Friday, November 30, 2007

Beginning of the party season

A good thing I'd arranged to have the day off work today! Last night was the infamous year-end party for Koryo Tours - a small British (Beijing-based) company that runs trips to North Korea.

There was free draft beer. There was free mulled wine. There was free soju. There was excellent music (mostly '80s pop classics, but with an occasional random admixture of rousing martial tunes from the DPRK). There was just about everyone I know in Beijing present. Did I mention the free beer?

As at last year's event, it was the soju that did for me. South Korean soju is one of my favourite rice spirits: smooth, delicately flavoured, not rasping to the throat - or too damaging to the head the next day. North Korean soju is quite different: it is viciously nasty. My restless spirit of curiosity, however, just can't resist a unique opportunity to try out exotic spirits - even if I know they're going to be foul-tasting, and quite possibly steeped in noxious chemicals.

Last year, there was a blind tasting competition of 10 or 12 different unusually-flavoured varieties; so, I felt obliged to try all of them...... some of them twice, for fine-tuning my identifications (although, like most competitors, I found distinguishing the alleged flavourings quite impossible: even strong and distinct ingredients like ginseng or blueberries seemed quite undetectable; rediscovering my scrawled - and largely profane - tasting notes a week or so later, I was reminded that my 'favourite' had inspired the comment "This is the only one that doesn't smell of toilets"!).... one or two of the less disgusting ones three or four times. I was wasted.

This year I was a little more circumspect. But only a little.

I soon got red-faced, giggly, and slurry.

And then the room suddenly filled up with beautiful women.

SHIT!

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