Journey mercies

Last night, after treating Gurjeet to a very expensive birthday dinner (since she claims she bought me lunch and dinner for my birthday which I can't recall) at TSB in Bangsar, we joined Nithi at his company's function in another restaurant close by.

I already had an earlier session with Gurjeet laughing over all the silly things said and done, and when we joined Nithi we went through it again. I'm telling you, thank God I learnt how to develop a sense of humor, because if I hadn't, I probably would have committed suicide from the amount of people laughing at me for all my slapstick moments.

Yes, yes... I can look very serious and be very very fierce. I can certainly look and act cool, poised and professional. But guess the people who have known me long enough also had the opportunities to see me when my guards were down.

One of the slapstick moments was when I was in my first company, and I was pulling an all nighter with my manager, Sonia. This was just before playing paintball, which the company was sponsoring for team building purposes (actually, our GM wanted to play and used team building as an excuse to get the company to fund it, and it was more for releasing tension at each other than building any working relationship).

And so after working all night, me and Sonia were starting to get more and more whacky. Muahaha... I can't even share most of the whacky stuff we did coz I do want to maintain some shred of dignity for myself.

So anyway, we were starting to get whacky, and Sonia, being ultra-competitive and since we were anticipating the paintball showdown between two major factions in the company, and her having a lot of tensions with some few people, was not going to allow herself to lose to any of them. So she started coaching me about how to shoot and if she were to shout at me, it meant I had to drop on the ground, whirl around, shoot and roll away (like some Hollywood cop show). So after prepping me with the theoretical part, she proceeded to give me instructions before we started practising. Like how many people actually practise for paintball?!?

So anyway, her strategy was, stick together and cover each other. So there we were, standing in the office which was the size of two badminton courts, at the aisle beside all the cubicles, with our hands pressed together to form an imaginary gun. And there she was, explaining to great lengths how our key strategy was to stick together and cover each other, and I was listening to her and nodding my head emphatically.

And after she was done explaining, she decided we should start practising our strategy, which was, stick together, cover one another, and remained close to the ground to provide less a target to our enemies.

And the next moment, just as we started to 'advance on our enemies', Sonia was moving forward, and I suddenly dashed through the cubicles on my left, with my hand gun waving in the air and my head ducked as I was trying to remain close to the ground as she taught and all Sonia could do was stop where she was and stare at me with her mouth wide opened. When I was halfway through the cubicles she started screaming at me to stop!

Sonia : What the &#$@?!? (she used to curse a lot) YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO STICK TO ME AND COVER ME!!?! WHY ARE YOU RUNNING LIKE A MAD DUCK OVER THERE?!??

Me : But... but... I thought I heard you say I should move to the left while you went forward, just before we started...

Sonia : ?!?!?!?! What did I just say for the last ten minutes?!? The strategy was that WE STICK TOGETHER AND COVER EACH OTHER?!?!

We ended up laughing for the next ten minutes and if I could swear, I would, that I thought I heard her tell me just before I dashed off like a mad duck, to move to the left while she moved forward... hehe... but it was really late, like about 4am or so already... and I tend to get really whacky when I have too little sleep and too much coffee.

Yes Ee Von, don't even bring up the captainball story.