right…FLAPPING around in the wind…long, extended scene. I’m sorry, call me shallow but in my opinion, you just can’t put something like that in a serious drama and expect people not to laugh. Am I right or am I right? Haha. Wow! So, needless to say, I was verrrrry glad that I got that ticket for free.
The next day at work, July 20th, was extra special, as it was SURVIVOR DAY! Haha. Yes, it was just as cheesy as you might think. Each team was assigned a color, so we all had to make banners to represent our teams, plus dress up in our assigned colors. Our color was blue and we had a pretty kick@$$ banner if I do say so myself (many thanks to Ervin and a few of the other girls). Our team supervisor told us to wear all black to work that day, then we were given bright blue bandanas with our team name Maroro. Besides the competitions for best banner and best outfit, the other competitions throughout the day included a gummy worm-eating contest, a hula-hooping contest, and a baking contest (with anything made with coconut cream earning extra points).
Phil represented our team in the gummy worm-eating contest—only fitting since he’s a rugby player and eats an insane amount of food every day, all while staying thin and probably 95% muscle. I think he ate around 20 gummy worms in the 30-second time limit, without the use of his hands. Sadly, 20 wasn’t quite enough to win. Hamish from one of the other departments beat him by a few gummy worms, which wasn’t entirely surprising since Hamish is the other one known around the office for eating an astounding amount of food while still staying thin. =) In fact, at our La Porchetta dinner, every single plate of food that wasn’t finished by any one of our group of 15-20 was passed down to Hamish to polish off haha.
I was the appointed person to represent our team in the hula-hooping competition. Yeahhh…let’s just say my hula-hooping skills have greatly diminished since my championship days in the 3rd grade haha. The guys in the office were actually a LOT better than us women though. I think Pierce took first place—he hula-hooped for ages! To find out who had won all the competitions, etc. throughout the day, we received “tree mail” in these designated green “tree” buckets in each department haha. Our team won three different types of delicious Cadbury chocolate. To end our Survivor day, the drink trolley came around and we were served alcoholic tropical punch, complete with umbrellas and all. Man, I love my job. =)
Cheers,
Ash
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