LKF after the Christmas Party

One of the 974 things I like about Hong Kong; work Christmas Parties are always entertaining. Or the companies that I choose to work with host good parties. Perhaps this is one of my interview questions when I’m looking for a new company to work with eg. “Can you tell me about last year’s Christmas Party / Annual Dinner? What would you do differently this year?” etc since I am a big believer that a job interview is about me interviewing the hiring manager too so I can decide if I’ll fit in or not.

In HK, it is common to have either an Annual Dinner or a Christmas Party. The Annual Dinner would typically fall between Christmas and Chinese New Year and be used to celebrate both occasions. The Christmas Party is generally before Christmas.

Typically, these parties have themes.

I’ve attended parties that were the Academy Awards (that was my Kill Bill outfit), a circus (gypsy fortune teller), ballroom dancing (I went as Morticia Addams that year and did the Masochism Tango with a Gomez. I wasn’t even recognised!),  masquerade party (the most boring of my outfits though did have a great mask), Old HK (purple cheongsam and a black short wig. I wasn’t recognised then either) and this year,  our theme was Our Company’s Got Talent (I dressed as Katy Perry as I wanted an excuse to have long purple hair). There have been others but clearly haven’t made as much an impression as these ones.

We look for any excuse to dress up here. HK Sevens is the other time where this happens en masse.

In both cases, there are prizes.

And these prizes are good!

They range from vouchers through to televisions, holidays, suitcases, computers and so on. These prizes are generally donated by the senior managers nowadays though in the olden days many providers would donate prizes. This is now not the case with most companies having strict policies about what can be accepted and from whom, to what value etc.

There are games, entertainment and food all based around the theme. The prizes are given throughout the evening and there’s always quite a wait until the final prize. The reason being, that as soon as this prize is given, most people leave even though the venue will be booked until midnight.

Those that stay are typically the foreigners and a few hard core locals who drink the rest of the bar dry (or make a good attempt), dance and then go out to Lan Kwai Fong (LKF) or Wan Chai.

This year, I left a little while after the prize draw with various colleagues to catch a taxi into LKF.

It’s fair to say, a good time was had by all.

It was a bit of an emotional evening for me as quite a few people came up to wish me well with my relocation, let me know the impact I had on their work and with the company etc though this all actually started earlier in the week at the races.

We were there to say farewell to another colleague.

He put his arms around me and told me that I was the second best HR person that he has even worked with. I thanked him and asked “what did the one who is the best do differently to me?”, figuring I could improve based on what he told me.  I am generally open to feedback. He then told a story of how he managed to sleep with the other one.

I told him that I was happy being second best.

* Thanks to Kenny Loggins for the title to this post. It’s fair to say that we had kicked off our Sunday shoes. Also our Monday to Saturday ones…