The Archive

Melting pot

A nice all-American day today.

It started with a Taiwanese breakfast (which for some reason, was at lunchtime. Must be something to do with the time difference between here and Taiwan).

This consisted of a range of dishes, but most interesting was a bowl of warm, sweetened soy milk which tasted like porridge without the oats. Kind of an Atkins-friendly porridge you might say.

The cool thing was that we were eating in a restaurant in the Chinatown in Flushing (New York has three Chinatowns, apparently. They don't do things by halves here do they). Because it was Chinese New Year (happy dog, everyone) there was a parade going right past the restaurant window, so we got to eat and watch the cool floats, dancing ladies and martial artists doing their thing without having to move from our seats.

After the Taiwanese breakfast we went to a Japanese karaoke box, where we sang in English, Japanese and Korean. Not all at the same time obviously, that would be silly.

In fact, the plan was to do a couple of hours of singing before going out somewhere. But then the beers arrived.

So at the start, we were hesitantly trying to knock out some fairly simple showtunes, but five hours later, we were hammering out 'With or Without You' by U2 (ie screaming loudly and tunelessly into the microphone).

Mark wanted to go home after this, but I wasn't done yet. So I decided to check out some of his neighbourhood bars.

They were ok, if nothing to write home about. Although I did meet a couple of people. Like Larry. Born and raised in Queens, Larry was, how can I put this, insane. He cheerily explained to me that he left Queens after getting into a fight (how bad must a fight be for you to have to leave town) and went to florida. There he got married and had a child, whom he subsequently abandoned.

Don't think he's heartless though. He was so upset, the drive back from Florida to Queens "normally takes twenty hours, but I did it in sixteen because I was drunk and mad."

I left that bar and went to a different one.

In the next bar I got talking to Jimmy the Colombian. This was entirely unrelated to the fact that his cousin was extremely attractive, of course.

Jimmy was a pretty cool guy and we became great friends. Which of course means it was that part of the night where we were both so drunk, it went something like this...

"Hello, I'm Peter."
"I'm Jimmy the Colombian. Nice to meet you."
"I like the shoes you're wearing."
"I fucking love you man. You're, like, totally amazing."
"Your cousin is very attractive."
"Touch her and I'll kill you. But I still love you man."

I didn't touch her. Well, he was Colombian (although actually, he was American. Remember what I said about the Australians calling themselves Aussie first and foremost? Oh, and Larry was Irish, meaning also American.)

Eventually I realised quite how drunk I was and wandered home. But not a bad day eh? Korean, Taiwanese, Japanese, Colombian and Irish experiences.

Only in America.

posted by Peter The Great @ 2:39 PM