Thursday.  Marc, Riz, I and my company’s other department  heads went to Shangri-La Makati’s Shang Place to have dinner with our company’s CEO and the COO.

Now a couple of things you should know about me: First, I don’t like fine dining and second I don’t like fine dining in a restaurant situated inside a swanky Makati Hotel because really, fine dining in Makati makes me sad.

This is largely because of the anxiety and the feeling of vulnerability and insecurity places that are imposingly fashionable and elegant make me feel. I mean come on, these places have rich beautiful women and douchebag businessman-types all over and you know everyone’s going to get some sex at the end of the night while on a regular night, my squatter friends and I are on the other side of the metro probably sitting on the curb sniffing Ovaltine Powder trying to get fucked up because we ran out of Emperador Brandy and none of us have any money left to get some more.

My anxiety was further exacerbated when we were waiting for our table to be ready and I was treated to an exhibition of groups of successful-looking, 30-ish, expatriates talking obnoxiously about something called “Attrition” who would, from time to time, pause to eavesdrop and smile condescendingly at another group from another table because they’re only talking about “The difference between the market value of our property and the claims held against it.”

Aside from these types of people, there were also young men and women who were obviously on their first dates as I heard most of them talking about their interests and shit (and face it, if you’ve been dating a girl long enough, you should be arguing with her about why she should be on the pill so you can come inside her whenever you want and not listen to her talk about how she likes Victorian architecture. That’s just silly.) Also, it looked like the ladies were wearing shoes that cost more than my parents’ first house. So yeah, sad.

What’s sadder is after they get a good buzz going from drinking expensive-ass wine, they’d probably have this conversation:

Slutbag girl: “Hey listen, you got me dinner which probably costs more than what that guy standing there makes in a month [points at me. Standing in a corner, looking at my shoes, sweating the fuck all over the place.] But I never got around to asking you what you do.”

Douchebag guy:“I’m the Vice President for International Operations of a BPO company. I have an degree on Douchery from Stanford which I leveraged to land me this high-paying job which will pay for my Porche and my beach house in Cancun. How about you? What do you do?”

Slutbag Girl: “Well I’m an Editor for–”

Douchebag guy: “Hey listen, want to go up to my room, snort some lines and fuck? It’s going to be pretty rough and there is a good chance that I’ll spit at you and call you Apollonia.”

Slutbag Girl: “K!”

The dinner itself was pretty uneventful and I really don’t have anything funny to tell you besides the fact that the Waitresses over at Shang Place were grade-A bitches. There were numerous instances when I ordered a drink and the waitress was like “I’ll bring it to you in a couple of minutes sir” when she really meant “Sir, you obviously bought your shirt from The Surplus Shop and it couldn’t have cost you more than 100 Pesos. Also, you’re not very good looking and you sweat a lot so I think I’ll get around to bringing your drink after I alternate between serving everybody else their drinks and shooting you looks of pity and utter disgust.”

But the night’s pièce de résistance came when they served us Chinese cookies and sesame balls for dessert. Being the highly cultured person that I am, I thought the Chinese cookies were Fortune Cookies and proceeded to dig into the pastry looking for a piece of paper where my supposed fortune is printed.

The aftermath: Crumbs, fudge and icing all over my shirt and the definite, imminent end of my career.

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