"Oh my darling Penny Ping, I shall love you forever, for you taught my heart to sing."
No I didn't make that up. I heard that tonight shortly after I had sat down to have dinner in a local restaurant. I'd ordered vegetable and rice soup (I think Penny approved) when I noticed that there was a group of Chinese people with one old western looking guy at a nearby table. Some time ago I'd read a BBC correspondents report that said Chinese guys like to get westerners drunk by ganging up on them and then challenging them to down beer. I was watching them, inconspicuously at first, to see if it happened to this guy. They'd nearly finished eating and already I could tell that the old guy was accompanied by the young lady sitting to his left.
It was 7pm when I got there, my soup arrived soon after ordering it and I tucked in straight away (I hadn't eaten since breakfast). It was about that time that I noticed that each of the Chinese guys sitting at the table had individually toasted the old geezer. He drank each time he was toasted and each of the Chinese guys only drank when they personally toasted him. Since there were 3 Chinese guys toasting the westerner he was bound to drink about 3 times as much as each Chinese guy did. A recipe for disaster, I could tell the westerner was older than my dad. It seemed to be going along just as the BBC report had stated.
With the westerners frequent loud Biggles style "cheers" I assumed he was English but it took me a while to work out that the old geeza was in fact a Londoner. At times I felt like I was watching and episode of "In Sickness and in Health". I was very amused and so were the waiting staff, we were all smiling. It went on and on and at about 7.45pm I had counted 20 glasses of beer downed by the old English geeza. He kept on drinking and drinking. By this time I was laughing out loud because I couldn't control myself, his Biggles style "Cheers" cry sounded funnier and funnier.
Surprisingly, he didn't get too wobbly. He had drank so much that I was convinced that he would fall over as soon as he stood up. What a champion, he managed to stand, move to the next table and start arm wrestling one of the Chinese guys who moved with him (how they knew he wanted to arm wrestle I have no idea). Not too much later the Chinese guys all stopped toasting him. He didn't care, each time the Biggles style cheers sounded he drank whether or not anyone was joining him. Then his young lady friend was drinking with him. I think he downed more than 30 small glasses of beer while I was watching but I got bored with counting when the score reached 20.
I had my Chinese books out so that I could go over what I learnt today but it was far more interesting to watch what was going on two tables over. I was supposed to be practising Mandarin tonight but instead I ended up staying until after they all left. The old guy did manage to stand and walk on his own and he even managed a short conversation with me before he went out of the door. The Chinese guys were the last to leave and funnily enough they had to support each other a bit to control their own wobbles, I watched with a big grin on my face.
I've done it no justice writing about it here, I only hope it doesn't happen to me.
