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Location: Aotearoa, New Zealand

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

fun bonding activities like throwing axes & shooting guns

Christmas is great, because it gives business organisations an excuse to ignore whatever spiritual connotations are behind the season and instead just be nice and debaucherous here at the end of the year.

For our work do, it was decided we'd go out to a luxury farm (OXYMORON) and do some some fun bonding activities like throwing axes & shooting guns before sitting down for a huge boozy lunch.

The office manager said I'd get an extra pressie if I came dressed up, so I scrambled together an outfit resembling the Ghost of Christmas Past - appropriate as, of course, our workplace is a nearly 100 year old theatre which has several ghosts.

In fact, at the moment we are without a Technical Manager (head of the backstage crew) and so the roster just has "Yuri" on 24/7 - who is the resident ghost and known for playing tricks, particularly with electrical things, as he worked in that department. The most recent 'sighting' was Monday night...!

Anyway, turns out the prize was more for 'most gullible' than for my actual awesome costume and I didn't get any extras goodies - boohoo!

But as we were playing that standard office Christmas party game where you're numbered off and people can pinch presents off each other, wouldn't have made much difference. I was second to go and therefore got shafted - anyone else who wanted to was able to literally take whatever I had outta my hands! Truly in the spirit of Christmas.


We quickly got onto the activities as we were only allowed one drink before arming ourselves and most people were keen to have more. Isn't it funny how this time of year makes everyone want to drink like a fish? I guess we're all just feeling so ready for a break and to relax.

As you can see from the pics, I had a go at the axe throwing first. The most terrifying thing wasn't so much that I might hit myself in the arse swinging it back over my head, but that the guy supervising looked about twelve years old. Seriously, it was like, are you qualified for this? Can I see ID? Can you lift this tomahawk with those spindly arms my child?

Got a pic here of one of the techie guys kindly removing the axes from the target for me. As you can see, it turns out I have quite an eye for this thing.

Also please note, its a case of Steal Her Style here with Neill choosing to rock the sleeveless hoodie outfit I was wearing - though he went with the conventional black rather than sparkly silver like mine.

All of the guys that work backstage are referred to as being on or from "the dark side" and when you occasionally seeing them wearing blue jeans instead of black, commenting on it will get you a gruff reply in keeping with their well maintained tough guy demeanour.

Next up was the target shooting - it was a 22 rifle if I remember rightly, though I'm sure some boffin will take one look at the pic and correct me. Twas my first time ever holding a gun I think and I made the mistake of going after Ciara, who's Irish and been in their equivalent of the territorials and pretty much owned.

I do quite like that the shawl and sunglasses give me a bit of a 'British hieress on safari' look tho, very fab.

The damn gun kept jamming which was quite annoying and made me wonder how entirely effective the whole shooting thing must be in a warfare type situation...?! But at least it gave me something to blame for hardly ever hitting the target. Tiny wee thing that it was.

[PS: don't forget you should be able to click on the photos to see larger versions]

So all in all was a rather fun day and I got a HILARIOUS joke in my cracker so am quite pleased overall. Of course, for last year's Christmas do, at my old work, we got to have a private screening of Brokeback Mountain two months before public release - and EVERYONE was dressed up as cowboys, gay or otherwise, and I seem to recall being quite slaughtered on frozen margaritas by the end of the night.

But hey - this year, I got to find out what a luxury farm is like. And apparently it means they have artwork on the walls, but they fasten it just by screwing it on straight through the front. Awesome.

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4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Never underestimate those with spindly arms.

And I loved the comment about lovely Ciara and how she can hold a gun...because she's Irish. When you keep reading the rest of the sentence it sounds better but my goodness when I read that it made me stop in my tracks!

Loving the silver hoodie (I was totally there when she decided to lay-by it for all of two days).

And your axe weilding skills are very impressive, am so leaving the room next time you look about to throw something!

Fri Dec 22, 01:04:00 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

You can be in my team anyday!

Fri Dec 22, 01:37:00 PM  
Blogger Lou said...

Aaaaah memories - you and I in the Flying Burrito Brothers bar at 9.30pm - you slaughtered on margharitas, me sober-ish - going 'WTF???' at the prompt disappearance of ALL of our colleagues at such an early hour.

Wed Jan 03, 11:46:00 PM  
Blogger Bel said...

Oh gawd yes - and then I dragged you to Chow to perve at my teenaged boyf & was like 'MORE COCKTAILS!!' which i believe you wisely advised the bartender to make non-alc...correct??

This year it was just followed by a bit of central city whale spotting. As you do.

Sun Jan 07, 10:49:00 AM  

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