Harry's have very generously provided a fantastic venue free of charge and will be giving us a percentage of their total takings from the night as a direct cash donation to our fundraiser - so please do come down and eat and drink as much as possible!
The evening will kick off with a quiz starting at 7.30pm. The tables (teams of six) are filling up fast so please do contact me through Google+ or on iclaisse@yahoo.com if you would like to book one. If you haven't booked a table for the quiz, you can of course eat and drink downstairs at Harry's before the doors open upstairs - but please let them know that you are there for the fundraiser so that they can give you a wristband and your bar spend will count! Mr Hooker will be acting as MC; if his last performance as quiz host is anything to go by, it should be pretty entertaining and involve impromptu singing while standing on chairs followed by an apocalyptic hangover for poor Mr H the morning after.
We will then have a charity auction starting at around 9.30pm. We have been given a variety of awesome auction items including a fantastic Specialized racing bike, hotel packages from Unlisted Collection and Lantern Sri Lanka, dinners in restaurants including Bistecca, Donna Carmela, Stellar, and The Line, yoga memberships at Sweatbox, bootcamp packages from ooberfit, vouchers from Simone Irani and Hannah Lee, massage packages at Footworks, booze provided by Urban Remedy, Drinks & Co, and of course Harry's, some beautiful interiors items from Singapore Trading Post, and hopefully a variety of other lots that I will put together over the course of the next week by shamelessly whoring myself and my extreme new haircut across the island. Please bring your chequebook and get as drunk as possible while still remaining able to (a) raise your hand; and (b) sign your name.
And finally... *drum roll*... the main event. Adam, Mariza and I will be losing our locks immediately after the auction, at around 10pm. I'm still trying to find someone to wield the clippers so if anyone knows a hairdresser with a sadistic streak and a portable barber's chair please let me know.
And after that I plan to drown my sorrows sufficiently comprehensively to make my reflection in the mirror the next day blurry - although I guess the tears will probably do that too (*plays sad tune on world's tiniest violin shamelessly to extract sympathy and cash from potential donors*).
So I hope it will be a fun evening and that we will raise a lot of money. And that brings me back to the serious side of this, which is why we are doing it all. Dave has now had his third and final round of chemotherapy before the surgery, which is currently scheduled for the end of January. The impact of the chemo drugs on his little body is just heartbreaking, as you can see. But the end of his treatment is in sight and I am so grateful to every one of you who has reached out, for helping us to make that treatment a possibility - and I look forward to the day when I can write a post on here attaching a photo of Dave looking like he looked twelve months ago when he was here in Singapore: healthy, happy, and living the active life that in an ideal world every child, wherever they are, should be able to expect as a birthright.
So thanks for your support, whether through the Generosity site or in person next Wednesday. I have been immensely touched by the kindness and humanity of people's responses to our campaign. In what has been a very dark and difficult time, a light has been shone on our lives by the generosity - both the financial generosity and the generosity of spirit - of friends and strangers alike.
Postscript: I am having some issues with my Generosity site. If you can't make the payment system work, please try Adam's site instead! And if you want to donate but would prefer to use a lower-tech method (or trying to make Generosity work is making you want to defenestrate your IT hardware), you can send a cheque made payable to Robert Driver marked for my attention at 9 Kreta Ayer Road, Singapore 088985.
Thank you!
