Smirnoff SENSATION 2011

Have always seen people walk past my apartment in Melbourne to get to the stadium for Sensation, the all-white dance party every New Year's Eve but never had the chance to attend it....always felt too old for it :)

(our friends and friends of friends)

Well, this year UK is hosting its FIRST Sensation party in the O2 arena, and a friend magically got some corporate box tickets from her work which she invited us to. So here we are, at an age that is too old to do an all-nighter, attending our VERY FIRST techno dance party....in a corporate box!! (A class away from the wild, young crowd...ahem!! :)  )

The Morgan Stanley corporate box (or suite they call it) is awesome! It is on the 2nd/3rd floor, and has like a living room and a bar inside, with seats at the balcony to see the stage.

 The view from the top is great - we literally see a sea of white. (The dress code, is all white! Both top and bottom - anyone not abiding to the dress code is not allowed in.

The stage / interior design was very well set up inside, with the theme of Under the Sea, hence a few giant jellyfishes deco filled the place. There were a few interesting shows with fireworks and laser lights, but most of the night is just people dancing to techno music... I can never understand techno music - its like a song with just a bar of tune, which gets repeated over and over and over and over again....how can that be in any way enjoyable???

There's one part I really like where they released 7 or 8 very large light floating balls on the dance floor (its suppose to represent pearls of the sea, I think) ...and the balls just gets bounced from groups of people to groups of people...above their heads. There is this one time that a ball got bounced to the corporate boxes and our neighbours are "rolling" it in the air.....i ALMOST, ALMOST get to touch it....if only my fingers are 1 cm longer,,.!!

The night went on well (and we got to know a few more people in London), except for after we left the event (at around 3.30am), when we could not get any taxi to send us back home!! We thought it was poor orgnization that the arena people did not help ensure revellers got home safely.....but apparently due to one of the tunnels being closed taxis couldn't get back to O2 quickly!

Other options were not possible as
- The O2 arena is sort of surrounded by water......so although near canary wharf we could not walk!!
- The tube network only started at 7.45am on Sundays which is a good 4 hours away.....

In the end, after much waiting in the taxi line for like nearly 2 hours, we decided to try our luck and take a public bus and do some heavy walking..(in my new shoes that hurts!!).  We caught a bus at around 5.10am and walked to canary wharf and took a short taxi ride home!! (getting back at 5.50am)

Well, that's a story to tell!