These Macedonian peeps at least. Find a bottle buried in the ground. Is it alcohol?
Yes…
Lets drink it…
Nectar of the Gods!
Beer at 7 in the morning…not a good idea
Sigh…am I disappointed? Yes of course, but will I advocate burning anyone’s house down? Well yes, Ranjit Fernando’s. Actually I’m not serious about that but I’m going to climb on the bandwagon of getting rid of the bugger ASAP. For one thing he thinks that there are 11 billion people on the planet and they all expect Sanath to have won the match for us, I think he should really check his source for that statistic.
There was one player and only one player that kept the teams apart, Gilchrist (and not Ponting as mentioned previously, thanks Sittingnut for the spot, my brain was completely fried at that moment) and what an innings he played. He won the match in the space of three balls and those three balls were right after Dilhara grassed what would have been a phenomenal return catch. Gilchrist won the mental tussle with Dilhara by attacking him for two fours and a six instead of playing safe to his near miss. I don’t think our bowlers really ever recovered from that pivotal moment. It really is those small moments in a game that make or break the result. Australia played power cricket to the ultimate and they were truly worthy champions, toss and condition advantages notwithstanding.
In the end our boys have nothing to be ashamed about, led by a young captain with what is in reality a polarized team in terms of age and experience, Sri Lanka played an honourable game. They captured the hearts and imaginations of fans everywhere and they were simply magic. I see great things for this team in the future if we can replace Vaas and Sanath. Murali in my opinion isn’t as key to the success of our one day team as he is to our test team but the other two will be hard shoes to fill. More maturity, more experience and a strengthening of nerves and Sri Lanka will be a force to be reckoned with in the next decade. I can only salute what Mahela and the boys did, I just wish Murali, Vaas and Sanath had better swansongs, but then they already have been part of a Cup-winning squad.
Watching the match was a tiring experience. For one thing getting up at 6am on a Saturday was probably one of my least favourite things to do. And beers at same said time are never a good idea either. That said the company was good, N and some other chaps one of whom turned out to be related to me (seems to happen to me everywhere I go) and a girl to flirt, which made the experience fun (oh yeah I still have no mojo). A couple of byte Aussies at the pub also helped though in the end they were good sports (unlike a few others present). I also happened to get talking to a couple of Englishmen, one of whom looked oddly familiar. It was on the drive back that it struck me why…I had inadvertently had a chat with a B-List star those of us who grew up in Sri Lanka in the 90’s will remember all too well, Clive Robertson. Remember him? Sunset Beach? He was a Sri Lankan fan…but oh so random. The food left a bit to be desired at the Springbok bar, the sausages for breakfast and lunch looked like something that a rhino turded out but on the plus side it was cheap. My whole bill with a fair amount of booze and two meals came to around $30.00, which isn’t too shabby at all.
Of course what really left a bitter taste and killed all my interest in the cricket was the text from R about “attacks in Colombo.” Nothing really surprises me with the Tigers anymore but this was the moral equivalent of the Tet offensive. N left and the only reason I really hung around was because F pointed out I wouldn’t achieve anything by leaving and I thought I might try (unsuccesfuly) flirt a bit more and help my headache along with a few more beers. The dearth of information was scary as well and the fact my new phone (since the Schizo Shitzu ingested my old one) didn’t have any numbers on it made getting in touch with home tough, but thankfully I remembered Bounty’s number off the top of my head and managed to ascertain his and the family’s well-being.
All in all a disconcerting, depressing day. This World Cup has left a lot to be desired, lets hope the next one in the subcontinent will be a better one!
On almost getting flattened and definitely getting drunk
You would think almost getting run over twice on two consecutive mornings would not be conducive to a good mood, but rather surprisingly I find it is. Perhaps it’s the thrill of cheating death in the mornings when I can usually barely get my jeans on without falling down a couple of times and generally pour juice into my cereal instead of milk. I am hoping though that this trend of missing the front end of fenders by inches will not continue, after all luck has to run out sometime.
On the bright side of life I discovered two new bands on my iPod, something that happens with pleasing regularity. I have close to 9,000 songs on there, downloaded from a spectrum of people from British hipsters, Sri Lankan yuppies and San Franciscan liberals. Every now and then it throws out a couple of random gems and today two outstanding songs popped up, Summertime by the Sundays and Turn by Feeder, two British ‘indie’ (if that term really applies anymore in the real world) rock groups. I would recommend both groups for some chilled out, sometimes upbeat sometimes shoe-gazer tunes.
This week has also been one of the most sozzled weeks since I left college and I’m sure I’ve burnt up what few brain cells I had left. PKS left on Sunday (sadly I don’t have anybody to laugh at with regularity anymore) back to NZ and R has either been trying to celebrate his new found freedom or drown his sorrows (probably the latter) and dragged me along with him. It’s been a steady stream of rum and cokes and vodka/redbulls since Tuesday. One of the more notable nights was Friday at Voda, a brilliant place where there’s no cover charge, drinks are around $5 each and on top of that it looks a bit like Glo. Five shots of vodka, a couple of them free meant that even though I managed to get a number I for the life of me cannot remember who the girl was. All I can recall is that she was Asian and from Fullerton which in retrospect does me no good as that’s around 500 miles south of here. I do quite like Voda though, especially as a start out point to the night.
I’m currently thanking whoever pulls the cosmic strings for making tomorrow a holiday during which I plan to resolutely steer clear of anything with an alcohol content, try and sweat some toxins out in the gym, lose at poker and watch Himalaya, i.e. be somewhat productive. I also intend to spend a good portion of the day putting my thinking cap on and come up with ideas to make a quick $4,000 (preferably something that doesn’t require me to give up a body part) so R and I can hit up SL in December for a couple of weeks, just to try and maintain some sanity. Why did I leave corporate America and a fat paycheck again?
Alcohol 5:33 am
One JD coke, four vodka redbulls down, many more to go, some good company, this club and hopefully some skanky badu around, I think I’m going to celebrate my entry into the workforce after 6 months of dicking about (if thats worth celebrating). Hangover, here I come!
For those of you who don’t know, Pure is one of the ‘premier’ clubs in Vegas, located in Caesar’s Palace. Spent the weekend in Vegas and went to Pure on Friday night. Notwithstanding the nine Ketel/Red Bulls I downed before hitting the club I was still knackered after driving for five hours in heavy traffic so all I did the entire night was stand by the bar. I was pretty impressed by the club, despite the fact its part owned by that horrendous extra from MIB, Celine Dion, but as usual for Vegas clubs it was just too damn crowded; going to the bathroom involved my personal space being violated by a number of different sizes and shapes of humanity and not in a good way.
Anyways as I said, I was so tired all I could do the whole night was stand by the bar, nurse a Long Island Iced tea and ogle this waitress, well all the waitresses in the club. There was this particular one though that really caught my eye, around 5’8”, brunette, big eyes (no really big eyes, I’m a big fan of big soulful eyes) and um..another pair of big eyes (OK so this time I mean her boobs), short black dress and some interesting dance moves. The only problem with the scenario was that the bouncers seemed to have a very ‘friendly’ relationship with all the waitresses at the club and I really hadn’t drunk enough to consider tangling with a six foot tall bouncer built like a banyan tree, especially considering I’m a short, brown guy who hasn’t been to the gym in oh about a month. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and headed home cursing my choice of career, the girls in the environmental field tend to be bucktoothed and have frizzy hair and hang out at animal shelters.
If Friday night was a bit of an anticlimax, Saturday was absolutely fucking horrendous. I followed my sister and a friend of hers to OPM, again in Caesar’s Palace, touted as the “#1 hip hop club in the world”, exactly the kind of claim that gets mind-numbingly common in the US. Note to self: always, always check the website of a club before going there to make sure what the crowd is like. In this case, everybody apart from me and a friend was black. Now my taste in girls tends to lean towards the slim, petite body type, so it was no surprise that I found all the girls at the club umm…lets just say unattractive. I couldn’t even bloody drink because I was trying to Vegas on $200 due to my current unemployed and broke status. All I can say is that I absolutely hate black clubs, the guys are usually around a foot taller than me and fairly menacing while the women have arses that would probably require a couple of satellite passovers to cover all that surface area. Not my idea of eye candy.
It was this weekend that also brought home to me the fact that I think I’m done partying, I actually found Vegas lame and boring and I doubt that had anything to do my budget. The lack of money was a real eye-opener though, I remember the good ol’ days of partying in Vegas when I was a mortgage consultant selling my soul to corporate America. Our minimum budget for a weekend was around $3000 to include rooms, clubs, alcohol, strip clubs and gambling. Ahh….those were the days! I can still remember one afternoon when it was around 40 ○C outside, sitting in air conditioned strip club with a double rum and coke, basketball on the big screen and a smokin’ hot Brazilian on my lap. The nights were wild, the early mornings were wilder, rolling into the casino at 4am pissed out of our minds trying to play Blackjack, sleeping for a few hours and then waking up to repeat the performance. I’m actually surprised none of ended up in jail or dead.
I guess everyone has to go through a crazy phase in life (though I seem to have gone through a few) but I definitely think I’m done now with that lifestyle. For one thing I’ve decided to stop selling my soul to corporate America and follow my heart in the environmental field. I’m actually considering jobs in the non-profit sector that pay less than half I made in my previous job. With that has come a realization that the endless partying, drinking, occasional drug sessions and womanizing has to wind down for me and my friends, I guess this last season in Sri Lanka was our collective last hurrah and now it is officially time to grow up (well at least be a bit more responsible). It was fun while it lasted but I really need to grow back some brain cells, if just for me retain the ability to tie my shoelaces in the morning.
I’ve still got that bloody awful song in my head from too many times at Clancy’s, you know the one, that god awful piece of shite from Global Deejays that masquerades as techno in Sri Lanka. Well actually going to San Francisco aint so much of a cakewalk, considering the last time I went up, I only made it 80% of the way before my car took a flying leap off the freeway into a field (see ode to my RSX).
Well last night I exorcised my ghosts and drove up to Frisco. This time I had my sister as company, still only drove 80% of the way again, don’t worry I didn’t try any aerobatics off the freeway, my sis just drove the rest of the way. Got into the city in positively monsoonal rain, spent almost an hour getting over the Bay Bridge and got dropped off at my best mate’s house. Getting out of the car I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief, no fiery crash, no EMT’s, no cops , just a bottle of reserve and some catching up to look forward to. Well three quarters of a bottle, a summary of the last two months of drama and some hilarious texts to various countries later went to sleep very contented.
Tonight should be more reserve, redbull vodka, Zebra Lounge and um hopefully some skanky San Fanciscan girls! Hopefully take my mind off my current state of being in debt, unemployed and hung up over a certain girl in Sri Lanka. Just not looking forward to that post hangover 6 hour drive back to LA! Note to self: STAY AWAKE!!
