Well, 2009 arrives, and I am now seventeen in Korean age.

AHH.

I went to watch the London celebration in New Year's Eve - which means that I waited four hours to see a ten-minute fireworks display. It was overwhelming - truly the best celebration I've ever seen - but it was also kind of hard to stand still for four hours in a temperature of -1 degrees Celcius.

And the couple standing in front of us. They smoked about five packs of cigarettes, drank two bottles of wine, threw those bottles away on the street, and they were kissing and necking for four hours straight.

STUPID FUCKERS. I WAS SO ANGRY I ALMOST PUSHED THE GUY INTO THE FUCKING THAMES. THAT'D HAVE KNOCKED SOME FUCKING SENSE INTO HIS HEAD.

This is why I hate crowds. It's the first time I've ever seen London so unhinged. Everyone was throwing bottles around, hugging, kissing, smoking, pushing, and laughing. Laughing. It was the first time I seriously contemplated pushing those idiotic people into broken glass.

And the restaurants! I understand it was New Year's Eve. I understand that the biggest crowd ever was gathered in London and they all needed to be well fed. But seriously, could they get any ruder? My father and I waited forty minutes to be seated in the TGIF in Covent Garden. That was actually surprisingly quick - we were told that we'd be given a hour-and-half wait. But while we were waiting, I witnessed one of the most terrible customer services ever.

The phone rang, right? A blonde waitress answered it. The person on the other line seemed to be inquiring about reservations, as she started saying 'oh no, sorry, we're fully booked already-'.

But then, a dark-haired girl who was greeting the customers snatched the phone and slammed it back down without waiting for the blonde waitress to finish speaking to that person.

"I was in the middle of talking!" the blonde one says, aghast.

"I don't care! We're fully booked, what does it matter?" the dark-haired one answers while laughing her ass off.

Fucking bitch. If your restaurant is fully booked, you should actually be kinder to customers and at least have a short, polite conversation. Nobody's demanding anything better. I don't know what you think, but that customer's going to have to seek other alternatives in any other way possible. The very least you can do is to be polite. You could offer alternative restaurants (if you were being really understanding), but we understand not everyone can do that. But if you can't do anything about that situation, the very last thing you do is to slam the phone down while someone's talking. Especially if you're not even the one taking the call. I am disgusted that somebody qualified to deal with customers can treat them that way.

The person called again, by the way. This time the manager took it. But guess what, he didn't really care either. All of them were laughing. I had to resist the urge to stick a fork into their eyes. The other servers were rude, they rushed with our orders, and it was really unpleasant. We actually ate there before - this particular visit marks the third time that we've visited that TGIF. They managed to let us down the last two times due to poor service, yet we still were willing to give it a chance. But this time they went way too far.

We probably should have walked out. We couldn't, though, because we'd put our names down for the waiting list to be seated, and we had to be equipped with buzzers to alert us when our tables were available. But man, I really wish we had. It's the only thing related to eating in London that I've ever seriously regretted in my life. I'm never going to the Covent Garden TGIF again. They can rot in hell for all I care. The TGIF near the Prince Edward Theatre is so much better. And yes, I've been to both ones more than twice.

Some might say that I'm complaining way too much - after all, it was New Year's Eve, and waiters/waitresses are only human. They must be stressed. But that doesn't mean that they can hang up on a customer who genuinely wants to visit their restaurant and inquire politely about a reservation. It also doesn't mean that they can give us piss-poor service. I don't have anything against the entirety of the TGIF chain - it's just the Covent Garden one. Sure, we all have bad restaurant experiences due to a variety of reasons - and we usually shouldn't take it too much to heart - but damn, this went too far.

And so ends my first rant of the New Year. Joy.