Yeah right you weren't, Lab!
Actually, I had an experience last night that made me think of this thread...
We have the first three floors for the language institute, and then the other three floors are apartments, some of which our teachers live in. (I live on the fourth floor.) Anyway, the school is in a major university district, with four major universities within walking distance. And along with the university district comes major shopping, DVD and PC rooms, video game rooms, restaurants, bars and nightclubs, and everything else a university student could possibly want. And a lot of Koreans (particularly the men, but also the women, especially the women students...) are prodigious drinkers. (They've got a brew here that I've not seen anyone mention on this thread yet - soju, a kind of beer made with sweet potatoes. But that's another matter.)
To severely curtail my story, there are about five bars within a stone's throw of our building, and it makes getting to sleep before about two in the morning a big challenge. See, when the Koreans get drunk, they go out into the street - literally the middle of it, since in the smaller streets there are no sidewalks to speak of; you share the street with cars and people and sidewalk vendors and everything else... - anyway, they go out into the street and sing and dance and talk, *loudly* with their friends, until very early in the morning. BTW, if there are any Koreans reading this, I'm not trying to be disrespectful of Korean culture, just trying to explain to the foreigners who've never been here something of what it's like around where *I* live...
So anyway, when the noise level gets really high, I like to peek out my window and see what's going on outside.
Last night it was fairly quiet from about 1 am to 2, then I heard some voices. I was at the window already, as it was pretty hot and I wanted some fresh air. Around the corner came these two girls, prolly university students although our area does attract a fair amount of non-students because there's a wedding hall across the street and there's a residential area up the hill... One girl seemed relatively sober, but her friend... Well, let's just say that now I know what the term 'falling-down drunk' means! Every two paces she had to sit down on something - a garbage pail, a car bumper, the curb - and her friend literally had to hold her up as they tried to walk down the street. A few minutes later she was laying on the ground and nothing her friend could do would wake her up. Don't know what happened to her, as I gave up and went back to bed. But jeez, sometimes I'm *really* glad I'm on meds that you can't mix with alcohol, because knowing me, that might be me otherwise - I've got what I think is an addictive personality, because once I try something, I get obsessed over it, and I take it to extremes... Well, those of you who know me, know what I'm talking about!
Okay, shutting up now - go on with your booze talk... Which, by the way, I'm finding very interesting. If only LabRat would get back to writing... And no, I'm not accepting any excuses, Rat...
Melisma (ducking back under her Rock to avoid any rotten tomatoes or, um... drunken watermelons
)
