orient the colony…

so saturday. after leaving matt and mark’s it was off to work until too late (5pm), then quickly to the gym where my liver decided the planned 8 mile run was NOT happening (although it did permit an eked out 6.7ks), it was time to rapidly shower and par for the course, delay matt & co. surprisingly, true to his drunken promises, Justin did arrange plans for dinner and karaoke. i picked up mackers, then matt and we hauled it off to Melrose arch, an area so glitzy and glam that I feel like I’m in west village dallas. only 30 minutes late (just call me Africa) we stroll into the orient, a hipped out polished, super grey white and black slicked down trendy asian restaurant. there’s Justin & friend, another McK fella with a name that escapes me. Agaran or something. I’ll call him Mc-A. Anyway, our motley crew assembled, I note that indeed this is an odd pairing: Matt- a British bainee I met like 2 weeks ago; Mackers a native South African who’s a friend of Bev’s; Justin an ethnically Indian south African I met 5 days ago; and Mc-A, another ethnically Indian south African who works with Justin. Only Justin and Mc-A know each other really, and the rest of us are working off of laughably recent and weak connections. but we get on well, and when mackers remarks that Justin is oddly familiar looking, it turns out that ‘that guy’s party’ was macker’s housewarming party. and mackers and matt know some of Justin and mc-a’s other mckinsey friends. and given the vast mckinsey connections at ALA, everyone knows Fred and our other founders.

strange coincidences rounded up, we order. jasmine, mint, ginger teas. dim sum that put what I’ve had in nyc china town to shame. satays, pot stickers- delish. then some damn spicy duck dish that my ability to delight in results in my designation as a ‘dark horse’. I ask what that even means. matt says that it means I’m an outsider—mackers offers a much nicer (and more accurate) description that it means I’m a surprise threat. word.

coffee, some foul looking but fair tasting shooter and we’re done. karaoke time.

so it’s off to some place called the colony. mackers is leading us. we pull into some sketch looking shopping complex off of jan smuts and bail out of his car. I hear the place before we’re even 5 feet from the car. like home bar in dallas or something. we pass one deplorably drunk girl trying to persuade the security guards in slurred speech that she is actually not drunk. we get closer, it gets louder. we go down some stairs, and it’s even louder. I wonder if we are descending into dante’s inferno. one look from the entrance, and it’s clear, we are. the place is that good.

really. karaoke in a mass everyone scream your lungs out fashion. college aged kids drinking a noxious looking green mixture from 2 liter bottles with the tops lopped off. shouting. and within 5 minutes mackers has already found 5 friends, one of which played soccer with Carson (my old roommate) this morning…. what? I meet like 10 people in 2 minutes and then even Justin and Mc-a who’ve never been to this place before run into francois, an ex McK with a laidbackness not befitting his name. soon francois has convinced matt that he must try this green mixture—sugar cane liquor and green cream soda served up in a big plastic bottle. sometime between ‘I love rock and roll’ and ‘bohemian rhapsody’ Bev shows up. Then Kiran. And I realize that I know a lot of people here already. which is a cool feeling. especially since it was so hard coming in a’dam where work circles stay closed meaning that as cool as bain Amsterdam people are, I just didn’t interact with that many non-bain people. as hyped up on karaoke as we were, it isn’t in the cards, mainly because I’m too indecisive to recommend a song. and it’s too late. and everyone in the bar (except us) is uber wasted. oh best part—matt goes to the bathroom and some guy stumbles up to him and says ‘how do you think this SMS (text message) is going to go down?’. matt hesitantly takes the guy’s phone, glances down and reads (warning—vulgarities…) ‘how’s your vagina doing tonight? mind if I drop in?’ matt, 150% bewildered ekes out a properly elusive british reply ‘er um I don’t know…’ but too late, the drunk mashes ‘send’. yeah.

and though it’s not really our night to sing our hearts out out out, it’s a good place to hang and definitely a good place to come back to...

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