Booooooze

A highlight of my recent trip to the USA was visiting a bourbon distillery. A lowlight, or, shall we say, nadir, was getting drunk on bourbon the week before. It was so good to see my dear, dear friends E and K. Unfortunately K is such a dab hand at making Old-Fashioned (a bourbon based cocktail) that I drank down three on an empty stomach.

The rest is un-history, for I certainly hope it wasn’t recorded.

The next day I felt like shit that had been hopped upon by elephants wearing high heels. My only comfort was it could have been worse. I could have been drinking baijiu.

Baijiu is the one mandarin word I don’t want to say in Cantonese because to me, 白酒 (baak jau – white wine) in Cantonese, is just that, white wine. Sauvignon Blanc and so on. Whereas 白酒 (bai jiu – “white” “wine”) is death, the vilest concoction known to man with a hangover so fierce I’m sure at least 40% of all suicides in the mainland (of men in a certain age group, let’s say 15 to 95) are committed during baijiu induced hangovers.

You have been warned.