Weekend Recap & Other Stuff

I've had the most jammed-packed weekend I can remember, and here I am, on Tuesday, still recovering. It all started on Friday with drinks with some friends to celebrate a birthday. D and I were supposed to only stay for a couple drinks but ended up staying out all night. At this bar, I met another trailing spouse who ranted at me for hours about how difficult it all was and how it will only get worse for me. She suggested I spend my days drinking and looking at porn on the Internet. Seriously. It's nice to know on some level that someone is having a hard time as well, but it made me better that at least I hadn't sunk that low.

Friday night I also made a rookie mistake. I didn't eat a thing. I know, how could a 28-year-old make such a mistake? It's something an 18-year-old does. In any case I didn't eat at this club because we were supposed to leave to eat at this German restaurant but we ended up not going, and consequently, not eating.

After this club, we went out to another bar and then it's like I was magically transported into Saturday because I have NO MEMORY of what happened at this bar. It's usual for me to have memory blanks of an evening of heavy drinking, but not for the WHOLE NIGHT to be erased. I don't remember being at this place at all (and the Facebook pictures that have been posted prove that I was there and posing for the camera), I have no memory of coming home, or of throwing up for hours upon coming home (something D told me the next day).

This is what I'm starting to call a Bad Beijing Booze Experience (BBBE). A lot of the alcohol here is knock-offs of the real stuff, and there are degrees of how bad it gets, but I've been in a bar here and had one gin and tonic that's had me throwing up all the next day; so it can get pretty bad.

Saturday was a write-off. I spent the day in agony on the sofa drinking Fanta. I think at about 5 p.m. I was ready to eat something and ordered in McDonald's (a perk of being in China - everything is delivered). I couldn't even get up to look after the Puppy, who snuck around under the table and ate the heel off my favourite pair of boots.

Sunday we went to The Westin for their famous Sunday brunch. All-you-can-drink champagne and martinis and all-you-can-eat brunch buffet (includes sushi, caviar, fois gras). This is an epic brunch that you take your time with. We get there at 11, and stay until almost 4 p.m. Afterwards, we went to a friend's house to keep drinking and to play Dance Dance Revolution on the Wii. It was a pretty great day, actually.

D took a day off on Monday and we slept in until noon and then went to the market where I bought a really cute D & G knock-off coat and got my nails done. I told D over lunch that I wanted to go to London for a week to get away; that I needed to get out of China for a bit. He told me to go whenever and to book a flight if I found a good deal. So, I may go next week. I hear London got covered in snow, which is pretty weird but I'm pretty sure it'll be gone by next week. In the whole four years that I lived there I think it only snowed once and even then it was just in the air and didn't stick to the ground at all.

Top 10 things I'm looking forward to doing in London:

1. Eating at Wagamamas.
2. Shopping at Boots. I actually had a dream about Boots last night. Yes, most things are manufactured in China and most people think you can get anything here, and that's simply not true. All the things that are made here are exported right away, and the things they sell here are extremely cheap knock-offs. The hand and body lotions and incredibly cheap and smell like dirty lemony dish water. To get the brands that I want I have to go to a luxury mall and pay triple the price because the product has actually been imported from America or Europe, and then a luxury tax has been added to it. So, all that to say I'm looking forward to buying cheap products at Boots that smell nice.
3. Seeing friends of course!
4. Not eating Chinese food.
5. Drinking good beer. The beer here is really cheap, but not great. I'm looking forward to sitting in pubs and drinking a good Guinness that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
6. Going to Borders and buying English books. Oh, I miss bookstores possibly more than anything else.
7. Being away from D. Now, I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just that back home we used to spend lots of time apart and I loved it because a) I like my own space, and b) it gave me time to miss him and to look forward to seeing him. Since we've gotten here he's been so over-protective of me that he's hardly done anything without me. It'll be nice to have some time apart so I can miss him a little. Does that make sense?
8. Getting my hair done by someone who speaks English (I'll need recommendations please!) and going to an esthetician for a good wax by someone who speaks English. I've been in some places here and even though I'm sure they do a good job, there's just something too frightening about getting a Brazilian from someone who doesn't understand a word you're saying.
9. Speaking English to cab drivers and reading English on signs.
10. I'm salivating at the thought of getting a jacket potato with cheese and beans at the Shepherdess on City Road.
    

So, London here I come!