Alcohol the big equalizer

July 6, 2007

Cyrille's text said Nat booked a table at Sala Thong at 8:30 and that I should let others know. I did. I left work a little late - compounding the mistake by taking the wrong exit off M11. I headed to Regent Street and then circled around Parkers Piece before finding a place to park - it was a little difficult in part because of some festival being held at Parkers Piece. I walked across Parkers Piece and entered Mai Thai before realizing that I was supposed to be at Sala Thong. Oops. Instead of going back to my car, I walked to Sala Thong - it probably took a little over 10 minutes. It was just past 9 PM when I made my entrance in front of a mildly surprised quartet of Natalie, Sergio, Cyrille and Rajiv.

Some of the topics at the dinner included Egypt, taste of something French, Unlikely Salsero, Lady Salsa, clairvoyance, Ghostbusters, magicians (David Blaine, David Copperfield… no one knew Doug Henning). Another one I remember was about alcohol - about it making you more you (or some such). It reminded me of what people used to say about my old friend Brad - "Brad under the influence of alcohol - same Brad except more so."

Time of arrival at Club Salsa was 10:40 PM. Initial and lingering thought was that we arrived too early. It was quite crowded and became even more so later yet it felt like there were a lot of people missing too. Domenic was back to continue his practice with Serap for their dance competition at Vauxhall and drawing large number of onlookers and admirers.

Absence of smoking was nice. There might have been more drinking without it. I stood around for a rather long time and not dancing very much until I decided that having some San Miguel would be a good idea. I think it made me care a little less about imperfections in dancing. I think it was a good thing tonight because thinking too much about mistakes would have been too depressing. After two bottles, I considered getting a third on around 1:40 before deciding that it would be unnecessary. Being slightly inebriated might not be so bad sometimes because it might allow me to care less about messiness, and it might have made things more fun for me if I started drinking earlier rather than standing around and doing nothing.

Zern, Euvian and other people arrived later after watching a performance of Lady Salsa. I had seen the show about 20 months ago and wrote about it. Some of the cast members visited Club Salsa on that occasion, but there was no repeat visit tonight. Looking back, there were some very strange conversations recorded from that night - including one between me and Janet.

Cyrille talked about not getting drunk tonight and presumably he restrained himself compared to last few Fridays. I'm guessing he drank less tonight, but I'm not totally sure.

Louise demonstrated that she's not as tall as she seems; height (and weight) was a recurring topic tonight with a number of people. Louise also asked me about my form tonight, which startled me a little before she reminded me that I mentioned something about it to her last night. How was my form tonight? Marginally better compared to last night and helped somewhat by alcohol, which caused me think about it less.