The Benefit To Our Benefit

Rory Dwyer is a friend and a regular at R&R tavern. He got into an accident early one morning a few weeks back and ended up in a coma with severe head trauma. His time in Vietnam, at least for now, is over. With his medical bills piling up and an emergency medical evacuation from Vietnam looming, some of his friends decided to have a benefit to raise money for Rory and his family who flew over from Ireland to collect him.
My band, Your Other Favorite Uncle, offered to play some music at the benefit. I was looking forward to practicing the set we are going to play on Saturday at the International Hanoi Music Festival, (click on the title of this blog for more info)
However, to my complete surprise, on the evening of the benefit we found out that our drummer,Mel, had been called away to Saigon at the last moment. We played our set without a drummer until when for the last two songs, Thuy, the drummer for Maysons Children, (R&R house band) stepped in and played with us. It was a little rough as far as que's and whatnot as he didn't know our songs, but he kept a solid enough beat for us to rock out a little at the end. All in all it wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be, playing a set with no drummer. At least on Saturday we will be a full band for the large outdoor event that is pulling bands from Australia, the UK, Japan and Ukraine.
There was a raffle at the end of the evening where there were many good prizes raffled off. Karen and I sat as every prize came up and went to someone else. We watched as Zippo's, art, Leg of lamb, bottles of scotch and many more prizes were given away...to other people. It was time for the big draw for the trip for two to Bangkok, Thailand and a two night stay at the Westin. We held our breath as Tim, the MC, wasted time and fumbled about drawing out the anticipation of the crowd. Then suddenly he called the number 137....Ed. I was stunned. I actually won something from a raffle, and not just anything, but the grand prize. Needless to say, Karen and I were overjoyed. We received many "Congratulations ya lucky bastard."'s and other such nods. The only thing left is for us to pick the weekend we want to go.
As for Rory, the evening was also a success, with proceeds hitting almost thirty million by the end of the night. Good on ya, Hanoi expat community. Well done.
Talk to you soon,
Ed