The Function

On Saturday evening we went down to the hotel lobby only to find a shiny black stretch limo downstairs, realising it would not fit all of us in, I knew it wasn't our ride - bummer! Sure enough one of those airport shuttle type bus thingies arrives and we all piled in.

We drove the 2-3km to Melrose Arch and arrived just as the sun was setting. It looked quite lovely. We arrived at The Venue (yes the venue of the function was a place called the Venue). We were greeted with a red carpet entrance and pyramids of cocktails to select from. The Venue has a huge Indonesian style wooden door it is very impressive.

We mingled with everyone in the foyer and then were invited through to the main club. Where we were served hors d'oeuvres. There were a few obligatory speeches, followed by the annual awards, where employee of the year walked off with an all expenses paid trip for 2 to Mauritius. Nice!

The dinner was odd but fairly nice, it was buffet style but very meat focused, with looks of little finger foods, kebabs, satay, wrapped duck etc etc. It was all very tasty but I was wondering what the vegetarians were eating? Once dinner was done we were invited upstairs for whiskey and cigar tasting. 2 minutes later BOOM. Everything went black. Apparently the whole of Melrose Arch went out. The Johannesburg people were all a flutter while the Cape Town people all carried on casually sipping their drinks like nothing had happened. We are rather used to power failures by now see. ;)

I navigated the stairs in the dark, and looked back down over the railing just in time to see the DJ crash to the ground and start proclaiming 'Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck...' over and over. I first though he had electrocuted himself, and then I thought he was having a seizure or heart attach. I made my way back downstairs and onto the stage to see what was up, but as I got there the brusquely efficient even coordinator arrived too and shooed me away. So my help was not needed. It turned out that he fell over a speaker and broke his ankle! Ouch. The stage curtains were closed for some time as they sorted him out and took him away. Oh the drama! By this time some low emergency lighting was on, and I again went upstairs, and found the elusive whiskey tasting group huddled in complete darkness in a lounge. I mean since I was un-escorted I reckoned that I might as well make the most of the entertainment...

I arrived not a moment too soon, as I missed the pleb options and started directly on the Johnny Walker GOLD label . Now I am no whiskey connoisseur, but even I could taste that this was good stuff. It must have been if I managed to drink the whole tot neat - and thus oiled by copious cocktails, redbull & vodka, and red wine over dinner, and topped of with the whiskey I had no hesitation in deciding that a genuine Havana Cuban cigar was a splendid idea! I mean you only live once right?

As a non-smoker I wasn't sure I could really pull it off. I have only tried smoking a cigar once before with a gang of male work mates, and that was a tiny cherry tobacco number. They took great glee and amusement in telling me I 'sucked wrong'. So I gave up and let them suck the thing. This time I had no one in particular watching and no self-consciousness (enough alcohol takes care of that) and so I did my thing. Who knows if I was doing it right or not, but it was nice and I really enjoyed it. I surprisingly went though at least 1/3 of it. I took a picture of myself 'sipping' it, for posterity. The sip action seemed to be the only way I could figure out how to draw on it without inhaling. I clearly need more practice...

Once I had smoked enough it was time to go back downstairs and boogie. It seemed that power had been restored and what seemed to be the house DJ was in the upstairs booth and playing some vibey music and so we all got down.

One young black guy was all over the dance floor dancing with everyone and even doing some break dance type moves (technically I think this is now called Capoeira). He came and danced with me a few times, and it was pretty fun. I eventually called it a night at around 1am when the last shuttle was leaving for our hotel, as I decided it was best to go while I could still see straight (kind of!).

It was really fun. I am glad we were invited.