Monday, May 10, 2010

Med Ball 2010

So ... Med Ball 2010 was fantastic. I’ve been looking forward to this year’s med ball since just after last year’s med ball, and whilst not everyone from our group was able to make it, we did manage to put together a table of 10 really ridiculously good-looking people for a night of mayhem.

I made the 400km drive up and made the best decision ever in staying with my sister at the same hotel as the ball. All 5 girls from our table congregated there to get ready, and my sister had a little production line of hairstyles going – and might I say she did a brilliant job! Champagne had started at 2.30pm, so we were all fairly cheerful and ready for a party by the time the boys arrived at around 6pm.

There were no tickets, so nobody had much idea as to when the Ball officially started, but we decided as a group that sometime between 6.30 and 7pm would be an acceptable time to arrive. On arrival I reached for a Coke, hoping for a bit of caffeine, but had it wrestled from my hand by RT who declared that my first drink at Med Ball could NOT be a soft drink and that I was to drink champagne instead. And that was the last glass of soft drink I saw for the night.

The ballroom looked magnificent ... I’d had some concerns about an “under-the-sea” themed Med Ball, but it didn’t look at all like a school formal or a 16th birthday party; it looked very classy. And everyone looked gorgeous (apart from a few young ladies who misinterpreted “black tie” as “dress like a hooker”, but they might know better next year). So many beautiful dresses and sharp suits! Well done Flinders Med – you’re a very impressive bunch!

The awards were very well done, although most were focussed on the first- and second-years (such as “McDreamy award” and “Walking Harrisons”). This meant that our last year’s McDreamy, MT, went unchallenged and undefeated – reigning champion of McDreaminess for our year level, congratulations! One of the third-years from a different table presented the “best dressed” awards for third-year (congratulations JG and MM) after reading the following medical poem:

“Your love is like bad medicine
Bad medicine is what I need
Shake it up, just like bad medicine
There ain’t no doctor that can
Cure my disease
Bad, bad medicine”

Profound, and I think it really struck a chord with all the med students in the room, especially those at our table who later on were up circle-dancing and air-guitaring to numbers by the same artist. The dance floor soon filled up, and the completely random music selection and occasionally malfunctioning speakers really got the party going. And I’m actually not complaining; I was happily dancing under a crackling speaker for a good portion of the night.

The hotel staff started to usher us out at midnight, and so the crowd straggled across the street to the after-party. Our table was a little late, as we reconvened in the hotel room to discuss the night’s plans over another glass of champagne. And so by the time we ventured across the street, one of our classmates had already been arrested ... the story is a bit vague, but from what I gather he was refused entry and took a swing at the bouncer. To his credit, he usually gets kicked out hours before the party starts, and so midnight was a good effort. The party was thinning by the time we arrived, but we found a number of people who’d skipped the Ball itself and gone straight for the after-party. We enjoyed a couple of hours there, dancing, drinking, deciphering drunken gibberish and occasionally arm-wrestling.

All good parties must come to an end, and in the outer suburbs this happens relatively early. The bars closed at 2am, leaving us out in the cold with no place to go. We met up with our eloquent classmate Anonymous, who despite missing Med Ball and most of the after-party looked most resplendent in a three-piece suit. I think the policemen were quite disappointed that he did not end up breaking out in dance right there on the street – they had offered to sit back and watch while he did so.

And so ended the night, with Med Students huddling in the street before dispersing into the darkness. My sister, one of my classmates and I headed back to the hotel to fall asleep surrounded by champagne glasses and bobby pins, with a sparkling view of the city out the window. An excellent night.

1 comment:

Sinbad the Sailor said...

Im amazed by how much you can recall...