merry xmas

So this weekend I headed to a couple of local xmas parties. The first was in Nakajima, and was pretty low key. I was pretty drunk within about and hour of arriving, so i probably dont have a great recollection. I do however remember having yakiniku =) and also having a rather boisterous debate with the token American about private health care vs public health care. Im pretty sure i won, his main argument was that supporting public health care makes you a socialist.

The next day i achieved nothing except crawling in a ball trying to get over a hangover. But i woke up in time to head the second and more populated xmas party in Hanawa. This partied featured many guests from over the border in ?? they were mostly Interac people, not JETs. They are quite obviously a different breed, but I met a couple of nice ppl.

The main attraction was the thieving secret santa thing. This is how it works:
- Everyone brings a gift and places it in the pile.
- Then they do a lottery to select the order in which people choose.
- The first person takes one from the pile and opens it, so everyone can see.
- The second person then has the choice of stealing the first persons gift, or taking one from the pile.
- This repeats till all gifts are gone.
- If your gift gets stolen, you can either take one from the pile or steal another one (you cant steal yours back)
- Each gift can be stolen only 3 times, so the third person to steal it keeps it.

obviously this means its not good be at the start (cos your good gift will be stolen), but also not good to be at the end (cos all the good ones may have been taken 3 times already). I was 30th out of 40, which is pretty good. cept i wanted this pudding-shaped cushion and it was already stolen 3 times before we got to 30 (grr). I stole some awesome slippers, then had them stolen, then picked some Arnie DVDs from the pile, then had them stolen, then stole the slippers back ftw!

Other items which got triple stolen were: a Totoro pillow, a cat hot water bottle, in a Jack Skellington bag (which i brought) and a Virgin Mary blanket (which my friend was for some reason obsessed with. she almost cried when she didnt get it). and also one of those pellet handguns (which i totally almost picked)

Other crap items were: a giant box of sugar (and only sugar), a potty putter (for putting whilst on the loo, it got stolen once, i have no idea why), a box with meat in it (not a dick-in-a-box, but a chunk of raw meat) as well as tons and tons of useless christmas mugs and other holiday junk which will go straight into someones trash.

I also managed to obtain some guy's jacket. Its like the ugliest jacket in the world. Its a thin hoodie which provides no warm, and was once described as what would happen if you killed cookie monster and made a jacket out of him. Im not really sure what ill do with it.. it looks pretty ridiculous even for me =p