Day 59 of 365 grateful days project:

"I'm grateful that we've managed to move to the new house today, despite the terrible, terrible hangover."

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope the year 2012 brings you lots of happiness and success in whatever you do. :)

Second of all, who in their right mind thinks that moving to a new house right on the first day of the year is a good idea?

US. Vincent, especially, but also me for agreeing to it. And of course, we were so damn wrong.

But the timing couldn't have been worse. We just arrived from our travel just a few days before we had to move. And if we'd have stayed longer in the previous house, we'd have been charged daily rate. So for the New Year's eve this year, we planned not to party. We planned not to go home early in the morning like we usually did. We planned not to drink too much to celebrate it. We wanted to be sober and excited as we entered our new beautiful house. After all, we were all tired - Vincent from the jetlag and me from packing things into the so many boxes.

But none of the plans worked out. Naturally. Greg called to invite us to have a small celebration at his place with one other couple. Vincent said we would just go there, have one drink and go to celebrate New Year's eve on our own, just the two of us. That never happened. :P

Don't get me wrong, it was a nice gathering with nice people. I enjoyed it very much. However, when we went home at 3 (still earlier than usual), we were absolutely drunk. And dead. And nobody heard the moving guys ringing the bell at 11 AM. They tried to call me three times and I only answered the last ring. Then it rained.really.really.hard.

It must have been a sign.

Vincent was so sick he couldn't get up. So we asked the guys to come back later when the rain stopped.
They did go, except that when I felt better at around 2, they refused to come back because they were out enjoying the New Year's holiday. Perfect. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

My maid called another moving company, and we were lucky to get one that worked on 1 January. We agreed on a price, which was a lot more expensive than our previous guys, but we just couldn't wait until we could be in the new place.

It was drizzling during the move, Vincent and I were both sick, we arrived at the new house and the manager wasn't around to open the door and give us the key to the gate. We couldn't even get into our own new house! Yes, you can laugh now.

So.... we were stranded outside of the villa for at least half an hour, or maybe it was an hour, until someone handed in the key. Alas, the loading and unloading process only finished at around 8 PM.

We thought we were dying. And starving. So Vincent wanted to order some pizza. I was ready with my phone to order it until...

"What's our address?" I asked him.
"Shit. I don't know," he said.

And after half an hour waiting for the SMS reply from the owner of the villa about the address, Vincent gave up and said, "I'll find something to take away."

Dinner was at 10.

365 grateful days project alcohol Bali home

11:12 pm

Day 20 of 365 grateful days project:

"I'm grateful for feeling good to party again."

After last year, my view of parties and alcohol got very ugly. I saw how aggressive an excessive abuse of alcohol was and how it could lead to stupidities that were not necessarily a part of someone's real personality. No, I'm not talking about myself. I ALWAYS know when to stop if I want to stop. But many people don't.

But I'm still not against having fun at parties. Alcohol is great when consumed within limits and not very often. But it is especially bad when drunk to run away from reality. Tonight, however, nobody was running away from reality. We were having a good time. And though a clash did happen at the end between Vincent, David and Laurence and I got just slightly upset because for a moment I thought nothing changed at all, overall it was still a nice outing. The music was great and I danced so much like I never did for a long time.

I didn't even expect to have a party tonight. I went to the ad print meeting and I thought I went just for that. But it appeared that the office was celebrating Sandrine's birthday. Since I was there, I was handed a glass of champagne and a piece of chocolate cake. It didn't stop there. After the apéro, we went for dinner at Warung Made. Vincent was already tipsy from the apéro, yet he ordered more and more vodka (and this is the same guy who said that he hated vodka the first time I knew him). So he got really drunk.

You could tell that Vincent was drunk only by his nod on dancing. And not any dance, a Tango.

Of course it wasn't a real tango, but Vincent's drunk mouth claimed that he could do Tango dance very easily. He danced first with Sandrine and then with me - yes, far from how you described how Tango should have been.

there's no such clapping on Tango dance, but this is Vincent's style

When I got back to my seat, his friends said: "Wow, you were so brave!!! Embarrassing yourself like that."

Marie drinking from flamed glass

Bahiana

After that we went to Bahiana when I danced happily with Laurence, Marie and Sandrine (and Vincent and David). But as usual, my eyes couldn't stay open that long. I'm a morning person and I wake up at 6 AM no matter how late I started sleeping. So I retreated when it was almost three o'clock. I knew as usual the boys wanted to go on and on at La Vida Loca (they really never know when to stop) but this time I wouldn't care. It's really too tiring to argue about it every time we go to the bars.

So I said good night to everybody, left Vincent to argue with David and Laurence, and went home.

365 grateful days project alcohol Bali social life

10:44 pm