Simply the Best

Fundraising for the PNC party last weekend included a glittering event at the RH Dynasty Restaurant at Vision City.

 Having been instructed to arrive promptly at 5.30, people clattered in on high heels and all manner of interpretations for black tie  (a remarkable feat in itself in a country with more secondhand than new clothes stores) while shoppers still lingered in the mall, and minions finished staplegunned bunting to the restaurant walls. An Australian duet with what must be the worst PR (billed on our programmes as having 'competent' voices) took the stage to provide the Simon and Garfunkle sounds familiar to hotel foyers everywhere, and lots of assistants in cheery yellow t shirts lined the peripheries, as major PNG players who wish to retain their status or acquire new construction and IT contracts slowly filled the 500 seats.

 
 Lovely Asian women with very high heels, very short skirts and very much makeup worked the room, as real PNG women with meri blouses and bilums were hugged and settled into their chairs. Even better was everything in between: if I live to see the day when a black tie event in PNG looks like one elsewhere in the world, then I will surely throw in my silly hat.

 

Wonderful Southern Highlands men in classic cornrolled scalps, others in Pacific formal shirts and sulus, and some in tight sports jackets and winched trousers from the back of their closets--and, not to be forgotten, at least one excellent example of what one PNG dignitary and myself coined as the territorial PNG 'bogan afrikaans' look---complete with mullet and bow tie and riding boots. 

 
 
 

Our new PM arrived in posse through the centre of the crowd (and for reasons of height could best be experienced as a ripple through the crowd) to the high volume strains of Tina Turner's Simply the Best!  Once he reached his front table, the song was immediately tuned down to silence.  But those who could not see him at the front table could find his doppelganger brother sitting elsewhere int he room.

 
 

But it was the first course that proved the most interesting choice (for RH or the organizers?). Just as the Marshall islands have launched their multi-kilometre shark sanctuary to prevent the kind of curel fin poaching that serves Asian palettes---we were presented with Shark Fin and Crabmeat Soup. Go figger.

 

Somehow the food all looked artifically coloured and glossy, arriving in strange sequence to the lazy susan just small enough on the table that everyone had to reach to fill their plates and spill red wine over good linen and dress shirts. And that was before everyone got sloppy. But the meal had been blessed by a Minister at the podium (no doubt to the dismay of our Islmaic and Buddhist guests), which might explain the otherworldly hunger we still had when everything was done and dusted.

 

 Our distinguished Deputy PM stood to present his PM, wearing a fresh military skullcap haircut, just as the first of two total blackouts swept the room. Thanks PNG Power. And as a surge returned us to the light Minister Namah joked about his otherworldly powers. The centrepiece of the presentations, however, had to be a short film called The Rise of Peter O'Neill, which was projected on the stage and then behind several tables in great flatscreen TVs, which occasionally made it look like the old Pangia shots of our teenaged PM had him sitting beside lovely Chinese couples keen to get aboard the adult O'Neill's gravy train.

 

 
 

 

Great shots of the PM's father, an Australian kiap in the Southern highlands, who was apparently a no-nonsense disciplinarian, according to Minister Fairweather who was interviewed in closeup (another freaky effect behind some tables) recounting a tale of being arrested by Kiap O'Neill when he was a young rogue and had driven a vehicle too fast along the highlands highway or something---only to be scolded in court, thrown in jail and given a K800 fine, as Fairweather said ("Which was a princely sum in those days"). It still is, of course, for everyone but those lucky enough to have paid the equivalent of a civil servant's severance package for a seat that night.

 

But the most fun was had by all at the Twivey Lawyers' table,  
where a succession of important men and women sauntered past to pay homage to (and burnish their own image with) this champion of  grassroots jurisprudence for PNG.

 
 
 
 

All in the interest of Change. Those we did not see at the event were, of course, Gabriel Kapris and Ben Semri and the Hole in the Budget Gang, who must have been stewing at Big Rooster as they planned their return to the gilded four-course inner circle. 

 

How far they had fallen... It was no surprise to some, then, that they raced to cross the floor only two days later-- to be received with open arms, even as the embrace soils the clean new reputations of  Sir Mek, Peter OM, B Namah crowd.

What's old is new again.

Comments

[KK]

This is golden.

[Monpi]

Obviously, quite a few people missed the memo on what constitutes "black tie". :)
PNG oh!

[Tavurvur]

Nancy - I enjoyed this post : ).