Booze, Trying

It's been a rather trying day. This morning I went for a run (5 miles of hard interval work) and then, at home, sat around stark naked, running procedures on a computer. It's an unexpected luxury in Singapore, that despite the generally Victorian attitudes, the tropical weather means that working without clothes is rather practical.

Cats and spirits

This evening we went to the bar over the road from the office, and I drank an awful lot of strong liquor. Most of it was gin, in different and ever-more-complex combinations, diluted only by beer and deep-fried balls of cheese. This is Monday, and it's ending one second at a time.

Marriage

Tonight we had the third wedding of 2012, on the third continent. This was also the coldest place we've been for a wedding this year, down by the Firth of Forth in Queensferry. Still, the abundant rain that had fallen on us as we took the coach there from Edinburgh abated by the time of the service, leaving us with a beautiful clear view of the sea and the bridge.

Drinking again

Another week comes to a close, and I scurried across the road from my office, to quaff gin and tonics and eat balls of fried cheese. It's fine, I'm taking pills to dissolve the fat, I can eat what I like. And it's not like four strong drinks and a glass of ale will do me any harm, is it?

There comes a point in life when your ability to handle the booze isn't the limiting factor; rather, it's your desire to have a bit more sleep. I was knackered this morning and I still got up at 6 to go for my run; I expect I'll be more knackered tomorrow, even though I had a Breakfast Beer today (no bacon included, alas) and a glass of red wine. And all the other drinks, too. But still, the training schedule is inviolate. I wonder if it was designed for drunks and office drones like myself.

The other problem with all this drinking is that you get home and then put on a 150 minute epic Chinese cowboy movie, and that deprives you of even more sleep. Dammit, I'm sure Mo Farrah doesn't have to put up with a pint of gin and Chow Yun Fat.

Gin and things

I left the office early today, so I could get to the bar across the street and drink some gin. I got up at stupid o'clock this morning (5:45) so I could get my run in and still get to work on time, so the day was already long.

It was elongated further by being filled with phone calls, which ground on until the middle of the afternoon, and each started at least ten minutes late, for maximum frustration. After Telephone Torture, I had to build a new database to solve a very old problem, and even with three screens my eyes were going bendy, so leaving to be filled up with gin was more a tactical withdrawal than a retreat.

Carry on karaoke

Tonight we went to Family Karaoke Box in the Cuppage Plaza. That sounds like a filthy, rotten thing to do, but strangely the Family Karaoke Box in the Cuppage Plaza is one of the least filthy things in that area; or at least it's not a cloud of scantily dressed prostitutes looking for trade.

Toast

I love toast. After the night's hard drinking (like a fool, I started at six and only realised at 10:30 that this wasn't smart preparation for the race at the weekend) we walked back to the flat, ravenous.

A weekend, a bit wasted

Although I went to bed early last night, I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned for a few hours, then went into the spare room to read. After about ten minutes, a gust of wind made the door slam shut, and after that I had a sudden terror that there was an intruder in our flat. The wind would blow something across the floor and I would be convinced that our knife-wielding assailant was getting ready to slash us open. My wife slumbered contentedly through, while I was woken after a few dismal hours of sleep by my alarm, which I rejected, until a few hours after that the Chinese music recital began.

Ambushed

We moved out of our old office today. That meant we decamped early to a bar down the street to celebrate. And that meant that by 6 I'd sunk two gin and tonics, where gin was the operative word and tonic was some sort of garnish that may have been waved in the general direction of my glass at some time this year.

A foreign country is a foreign country

I woke from strange dreams about hiding in a garden shed to find myself alone in a windowless hotel room in Bangkok. For such a place, it was remarkably well decorated; not a concrete oubliette, but a palatial king-size lair for a business traveller who enjoyed paying for wifi access and continental breakfasts.

Drunk again

Today I was so utterly stressed and enraged that I had to spend five minutes with my head in my hands, lest I picked up my laptop and hoied it out the window. Thus it seemed a good idea to go out and have dinner, rather than rage around the office all evening.

Party

This evening we had our second housewarming, to which we invited everyone we don't know through my job. This was a calculated risk; although we'd quarantined work from non-work people, I had allowed mountain bikers to meet comedians to meet martial artists. How would it end up?

Original Sin(gapore)

Rather than stay in the hotel drinking cans of overpriced beer ($11.50) and making myself tofurkey sandwiches while watching depressing sounding pornography (Carnal Crimes, anybody? Sounds about as appetising as Lonely Business Traveller III:Anal Retentive Invaders) I went out to Holland Village to see an old university friend for dinner.

Smashed, Singapore

There are advantages to getting hammered in Singapore. Like not caring about where your hotel room is. Unfortunately, that's only an advantage when you don't know where your hotel room is.

Running, enraged

Another day, another run. And just as the days grow shorter, so do the runs. I was running around the jogging track (a little clearer of people walking very slowly at six-thirty) when a guy in a sweat-drenched t-shirt overtook me.

Well, I wasn't having that. A burst of aggression and rage sent me past him, and kept me going for three more kilometres at (finally) above marathon pace. It's a shame this is half the required distance, and it required a head full of negative thoughts to do so.

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.

Questionably drunk

Tonight I went to a quiz night, the first time in at least a decade. It was an odd affair: in a darkened room hidden on the first floor of a building in Causeway Bay, with very cheap drinks and a very complicated door, which meant although it was easy to get drunk in, it was hard to get out of. A bit like a land war in Asia.

Singapore Zoo

Dragged from my bed at the insanely early hour of nine this morning, I struggled through an unsatisfying breakfast of the world's smallest Danish pastry and a cup of horrendous hotel coffee, before taking the express bus to the zoo.

Acclimatising

I watched Dinner for Schmucks on the plane from Toronto to Halifax. It's things like that which make you wish that the entertainment system had been broken for that flight too: it was an egregious, heart-sappingly awful lump of rubbish. (I read a multiple page review of Steve Carrell in the New Yorker that gushed about his prodigious talents a few months ago, that suggested Dinner for Schmucks would be the greatest comedy the world had ever seen. It is. If you laugh at a man mugging for an hour and a half. I mean, there's nothing wrong at laughing at people with mental deficiencies and social inadequacies - I enjoy sneering at those worse off than me as much as the next guy - but this was really, really unpalatable. Grindingly, unremittingly, tooth-rottingly bad stuff.)

A short bit of improv

Today I went to an improv show at the comedy club: ninety minutes of people making jokes up. My only contribution was to shout the words "chilli powder" at an inopportune moment. Ah well, oh to be a performer.