Hunger Games

It's cold. Really cold. I have a new winter jacket, but it's still pretty cold. It's especially bad at home, as my heating system doesn't work properly and my bedroom becomes an icy hell overnight. It's great when I'm under the covers but getting out is an issue.

So this Friday. It was especially cold and as I'm writing this on a Saturday afternoon I already know that it was about -28 C at about 6 or 7 am. This is the time to have some alcohol in your system to feel as if you're not turning into a human icicle every given minute spent outside, but for some reason, for the second year in a row, I go on and decide to be sober instead. Yay for me, the stupid naive asshole.

So yeah. I got off work at about 7 pm and decided to finally buy a lottery ticket and get really really rich. I went to the nearest R-kiosk, which was still somewhat the other way, but found that it was closed. The normal time for it to close would have been about 10 pm but for some reason it was closed at 7 pm and I didn't get a ticket. I took this as a sign that this was not to be my turn to become filthy rich and probably not exactly my night either. Now, as usual, I didn't have the slightest idea where I should eat before going to Möku and as sometimes I go for a beer or two before deciding where to eat, I also thought to do it this time, only without the booze. After drinking a cup of tea at Möku, I realized that I did not want to leave the warm comforting seat at the bar and decided to try and not eat for change. But let's not rush things.

I got to Möku at about 19.45 and found it to be quite empty. Seeing as it was unusually cold outside, it wasn't too strange. Suss and Aadi were working the bar and black pudding was already at the bar with a friend and meat. I'm not actually entirely sure meat was black pudding's friend, but meat seemed like a sociable fellow. I wasn't familiar with meat beforehand and he introduced himself and asked me about what I'm doing. Realizing that I'm in IT, he somehow figured I'd know a thing or two about the deep web, which I sort of do but haven't been to myself. That is a strange assumption as most IT people don't know about the deep web. Anyway, after that interesting chat, black pudding told me a story about him and his colleague and how they read this here blog last Saturday and tried to figure out what they did the previous Friday. They were apparently both a part of last Friday. So yeah, this blog has turned out to be a great way for remembering last night for some drunk people. Cool.

Some time later, black pudding announced that he is destructive and left, promised to be back soon. Yeah...
Meanwhile, meat got on a philosophical streak and exclaimed something along the lines of this: Self-improvement is masturbation, now self destruction is ...
He couldn't remember the rest and got very confused. Apparently that was it. The quote is from Fight Club and by Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) when taking a Subway with Edward Norton. He doesn't finish the quote because he gets bumped by a man walking by. Apparenly meat knows his shit.

Meanwhile, I had a beer. Not just any beer, a Warsteiner. It smells a bit like bread and tastes pretty much the same. Not very good, wouldn't recommend it. Now that you're all panicky about me drinking beer, I will point out that it was non-alcoholic. Many people noted, however, that they truly and honestly believed me to be drinking normal beer. Take that, non-believers. I have to note that it had a strange effect on me. For a second there I thought I was getting slightly drunk when I wasn't really and after finishing it, I got a craving for a normal beer and a smoke. I do remind you that I've also been a non-smoker for 19 and a half days now.

Shortly after my beer-related philosophy, I started talking to meat about Rabarock and various bands that we saw there. We also agreed that Clawfinger is an awesome band and Suss played us a song called Two Sides. Apparently in the chorus of the song, a woman sings in arabic: Men allah al salam, Ya rab ya rahman which is apparently a very useful sentence when interacting with muslims, as meat explained.

Meanwhile black pudding returned and exclaimed that they had a bottle of cheap wine on the way back from a liqueur store down the street. Apparently it's fairly natural for young poor people to seek extreme measures for getting drunk outside of the pub. Not everyone can afford getting drunk at the bar all the time like I do.

Shortly after smoked eel showed up with his friend rare steak. Apparently smoked eel bought some land recently and plans to go on a skiing trip, the rich bastard. I told him about my plans with the amount of money I'm planning to win with the lottery and he suggested getting a smaller jackpot first, about 200,000 €, and buying 100,000 tickets for the bigger jackpot, thus supposedly increasing my chances of winning the bigger jackpot. This plan has a few flaws because apparently you need a helluva lot more tickets than 100,000 for a sure win of 5/50 main numbers and 2/8 additional numbers.

After that smoked eel had a Sparta and at the same time groats arrived. Apparently groats was very happy to be in town as he's currently in the army and had a small chance of not getting the weekend off due to some  possible guard duty. Talking with groats we got a wonderful idea. We were talking about how we miss having Kevin around and how he should create a truly Irish bar in Tartu someday and I got a very cool idea which probably wouldn't work in Tartu or probably even in Estonia. It would be like a large department store, but it would all be bars. We'd call it the Department Bar (name in progress). It would have a posh cocktail bar that only plays soft chillout beats and serves fancy cocktails made by a show-barman and also a biker bar with strong beer and loud rock music and also a German beer bar with bad German folk music and many many other types of bars, all in the same building. It would also have loads of toilets and water fountains and it would even have a makeshift drunk-hotel for people that need to lay down after getting too drunk to stand. An excellent idea.

With all this talk of good ideas, I noticed the candy in which I typically do not partake as I don't believe candy can be mixed with beer. So I had some and as the last time I had some actual food was more than ten hours ago, this was quite possibly the best candy I've ever had.  While I enjoyed my tiny piece of chocolate covered marzipan heaven, groats finished his beer and decided to go and have a look at what's going on in Kivi.

Now, each time I decide to sit there sober, I have the same problem - what to drink? I mainly had tea last year but I really don't feel like having only tea this year, so I've been experimenting with different kinds of non-alcoholic drinks. For instance I had Suss pour me a Fanta and put a little bit of grenadine in it, which did make it really sweet but it looked a lot like tequila sunrise or any other similar alcoholic drink. I called it Fantastic Sunrise. The other interesting drink I had was pretty much just water with a bit of grenadine. It looked nice and the taste was not too sweet. I also noted that with this non-drinking thing at least keeps me very well hydrated. I should be doing this in the middle of summer...

I had a chat about something with Suss and found a good use for drunk people in arguments. I was talking to Suss and suddenly asked smoked eel for confirmation about something and he agreed right away. Seems like a good way to get some backup in an argument. Useful drunk people. Now there's a concept I found surprising. As smoked eel was still very drunk, he decided to go for a walk and sober up a bit. I was left there at the bar with nobody around. Sure, rare stake was still there but didn't seem like a very interesting person to talk to so I just sat there and drank my sweetened water. It was 22:22 and the night was extremely slow.

Suddenly a whole bunch of people walked in at the same time and the bar was full of people. This only takes about 5-6 people because the bar is quite small. A night in Möku can change from empty to a full bar in the matter of minutes, really. I didn't know any of them, in fact I didn't know anyone at the bar with the exception of workers who were mostly busy. I assume this is the low point of my boredom during this project. If it gets more boring than this, I'm quitting. Well, only one more weekend to endure, really. One of the reasons for time being exceptionally slow this evening was probably my being hungry.

At 23:00, still with nothing going on, I wrote down "Bored as hell" or "Bored as it is cold outside".

Some 10 minutes later, groats finally returned. I had decided to be at Möku until at least midnight. I had an interesting chat with groats and soon after french fry and chili con carne joined us. Also note that french fry was the first girl to join us, besides Suss who was working the bar. French fry explained that she is also sober and probably staying sober for a while and also trying to quit smoking, after which she proceeded to buy a pack of cigarettes at the bar. I don't think this is how quitting works exactly. French fry then proceeded outside with chili con carne, apparently for a smoke.
Soon after breaded broccoli joined us with some friends and at this point groats was pretty much surrounded. As groats is quite a tall fellow, him surrounded by much shorter girls was quite an amusing spectacle. The girls didn't mind.

Soon after we got to speaking about Virgin drinks, or alcoholic drinks without alcohol. We speculated the existence of virgin vodka, which would probably be just an empty shot glass. I then thought about what would a virgin Sparta be and figured it'd be something along the lines of just a slice of lime next to an empty shot glass, to which groats exclaimed: "Nobody stays a virgin after Sparta because you'll be thoroughly fucked." It does get you very drunk very quickly. Reminds me about an earlier chat with groats about foreigners and drinking. We figured it'd be downright dangerous to offer them Sparta. Might kill a guy.

As french fry was sober and arrived with a car and I was tired, she offered a ride home, which was an excellent idea as it was already about -20 C at that point. Not the best weather for a walk home.
We left at about 00:20 and half way home I got a text from a girl I was supposed to meet at möku. Apparently she had arrived precisely after I had left. That's three weeks in a row now, she manages to arrive right as I'm gone...

So yeah, french fry gave me a ride home, I had a chat with her and got home without freezing my beard off. Thanks, french fry! I had some old pancakes at home and was too tired to even write this post so I'm writing this on Saturday.

All in all, a boring night, most definitely the most boring one this year. Let's just hope next week will be fun because I know the one after will be. Apparently the first of February will be a Friday and since I will not drink until it's the second of February, I won't be drinking until midnight of that particular Friday. That midnight will be something else.

Anyway, I'll first have to survive this weekend and the next.