Bear and J-Dub Endure a Day of Shopping and a Night of Drinking and J-Dub tries to Pinch hit after he strikes out.

It's got to be record: 7 hours of shopping followed by six hours of intense drinking.

The Ma Boon Krong (MBK) is probably the biggest assortment of shopping I've ever seen. The fourth floor has so many goddamn cell phones you wonder how any of the shops stay in business. My best guess would be that each stall has about one hundred phones for every customer, and there are so many stalls that I would also guess each stall makes two sales a day, if they are lucky. Each floor has a mini-food court. There is also a bowling alley and movie theater inside.

The thrill of the bargain was too good not to get giddy with excitement. I bought T-shirts, copied CDs (2 Pac's Better Dayz, Trick Daddy's Thug Matrimony, OutKast's Speakerboxx, and a Reggae Compilation -- all for 7 bucks), new black shoes, a hat, a sick pair of cotton pants, and J-Dub and Bear were happy. Especially because many vendors gave us exclusive, "special price." I love to feel special.

Being Saturday, we hopped into a cab back to MTT, where we showered and manned up for the night ahead. The night almost took a horrendous turn for the worse when, a few hours earlier, Bear came desperately close to pulling his usual cock-blocking tactics by inviting our landlord's secretary out for the evening.

Bear on his mobile, "You should bring your friend and we can hang out."

Talking on the phone.

Bear, "Yes... Call your friend, and then call me back. Okay bye."

Sounds good, no? Great, except for the fact that it's Bear. Even my own family, my own kin, would ask a one-eyed lesbian out for a Satuday evening, if it equaled a potential friend [FN 1]. J-dub had to take immediate attention to this matter and explained that we might be able to do much better as a duo. That is, not being held down by girls who may turn out to be way lame. Which by the way seems more and more to be Bear's Modus Oporandi. And if it is, it will be my sole ambition to change that.

So we arrive at OTK which hosts multiple venues of live bands and music. Finding our niche in Club 400, we pay our cover charge and get our free drinks. Loud Thai music bumps from the speakers and it is almost immediately clear that we are the only white people in the whole place. Random dudes would come up and want to drink with us. This only gave us more incentive to keep drinking more. We kept drinking loads, drinking and dancing until finally the lights came on and everyone was meant to get out. Bear asks these girls who seemed very interested and way cute for their number but they flat out rejected him with a tenitive, "uhh, no." Strike one.

Across the way, we find a bar that has a ton of people still drinking. We come to find out that it was a place that was celebrating its 6th anniversary. Fuck yeah! I love anniversaries. So we keep drinking. And keep drinking. Bear was chatting away with some chick at the bar, while I was getting smiles from across the bar from a very pretty Thai girl. J-Dub thinks to himself, "Oh... Hellrow pretty Thai girl."

J-dub approaches and sits next to pretty Thai girl and company. Getting down to business, he asks, "so what do you do?" Not knowing quite what to say, the respond, "uhh... wee.... are free..."

Now what could a response like that mean? Prostitues: obviously. My face must have been classic, but not wanting any of that, I go "okay... I'm going over there." And so I return to the bar with Bear and his new company. Completely unbeknownst to me, not even thinking about it, my assumption about these girls couldn't have been more astray.

They weren't prostitutes, they were University students who don't have jobs. I learned later that this is pretty typical of Thais. They don't get jobs until they graduate. But instead of saying that they were students, they said they were "free." That assumption killed me an hour later, when Bear had left citing the fact that he had puked 4 times already and was going to pass out at the bar if he didn't go home. Aye, Bear, J-dub is staying.

So after Bear had left, I managed to make a scene with some Japanese dude who was hammered out of his tree. I would say shit like, "Wow! This mother-fucker, right here. He's one son of a bitch!" Not knowing how to respond, this Japanese dude would just repeat exactly what I just said but 30 decibles louder. I almost pissed myself laughing. He got slightly angry so I explained it was all in good fun, and he too started to laugh hysterically.

As 5am approached, I decided that getting a taxi home was probably the best course of action. I said my good-byes and as I was leaving, the chick I assumed was a prostitute walked out at the same time. Being completely fucked, I said hello. Well, she asked me for my number and still thinking she was a bad girl, I said that she had to kiss me first. Strike two.

Not thinking that was too funny, she caught up with her two friends who were with dude. Well, I sat next to one of the dudes and asked in Thai ("tao a-rai"? meaning 'how much?') Strike three! My Thai being sub par, I hope he thought I was asking about the taxi and not the girl, but I obviously was speaking about the latter.

I did, however, manage to get the pretty Thai girl to put her number in my phone. Yesterday, I called her, but did not get an answer. So I texted her. Still nothing. What am I doing? You can't bat from the dugout. I was out long ago. Can you pinch hit after you strike out? Well Dubski tried his damnest.

Yesterday, I woke up at 4pm and surprising feeling great from an abundant sleep, got some work done. After a modicum of productivity, we watched Kill Bill.

[FN 1] Our landlord's secretary is not a one-eyed lesbian. Hypothetical situation used for emphasis.