Time And Chance

I was invited to Royal Holiday’s year-end dinner party the other day, and now we’ve had our own party. Here are a few random pics from both.

Royal Holiday reserved the Obsidiana ballroom at the Royal Pedregal Hotel (coincidence or design?) to host their annual Christmas party. It was nice of them to send an invite –though I did spend 8.5 months of the year with at their offices, so it’s all appreciated. Traffic was murderous, but expected: with everyone (Sinergia included) cramming their own parties in the weeks prior to Christmas, the city has been a huge gridlock through mid-December and onwards. That didn’t deter the RH partygoers, however, and one of the remote Developments manager actually drove the three hours from Queretaro to make it there.

Food was interesting though a bit artistic: huge plates with a smattering of meat and generous sauce. After dinner, the company president (I think?) came up to host the traditional raffle. This being Royal Holiday, they didn’t hold back with the prizes! They worked their way up from iPods and DVD players to HDTV screens and a few round-trips to RH sites –a cruise included– and even a surprise car. Sadly, none of the prizes went to the poor, neglected IT department, but with about ten thousand people in the Call Center and Sales, simple law of probability was against us.

A small sample from the prize table. Not pictured: the car. A Pontiac Matiz, I think it was. And after the raffle, the dance floor was well and thoroughly hit:

The best part? The band actually played songs everyone could dance to. Sure, there were the stock-standard cumbias and merengues, but they also played some pop, rock (80’s, even!) and ballads, and they did a bang-up job at it, too. To everyone and anyone planning a wedding in Mexico: HIRE THESE PEOPLE. STAT.

Rumor went that Royal had reserved the ballroom till 3AM Saturday, but, sadly, I had to duck out earlier. Had a great time there, though. Food for thought: RH is nice and generous enough to invite an outsourced contractor to its Christmas bash, but Nextel never did… even though I was a full-time employee for a year and a half… and then it went and downsized our positions two months after announcing a 40% growth. Hmm.

Our own dinner with Sinergia was, naturally, smaller and more reserved. We reserved a table at Adetto, and the food was nothing short of excellent (roasted duck with Port.) At the end, instead of a raffle, we had our “Office Secret Santa,” and I scored an Apocalyptica CD. Wii!

Here’s a pic we took at the end. Sorry for the quality: like the pictures above, it was taken with a cellphone camera, and it’s not exactly friendly for dimly lit situations.

(Protip: I wear glasses.)