Invasion of the Amar

I woke up yesterday morning to find 2 cartons of lime diet coke and a box of krispy kremes in the kitchen. There was a bottle of Small Talk 'bed hair' wax in the bathroom and several bottles of facial products I never use. And the living room smelt of overpowering Vera Wang perfume and stripey scarves.

Yup, the Amar has landed. And my little flat is now a minefield of everything metrosexual.

When Amar rolled down to London, quite unannounced, and planted himself in our living room it took us awhile to realise:

"Hey, are you here because there's no one in Warwick to celebrate your birthday?"

The boy turns 22 today. It's 3pm and he's still sleeping. Maybe he's feeling old. It can't just be the clocks going forward. We went all the way to Selfridges to buy him a Mandoline (which is a fancy way of saying food slicer and grater). We also put 4 candles on a Krispy Kreme for him to blow out. We were feeling generous.

In return, Amar made Cachaca from a huge ass bottle of sugar cane liquor he bought from Selfridges (which resulted in Lionel and I bumping into him at the same time we were buying the Mandoline which is too stupidly big to hide).

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Other exciting things happened this weekend. It's finally the end of term, and after submitting the Finance and Financial Management coursework around noon, I sat in the computer labs vegetating - trying to take in the surrealness of having absolutely nothing to do. Its a creepy feeling... of time passing by so slowly when there are no deadlines to meet.

A few hours later, I managed to grasp the concept of freedom and joined Odac Batch XVI for dinner at Chinatown. Wee Lee and his girlfriend, Julie, were visiting from the US and so was Thanan, who managed to catch some sort of bug from the Frenchies in Paris which didn't seem to affect his all too kemp sense of humour or his very American accent ("Twalk to da hand"). Lester gave us very strict instructions to meet at the Big T at Chinatown at 6.30pm. Being Odac, no one really knew what he meant by the Big T and to Lester's annoyance we all arrived somewhat together at Leicester Square tube station at 7pm.

It was rather funny that it was raining after dinner. I thought Batch XVI was rain repellent. Or maybe it was me and Batch XVII being rain prone.

Anyway, Saturday got even more exciting. Lionel's classmates, Sebastian and Gary, were celebrating their birthdays at Busaba Eathai (on Store Street, highly recommended!). We ended up at a pub after dinner which seemed like a good idea at first until I had a Breezer and a pint of Fosters in front of me. I'm not sure why, but the Thai food had made me feel really parched and downing rum alcopops and beer in quick succession is really not a smart way of quenching your thirst. But I do some pretty dumb things sometimes. Besides, I've always held my liquor well... maybe too well most times, its pretty shitty being one of the most sober around... but point of the story is, I ended up regurgitating almost half my dinner.

Now puking when you're wasted is one thing (and something I haven't tried yet). Puking when you're still fully sober really isn't funny. Puking out a pretty expensive dinner... well that's just me being a calculative Malaysian.

Later that night, at Jun and Matt's house party, I had to make CL watch me so I wouldn't take even a sip of alcohol. That didn't really seem to work, as Matt kindly spiked my lemonade with vodka and I could taste my dinner again. Setting my cup down, I spent the rest of the evening only touching solid foods. I risked the jelly being alcoholic but well, you only live once.

So there I was, sitting in a corner, almost alcohol free and thinking - its shitty to be the one damn sober person at a party with so much free flowing liquor! Not only did it make me realise how the lack of alcohol can make one feel old and anti-social (it was a junior's party and you could count the number of 3rd years on one hand!), it also made me wonder about something Jere said a few days ago when I told him I was preparing slides for a Christian Praise and Worship Session

Jere: No!! You're kidding right??? Charlotte Yeow! Don't play games with me!
Me: Huh?? What? I don't seem like the kinda person who does this sort of thing?
Jere: No... I thought you were more of a 1 tequila, 2 tequila, 3 tequila, floor.

Oh thanks. Years of trying on the 'Charlotte the sweet (and sometimes anal)' facade has been eroded by:

Hi, I'm Charlotte and I'm an alcoholic.

Anyway, weekend's almost over and we're going out to celebrate Amar's birthday at some Greek place. At least I think its Greek. Let see if its worth his fancy schmancy food slicer.