AMP Treatise

Last night, as posted, I was super tired, set my phone alarm (my only alarm at the moment) for about 8:15 to go to the Latina Restaurant party. Well, inevitably, I sleep right through it. I eventually wake up about 11PM. Still time for drinking! At least that's what I thought since that's normally the time I head out in NY and even then that's a little early. So I walk to 20 minutes the bar and roll in to find the place essentially empty! WTF??? Everyone, save for my classmates Ben (America) and Siddhartha (Indian, who I would later find out has got some moves on the dance floor), and about 7 2004 MBAs, and a Danish guy called Henrik. So we have some drinks and end up closing out the bar at 2am. None of us are quite in the mood to head back yet and we're debating what to do, when one of the waitresses at the bar comes over and we start talking (or attempting to anyway, as our 4 days of chinese lessons have ill prepared us for hitting on chinese girls). So we decide to go out, me thinking that we'd go to a local bar. Shockingly, I hear the girl say a string of words to the driver and recognize one, Puxi, all the way on the other side of the river! This is perhaps the equivalent of going from Jamaica, Queens to Manhattan or so.

Anyway, went to Pegasus (kind of a club/lounge). More drinks, dancing, and Siddhartha orders one last round (around 4am now). He CLAIMS to have ordered a beer but I still don't believe him because what we got was 4 shots of tequila. The Decepticons to my Transformers (robots in disguise!), the oil to my water, or the six-fingered man to my Indigo Montoya. In other words, I fucking hate it. So they also slide a long a bunch of lemon slices and what I thought was sugar (it has been THAT long since I've had tequila). Great, sugar! Something to blunt the vile liquor. I get as much sugar on that lemon as physics will allow. Gambei! (Chinese for Cheers!). I down that evil shot as quickly as possible and immediately shove the nice and sweet lemon in my mouth. A brief moment of relief. Then the realization: AAGGG! It's SALT!!!! I do not think I have ever had a look of shock like that on my face ever. OK, maybe with that fermented tofu. Not fun! Ok, you can stop laughing at me now, thanks. So close out THAT bar too and get back at 4:30am. I have about 4 hours to sleep before I have to get out to get a medical exam.

Somehow make it up, but Siddhartha, despite 10 minutes of knocking at his door is for all intensive purposes, dead. So the two Koreans and I leave around 9. The medical exam was interesting. The feeling was somewhat like being herded cattle. Change into a robe, then 8 exams, each in a different room and each with a different person. Didn't take too long but we were not allowed to have anything to eat that day. And I was hungover. Big surprise, eh? I wonder if they test for blood alcohol level...

Desparate for food, we had back to People's Square (where I was the other day at Nanjing Lu). Go to some sort of chinese restaurant in a mall (there are TONS of malls here, one after another many right next to each other). This is a shopping mecca. SooJin gets a club sandwich, I get shredded pork with bamboo shoots in oil sauce, and Kwang gets japanese curry chicen rice. What was Japanese about this, I have no clue. But the best part? It had a huge layer of cheese on top! CHEESE! I forgot how much I missed cheese. Dairy here isn't all that popular (milk is somewhat common) so it was a welcome sight.

Not quite satisfied we head to where there is supposed to be a famous dumpling house in search of the famous Shanghai dumplings (shaolongbao, or small dragon dumpling). Its a dumpling with filling but also with some soup INSIDE the dumpling. Anyway, no luck and walking on Nanjing Lu every person selling something makes a bee-line for me, but neither of my companions. A very useful phrase is "bu yao" or don't want. Although I was tempted to get my sneakers "sparkled" as in sparkling clean, I assume. But this IS China, so for all I know they could have meant glitter. We also saw the 5-star Howard Johnson!