A night at the tables

It’s with a heavy heart I write this but it’s a great story and memory that deserves to be shared.

Greg was a colleague of mine at Verizon and we met when he was seconded to Hong Kong to cover his counterparts maternity leave. After working on one of our larger projects and a pretty stressful as well as lengthy negotiation we were successful in closing the deal which took most of the time Greg was based in HK.

So it was only fair that we had a bit of a leaving do. This culminated in a group of us going to a local bar for a few drinks and snacks. Whilst we were discussing impulsive things that we’ve done in the past it came to light that Greg hadn’t been to Macau. Well that seemed a good thing to fix as he was moving back to Singapore the next day. Only challenge no one had their passports with them obviously.

However by 9PM we managed to talk a group of 8 of us into making the trip over to Macau an hour away by ferry. So we all went off to collect passports and by 1030 we were on the ferry, amazingly all 8 of us.

By midnight we were in the Hard Rock Casino in Macau chosen due to the low table limits not musical preference. Turned out that Greg and I were the only two really playing. Started at Blackjack which went well followed by poker which didn’t. Lesson learnt you cannot beat the Chinese at poker.

After returning to the blackjack table a bit short my poor form continued. Greg covered my losses for a while and I still had to make a trip to the ATM to repay him when we left.

It was 7 o’clock before we knew it and all I had a meeting at 10 and Greg was flying back home so we left. All 8 of us then traipsed back to the ferry somewhat worse for wear and a touch tired only to bump into one of the management team at the HK ferry terminal. The look on his face when we got off and walked past was a picture.

I made the meeting, Greg made the plane and we both made good friends with a very diverse group of people.

Ben – your dad was a great man and will be sorely missed.