Catalonia

For the past 5 years (or so) I have harboured a little plan to dine at El Bulli one day.

Needless to say I'm very disappointed by the news that it will be closing down next year. This will make it almost impossible to get a seat before it closes.

So I've decided to appeal to the goodwill of the auteur of a certain Spanish themed blog. Perhaps he could appeal on my behalf? I have asked him to return to the blogosphere and make a series of updates which have a slightly Catalonian bias. Mention of historical food trends will also be highly regarded.

In a few months I will write to the management of el bulli and tell them i have a 14 yo nephew whose short life's dream it is to go to Spain and eat at El Bulli, using the blog as proof of his obsession with Spain (the latter being true of course).

If this succeeds, we're both going to eat there. If he fails, he may find his oboe scholarship drying up as well.

I pitched this idea to him today. At first he resisted for all the right reasons: ethics, his truepassion for Spain, the importance of truth blah blah blah. I tuned out, patiently waiting for him to draw breath, then clearly outlined the concept of "cash for comment". Once he realised the financial upside for himself, the ethical barriers dissolved quicker than a valium in vodka.

Is Mighty Pretty

Last night I found myself hanging out with smokers, which meant standing out on the street in front of a groovy bar drinking vodka. It was Absolut Citron and Soda if you must know. The drink itself about 7 years out of date but I'm bringing it back on account of my ... umm ... stomach. Given that Vietnam is about 25 years behind the rest of the world, when I get back I'll be fashion forward and retrotastic at the same time.

Giving up drinking is not an option. Not only would it would be social suicide, but it would probably give me the shakes (and not in a good way). Alcohol is the core social (and occasional sexual) lubricant of ex-pats; probably why vodka comes from potatoes.

Back to the smoking section.

At one stage an extremely drunk potato came staggering through us. She was really pissed and had that otherworldly-but-focused expression on her face that spells "I'm drunk and I'm on a mission and I won't living in your world for a few more hours and I don't really know where I'm going but I do know I'm not stoppiong.". Her bottom lip seemed leaden, causing a slight agape to her mouth. Her eyes were not those of a pedestrian; they were focused on some point just a bit farther than they needed to be. It was like the street had become one big magic eye picture for her and if she looked hard enough, she would find her friends in it.

All this strident weaving was like witnessing Courtney Love staggering to breakfast after a big night.

And I think we all know how her hair looked.

An adjacent smoker - Claudia, a Polish woman - also noticed our drunken potato and said with a slight chuckle "It's very windy tonight, isn't it"?

She explained that this a Polish expression. Whenever someone is weaving home drunk, they say "it's very windy tonight" and then get back to their own drinks. I'm going to start using it.