The venue for last night’s gathering of Oriented f…
The venue for last night’s gathering of Oriented folk was Champagne, a suitably classy setup on Anhe Road. As usual, I was one of the first to arrive, despite the fact that I had been purposely loitering around the neighborhood in order to be late. Mingson greeted me at the door, and I stuck a nametag on my shirt in the naive belief that others would follow my example. Familiar faces began to show up, including those of such Oriented celebrities as “Alien”, “Maoman”, “Juba” and “Cranky Laowai”. The more I think about it, the more these names sound like hackers or villains from old Dick Tracy comics.
The place quickly got crowded, but since most people weren’t revealing their secret identities, I couldn’t tell if they were frequent posters or just the usual voyeurs. Alien was mutter her opinion that they were mostly of the latter sort when her Scottish pal Rowen showed up. I was on foot so I’d been drinking a bit as I scavenged for the little sandwiches hidden like Easter eggs around the room.
Eventually Alien and Rowen decided to go to Watersheds, so I tagged along, drunkenly unaware that I had forgotten my hat at Champagne, so I had to go back for it. I had a “Mudslide” for the first time at Watersheds, which was typically too small but rather empty. we discussed a production of the Maltese Falcon and other theatrical things. At about midnight my companions were planning to stagger over to Carnegie, but I elected to stagger home instead. It was a fun evening, but faced with getting online and blogging about it or falling into bed, I chose the latter.
Today was uneventful. Boring work, misty dark weather, meetings where managers dissect all the life out of our work…happily I had Office Turtle around to entertain me by helping me type and even giving a TV interview to my Mr. Cameraman, who, by the way, is standing atop a printout of the Damn Book.
Anyway, it’s now Friday night and I’m off, released to wander this gloomy city alone…*puts on moody 30’s detective movie music*
