Day 21 – 28: May 13th to May 20th - Drinking

This week had a very different feel to it, since the girls were at work. I never actually went to the electronics market, but did a lot of other things I didn't expect. Mainly, I didn't make it to the electronics market because for 4 of the days, one or the other was on their weekend, so I had company. Since neither of them are geeks, I didn't want to subject them to that. The other days on my own have consisted largely of sleeping in until about anywhere from 10 to noon, then either doing chores and random cleaning around the apartment, or just relaxing. A game called Civilization, revealed to me by Paul and Rob (my housemates) has been a bane to my Chinese experience. I hated it when I started, but it kept calling me back, and has become something I don't want to do, but can't stop playing.

What I have actually accomplished this week has still been noticeable, and quite entertaining for me. Jessica had Monday and Tuesday off. Monday night was nuts. We went to a bar (Soho), which turned out to be pretty good. The music was loud, they had dancing girls with little tops on, and my favourite part: the alcohol. Instead of paying for one drink at a time, we bought a 40 of Absolut Vodka, which was great, because we didn't have to do anything. They reserved a table for us, and we had a personal waiter make drinks, and bring out food (fruit plates and nuts). I definitely went on a power trip, because they treated us way too well. The dancers came over after their shift, and talked to us (Chris got one of their numbers), and people would watch in awe when we danced on stage. The dancers even brought us up on their individual platforms to dance with them.

Unfortunately, the ego booster ended sharply soon enough. We had finished the bottle, and we were all feeling fine, so Chris and I went in the back (literally, we walked into the staff room) and Li Bin Hui (our waiter) tried to sell us another bottle. Well, I was the only one who still wanted to drink, everyone else was satiated, so I just wanted a few glasses of rye and coke. In his sales pitch, Li Bin Hui let it slip that bottles of Absolut cost 150, so my trying to haggle for a more expensive rye didn't make sense (I was trying to get a price around 150). So instead of buying the rye, we bought the Absolut at close to at cost, with some free cans of coke to boot. Chris had paid over 250 for the first bottle of Absolut, and he had talked them down from 400, thinking he got a good deal! So we were ecstatic when we got this bottle for 170 with coke to boot. That was easily part of my downfall.

In the end, I got ridiculously drunk because I was drinking too much, too fast, and due to the power trip I was on, I wouldn't stop drinking. I kept giving cheers to people, especially our waiter, and had more than my fair share. I ended up losing my balance sitting down on a chair, and stumbling backwards into a table and chairs, cutting my head in two places (the back, where I smacked it, and some mysterious cut appeared at the front somehow in the fall as well). Here's the best part of just how eager they were to stroke our egos. Rather than kick me out for being drunk, as they would in Canada, the bouncer picked me up, and helped me sit down so I could drink more. Suffice to say, the night did not end well.

The morning came, and no hangover, surprisingly enough, but I couldn't stomach food until the evening. Jessica went out to settle her tutor job with the Korean lady Sabrina had been pushing on her all week, and I sat at home and finished 1984 (good book!). By night fall, I was finally able to stomach a meal, and Tuesday went out quietly into the night.