As you all know my company rewards its employees by an end of year trip/Christmas party/tax right off. In 2005 we went to Cairns.
On the 7th December my mate Sylvia picked me up bright an early and we drove to the airport. After checking in, we wandered around a much reduced sydney domestic airport. Finally we got on that plane....all 150 Sydney employees, and made a very loud and probably rather annoying journey to the hottest of hot cities in the north of Queensland. When we landed it was about noon and 35 degrees hot!
After shuffling along queues full of merckies we were handed our hotel room keys and our spending money. The money envelope had $195 in it to be used for dinner on Wednesday, Lunch on Thursday and anything else we so desired. Of course the tax right off part was a 4 hour business session where Mikey Robbins took the piss out of our director team, we scoffed ice creams and played trivial games with Larry Emdur. After much cash and prizes were given out we were allowed to leave and headed into town for some dinner.
Australia is a great place for seafood and Cairns is no exception, the nightclubs however, leave much to be desired! Imagine 500 sunburnt poms drinking WAY too much liquor and dancing half naked in a room the size of an average living room...add to that 300 merkies on a company funded holiday with managers credit cards behind the bar and you've got one helluva mess! A fun mess, but a mess never the less.
The next day we grabbed our towels and room keys and headed to the pool....we lay in the sun, we ate yummy calamari, we sipped extravagant cocktails and had the obligatory hand stand competition. What a lovely day! we popped out around noon for a small shopping trip where skirts, shoes, pjs and jewellery were bought with our merck money. That evening was the gala dinner.
Now merck gala dinners are a huge affair. Many people hire costumes and lug them to the event, others get creative and then there are the lazy bums who don't get in the spirit. This year the theme was Enchanted Forest so needless to say there were about 200 fairies and 50 wizards, we also had 5 smurfs (complete with full body paint!), a peter pan or two, some elves and gnomes, and a managing director in an hawaiian shirt??!! It was all fun and games and then Bjorn Again rocked the house...I say rocked, but I really mean sang loads of tacky songs that everyone (yes everyone) got up and had a dance to!
The next morning was one spent by the pool, relaxing and cooling down till we all boarded a bus for the airport. Problems hit at the terminal when Virgin announced the plane was too small to accomodate us so could anyone volunteer for a later flight? After much negotiating about 15 of us opted to get bumped in exchange for $300 in flight vouchers from Virgin. Not a bad days work....2 hours later we were on a plane and each of us were $300 richer.
Can't wait till this December.....I guess they'll tell us where we'll be heading soon. I'm hoping for west coast. Fingers crossed.
8 comments:
Did I mention I hate you company. I got an electronic christmas card.
I hate you company John. Thats just mean.
Isn't it tax WRITE off??
Like a car crash, isn't that a WRITE off if the car is completely stuffed?
I'm not being a pedant here, just interested...
I though it might be...I actually wrote the word about three or four different ways and none of them looked right so I settled with the multipurpose one.
I'm pretty sure it's write off. It has been written off.
No no, you tax right off... what happens is they take the tax loss and shift it to the right side of the spreadsheet, hence... you tax RIGHT off (the page).
Rite on, Suzy!
Take that Wrichie!
Post a Comment