New Year Party at Amdocs

It was end of January and time for the annual Amdocs New year Party. Amdocs' parties have grown bigger over the past year and like the Diwali party, this too was held at Monte Caputo just outside Limassol. The decorations were amazing, including the balloon decorations on each table resembling the Indian tricolor, as the party was on January 26th. I was compeering the show, so didn't get much of an opportunity to roam around and take some photographs. So, all the photos i have are from the events which happened after the time i finished compeering.

Well, can there be a new year party in amdocs without a Belly Dance Show? Of course not. Like the last year and every year before, Belly Dancing Show was the highlight towards the end of the party. This year we had an extra dose of dancing, a cabaret show. A cabaret show in India would have entirely different connotations, but this show was great, easily the best show of the evening with the performers doing a variety of sequences with extensive costume changes. The Belly dancing is always the last event of the evening and is used as a trigger to get people on stage to dance, as it seems that the success or failure of an amdocs party is determined by the duration and fervor of the dancing by the employees!

As is the tradition, the first song of the evening was the famous Punjabi Number and as expected, many employees including the punjabis ran onto the stage with their hands high up in the air. But, their enthusiasm was short lived. After this Punjabi number, the English songs came out and slowly turned into slow Cypriot numbers. The punjabis were outraged at this, left the stage, went to a corner of the hall and started playing with balloons in protest.

Once the Cypriot numbers started and kept on flowing, all the non-cypriots came off stage. So, the Cypriots went on stage and sat down. Yes, they sat down. No, they were not protesting like the Punjabis. That is their way of dancing. Whenever a Greek song starts playing, Greek people immediately sit down in a circle and start clapping. Usually, the person who accidentally slips while sitting down and comes into the circle has to dance round and round. Whenever he finds a vacant space in the circle, he discreetly dances towards that spot and sites down and starts clapping. Much like the musical chair game we used to play when we were kids. This cycle loops on and on until the wine gets to the head or the music stops.

It was a good, lavish party. The food was good, compared to the fiasco in the Diwali Party. Maybe our caterer wanted to make amends for that, this time. February is just around the corner and the Cyprus Carnival is about to start and guess what, we have the Carnival party coming up. Life is beautiful!

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