The noble art of drinking gets nobler as the evening pushes into night; so noble in fact that we have developed a ritual to ensure that a drinking session cannot end when it ends. In fact, it cannot end until you've had at least the Cleanser, the Rinser and the Closer. Imagine a Wednesday evening about 11:30pm in a pub in Wan Chai (Hong Kong). Imagine being there with two work mates, all three of you away from home. Imagine beers, Red Bull with Jaegermeister depth charges and Mojitos and other assorted drinks. Also please imagine having to work the day after. I don’t need to imagine all that of course, as that was my situation a few weeks ago. So should we have headed back to the apartment hotel and get a few hours sleep before work? Of course. Did we? Well, yes… “Let’s head back,” I said. “It’s getting late and we’ve got that presentation tomorrow.” I also knew that we had about 45 minutes on the MTR before getting back.
“Ok,” Rohan said. “We just need a cleanser and then we’re on our way.”
“A cleanser?” Mattias asked as he finished his Carlsberg. “What’s that?”
“Something to cleanse everything we’ve drunk so far. Like a final drink. I suggest a Slippery Nipple.”
“No!” Mattias and I both said.
“Great!” Rohan answered and went to order three Slippery Nipples.
“God, that tasted like crap,” I said; the name of the drink somehow not matching up with the actual taste.
“Yeah,” Mattias agreed. “I think we need something to cleanse that.” He stopped, as if thinking halted all his motor functions. “A Cleanser!”
“No!” Rohan and I both said.
“Great!” Mattias said and waved to the waitress. We felt great, we all agreed fifteen minutes and a Vodka and Tonic each later. So great in fact we now agreed we needed one final drink – the closer we dubbed it. After much deliberation we decided on a Long Island Ice Tea as the perfect choice. Another fifteen minutes and we were about to leave the bar – drunk as skunks. We walked past the bar out on the sidewalk and headed off for the MTR station.
“I think we need an Opener,” Mattias said suddenly.
“An opener? What’s that?” I asked knowing I’d regret it.
“After you’ve had an Opener, you need to have a Cleanser, a Rinser and a Closer before you can go.”
“Great!” Rohan said. “Let’s have one of those!” Somewhere in our alcohol-addled brains alarms went off, telling us this was a bad idea. The few brain cells responsible for the alarm was soon knee deep in Slippery Nipples and so the next bar was visited and the whole scene began again…Opener, Cleanser, Rinser and a Closer.
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