Monday, December 31, 2001

Holidays - Day 13

So it's NYE and I still don't have plans for tonight. I have a few options but have yet to decide. I want to be hopefull that I could go out tonight & have a really good time, but I'm also tempted to just stay in, watch Lawrence of Arabia on tv & go to bed as my last few NYE's have been duds. Let me explain where I'm coming from...

NYE 98/99: I'd rung around & told friends that I was intending to have a pretty low-key NYE. I'd been into town and done Southbank in previous years & they were duds, so I was just going to hang out at home & have a low key BBQ. I said "drop in on your way to whereever you're going" and "if you've got nothing planned feel free to just hang out here". I knew of some people who'd definitely be there, and we had extended family staying from Victoria, so I thought it'd just be a family thing. The small low key NYE turned into a huge party when people dropped in and didn't leave, and people who'd said they were previously committed showed. Drink flowed & music played and it turned out to be an awesome party; everyone had a great time & I was getting phone calls and notes of thanks for weeks afterwards (pretty good for minimal effort).

So all through 1999 people would bug me about having another party. "You've got to do that again!" and "I've already invited people" were common. All I wanted to do was give the city venues another go, but I relented in November and decided to make this one even better...

NYE 99/2000: The family had headed up the coast for Christmas; we returned with two days to organise everything. I spent a couple of hundred on food & drink, and had intended to hire lights & mirrorball etc, but with the late notice I couldn't get them. I spent the whole afternoon cleaning the place up & arranging the backyard furniture & generally getting everything ready. Then the people started to arrive. Then the people stopped arriving. Ten people. 10 people! Then, when I decided to just calm down and cook, half of them decided to head into the city! To add insult to injury, the one thing I left for someone else to procure - the champagne - turned out to be sparkling RED! So I saw in the year 2000 in front of the box watching George Negus presenting Y2K across the world on the ABC sipping sparkling red & being very pissed off at everyone who'd bugged me all year to do this & then didn't even show or call.

Fast forward a bit; moved to Canberra in February and returned to Brisbane for the Christmas visit in December. Having moved away, I was obligated (as one is when they return to visit after moving away) to catch up with the old crowds. There was the boys from school, the old workmates, the uni crowd, family friends and everyone else, the "none of the above" crowd. As it turned out C&V (V was part of the uni crowd) were having a NYE party at their apartment at Kangaroo Point with great views of the city (and thus of the fireworks) so I decided that would be my opportunity to catch up with the uni crowd.

NYE 2000/2001: Unfortunatelty I passed right through the time period that could be called "fashionably late"; by the time I showed up the uni crowd had "just shot into town to get some dinner" but "should be back in about 20 minutes". So I mingled with the three people I knew for a while, checking my watch regularly. I did try talking to C's friends, but they were all overpaid IT engineers who couldn't handle their alcohol, spent most of their time arguing over the playlist (they were running all their music through Winamp) and asking everyone "How much do you make?" "What do you drive?" and "Hey, don't you love my $500 Vercase shirt?". My uni friends never returned, so I left with the only people I knew at 12:15am after watching the fireworks, but not before telling C that he "should never ever host another party until the end of time" and "if there was a licence requirement for hosting parties, you would have failed miserably". I wasn't drunk (I'd had maybe three drinks all night), I just needed to vent at all the obnoxious prats. I was in bed asleep by 1am.

So do I tempt fate for a hat-trick of crap NYE's or do I cut my losses and stay in with some epic cinema?

Posted by Dean @ 12/31/2001 12:34:00 pm

...Survey says...

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