Because of my time here in Beijing, I can now say for sure that I'd rather be shot on a warm day.
Everything hurts more in the cold. Life is different. The cold will fucking eat you. You don't stand still outside, there's no 'we'll figure out where we're going once we go outside.' You come up with a plan and execute it.
Last night the plan was to have a quiet night. I'm still sick with bronchitis and we pushed it a little bit Thursday and we have a party to go to in a few minutes so Damien figured I could use a night off.
Obviously since I'm writing a blog, things didn't go according to plan.
We went out for some hot pot with Damien's friend, Michael, who I will be referring to as 'bastard' for the rest of this and maybe all future blogs. Not that he's a bad guy, but he's the reason for my current miserable pain so I kind of hate him. I've actually been plotting revenge all morning.
So we finish the meal and walk back to Damien's after picking up a couple bottles of wine. After the wine was done we decide to go kick around the Chinese hacky sack. These things are awesome by the way, they're like a badmitton shuttlecock/hacky sack, I'm going to bring back dozens.
Well hacky sack goes better with beer so we clean out the mini mart and get a good game going. Drinking in public and in cabs here is legal. So civilized.
The game and the beer finish up after an hour and somehow Bastard talks us into going to a 'chill bar for a couple minutes.'
Damn him.
The club's definitely not chill, we end up shutting it down then heading to a dive bar. Bastard starts talking to some local girls and I'm chilling and impressing them with my 'thank you'. Seriously I say it very well, everybody's impressed, they're always complementing me to Damien.
So the girl Bastard's talking to is somewhat psychotic. She seems normal enough but anytime Bastard gets too close she yells "DON'T TOUCH ME!!!!" and makes this twisted up face. And it wasn't like he was draped all over her, it was if he came anywhere close, he reached out to hand me a drink and she yelled.
Anyway, the reason Bastard is Bastard is because at 5am he orders a round of Tequila.
This is an awful idea.
Unfortunately at 5am in a divebar in Beijing the 'hey that's an awful idea' part of my brain has already passed out and the 'hey....what could go wrong?' section has taken over.
Well here's what can go wrong. Damien warned me about a lot of different counterfit products out here. It's kind of amazing the things they counterfit. Laundry detergent, bottled water, clothes, money, dvds and ALCOHOL.
Yup. Fake tequila. Apparently people die from that stuff. Thanks bastard.
I knew something was off when I took the shot. It tasted pretty much like tequila, but more...raw, more watery? Not like mescal, but like unfinished I guess. Definitely some bathtub brew.
So we wrapped things up around 6 and headed home. I was definitely feeling the effects but the exhaustion was worse and I passed out pretty quick.
This morning the pain began. It was off the charts. I've had some pretty awesome hangovers, this one is off the charts. This is megastorm, species extinction bad. There was of course the mass stomach evacuation, the shakes, and the headache that feels like my brain is trying to escape from an ever shrinking skull. The phrase 'NEVER DRINKING AGAIN' was definitely floated around.
I mean, just 'wow.' Seriously. When Damien woke up I was kneeling on the floor with my head buried in the couch. It was the only position that made sense.
At this point I'd let Trent stick me with an IV, oh man that's a good story if you haven't heard it ask Feroz.
So what's an alcohol poisoned foreigner with bronchitis do? Yup. Rock climbing.
We found this little hole in the wall climbing gym out here. Just bouldering, which is what I prefer anyway, no really set routes, but some good inclines and a vicious overhang. Getting my blood pumping was nice, though I was weak as hell and had to take frequent breaks because of the headache. But hey, climbings like the simpsons, even a bad epsiodes better than no episode.
So that's about that. It's time to shower and do the same damn thing tonight.
Beijing's been great. Haven't seen much but I'm really getting into the rythm of life out here which is much more interesting to me than seeing tourist sites. That said, of course I'll see a lot of those things as well. Just haven't felt the need yet.
Took a few pics, I'll post them at some point. And I'll share more of the life out here in the next couple of days. Just needed to vent my pain.
Also, I'm taking suggestions on how to extract revenge on Bastard.
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