Long night

It's 3am and I just got back. Not quite drunk, rather high - still ok enough to slip the cops basically. It was one of those days - and became one of those nights. The whole morning was spent with the new CEO. He's a nice fler. Then spent the afternoon working a board paper. My boss escaped by heading out for training. Then at the end of the day, claimed he was too tired to come into the office and asked us for a meeting at his hotel. Dumb ass.

Evening was more interesting. More debauchery and drunkenness, in true oil and gas style. Had a customer from Singapore come in - wanted a night out. It was Mr Beemer's customer, and since he's out of budget, I had to cover for this case. So I dutifully followed Mr Beemer to a dinner and then followed by the ole karaoke session.

Dinner was nice. I wholeheartedly recommend Pregos.. Its a very chic Italian joint at the Westin. Very nice food. Excellent service. Cool crowds and fantastic Italian wine. We had 2 bottles - after trying out several. Ended up with an Aussie Merlot and Italian Chianti. Our customer picked the vintages, so fortunately for us he wasn't totally lost when it came to wine and we came up on top.

Food was great. The other two had racks of lamb and I took this weird salted seabass dish. The fish came whole and covered in salt. Huge rock ones. So the waiter took 5 minutes to carve out the fish and present it to me. It was nice, though I should have had red meat.

Pregos apparently has a fantastic one of a kind buffet on Sundays. During brunch around 11am to 3pm on Sundays they serve a buffet with food from their ala-carte menu. Which I find to be damn cool. Best part is buffet includes free flow of champagne and cocktails! Wow.. drunk on Sunday afternoon, gotta try that next week. Bad news is the price: RM 150 plus. But since the food is great, and if you like champagne then its a good deal.

We retired to SS for the karaoke session. Pling thought it would be a sleazy joint, but really its not that bad. It's got girls, but the place is not seedy - its the one on the ground floor of KL Plaza. The rest of our "kakis" joined in after a while and we ended up with 10 people in a rather large room: 5 boys and girls.

My last visit to SS, I ended up with Arlene, fake name forgotten. She was one of my mom's ex students at BBGS. Small world. So you can figure out how that turned out. This time it was Kris, real name Aliana. She's a 27 year old mother of 3 from Terengganu - mix of Thai, Chinese and Malay. So that went well too. But she's a looker though. Could easily pass off as a college student.

Anyway, we really meet interesting people out there. Kris started working there to make some money and put herself through school. But that's what they all say. As she mentioned her kids, I said I was married too. She mentioned she was divorced, but dating some dude in Singapore. She asked if I was trying to have kids, so I said yeah.. sort of. She thinks babies are more like God's gifts. There are people out there been trying for ages, but never got even one. Then there are those like her, screwing around when she was 19 and got preggers to her then boyfriend who became ex-husband some years later. So point is you can never really plan - things just screw up with you and you just have to make the best of it. I tried to agree.

She planned to get through school and open a boutique or a cafe. Sigh, 9 out of 10 GROs I meet say the same thing. But they never really get around to doing it. Very few in fact I know who actually have a business outside. In the end, if they get lucky, someone marries them. Those with luggage (kids) fare even worse. Most turn to prostitution or end up doing GRO work until they are no longer wanted. After that, they usually disappear.

She left early with a friend, around about 1am. The rest of us hung around until about 2am before making a move. Mr Beemer said it nicely on the way out; "We have to find something else to do to entertain, someplace where there are fewer people so desperate for love."

Happy International Women's Day?

Seen: EPL Football action
Felt: Helpless
Heard: Karaoke voices