Saturday, June 21, 2008

A plan of a different kind

No, not that Plan. That Plan is in tatters, ruined, abandoned. The headturning woman who was at the centre of it, with whom I was so smitten a few months ago, has quite disappeared: no new sightings in the past seven weeks or so. (Moreover, she is - I believe - a teacher at one of the international schools. And schoolteachers like to make the most of their long summer vacations by getting the hell out of the city the very instant that their term ends. Hence, I surmise that I am unlikely to have a chance to see her again for another two months. Damn! There's slow progress and then there's NO PROGRESS. This would be the latter.)


No, no, this is just an ordinary, innocent, run-of-the-mill 'What shall we do on Saturday night?' kind of plan.

Well, not perhaps all that "innocent".

My thoughts are tending in the following direction:

6pm Hit my 'local', Room 101, for an affordable pint or two of Stella on their happy hour.

7pm Taxi over to Nurenjie for a bite of supper. Several good eateries to choose from, but I tend to favour BiteAPitta because it has decent draught beer.

8pm Check out the nearby Afro Arena - a new contender for the accolade of our city's diviest bar. It is quite alarmingly basic, but I felt it nevertheless had a certain sleazy charm when I happened upon it for the first time a month or so back. It also has bottled Guinness for 20 kuai a pop, the best deal in town.

9pm Move on to 2 Kolegas for the second day of Tag Team Records' annual 'indie' festival: 6 or 7 decent bands, 4 hrs or more of music; hard to resist.

2pm Return to Room 101 for their wee-small-hours happy hour (now 3am-4am) and - with luck - a live screening of tonight's quarter-final clash between Holland and Russia in the European Football Championship.

5pm, 6pm (god, I hope it doesn't go to extra time and penalties again.....) Stagger home to bed.


It's not a very sophisticated plan, I know; but I think there is a virtue in simplicity. Wish me luck in bringing it to realisation. Damn...... going to be LATE for Step 1 - not a good start!!

1 comment:

Froog said...

Ah, well - so much for having a plan!

I fell among thieves, you see. And once you have other drinkers involved, there are certain pressures on 'the plan', it's difficult to maintain its abstract purity.

We started nearly an hour later than I'd intended, and then subsequent elements became far more protracted that I had hoped, with the result that the gig idea - unfortunately - got abandoned. And I got railroaded into Texas Tim's for dinner, where the food was extremely crappy.

At least I made it back to 101 in time for the footie...

And I didn't get into any bar fights - which, considering the company I was in, was no mean achievement.