Friday Night in the Big City

So E wrote, and said I was complaining too much on the blog, which is valid.  With all the hardware delays I’ve been having, only the crazy stuff gets in the blog.  I have one thing stil to overcome, that’s that sometimes wordpress just doesn’t open from my house.  I’m using a crazy internet secret backdoor to get in now, to write this post, but it’s slow. 

I made a video the other night, but it’s kind of a bore (more complaining), and wordpress is acting weird about posting videos now, so if you want to watch it, you’ll have to go here. 

So last night after work I stopped for a bowl of shuijiao, and then I met the whole crew for some beers.  We had a revealing conversation about someone named ‘hotballs’ and the cultural distribution of tongue-kissing.  Later, we walked to a Thai restaurant.  There were seven of us, so the waiter lead us to a big table with a lazy susan.  The table was too big.  So we moved to a smaller table, no lazy susan (in Chinese:  “plate wheel”, or “turn plates”).  Somebody decided to go get the lazy susan off the big table and put it on the small table, much to the chagrin of the staff.  Of course, lazy susan was as big as the table, so we put it back. 

C did the ordering this time, thank God.  I am a little appauled that my new friends have been in China so long, and still resist the concept of a food dictator, the one person at the table who orders for everyone.  That’s why they only give us one menu, folks!  Anyway, C ordered, and he knew what he was doing. 

There was some shock when everyone found out I was 35.

What else happened?  It took us a while to get a taxi, but we finally found a good corner, and sped off to the Velvet Lounge for L’s birthday party.  We were 45 minutes “late,” but since it was a latino party, we were still way early.  The dj there was doing a really tasty beat mix, but I think the latinos were disappointed there wasn’t much latin music.  The birthday girl looked radiant, as always; actually, all the latinos looked glamorous.  Us non-latino work friends showed up in the same clothes we had worn to work, me in a shabby gray sweatshirt.  Nobody seemed to mind. 

I snuck out of the party early (around 1 am) and cabbed it home. 

The cabbie and I chatted the whole way, and for some reason, I could totally speak Chinese.  Maybe it was the several beers, two glasses of wine, shot of tequila, and a whisky sour that did it…  You know, besides the cheap cabs, I paid for nothing last night, including fancy Thai dinner. 

Today is bright and cold.  I slept in until past 10.  The cleaning lady will come this afternoon.  I’m thinking of going to the English language bookstore and picking up Children of Men, which is the faculty book club book of the month back in Seattle.