Lemme reintroduce myself……

It's been a few months - did you miss me? What? No?

Frankly speaking, it’s been a while since I’ve graced blogsphere with my stupid musings. My colleagues and fellow drunkards have had a hard time bearing the brunt of the listening to my idle ranting and maybe I should thank them publicly for their time.

You’ll have to bear with me; I have to admit that I am totally rusted. Since the last time I wrote here, I have been locked in a virtual cage, engaged in a mortal kombat with my addiction to alcohol. Not having access to the liquid in brown bottles in the name of detoxing my system, I started debating the jurisprudence of starting other bad habits such as going to the gym, eating healthy and walking up the stairs to my office.

After twitching through more than thirty days and four torturous weekends of withdrawal, I awoke one Saturday morning to birds chirping outside my window. An unusual occurrence, being used to noisy car alarms and noisy children, I sat up, took a deep breath, and, lo-and-behold, I didn’t belch, my head was as clear as a bottle of Smirnoff Vodka (pun intended, of course) and I could remember what I did on Christmas day last year. Amazingly regenerative, the human body is. Four solid years of binge drinking every other weekend, and I was already feeling a difference after only five weeks detoxification. I spent the entire day jogging my memory and running errands for the house.

Truly, I hadn’t felt so clean in years, and I will go on record saying that alcohol does affect the health of the body, despite my prior assertions that the responsible drinking movement is just a conspiracy by the social rejects at Nacada, jealous of how cool, sexy, and mature sitting in a bar having a beer makes me appear. Apparently, those guys are on to something. Too bad they lost another convert when a long lost friend of mine rolled into town from North Eastern with a bottle Three Barrels under his arm. I didn’t ask where he got it, I just unlush two glasses and some ice and were we in business. The neighbours, who’d started being nice to me, offering me friendly smiles and saying hi occasionally, have now gone back to their old ways. It must have been the loud music/laughter of that day (and night!) and subsequent days (and nights!).

I’ve taken quite kindly to a new watering hole here in Nairobi. Mind you, it takes quite a bit of atmosphere, a very large babe-quotient and really cold beer for yours truly to belly up at a new establishment and feel at home. This new place, called Taidy’s, has it all. They’ve got good music, better than average bar food, it happens to be owned by a jamaa from the Rift Valley like me and of course it has got its share of fellow jerks with stories to tell and also willing to listen to my rants and look forward to random bitching from babes. Not to say it beats The Ale House but that is a story for another day. One of them came up with a new term the other day – flirtilicious – to describe a lady he found attractive. He often uses this term to compliment babes he’s trying to seduce. Sample this...

"Hey gal, you look flirtilicious tonight. Can I buy you a drink?"

One night, when I was moments from falling out of my chair, drunk as a weasel, a really drunk guy ambled into the bar and screamed. A long harrowing-high-pitched scream. When the bar fell silent and every one stared at him, he asked (loose translation):

What are you guys staring at? Our country is run by a drunkard!

The guy was a total mess I tell you. So one of the guys in our table starts talking about Kenya's inane politics. He says oh bla bla we are forced to bear with all the appointments and policies that the big man throws our way every now and then sijui nini. Like I cared. But in my drunken stupor, I agreed with him. I know, I know, if I don't like my country and the current economic growth, tribal wars, Mungiki beheadings and all the dirty horse-donkey (okay, mule) politics, I should just pack up and go. Well, just know that I can’t. First, I am too lazy to look for another job abroad. Secondly, well, I'm too lazy to think of anything else!

But I digress.

So this drunken guy looks around then walks to some chicks at a table and bursts into tears and all but one scramble to leave hastily. The waiter comes for payment and a bouncer follows, restrains the chicks who wanted to leave and asks them to pay up. Apparently, they had been drinking with the noisy guy at a nearby pub and they ran off when he got so drunk and out of hand. When means of going home got tricky, one of the ladies (apparently his cousin!) sent him a text telling him to come pick her. One of the others was his arranged date for the night and she actually had to intervene and save the situation from turning sour after all the patrons and bouncers started laughing when the drunk guy started recounting how he had been ‘used’ and his money ‘eaten’ by his cousin who had earlier arranged a date for him etc etc…

The good news is that they eventually settled down and started talking animatedly and the drunk guy cuddled with his date, obviously after the ringleader of the chicks left in a huff after her protestations at the jamaa’z ‘invasion’ of their table fell on deaf ears, her friends’ and bouncers included. The things that don’t happen in bars!

Stay drunk.….