January 23rd, Day 7

January 23rd, 5PM: Once again, I decided to take it easy in my room for most of the day, finally working up the courage to call Wai Zin and Chorng Shin to see what people were doing for dinner. This might not sound like anything special, but I hate calling people on the phone. But this is only true for the first time I call people. I suppose I'm terrified I'll call a wrong number or something like that, but I get extremely worried before I make that first call, and is also why I refuse to call places to ask questions and will always get one of my friends to call instead (Robert and Grady, you know what I'm talking about). So, I called CS and it rang and rang. Finally a Chinese woman answered the phone and started speaking in Chinese. I freaked out: my worst fears had been realized. So, I called Wai Zin who then called CS and told me that they were going to a Japanese Restaurant and invited me along. Now, on days 6, 7, and 8 most of the international students went on tours of HK that we signed up for. I had personally forgotten to sign up by the deadline but from what people told me, it wasn't worth the money. Anyways, it turns out when I called CS he was talking to his boss and so it went to voice mail, and that's why a Chinese woman answered. After learning that I felt like an idiot. So, we went to this Japanese restaurant buffet where you have two hours to order as much food as you can eat. Wai Zin was especially excited about the seafood and I tried various foods that CS ordered for me. It was actually pretty good and I enjoyed the meal. What I've left out until now is that at the start CS asked if he could order some Saké. I said that I didn't care so long as I didn't have to carry him back to UST (while in Hong Kong we drop the 'Hong Kong' from the name). So, we were eating our meal when the Saké arrived. So, CS poured each of us our very own glass. Glass isn't quite the right word, it was more like a small ceramic shot glass and he poured a small amount in each. Him and Wai Zin then grabbed their glasses and held them up for a toast. This is where it momentarily got awkward for me. As I'm sure you all know, I don't drink, nor had I ever had alcohol before that point. So I suddenly found myself in the awkward position where I did not particularly want the drink he had poured me, but they were sitting there waiting for me to grab my glass. I think I mumbled something about an excuse like "I'm fine" or excuse of equivalent patheticness. They didn't buy it and encouraged me to try it. Up until that point I knew that while I'm here in HK the drinking age is 18 and I had not yet decided if I wanted to try various alcoholic beverages while here or not. This moment forced me to make a decision and my thinking went something like this: "well this is awkward." After a very short yet intense burst of thinking I decided to try it. Call it peer pressure, call it acceptance of the inevitable, but I tried it. All I have to say is it was the single most intense experience of my life. Skydiving? Doesn't even come close. It burned my entire mouth and throat while making me almost convulse in my seat. All in all not the most pleasant experience of my life. For your viewing pleasure, on the next drink I asked CS to record it for posterity.


So, there you go. My first drink. Trust me when I say my first one was much more interesting to watch because my mouth was still partially numb from the first one. It was after my third drink when they were remarking how much I reacted to it that they realized that they had forgotten to tell me that you're supposed to sip it slowly, not drink it in one gulp, which explains my strong reaction to it. Also, I got red very quickly, which means my liver processes alcohol very fast. In total I only had about 1-2 cm^3, so it's not like I was drunk, but just had a taste of it. After that i can say I doubt I will ever be a drinker, because it tasted pretty bad...

So after that experience the three of us went to the arcade. I've never actually been to an arcade so it was quite fun. Many of the games are music games based on rythm and hitting drums or playing a guitar, similar to guitar Hero or Rock Band.

This is me playing a drum game, which CS and Wai Zin were quite surprised that I was good at. The arcade was fun, and I realized that I'm not that great at Time Crisis. On our way back to UST I made plans to go with them and a few others to China and Macau, with China being on Chinese New Year and Macau February 2nd, so I'm excited about both of those trips.

When we got back, we made plans to have tea later that evening and I went over to CS's place around midnight and myself, CS, and Wai Zin all had tea. Now, I am not a big tea person. This meant that the tea, being quite strong, was much too strong for my liking. We ended up sitting around talking until about 2AM and drinking tea. This was quite enjoyable and overall it was an interesting day.