Butterfly Goes For Muay Thai Event

Is age perhaps catching up to me or could I have probably finally succumbed to societal vulgarities like responsible drinking and civil public conduct? Has my insatiable thirst for alcohol finally been beaten into submission by an ailing liver? Or has the toil of continuous late nights and parties finally reigned its wrath on me?

I attended a wine appreciation event last week and I didn’t even get drunk.

But Butterfly, its wine appreciation, no one gets drunk. Not when you are me – usually -, because anything that is free and alcoholic, deserves at least 6 glasses to wet my pallets or kill the liver. The last time I went to a wine tasting event, I got drunk and this was after my mum constantly reminded me that,

1. You sip, not gulp wine
2. You don’t need to finish the full glass
3. This is not a competition

This time, against my better judgment and outright inaccessibility of the place, I drove down to meet Totti at the event and kept myself contented with just sipping on the glass of the customary welcome drink.

Two of the event PR girls came over for a survey and one of them actually remembered me from an event I attended once.

She: “I’ve seen you before right? You were here for the Muay Thai event.”

I immediately told Becs who was the head PR (I think) about being recognized and she quickly rolled her eyes,

Becs: “Babe, all the girls remember you. You were so loud at that event la.”

And I was.

This was about half a year ago and tempted on the lure of free drinks, riding on my then obsession with Contender Asia and all things Thai and sparked by an impetus to start the weekend drinking spree a day early, I rounded up LB to attend the event with me.

It turned out to be some opening for a Thai restaurant which also ran in conjunction for a series of other underlying brands but none of which I cared, because there was a constant flow of free wine and finger food to keep me happy.

It was a private affair of sorts which progressed to a dinner, where we interacted with other people who shared our dining space and thankfully Jerm and Botak turned up for the event and so did Geri and Dom, which meant that I now had 5 friends who might renounce their friendship with me before the night was over.

Over dinner they had a general knowledge quiz contest and we got grouped according to our table and by then, I was already on my 4th glass and fighting against speech impediments. I was probably known as the Chinese boy who was tipsy and talked alot.

Then 30 questions down and I was dishing out answers where no one had a clue, from the composition of countries for the former Siam kingdom, to the number of provinces Thailand had to varying geographical obscurities and I was single-handedly carrying the table.

Host: “What is the capital of Bangladesh?”
Guy: “Chittagong.”
Me: “No, Dhaka.”

And by now, the other people on the table – of which I was easily the youngest male, save for LB – were looking at me in disbelieve.

Girl: “How do you know so much?”
Me: “I don’t know, alcohol makes me smart, sometimes at least."

I was no longer the tipsy Chinese guy, I was now known as the very smart Chinese guy.

We submitted the paper to Becs, whom we didn’t know then to do the marking, while we all headed out for a smoke. We got back and Becs signaled a total of 12 mistakes which I immediately protested, because as drunk as I was, I was absolutely certain that I could not have possibly made 12 mistakes, especially not when I’m drunk.

Me: “Sweetheart, bring the paper over. I cannot possibly have that many mistakes.”

I quickly pointed out to her a whole string of marking errors which brought the final tally up to 5 mistakes out of 48 questions. It didn’t matter because some other team won by cheating and it only reinforced my stand that cheating pays off, sometimes.

It was a kaleidoscope of quiet compunction for not cheating and self congratulation for being surprisingly smart under the influence of alcohol, that I felt invincible and confident that I would have passed any sobriety test, even if it was taking a straight line with handstands while reciting my IC numbers backwards in Hebrew.

By the time it came to the main highlight, which was the Muay Thai exhibition match between two obscure local individuals and I thought I was knowledgeable enough to be dishing out name s of the sports greats like Yodsenklai and John Wayne Parr, to be sitting through an introduction of the sport. All I wanted was to see a fight.

When that got on the way, I was cheering on my team with so much fervor and equal amount of trash talking, I was keeping everyone around me in stitches.

Me: “Knee the balls!! Gorge the eyes!! Bite the ears or something!! FOR CHRIST SAKE!! YOU ARE LOSING!!!!!”

Me: “Com’on!! Punch harder!! Don’t make me regret supporting you!!! Dammit!”

Along the way, they teased an opportunity for one of the guest to step into the ring.

Me: “MEE PICK MEEEE!!!! I WANT TO FIGHT…THAT GIRL!”

I had my hands up in the air, yelling wildly and the guys were all cheering me on to get my butt wiped. The organizers ignored me, as usual.

The fights ended and I lost my chance to win a bottle of champagne because I picked a loser who could get knocked out by his shadow. I was bitter and sulking because I wanted champagne and I got bored because no one died in the exhibition match, so I decided to hit on the PR girls instead.

One of them turned out to be my neighbour of which LB thought was pretty attractive, but I offered my car to LB to drive another one of them home. She was petite, decently pretty and was from a mixed lineage. I was just bored of ending the night prematurely especially when there was still a good amount of wine in me, that if I took a blood sample, I might qualify as a grape.

It was a cordial conversation between us, up till her door, about her work as a model to her hobbies and her racial composition. When LB drove himself to his place for me to change over, he started clearing his stuff off my backseat and then emerged holding a magazine laughing.

LB: “Do you know who this is???”

He asked, pointing to the cover girl.

Me: “Who’s that?”
LB: “Dude, we just sent her home.”
Me: "Noo way...."

He placed his wallet and phone on top my car as we, spurred by the hilarity of it and fuelled by alcohol, started laughing our asses off for a good minute or so. For one, this was a girl that sat through the entire car ride with a cover shot of her on a magazine lying next to her. And there we are asking her questions I only just read of in the article hours ago. And we had absolutely no idea it was her.

I drove home still giggling over the matter after LB laughed his ass into the lift. Then 30 minutes later, LB called,

LB: “Dude, can you go check your car? I left my wallet and phone on top of your car.”

So.Not.Funny