Call me Ms. Shitty

When end of the year approaches, what makes employees most happy is the company's "end of year" dinner party. Free food, music, entertainment, games, the only time in the year given the permission to possibly mock the boss in public for all sh*t that you had to go throughout the year, and the highlight of the event—the gifts and prizes. Well, I here had my first end of the year dinner party last Friday.

Since my entire company is too large, dinner parties are organized individually according to each department. All details and arrangements are up to the dinner party committee, and it normally consists of some speeches by the boss, and by the boss' boss that hopefully be interrupted by MCs so draggy pain doesn't have to go on and on, food, performances, raffles, lottery and bingo games (yup, just like the old folks). Very light and easy. But that's not our case. We like to kick it up a notch.

My boss likes karaoke. A lot. He loves singing, his voice is pretty ok, he knows quite a few old songs and he often thinks he's the next Taiwanese Idol. Therefore, for his dinner party, there HAS to be some karaoke performances involved. However, simple performances just won't do the job. They made it a karaoke competition: 6 teams of 3 (1 guy 2 girls, we're short on guys), 3 songs (male, female, duet) and at least one of the songs has to be in Taiwanese. Initially, the competition seemed to be a fair fun, people go up and sing, we vote what we liked, the winning team takes US$450, US$300 for the runner up. Fun and joy. Several people from my team signed up for it, including myself. But it wasn't till later, when the boss suddenly had one of his episodes of PMS (story too long to be written) that the whole competition took a different spin. Not only did we have 1st and 2nd winners, we were also voting for the WORST team. Yes. There was a 蔡青史獎 (pronounced in 台語), which literally means "The one that poops green sh*t" for US$100, and on top of that, there would be a panel of judges to criticize each singer's performance. Yes... we would have a Randy, Paula, and Simon, to be judging on our image, singing skills and the overall performance. One small detail, my boss likes to rant/biatch/complain/talk sh*t a lot too. Needless to say, boss was, of course, Simon. Oh, and did I mention that in their email they said they would do whatever possible to make us look BAAAAAAD on stage?

Now, although the dinner party was held within each department, we still had to invite those who decide on the bit shots, like our president, the 2 VPs, and bosses from other departments that we normally have more interactions with. Hence, yeah... not only were we going to embarrass ourselves in public, but we were also going to embarrass ourselves in front of the top execs. And people from other departments. Great.

The designated songs were randomly chosen from a small pool of (oldies) song lists, and my song was, err... quite hard and high pitched. LOL. Few people performed very well, while others, AKA my team, we didn't do so well. But cannot blame anyone actually. Our male song was horrible... It doesn't match my teammate's style at all! Not to mention that the song is god-knows-how-old.

Frankly, it was a bit painful to hear our team perform. Could tell from my colleagues' and the bosses' faces. Hahaha~ That's why I have to give credit for my team's courage, for it is not that easy to go onto the stage and make a total fool out of oneself. That takes a lot of guts, you see. And a lot of shameless self. Aaanyway, the judges didn't have to do that much effort to take us down, the audience are all aware of what they heard; and when it came to vote, my team got the "Worst Team" title, fair and square, with a high 82 votes (out of probably 90 people). It was almost by default. Hahahaha~ Hell yeah~!

I mean, in this kind of occasion, either you score high or you try to hit the bottom pit, because that's where the prizes are, right? So, my team won the so-called Shitty Prize (蔡青史獎), and we're now known as the shitty people (蔡青史人). Hm... that's a very interesting way to start a brand new year! Well, at least we got something. It is definitely way better than being criticized and NOT getting anything out of it (muuahahaha~ take that, you suckers!).

Told you people that I have shitty luck!

BUT~~! Shitty luck can be good and bad, remember? God is fair after all. I guess He/She took pity on my after seeing me be all shitty. Because later, during the final round of bingo, I actually won! Hehehehe~~~ And it was a hard one too! Not any 5 lines can call Bingo, instead, we had to make complete the blocks that were given. My game looked like this Pretty weird shape, huh? But I GOT IT~!!!! And the game was for $240! I was all jumpy and happy. Good good. In the end, I made almost $300 for the entire dinner. AAAh~~~ It feels good. This upcoming Friday, my entire company is going on a hiking trip, and they'll be giving out $80 mall vouchers for those who complete the trail. Hehehe, we're being paid to exercise~! That's good company benefit. That's what we're talking about.

Being Ms. Shitty is not that shitty after all =)