How to win friends and influence people

When arriving at (yet another) company event with Mills's colleagues, I try to introduce myself from the start. We meet so many expats, people who are just visiting, people who have just arrived or people who are back on business, that it's difficult to keep up with who's who. I start with my name and my relation to the person who actually works in the company. I find this has been a good way to avoid the awkward, "should I know you, do you work for XXX company?"

So at the recent BBQ on Saturday, I confidently marched up to the first group of people I didn't recognise, stuck out my hand and announced, "Hi, I'm Koekie. I'm Mills's boyfriend."

Step One: Introduce yourself as the wrong gender.

Having got over that little hurdle (I didn't speak to the particular group again, and I noticed, they didn't make my effort in my direction either), I stuck to talking with people I know. I was engrossed in one such conversation, and was aware of a screaming child having a temper tantrum somewhere in our vicinity. It was noisy and I was doing a good job of blocking the crying child out. What I didn't realise was that said-screaming child was having said-screaming fit directly behind us. I found this out when I took a small step back, and ACCIDENTLY trod on his precious blonde locks. Which were, in my defence, right behind my goddamn foot. Not surprisingly, child screamed harder. Where were his parent's through this? Oh, they were hovering over him and politely asking him to please calm down and stop making such a scene. That worked out well.

Step Two: Abuse children in full view of other guests.

Once the parents finally decided to remove screaming child from the middle of the social gathering, we could get back to adult conversation. In the throes of a no doubt highly entertaining and intellectual argument, I flailed my arms around to make my point. Unfortunately flailing hand connected with another guest's boob, who happened to be walking past at that stage. My hand landed, palm-open, on her left breast. At least a D-cup, I reckon. They were pretty hard to miss.

Step Three: Inappropriately grope other guests.

We left shortly after that. I don't know why, I had only embarrassed myself in front of a quarter of the crowd. I was just gaining momentum!