Chapter 8 – Tapirs, Mushrooms and a Swan Song
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The schedule for the day was as follows: Arrival; Check-in; Lunch; Trivia game; Free time; Water relay; Free time; Dinner; Free time. The trivia game and water relay were purely optional, so only those interested would show up. Technically the meals were as well, but pretty much everyone shows up for those anyway.

With that said, as soon as we arrived in the resort, everyone pretty much just hurried off to leave their bags in their respective rooms and then straight to lunch, since we arrived a bit past noon. Based on the information we were given via email, we would be served a buffet courtesy of the resort, mostly surrounding seafoods. It was their specialty after all.

* * * * *

As soon as I was finished with my business checking in our room, I headed for the lunch hall. As it turned out, I was still one of the earlier ones to arrive.

One of the perks of being early in a venue was not needing to make an actual decision on who you want to sit with. You could just occupy perhaps a vacant table and just let things fall into place. This was in contrast with say sitting away from a group of people and being viewed as either anti-social or as someone trying to avoid someone else, or perhaps in contrast with say sitting beside someone and being teased over following that person. Being early eliminates such complications.

The other perk of being early was not needing to ask if a particular seat is taken as virtually every seat is not taken. This eliminates the possibility of people telling you that they have no room for you, or perhaps the possibility of being disappointed upon learning that your friends did not leave out a space for you.

So I decided upon a table in the corner opposite of the table currently occupied by the people in our Admin Department. It wasn’t that I had a problem with them. I just felt it better to spread ourselves out.

I sat in one of the chairs in that table and pretty much just waited in silence as I fidgeted with my phone. Soon enough people started arriving. But I was still alone in my table.

* * * * *

“Jude!” a girl’s voice called out to me.

I turned to see who it was. It was Cathleen.

Was I expecting someone in particular? No, not really.

“Hey!” I greeted her back.

Cathleen sat down beside me.

“I heard you and Vivien were seatmates on the bus,” she said, sporting an obvious grin.

Only God knows why at that time every single one of my friends, and perhaps even beyond, somehow knew that I had a crush on Vivien. Maybe I was obvious. Maybe people were just big gossip mongers.

“Yeah, for some reason everyone else were either in bus A or B,” I replied.

I tried to play it cool.

“So how was it?” she asked.

“It was pretty traffic along the highway. The road got pretty bumpy as we neared the resort. The seats were okay. I guess the airconditioning in the bus was alright as well.”

I tried evading the obvious interpretation of the question.

Cathleen just glared at me for a few good seconds.

“It was fine,” I continued with a laugh. “I was asleep for much of the ride.”

“Tsk.”

“Hey, bus rides are for extra sleep,” I joked.

Obviously, I was never going to make any indication about my earlier disappointment over that bus ride.

* * * * *

There was not much to note about lunch aside from the fact that pretty much everyone sat with their respective batches. Save for a few groups that transcended batches, cliques pretty much formed around who joined the company with whom. It wasn’t that people were exclusive, that was just how things organically developed.

I had to quickly finish up whatever I took from the buffet as I was one of the volunteers in the trivia game that proceeded after lunch. James, another colleague of ours and resident Mr. Congeniality of the office, was the one who spearheaded this event. This whole thing had actually been his idea, and he himself offered this to our HR department. And when he began looking for volunteers to help him organize this game, I felt compelled to help him out seeing as we went way back having been classmates in our primary school days.

Much to my surprise, almost everyone in the dining hall stayed for the trivia game. Perhaps people found it impossible to immediately swim right after lunch, and hence decided to just see what the trivia game was about, but I was personally pleasantly surprised to see virtually the whole company so gung-ho and competitive over the trivia game. In the end, we had to dig deep into our tie-breakers to finally declare a winner.

After the trivia game, a few people did decide to brave the early afternoon sun and swim. A few others decided to let the afternoon sun wane a bit and just hang out in the huts along the beach for a while, while still a few others for some reason decided to head back to their rooms to sleep. I wasn’t sure myself what to do that afternoon, so I decided to just wander around aimlessly.

I spent a bit of time watching a few guys play some board games, even joining them for a round of 7 Wonders and a few rounds of Munchkins. I also observed a few camera enthusiast officemates try to take pictures of virtually anything along the beach. Eventually, I got called by a few friends who saw me wandering around to join them in their hut as they played a few card games. That was pretty much how the entire afternoon went.

* * * * *

When dinner finally concluded, there was a sense of festive mood you could feel in the air. There was no sense of people preparing to retire for the night. In fact, it was more of the opposite, saying as though the night was still young. To be more precise, it was more like we were only just beginning.

As we had our dinner under the stars, a few groups of people simply decided to stay at their tables while some among their ranks went to get their supplies. Still, most of the groups decided to relocate. A few went to the huts along the beach. A few camped out along the halls outside their rooms. In the end, we as a whole managed to spread ourselves across the entire resort.

I wasn’t part of any regular drinking group, which seemed be the basis of how people broke into huddles. I’ve only ever joined a few of them once or twice, during special occasions. So in that sense, I really had no idea what to do that evening. It was still too early to sleep, so I decided to once again go back to what I usually do: Wander around aimlessly.

* * * * *

“You guys aren’t drinking?” I asked Chris and Desmond.

I noticed the two of them earlier hanging at the balcony outside Chris’ room jamming to a few songs. I found that particularly weird, as both of them regularly joined people to go on drinking sessions. Aside from that, they were rather people-persons, so it was odd to see them sort of hidden in a corner.

“Later,” Chris replied as he continued strumming a few chords from a love song on his guitar. “We’re still full.”

One of the things I learned about dealing with Chris was never to take anything he says seriously. I turned to see if Desmond would add anything.

“Chris is still preparing for his plans tonight,” Desmond quipped.

I knew something was up. Thankfully Desmond was there to spill.

“Plans?” I asked.

“He’s gonna serenade Rose,” Desmond replied with a smirk.

It was a classic example of how some friendships were built on the ability to mutually make fun of each other.

“Whoa, when?” I asked. “Can I watch from afar?”

I wanted in on making fun of Chris.

Chris just waved his head left and right as he continued singing random songs with a smile.

It looked like I had to time my walks properly to catch a glimpse of this wooing.

* * * * *

“So is this the notorious Vic show?” I asked Shirley.

I decided to approach a hut that had a significant gathering in it. Inside, most of Vivien’s batchmates were in it, as well as other people who occasionally hanged out with them like Shirley. Vic was one of Vivien’s batchmates.

Vic was well known in our office as a super quiet, no-nonsense kind of guy. Having worked with him before, he wasn’t really anti-social. It was more like he wasn’t a social butterfly, and not even remotely close to it, and he had no inclination whatsoever at being one or pretending to be one. So he wasn’t exactly someone you’d see hanging out with people.

But that was just one side of the story. The other side was that he was also famous for having the biggest transformation when under the influence of alcohol. It wasn’t so much as becoming wild or aggressive, but rumor had it that he becomes really chatty.

And true enough, the sight I saw was a very talkative Vic.

“Yeah, he only just started,” Shirley informed me.

“When I visited HK as a kid, one of my brothers wanted to see the tapirs in the HK zoo,” Vic recounted.

I had no idea what tapirs were, but seeing as it was mentioned in a zoo I figured it would have been an animal. I also had no idea why tapirs would be interesting, but since everyone was into Vic’s monologue by then, I figured I shouldn’t sweat the small stuff.

“So we went to the zoo, but as it was raining that day, we were disappointed not to see any. So on my recent trip to HK, I decided to check out the tapirs in the HK zoo once again. As it turns out, they no longer had any tapirs.”

I was kind of confused with the tapir stuff, but since it seemed like a lead up to a story, I decided to stay and listen.

“So I went back to my place and just worked on my fanfic while occasionally browsing Reddit. One of the ask-me-anything threads for that day was ‘I am on a business trip in HK, AMA’. And no, it wasn’t me. Someone asked in that thread if it was true that brothels in HK had online booking systems. OP confirmed it. It piqued my interest. I never understood the fuss about sex, and this was a no-hassle opportunity to figure that out. So I decided to give it a try.”

I was surprised. Not only was Vic being talkative, he was sharing such a personal and perhaps sensitive matter to us rather openly. Vic recounted to us rather animatedly the various anxieties he went through browsing and selecting a servicer, the difficulty of looking for the place, and the awkwardness of getting down to business. All in all it was a fascinating account, but what was most interesting for me was his disappointment at the end of it all.

“It was just a purely physical thing,” he noted about sex.

Nevertheless, that Vic show segment was truly enlightening.

* * * * *

“Jude! You!”

I turned to see Joyce pointing at me.

I was shocked, worried even. Did I do anything to her? I don’t recall ever doing anything bad to her. Heck, I hardly ever interacted with her. Maybe at most a few words here and there?

Joyce rushed at me. As she grew closer, I noticed that she was in a rather upbeat and happy mood. I was confused.

“You! You did not eat your mushrooms!”

I was baffled.

It was true that during the lunch earlier that day, I set aside the mushrooms from one of the buffet servings I got and did not eat them. I disliked mushrooms, but never in my whole life did I expect such a strong reaction to my dislike of mushrooms.

I noticed that a friend of Joyce’s was just a few steps behind her trying to contain her laughter. Then it clicked. Joyce was rather drunk it seems.

“But mushrooms are gross! They’re fungus!” I reasoned. Obviously, it was a half-hearted attempt at it.

“They’re yummy! Just give them to me if you don’t want them!”

“Ok. Next time then,” I agreed and laughed as Joyce was promptly escorted away by her friend.

It was a weird night.

* * * * *

“Is the serenade done?” I asked Desmond whom I met while walking around. He was alone.

Desmond nodded.

“Aww, I wanted to see,” I remarked.

Desmond laughed.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“It was okay. Chris is talking is talking with Rose right now. But Rose didn’t look very happy after her friends wouldn’t let up teasing her.”

“Oh…”

“I hope it goes okay,” Desmond added.

It seemed rather worrisome.

* * * * *

“Why are you being all emo here?” Shirley asked me.

I was sitting in a bench, all alone, looking out towards the evening beach when Shirley approached me and sat beside me with a bottle of beer in hand.

“No! I’m just contemplating whether I should go sleep now.”

“It’s still early!”

It wasn’t. It was 11 PM already, roughly my normal sleeping time. But I knew where Shirley was coming from, as people my age normally sleeps much later than that, and that no one actually sleeps before midnight during events like these.

“But I’m now bored,” I replied.

“Join us! V is with us anyway,” Shirley said with a grin.

“Meh, I’ll pass.”

“Jude! Stop being so passive!”

“I should be aggressive?”

“Yes, I’d like to see that.”

“What…” I simply gave a deadpan look.

“If you like V, make a move.”

“I doesn’t work like that.”

“What do you know?”

“Fine. But still.”

“Look, do you like V?”

“It’s not as simple as that.”

“Answer the question! Do you like V?”

“I guess…”

“Then make a move!”

“Just because you like someone doesn’t automatically mean you make a move.”

“Why not?”

Discussing this matter with a tipsy Shirley proved to be more difficult than a sober one.

“I don’t know if I like her enough to want to end up with her.”

“Aren’t you over-complicating things?”

“Aren’t you over-simplifying things?”

Shirley sighed with exasperation at my reply.

“If you don’t do something, you might regret it, you know. Someone might beat you to it.”

“If it happens, it happens. That means it’s just not meant to be.”

“Then you’ll just cry and be emo?”

“Sure, why not?” I laughed. “I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

Shirley just shook her head in disbelief.

* * * * *

Shortly before midnight, I gave up fighting my sleepiness and decided to retire for the night.

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