TMI Thursday #5

TMI Thursday is here again, I know how you love it and I do so aim to please.
Read on my friends, read on...

As I sit here nursing a tequila headache, trying to run my fingers through my sex tangled hair I am reminded of a particularly fun evening Big Daddy D and I had in China.

Our tenure as adjunct professors was coming to an end at Northeast China Institute of Electric Power Engineering (OK, we were glorified ESL teachers-but hey-I was "teaching" post grad students at least!)(and that lovely tile facade you see there cost $1,000,000 US and they did zero improvements inside, as far as I know the paint is still peeling and flaking in the class rooms, the desks are 10 yrs older and still no heat or flush facilities)and after nearly a year in this lovely city just a few hours south of Siberia and fewer hours north of North Korea we had become quite the professionals when it came to putting our drink on.

Usually we stuck to liters of beer. Many many liters of beer. After all, you can't drink the water-and a 12oz can of soda cost 2-3x what a liter of the local pijiu did.

This freezing night we decided to go the Jilin Crystal Hotel for as close to a western meal as was possible to get and to hang out in the cushy bar far away from the hordes of non-English speaking people who never stopped staring at us.

As we sat there talking and laughing, looking forward to getting the hell out of Dodge we had a few drinks.

More than a few drinks.

A whole lot of drinks.

Mostly whiskey consumed by me.

Doubles.

Mostly gin consumed by Big Daddy D.

Doubles.

Drink for drink I kept up with the guy-and though he was close to 2 of me in those days(I was a wee bit smaller) I was holding my own.

We ended up with a whopping 400-500 yuan bar tab and were laughing like hyenas to have gotten so drunk on about 50 bucks as we stumbled our way out into the -40 degrees Fahrenheit night.

Catching a cab home was no problem as we were quite "famours" and little red taxis followed us around like flocks of ducklings in the hopes of being the one to drive the crazy lau wai back to the university.

We never really even had to tell them where we wanted to go though we always had fun trying.

The streets of Jilin City at this time of year were covered by at least a couple of feet packed snow and ice that was only occasionally littered sparingly with some kind of grit or gravel for traction.

Bumper cars for reals ya'll.

Usually it was a bit scary but when you are that wasted everything is pretty damn funny.

Even when you have to ask the cabbie-through pantomime-to pull over cause you gotta hurl and the car is slipping and sliding to a halt, it is funny as hell.

You have not seen anything til you have seen vomit steaming and melting its way through 2 ft of packed snow.

The cabbie and Big Daddy were chuckling it up like old pals and cracking jokes about women who can't hold their liquor.

Which is good cause I had to puke several more times before we hit campus.

The sight never got old.

Even the guy in the guard shack was laughing at me since he had the pleasure of catching the final installment of my performance art.

I was so very drunk I was feeling no pain and having a pretty good time in spite of my spewing and laughing at myself to boot.

We stumbled along, holding each other up on the way back to our lovely apartment where I brushed my teeth and we proceeded on to that most pleasant of past times-trying to break the bed.

The best part of this whole episode is that I woke up just drunk enough to still be feeling good the following morning-a feeling which lasted til lunch and the first of that days many beers.

Big Daddy D was not so fortunate.

In the end the joke was on him.

And I did laugh.

Loud.

Times have changed though and I need to get an aspirin.