The Montagues vs. The Capulets

Don’t worry. I’m not reverting back to the days of High School Literature here. Frankly, I’m not even 100% sure which family was which. I think Romeo was a Montague and Juliet a Capulet, but I’m really not sure. Anyhow, I digress.

So I spent the weekend in LA as my cousin was getting married. It was one hell of a long flight (about 10 ½ hours each way) considering I was in LA for all of around 72 hours. But, it’s family. So, as I saw it, I really had no choice. Besides, wedding are always really fun, and I was able to use my parents’ frequent flyer miles for the trip, defraying much of the expense.

Anyways, back to the story. It actually dates all the way back to July of last year, at the engagement party in Silver Spring, Maryland, where the groom (let’s simply refer to him as G, for Groom, for the purposes of discreetness) and his family are from (my cousin is the bride, who hails from, of course, Cerritos, California – we’ll call her B, for bride). After a very civil engagement ceremony, we all headed to the groom’s parents’ house for a little post-game barbeque to properly celebrate the pending union of our beloved cousins. It was at this point that one of our female family friends (let’s call her S) informed me that most of G’s family doesn’t drink alcoholic beverages. Which is a direct contrast to our side of the family, which generally doesn’t drink non-alcoholic beverages, except for the next-morning coffee and water. Of course, at this point, I was afraid that there would be no alcohol served at the barbeque, and I deeply regretted leaving my bottle of Goose behind at the hotel. Alas, I was pleasantly surprised, as G’s family – despite not being drinkers themselves – were gracious enough hosts to stock their house with beer and liquor for our benefit. Whew! Anyways, that night ended up turning into a big, par-for-the-course, drinkfest – for our side of the family. It was hilarious observing, as our side of the family (aunties and uncles included) pounded drink after drink and shot after shot, while the other side just watched with their arms crossed and disapproving frowns on their faces. Maybe we would have been embarrassed about all this, if we weren’t so drunk.

Fast forward 10 months to Saturday’s reception. I quickly learned that G’s family – specifically, his female cousins, were not too fond of our group of cousins, which I just attributed to the engagement party and more generally the fact that we have one huge collective drinking problem. Color me surprised when I saw all of these female cousins boozing it up at the cocktail hour. Granted, these were a bunch of Patels, and the drinks were free, but I still found it quite hypocritical that they disliked us for our drinking as they chugged their glasses of champagne. Fast forward a few hours, after the speeches, first dance, dinner, etc., and pretty much all the “kids” – as we will be referred to by our parents until we have “kids” of our own – were tipsy/buzzed/drunk. So, it seemed peace had been made. Once it got kinda late and all the aunties and uncles got tired of dancing, and the rap started flowing, we all danced together in a big circle as one big happy family (sidebar – have any of you ever been to a wedding where the DJ didn’t play the 112/Biggie/Ma$e Only You Remix? I don’t think I have either. Great f’ing song.). Towards the end of the reception, we even started discussing postgame plans together. One of G’s female cousins repeatedly invited me and another male cousin on our side (R for the purposes of this entry) to their room to postgame, where she claimed to have “a shitload of alcohol.” Room 4361. She even put the room number in my cellphone, and it was NOT fake.

Fast forward another hour or so. I’m not sure how I got separated from my cousins, but somehow I ended up going up to Room 4361 with the groom and one of his cousins. It was then that I discovered that their “shitload of alcohol” consisted of maybe 4 oz. of vodka and a big bottle of bright blue God-knows-what. Maybe it was Hypnotiq, who the hell knows. Again, my memory fails me, thanks to the Patron shots and 10 or 20 7 & sodas I had at the reception, but the next thing I know, some of the groom’s female cousins kicked me and my cousins out of their room. What the fuck just happened? Didn’t they invite us up? Hadn’t I showed up with the groom himself??? After they closed the door to Room 4361 on us, we just kinda stood in the hallway with these blank looks on our faces, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Then one of them actually opens the door – not to invite us back in – but to tell us to leave the hallway. What the???!!! Still bewildered, we wandered down to the lobby to try to find our other cousins and figure out a new postgame plan. It was there that we ran into the bride and, soon after, a group of the groom’s male cousins and/or friends. Trying to figure out a gameplan with them, it eventually turned into a mild argument. I’m admittedly not sure of the context, but one of the guys then told my female cousin to “shut the fuck up.” Keep in mind, this was the female cousin who had been married about 12 hours earlier. Now, as all of you know, I’m not the most polite person in the world, but there are certain things even I won’t do – and telling a girl who got married earlier in the day to “shut the fuck up” is one of those things. At this point, the bride wanted to pretty much throw down and those of us with better – albeit clouded – judgment, held her back and said it wasn’t worth it. Though in hindsight I kinda regret not clocking the asshole myself.

At this point, it’s probably 1am or so, and so our side of the family just headed back to our room to kill the Captain Morgan and Jager that I had brought. Within a couple hours, the liquor had run dry, and the group had thinned to about 4 of us. At this point, S, R, and myself decided to head back to Room 4361. We knocked on the door – rather politely I might add – and were legitimately stunned when someone actually opened the door for us. It was at this point, we realized we didn’t have much of a plan. We kinda just wanted to wake them up and disturb their sleep I guess. So we made stupid, useless chitchat with the girl for a few minutes, then said our good nights. S decided to leave a little present for them – a cigarette stuck into the peephole of their room door. Of course, we would find out the next morning that the 4361 girls had simply assumed that this was the work of R and myself. I guess these Montague guys won’t be making nice with the Capulet girls anytime soon. Oh well.

MINOR REVISION:

So some other people who were at this wedding have emailed me offline. I'd like to clarify for the record that it was only a select group of the groom's cousins who disliked us, kicked us out of the room, etc. The rest - as I suspected based on the drunken fun we had at the reception - are not on the shit list. So if any of the groom's cousins/friends somehow stumble upon this blog - i'm not singling you out unless you were the ones who kicked us out of the room or told my cousin to "shut the fuck up". Glad we got that settled.

5 days from Hell...

Ok. That title is really misleading. I just couldn't think of what else to call it. The last 5 days have actually been the funnest (yes, I know that's not a word), since I got to London.

My friend/birthday buddy from NY, Puneet, arrived in London on Wednesday morning. I've always known Puneet to be a fairly energetic guy - the type that wakes up early even after a long night of drinking, and expected him to be even more energetic given a) it was his first trip to London, and b) he has been doing absolutely no work for the last several months (kinda like me - though I at least have to show up and put in 10-12 hours a day at the office). So I was expecting a pretty busy few days of both daytime sightseeing, and nighttime partying.

However, I was utterly shocked at the amount of activities (save the gay jokes, please) we ended up doing. It really hit me yesterday evening, after coming back from the train station where I bid Puneet adieu, when I looked at the sofa in my living room. It's a really crappy, uncomfortable couch - the cushions literally sink in after one lies down for more than like 5 minutes. When I looked at the sofa at around 7pm on Sunday night, the cushions were completely intact. Neither Puneet or I had sat on the sofa for more than a few minutes at a time in the previous 5 days. Ok, that's not completely true. Puneet did fall asleep on the couch on Thursday night - sitting up, though, not lying down. I woke up drunk/hungover at like 9am to get some water, noticed he wasn't in the bed with me (queen-sized bed, so, again, save the gay jokes), and then found him sitting there, on the couch, completely asleep. Absolutely hilarious. Especially considering he was the one who was relatively sober on Thursday night.

So anyways, back to the weekend. I'm really too tired on this Monday morning to go through step-by-step everything we did. Nor do I think anyone wants to actually read that. But to summarize - between Thursday night and Sunday evening (when Puneet unsuccessfully tried to leave, showing up at Heathrow 58 minutes before his flight - unfortunately, 2 minutes to late to check in):

- we hit up Oxford (beautiful town) where we "punted" (the Oxford/Cambridge version of rowboating) and realized that going to Oxford isn't as intense as one might think. Puneet has a friend there who's a Rhodes Scholar, and he described his day-to-day life as "waking up around 10 or 11, checking email, getting lunch, working for a few hours in the afternoon/evening, and hanging out/coffee/movie with his friends or girlfriend". Hardcore.

- Checked out other London sights, such as St. Paul's Cathedral (with the most annoying tour guide I've ever seen - complete with his gay love/admiration for Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who designed the building), the London Eye (giant Ferris Wheel type thing along the Thames that gives you some great views of London), and the London Tower (which is really a Castle, so why it's called a Tower neither Puneet or I could figure out).

- Went to a couple of really nice restaurants, including this trendy Indian place called Mint Leaf. I made the comment when we first got there that it seemed like a really good date place (which I'll keep in mind in the off-chance I ever get a date while I'm here). Then we looked around and noticed that every table had exactly 1 guy and 1 girl - except for the table that had 2 guys and 2 girls, and, of course, the table that had me and Puneet. Good times.

- Hit up 5 bars/clubs in central London over the 3 nights. Despite the fact we were 2 guys, we generally didn't have many problems getting into places, thanks to this website that lets you sign up for guestlists for a lot of the trendy spots. Highlights of the evenings included:

1) Meeting an Iraqi girl who said she was happy about everything that's happened to America over there

2) Puneet falling asleep sitting upright on the sofa (I know I mentioned it earlier, but I felt like it also belonged in the "nightlife" highlights)

3) Puneet and I getting into a club only AFTER we ditched the one female with us - that's how drunk she was

4) £11 Patron shots. That's $20 for you non-Finance people.

5) Meeting a big Indian group at one of the clubs who were celebrating a birthday. One of the guys was real friendly with us, gave us some of their champagne and basically invited us to party with the group. His girlfriend then said to me "you need to get down right now" as I was dancing on one of the tables with some of them, and generally uninvited us from the party - for which the guy apologized. Kinda backwards, huh? Oh, and I think one of the other girls whose boyfriend had yet to arrive invited Puneet out the next night. He probably should've followed up on that.

6) Me getting followed down the street after getting denied from a club, and being slapped - with an ice pack according to Puneet (I couldn't remember if it was with his hand or some object) - by a bouncer. I'm not joking.

One hell of a weekend. Glad you came Puneet. Please add/amend for anything I've missed or misrepresented.

Goddamn I'm tired.

Will [insert gratuitous verb here] for a stronger dollar...

So as most of you probably don't know, the US dollar has been getting its ass kicked by most major currencies. Hell, even the Canadian dollar is up 5% this year vs the dollar (yes I looked it up). Anyways, for most of you, living in the States, this obviously doesn't make much of a difference...except when you buy your 4-runners and Sony LCD TVs (does anyone own an American car or TV?). But for me, living here in London, I have been getting my ass kicked because of the pussiness of the dollar (sorry if that's misogynistic for any females reading this). Two examples (albeit with incremental circumstances adding to the expense):

Example 1: On Saturday, I looked in the mirror and realized it was about damn time I got a haircut. I usually get my hair cut every 2 1/2 - 3 weeks, and it had been 4 weeks since my last cut. Frankly, the reason I procrastinated so much was a) I really didn't know where I should go to get my haircut, and b) most of the lazy fucks here don't work on weekends, so it's tough to find the time. But on the suggestion of a friend, I headed to my local Toni & Guy, a relatively upscale chain of "stylists". I'll admit, it was a pretty good hair cut. The shampoo (from a woman, to be clear) was a few minutes longer than I'm used to (let's admit guys - this is by far the best part of the hair cut), and the guy cutting my hair managed to give me a proper fade without a) using clippers or b) knowing what a fade is. Cost? £42. FORTY TWO FUCKING POUNDS!!! That's around $77 at current rates. So the big dilemma, of course, was what the hell to tip on a £42 haircut? If I wanted to tip the standard 15-20%, I would have had to get a second job. I ended up tipping £5, got the hell out of there, and, needless to say, my hair will be reaalllly long when I return to LA on June 30th.

Example 2: Yesterday my friend Puneet flew in from NY. Figuring we had Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights to party, we decided to check out a show. Puneet stood in line at TKTS and paid half-price for pretty good seats to Les Mis. £25. Shit, half price tickets were like $46. Then, of course, yesterday evening happens to be my first bad Tube (that's the subway) experience. The Jubilee line, which is the only one that goes through the area where I work, was shut down because of 'passenger action' or something like that. What the hell does that mean?

So, anyways, if I was more experienced in my London ways, I probably could have figured out some bus route to get to Central London where the theater was, but of course, I understand the bus system about as well as I understand Ali's blog. So I managed to find one of the few available cabs, and proceeded to spend the next 40 minutes, and £21, headed to the theater. So, my 'half-priced' trip to see Les Mis cost about $85. Oh yeah, the show wasn't very good either. Too long, and too 'musically', even for a musical.

The only solace I can take in all this? Just check out what Shashank calls his link to my blog. I guess it all evens out in the end.

I give up

As you can clearly see, this is my first post in about a week and a half. I intentionally did not write last week because I really wanted people to post comments to my last posting. But, as Anuj so intuitively pointed out, my friends/readers are clearly more motivated to respond to stories about drinking than they are about serious, "real-world" topics. So I've come to grips with it.

Anyways, so last weekend was a long weekend here in Europe. I hadn't traveled anywhere since I arrived in early April, and frankly I was getting sick of all the people back home asking me where I've been traveling to since I got here. So, after looking at airfares and weather forecasts, I finally settled on Edinburgh, Scotland.

Since I was traveling by myself, I made the money-saving decision to stay at a hostel. After picking up Lonely Planet Scotland from the local bookstore here by my office, I settled on a hostel that sounded like it would be relatively social. I figured that way I'd have a chance to meet some people, thus avoiding the depressing scenario of drinking Scotch all by myself.

So Saturday morning, after a relatively sober night of sleep, I woke up around 6am, ready to head to the airport and begin my first-ever trip by myself. Of course, I got to the airport ridiculously early, and, despite the fact that it was around 8am, decided I might as well let the games begin, so I headed to one of the airport bars to drink, of course, Scotch. All this really did though was offset the coffee I had earlier, and thus enable me to sleep like a baby on the 90 minute flight.

So I arrived in Edinburgh awake and refreshed, and hopped on the shuttle that connects the airport to the center (still not 'centre') of the city. As we drove by the Edinburgh Castle for the first time, I was absolutely mesmerized. I had seen pictures before, but it was still an amazing sight to see. In fact, as I was looking at the Castle for probably the 30th time on Sunday night, it was no less beautiful than it was the first time I saw it - that's how awesome and picturesque it is. Probably has something to do with the fact that it's built on top of a big hill and thus from many of the streets of Edinburgh, you're actually looking up at the Castle.

Overall, it's just a tremendously beautiful city. I lucked out in that the weather was great all weekend, and I can imagine it being pretty bleak if it's cold/cloudy/raining. Rather than going into detail-by-detail about the trip, I'll just summarize the sights I saw in the order I recommend them:

The Castle. You could probably spend an entire day here if you want to check everything out in detail. Even I, far from the avid sightseer, spent a solid 2 1/2 or so hours here. I think the most interesting part was, as I toured the barracks where they housed POWs back in the day, I learned that, in addition to the standard meat, cheese and bread, POWs received a daily allotment of 2 pints of beer. Not too shabby. Also, if you're there at 1 o'clock, be sure to check out the firing of the 1 o'clock gun. Skip the audio guide though. Total waste of money.

The Scotch Whisky (no 'e' the way they spell it) Heritage Centre (i'm only spelling 'centre' this way b/c it's the official name of the place). I guess this isn't really a must-see unless you're into scotch/whiskey, which I'm not so much, but liquor is liquor. There's a tour where they go through the whole distillation/aging process, and at the end, if you pay a little extra, you get to taste 4 different scotches - one from each of the major scotch-producing regions in Scotland. There's also a store with all sorts of brands/ages of scotch. I'm not even a huge scotch fan, but I still managed to spend £75 on the stuff, mostly for my friends back in the US. Shashank - that Oban stuff better be good.

Museum of Scotland. Huge museum that, if you're into history/museums, could take a whole day or maybe even longer. I'm really not so into that stuff though, so I made like Lens Crafters and was in and out in about an hour.

Calton Hill. It's this 'hill' that's really not all that difficult to climb to the top of, and very overrated. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more had I gone at sunrise or sunset, but at 10 in the morning it was pretty damn unimpressive. You get some good views of the city, but nothing that you can't get from the Castle. I guess maybe it could be kinda romantic, but since I went up there like I go everywhere in life - by myself - I didn't really get that aspect of it.

Other than that, I just did a lot of wandering around. I actually enjoy just roaming more than I do a lot of the sights, since you can really get a good feel for the city and its people by just blending in and observing. People overall in Edinburgh were really nice, and based on the limited time I was there, the girls are much better looking than in London.

Oh - and last but not least, I did end up drinking Scotch by myself, but only at the Scotch history tour place. Unfortunately, the hostel was nowhere near as social as the Lonely Planet described, so I didn't get a chance to really experience the nightlife, though just based on walking around on Saturday night, it seems it's very much the pub scene. I did enjoy watching Lakers-Suns Game 4 at the bar next to my hostel on Sunday night. Way to blow a 3-1 lead Lake show. Go Clippers!