Halloween Hoopla

Yea I know no one says hoopla anymore, but I have my reasons for using this term.

I threw a party last week. Yes. It was my first party in this country and the first great party I have thrown, where i have thoroughly enjoyed myself.

It was supposed to be a Halloween themed party, costumes were optional but due to dress code "issues" we it ended up being a party thrown the night before halloween!! I didn't want it to be a "ghanaian party" and if you know anything about those events, it is just petty. Yea I am generalizing and stereotyping, but there is more than a grain of truth in these here words. These parties tend to be opportunities for people to show off and to try to pick up each other and just to waste hard earned money. No I am not opposed to picking people up or them trying to pick me up, but it is all about "posin" "frontin" and people acting like they don't know.. please, dalydk ( Don't act like you don't know!!)

So my party was a "Halloween Melting pot" ... yea it was multi-cultural, and?? There were white, Asian, African-American, Indian, Ghanaian, Botswanaian, Kenyan, Jamaican, Hatian and even a few British cats running around. Pretty good mix if you ask me. I could go on and on about the time I had, but I will post pictures for y'all to see.
"Pcitures to come"
In short a hoopla.

What did everyone else do for Halloween?

CPW Ball 2004 and Why I Hate Smokers

The last saturday gone by. The day before Haloween. 29th right? Yeah that was the date for this years Carphone Warehouse Annual Ball. I wasnt gonna go at first cos i hadnt planned on taking someone with me and Abe happened to be in London that weekend.

I couldnt just tell her, you stay wherever you are, i'm going to the ball. This all stems from the fact that even though the ball is free for employees and other invited guest of the company, were they to bring a partner or friend along, it's £50. More if the company is organising your transport as well.

After days of indecision, we decided i was gonna go to the ball, sign in and promptly get out so we could go party eslewhere... cos one of the rules is that if you RSVP and dont turn up you get charged £50.

It's hugely popular and people that are late to RSVP might find that even it fully booked so many people, as in my case, rsvp as soon as they can without checking against their schedule for other things.

The long and short of it is that I managed to blag my way in with Abeyna, meaning we didnt have to trek back across town to find some other club to party.

The venue was Black Island Studios near Park Royal, West London. Same venue last year. It's this really spacious film studio with the room in the studio decorated and named to match this years theme; Moulin Rouge.

As you would expect, Satine's Boudoux was the most popular room. I can speculate what was going on in thet room but Abe and I made a mistake of going in there and coming out. Later after checking out all the other rooms and trynna go back in there we found we could hardly get it cos it was too bustling.

Oh and I dont think the fact that it was dimly lit and had dark encloses grottos for possibly making out to your hearts content has any bearing on its popularity.

Well we had to settle for the R&B room which was the next best thing to Satine's. Not so good music but it beat having to watch will young sing.

Yup! This year's surprise artistes were Will Young and Jamelai. We didnt get to see Jamelia though cos we went there around about midnight. I bet Abe's still cursing me for spending too much time on the computer!!

On why I hate smokers, well i suppose i've always detested them but it's time to make it official. I hate smokers!

Since that night, i've had a really sore throat that's blossomed into a runny and blocked nose. Sigh! When is shoot a smoker day? For all the sleepless nights i'm about to have becuase of this, maybe i should shoot one smoker for every one of them. I'll probably be more humane than that lung cancer their harboring.

Oh another thing... Since the ball, I've silently sat back while Abe narrates the incidents of the night to some family member or friend and it's so fun to hear her always say how good the whole experience was. Then when she gets to the bit where she says how packed the place was and she throws that "10,000" figure at them.

Well, she has a habit of asking for figures and when told "I have no idea" she'll insist on an estimate. That night when she asked how many people were at the ball, i wasnt in a mood to play estimate-ping-pong so i said the first thing that came to mind. She's stuck with that. Thing is, for all i know, there could have been 20,000.

Anyway, here are some pictures. I'm sorry there arent that many pictures with me in there. I forgot to take my cam well technically not, but i didnt think i was gonna be staying at the ball.

HINT: Click images for large version

(L-R) Mark Wheatley, Lifeline Admin Manager; Me -- We're not dressed very Moulin Rougey as you can see.

(L-R) Kevin, Bonny, Martin, Mark -- The Sofa-so-good club. Cant you spot the Faf and Abe?

(L-R) Martin, Roger (Should I start my smoker clipping with him?), Bonny, Kevin (I'm taking captions for this one), Markey Mark

Catption ideas for Kevin:
1. "For some Haloween had come a day earlier"
2. "The full moon was affecting him. He was turning"
3. "It's so much effort with that guy sitting on my head"

D. O.D.B.

D. Deceased, Dead, Departed, Down...

O- Old, Ole Ol'...
D- Dirty, Dirrty...
B- Bastard.

So ODB is dead... Ol Dirty Bastard, Dirt Mcgirt ( I liked this one personally), Big Baby jesus or as his mama call him... Russell Jones.

Ahh well, what can I say? He was 35, he had a few hits, ( My personal favorites, " Shimmy shammy ya... aka ooh baby I like it raw", " Baby I got your money")

My Question is, "for what?" All those babies he has ( lots of em... think a football team, a bakers dozen..13), all those crimes and jail time, all that gold in his teef......

Yea all that drama in his life and what does he have to show for it?

Dying suddenly without a cap in ya a$$ for someone like O.D.B. is a bit punkish wouldn't u say?

Well Roc-a-fella should be releasing his album soon... he was almost done with it and so they will probably retouch it and do some funky stuff and it shd sell like a MOFO...

Anyway, he's gone... just like Big L, just like Aaliyah, Just like Left eye, Jam Master Jay..... ... Yasser Arafat.

Life is fleeting.. don't be a Punk, stay in school and don't try to be cool.

My Girlfriend is a Busker!

Abe sings on the Tube. If any of y'all live in London and/or have used the London underground, you'd know one of the ironically unspoken rules of the Underground is that you dont sing unless you a busker. Or drunk or well... a drunk busker.

Having loud conversations is also "frowned upon". I dont talk at all on the Underground if i can help it.

Anyway, so my girldfriend loves singing. We sing when walking down the road. Could be a Kelis track, Outkast, Eminem.... some other obscure track... but i refuse to sing on the tube. This is mostly cos singing on the tube draws attention to oneself.

So basically doing so forces other people to break another Underground rule. Dont look at anyone you dont know. By singing, you give people a perfectly good excuse to look at you. I dont like that.

Before i finish this entry, i'd like to say, Abeyna has a nice singing voice and i think the reason why she likes singing so much is to show it off. Shedoesnt take any criticism from me anyway about her singing; like how she sings a lot of songs garnished with her own style and basically ruin them. Or when she sings off key and doesnt seem to know it and no amount of convincing will do. She'd just sing that part again and go "See? That wasnt offkey".... well maybe it wasnt but it doesnt change the fact that the first one was off key cos u sung a note higher than you can sustain.

Alright now i'm beginnig to sound like Simon "Cowdung" Cowell.

Total Recall: Outlook Impossible

Or should that be Microsoft Outlook: Recall Impossible.

Either way, it didnt stop me from being red-faced at work yesterday. It's a long story but i'll keep it as brief as possible.

As you may know, i work for the Carphone Warehouse and every now and then, we sponsor some program or some pop artists or sum'in else.

What normally happens is that if they're gonna come around to the head office, where i work, an email gets sent around from an email alias creaton in thier name.

For example, we would get emails pertaining to Big Brother seemingly from big brother contestants because of the "From" name but probably written by thier PR officer or whatever they call them. Its all cos CPW sponsored the last big brother (if you missed me sayng it)

Anyway that said i'll show you an email that started this whole thing:

Now this was sent to the whole company, not just the Head Office, so shops in London are getting it just as shops in Edinburgh. Now whoever set the mailing list up had made a mistake somehow and set up the Robbie Williams alias had mistakenly set it up to forward any replies to the RW account to everyone in the company. Pretty stupid if you ask me.

Cos as soon as the mail was sent, everyone in the company started getting "Out of office replies" from people that has setup thier autoresponders.

I shd have know something was wrong, but stupid all me rushed to send this to "Robbie". Well y'know sort of poking a little fun:

Alright you may not have heard, but apparently Robbie Williams had found a new woman. A single mother of two, and i thought it might be fun to poke errr... fun at that.

Anyway, what's just happened is that i've send a stupid email out to the whole company.

Yeah everyone. The Boss himself would get a copy.. well his secretaries will. At that point in time, i considered runnig away cos everyone around me was asking what that was about... blah blah.

But it wasnt all embarassing stuff for me. Some people didnt know what was going on and mailed me to ask why... and no surprisingly, it turned out some guys in the company were dating a single mum or two and emailed me to ask wo i was and how i knew. Or to say that they were old news.

I even got one rant about how one guy couldnt stand the "annoying little brat". For obvious reasons, i cant post any of those emails here so i'll stop by saying my inbox is still getting a battering and will probably be for the next couple of weeks.

I had "Read Receipts" turned on. And when i realised what had happened, i tried to "recall" the message with a setting to let me know whether the recall failed or was succesful.