Netbasic Ltd.

This blog post arrives pretty late (I’ve been really busy doing reporting for the guys upstairs), but here is an account of what happened when a few Netbasic folks and their partners went to The Dorchester in London to attend The Shooting Star charity ball 2008. Luke had won tickets for this prestigious event in a charity auction at Hannah’s Charity Ball, just the weekend before. Unfortunately, he had double booked himself, so he couldn’t make it. Nevertheless, Sii, Jon, Hannah, Chris Q, Colin, Sarah and myself, along with a few partners, were whisked off from my house in a rather battered minibus. We arrived at the Dorchester just in time after a seemingly unending amount of traffic in our battered minibus. There was a champagne reception, with a small war over some crisps, and a short while later, we began the meal.

As a warm-up before the seafood starter, a variation of the Higher/Lower game was played, with Jon making it into the final few onstage. He made it to the semi-finals, but unfortunately he didn’t know the exchange rate for the Zimbabwean dollar well enough. A nice fishy meal, an uplifting performance from the ACM Gospel Choir, and rich dessert with a star-shaped chocolate morsel followed, accompanied by a number of glasses of wine. There was then an extremely moving video about a girl called Courtney (pictured above), who battled with cancer for some time and unfortunately passed away at the tender age of 7. After this, there was the charity auction that included a signed guitar by Sting, signed Harry Potter DVD & Book, and loads more - all in a good cause! The silent auction was presented by flamboyant interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, which was followed by the Tony Hadley band. During this, I decided to get us some cigars, but the only cigars the hotel had were nice expensive £10… so we had four of them. Unfortunately this got me into trouble as I told Hannah they were £1… oops…