This Saturday I had to go to work. Kind of. Work reserved my Saturday because they planned a team outing to celebrate/reward us for our recent efforts. It’s by far the most grandiose event since I started at IBM and from what I’ve heard I shouldn’t expect stuff like this happening very often. Oh well. Anyways, the event started with a matinee showing of (The Life and Adventures of) Nicholas Nickleby. I’ve heard this was in town, but didn’t know too much about it aside that it’s based off of a Dickens’ book. We had Orchestra level seats, right at the boundary where the second level starts (above us), which are the best seats I’ve had at the Princess of Wales.
I didn’t know much about the story or the play, fortunately the programme included a synopsis of what happens. It was also at this point that I realized that there was a Part 1 and a Part 2 of the play, and our 3-hour showing was only Part 1! Unfortunately for Nicholas Nickleby, it’s not Lord of the Rings. I realized this about half an hour into it as it went on and on about the life of some English guy. This is definitely not a show for my generation and maybe the movie would be more interesting.
Fortunately for us, we didn’t have to sit through part 2 because our agenda brought us to the CN Tower (no we weren’t doing the CN Tower climb). About 200 of us rode the elevator up to the Horizons Cafe (above the glass floor level) for some cocktails (no open bar though) before making our way up to the 360 restaurant. This was my first time there and I was kind of disappointed that the entire structure didn’t move, but only a track on which the tables are on. We had a set menu to choose from (Chicken, Salmon or Vegetarian) and were given color coded cards beforehand so that we could display them for the waiters. As you would expect from a group that took over half the restaurant, the food was mass produced and I didn’t think it was that good.
We got good seats however, and stayed around for almost two hours (or 1.5 revolutions) as the sun went down. I didn’t bring my camera SLR though, maybe I should have because the light was pretty good even if there was a bit of a cloud cover. After dessert, ever employee got a gift, which turned out to be a teal 1GB iPod Shuffle. It’s not too useful since I already bought a 2GB one, and plus I can’t sell it because it’s engraved with a personal message from IBM!
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