December 4, 2005

  • My girlfriend invited me to go with her to a social party / dinner on a
    3 hour boat tour at Long Beach, CA. It was some kind of "client
    appreciation" thing related to her work, but I was game to be on my
    good behavior to represent her company.

    First off, for whatever reason, I always get lost when trying to get to
    a destination in Long Beach. I dunno, it's just the way the city roads
    are laid out, with their pier exits, bridges, over passes, and what
    not. The directions given to us seem sound and made sense so I just
    went with that.  Nope, still got a little lost, there was one
    major fallacy in the directions that GOT me lost.  My sense of
    directions helped though, because I was able to find the place just
    based on instincts alone (didn't have to look at the map, booyah!).

    So when we got there, we met up with some of the people that my
    girlfriend has only talked to through the phone at work.  In a
    way, that's the reason why she was invited, to put a face to the
    voices. The boat itself holds about 60 people, but there were less
    people on board.  It's probably due to some people not being able
    to make the prompt 8PM departure time. It's a boat tour, so you will
    get left behind if you don't make it on time.

    Now if you've read my past blog posts, you know I'm able to socialize
    but I'm also anti-social at the same time. So for the first hour, it
    was pretty much my girlfriend keeping me company, along with the open
    bar, the
    appetizers, and the main courses.  I suppose it should be pointed
    out that we were among a crowd of people that were primarily at least
    15 - 30 years older
    than us.  Because of that age difference, it was at first was hard
    to find a common interest besides talking about our jobs and this boat
    ride. But later on, I found at least a couple of older men who I got
    really conversing with.  It was a very eclectic conversation
    involving talking about dogs, culture, movies, and finally the topic
    that lasted until the end of the cruise, anime. That's right, the last
    topic that I could possibly have imagined to come up in THIS boat trip,
    ani-freakin-me.  I'm having an honest to God conversation about
    Japanese animation with people almost twice my age. Incredible.

    So we had a great time. It was an open bar, and my five drinks proves
    that (never felt buzzed though).  Free food, so we got several
    helpings to really fill us up. It's funny, but we were on a near three
    hour boat trip tour around the harbor and we didn't really bother
    checking out the view.