Drunk on Friday night

And back in the room... I left the office at 6 this evening for a quick drink before dinner, and recovered consciousness standing in HMV in Causeway Bay, listening to Lady Gaga trying to be controversial - it's hard to figure out if I'm plastered, or not paying attention to the Pet Shop Boys, or if this is real life.

The lazy thing is that whenever Lady Gaga runs out of things to say, she bellows 'Gaga!' and goes to the next track. 2 Unlimited might have stopped one of their 'tunes' to shout "techno techno techno!" but they never had the gall to yell their own names, as if that were important. I suppose that's Belgians for you.

Anyway, the Lady Gaga album cut out at random so, still half cut, I began to wander the aisles of HMV. Had I expected Lady Gaga to sober me up? Golly, it's confusing.

There's lots of odd stuff in HMV on a Friday night. A DVD of Celtic Shite. I'm sure I saw that. A bossa nova remix of Love The Way You Lie on the store PA. A million and one Japanese pop tarts, only wearing their hair. Is it the same when you're sober? Should I have gone downstairs to Ikea to buy some cut price furniture?

I got distracted by an Xbox pinball simulator. I suppose playing on the Xbox doesn't count if you're shitfaced and listening to Rihanna. Then I fell down some stairs and ended up back in the Japanese DVD section. Like I may have implied earlier, I've drunk more than I needed to.

I have all sorts of vague images washing through my mind, like an amnesiac in a low budget movie. Wierd glimpses of people drinking absinthe in the Hard Rock Cafe in Lan Kwai Fong, or me eating pizza, or a giant metal weasel with no face.¹ And then back to the oddity of HMV again, a succession of strangely priced DVDs in a chequer board decorated room, when I should have either been having a lie-down somewhere quiet, or on an absolute raging tear in Wan Chai. Life is so complicated sometimes.

Today I also donated some books to a sale for charity at work, which left me a bit conflicted, as people kept asking me which books they'd enjoy. As I was donating books I wanted rid of, it was difficult for me to navigate the complex route between lying and failing to ensure enough money was raised for charity. I mean, I could tell people that Ian McEwan only wrote Amsterdam for a laugh, because he enjoyed the idea of people who read it being depressed, but then I doubt anyone in my office would pay for it. Which would mean we raised less money to buy tins of beans for poor people. Although I suppose we might also avoid breaking laws about reselling books, but then we are in Hong Kong, hardly a hotbed of intellectual property litigation.

Yet.

The more worrying thought is that people might buy some of the books I didn't like, and think I did like them. Which in turn would leave me looking like a tasteless idiot obsessed by Scandinavian murder-porn and badly written Scottish sci-fi. And that's not what I am. I may be an idiot, but I'm not completely tasteless. Honest.

And I say that while listening to the Prodigy's live album, which is basically any album by the Prodigy, with the addition of Keith From The Prodigy swearing at people in Milton Keynes, which is something only people born and raised in the UK can really appreciate.

Oh dear. I really am soused. I hope I can read this in the morning.

Oh god. I really am soused. I hope nobody can read this in the morning.
¹Sorry, that was a lie.