Dean, Mindcrime, Norman Peltier (yes, that Peltier…
Dean, Mindcrime, Norman Peltier (yes, that Peltier. Leonard’s cousin, apparently), and I met up at the Shannon on Wednesday night after work to celebrate Mindcrime’s recent job freedom. I had two glasses of wine on my own, then a third and fourth on the insistence of my friends, and a fifth because Norm was buying. Usually after I swear I’m never drinking again I actually don’t for at least a week or two. Not this time, though. I’m afraid that we were on the loud side, earning dirty looks from the group of businessmen at the next table. The food was excellent, though. It just keeps getting better, and their Irish Lamb Stew is truly wonderful.
Today was one of Those Days, the kind when nothing seems to go right. I got up and played around with Trial Kitten until it was time to go to work, but I just missed the train, just missed all the crossing lights, and then just missed the elevator, twice, resulting in me being five minutes late. Usually I’m on time, but there’s not much to do and nobody to see that I got there on time. But today, of course, as I was five minutes late, a small group of people, each one wanting me to do something urgent like translate an important international treaty, had gathered at my desk. Great. I spent a couple extra hours making sure the translation was reasonably error-free, lest Taiwan be overrun with squirrels or something due to my negligance.
After work I went to the Oriented Happy Happy Kon-tiki Hour. Or rather, I met up with Dean and Mindcrime at the Teahouse, where Dean was just getting over finding a roach in his tea, before setting out on a long, exhaustive tour of the area, featuring walking in large circles following inane directions for over an hour before running into Berta, who directed us to the correct address, which was nowhere near where we had thought it was. The restaurant across from the place was suitably named “The Lost Restaurant”. It’s like the bermuda triangle of restaurants.
The circular bar had no dance floor, yet the music was inexplicably loud. A small room in the back was filled with women in black posing amidst shrouds of cigarette smoke. I met such Internet personalities as Cranky Laowai and Alien, plus some other people, one of which was Corbett Wall, who had seen this website and wanted to meet the man responsible for this html travesty. I hadn’t eaten all day and wasn’t too satisfied by the finger food available, so we left the melee and went across the street to Ding Tai Feng for Xiaolongbao and fried rice with tea. It was just the thing after an evening in a pretentious, hard-to-find bar.
