Severe Jam Damage

Apparently a few of the lads from the ‘k-club have found my little corner of the interweb. Somebody mentioned it on Saturday night and as the drink flowed more and more of them asked me
‘Whats all this about you writing a blog then?’

So now they know and I’m not sure how I feel about it.

On the one hand I have a bunch of friends who are aware of my presence on the ‘net. Some of them are fellow bloggers \ writers themselves and some aren’t. My family also knows about my ‘not so secret life’ and my sister and brother in law keep vague tabs on me here.

So I’m used to meeting up with people and talking about online stuff, etc. But the ‘k-club lads (as I have coined our ex-company) are former workmates. Which kind of makes it a whole different ball-game - I’ve already blogged about how I prefer to keep my work and personal life separate.

Then again I’ve known them all going on for seven years or so. Every Christmas we do a ‘12 pubs of’ crawl – even the years when I wasn’t working there. People gave up a Saturday night to eat and drink with former workmates, the lads go golfing together, former employees still keep in touch. How many companies do you know where that happens? Christ, even C-Bear is a former employee - and oh the amount of confusion that friendship caused when we first became friends.
‘But the two of you are so different, how on earth can you be friends?’
I used to refer to us as ‘Uma and Janeane’.
Guess who I was.

Anyway, I’m waffling now. If any of the ‘k-club are reading this I guess this is the bit where I say:
‘Hello Boys.’

Saturday night I was out with ex-coworkers in a last blast to the company. Also we had a bit of cash in the social club coffers so used it up on food and drink in Diep le Shaker. A few of us met up in the Pembroke beforehand and the rest waited in the bar of the restaurant where they ordered cocktails.

The organizer had booked us in for the ‘Taste of Phuket’ menu which involved a buffet of somewhere upwards of 10 dishes. The restaurant is small and intimate although our seating arrangements weren’t terribly good. One large round table (8 top) shoved together with a smaller round 4-top does not make for much room for 15 guests – especially those unlucky enough to be seated in the odd curved space between the two. In addition the tables were at the back of the room beside the kitchen. At times I thought that a few on the other side of the table were going to end up with a plate of crispy duck all over their heads.

The service was fine although perhaps a little too attentive as the waiter was around every five minutes to refresh our glasses. All well and good except that the second bottle of Shiraz appeared to have some horrible tangy aftertaste that the first bottle did not, but it was too late to save anything as the waiter had already topped up our glasses with the second bottle. If it had been a smaller group I would have asked for fresh glasses. Also we never did figure out what accent the Maitre’D was trying to imitate.

The food itself was good, although with ten-plus dishes it was hard to tell which might be your favourite. There was simply too much choice. Crispy fried duck with plum sauce and pancakes, chicken, beef and prawn satay. Spring rolls, fish goujons and Chicken Pandan - cubes of chicken baked in lime leaves (‘Don’t eat the leaves’ warned our waiter.) The main course was even more meat-laden. Roast duck with pineapples and plum sauce. A hot and spicy prawn and scallop curry that snuck up on those who dared to try it. ‘Sure that’s not so bad’ was heard a couple of times and five minutes later there were gasps for water. The always popular green chicken curry, a beef curry of some sort, a spicy vegetable thing, another seafood curry with mussels and prawns, and a yellow prawn curry. Served with noodles and rice (steamed or fried.)

A third course of crispy banana fritters served with ice cream –which many had to chase around the plate - and a coffee finished the meal. Our booking was for 7pm and we were supposed to be out of there by nine for the second seating, but the staff let us finish off our meal and stagger wearily away at about 9.30.

Kudos to them for putting up with us.