Another Saturday where I have to get up early. Luckily this time I don't actually have to do any work, even though that is were I was first headed. I met up with my co-worker Gloria at Town Hall station just after 9am, as most of the team were meeting there so we could pick up our costumes. Meeting at work on a Saturday isn't all that exciting, as anyone who does work on a Saturday knows that the air-con isn't on during the weekend. Even though it was 24 degrees at its max temp today, the office was still stuffy that early in the morning.
After that we all headed to the hotel Sheraton on the Park where the conference was being held. When we arrived there was also a group of people from the office within Brisbane who were checking into the hotel, its was a chance for all of us within the office to chat and say hello before we went into the conference room. We then all quickly went upstairs for a bit of early breakfast snacks, and it seems everyone was feeling a bit stuffy and was dying for some water. As the waiters kept having to refill the water not even a minute after they refill it.
Once we got into the conference there were the usual chit chat about how and what departments are up to. This part can usually get a little boring, but the presenters we had this year were pretty awesome so it didn't feel boring at all. After that we did a bit of self reflection, which I ended up finding out that it had a bit of NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming). For those who do not know about NLP, it's a great way to reflect upon situations which are happening within your personal life (even business) learn how to improve your perception with events in your life. It's great for depression or just when your in a bit of a funk. I was in a 6 week course of NLP about 10 years ago, and it's really helped me a lot. After today's course I may even pick up reading about it again.
After that we all had a lunch/bathroom break, where we noticed that there was another conference across the hall about to start. Went to have a bathroom break when I noticed this in the bathroom which made me laugh. Last time I saw something like this was from our old washing machine!
If you can't figure out what that is, it's basically a stream of bubbles which is coming out of the drain! It stared to look kinda like a bubble worm.
Afterwards we went back into the conference, where they started a bit called 'Speed Dating'. Which is basically us sitting with people that you'd normally didn't sit next to, while a representative from each department would talk a little about what they do for the company. Was really awesome, and it's also someone that a lot of us were asking for as a big company we really do not know what the other departments get up to.
The conference part ended up finishing a little early, so I caught up from my friends Jia, Sandra, Jaclyn, Jennifer and Carol up in their room while some tried to sleep and the rest just ended up talking away. I was trying to suggest another get together at Sandra's place, as the last time I was there I had to leave early. So I missed out on Guitar Hero and a lot more partying :(
At about 6pm the rest of the time caught up in a different room where we had to put on our Jumping Beans costume (yes, that's that the picture was of the other day). It was still a little struggle putting them on, but thankfully this time I was wearing light clothes so I didn't feel as though I was being strangled when I put it on. One of our co-workers Nicholas had brought with him some black face paint, so we could put on some fake bears and mustaches on ourselves to make it more Mexican. I asked Gloria to put mine on me, and when she was done the team said mine looked really sleazy! So I put a self pic and sent it to my mum, I also decided to put it on Facebook with the title "Would you trust this person?"
Gloria's costume ending up being that of a Bean Farmer, as the custom size was too small and didn't fit her. So once we all got dressed and ready (with our Mexican mustaches) I quickly took a photo of everyone. Mark with his mono-brow, and everyone with their different types of mustaches!
Once we got downstairs just after 6:30pm, we got to see what everyone else was dressed as and everyone else got to see us. There were people dressed as Chili, tourists, border control, Drug Cartel, Spring Break, Waitresses (and a bar)... you name it. Just about everything to do with Mexico was there.
We all had a fantastic night as everyone was a little bit silly, but it was just great seeing everyone with their hair down and just in general having a good time. I got to meet people from the UK, Brisbane and even the Sydney office which I hadn't met before. One thing I did notice with the costume that I was wearing, that it invited a lot of people to either punch us or hug us. I was more prone to give people hugs :-p Even the ones that came up to punch me I ended up giving a hug!
I added a little video below, as Mark and I decided at one silly point to act like real jumping beans! And he wanted photo or video evidence that he was going to do it, so I thought I'd share it with everyone here on what really a great and silly fantastic night it was!
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