Thursday, November 3, 2011

So very generous

Sashimi is a dish, or meal, or pet food that is served, as far as I know, in many Asian countries. Essentially what sashimi is, is an attempt by a restaurant or chef to warn his diners that he is in fact suffering from a severe form of Alzheimers rendering him to mentally think he’s living in the year 4386 BC, which of course is a good few years before some teenagers invented fire so they could light their farts. As YOU know a couple of centuries later someone once put a sausage on a stick and held it in front of the fiery fart and proclaimed ‘if you remove the smell of Zorgs ass, this would actually taste better than raw flesh’ and cooking was invented.

Sashimi chefs have never heard of such a wonderful thing. So instead they serve people a plate of raw fish flesh. Incidentally I once wrote a novel called ‘raw fish flesh’ it was about a man deserted on a tropical island who died because he wouldn’t eat raw fish flesh ‘That’s freaking disgusting’ he bellowed as mermaid tried to force some into his mouth as he descended towards death from malnutrition. This man was based on my idea of what I would do if I were deserted on an island and the only thing to eat was raw fish flesh. Yes I would rather die than eat raw fish flesh – even if living meant I could bang a mermaid.

My point is - ‘Hey chefs, cooking exists, I know – we have a goddamn toaster oven in our hotel room, its cost us twenty bucks at the store just up the road. Also don’t cook fish, that stuff is freaking gross and stinks as bad as anything on earth, I’d rather eat a Zorg firey fart hotdog’.

The things is that as rare Westerners that visit the small fishing town of Chenggong our contact in town organised a special feast for us, and people from all over town came to meet us. And I was able to do something that every traveller dreams of, rudely rejecting a locals generous gift.

Actually it wasn’t as bad as that. They served us all sorts of things, and the rice and chicken were great, and the duck really needed more time in the oven, but was ok, and they kept making us drink. They made us drink a lot. They have a strange yet wonderful way of drinking here, they all take a small cup and you are not allowed to have a sip unless you toast it to someone else who has to drink. And when you are the strangers everyone wants to toast you, and when you are gullible you let them make you believe that you are never allowed not to finish the cup (which they always immediately refill for you – back to the top) and that the first time you toast with a new person you must drink three whole cup fulls.

We all got really, really drunk. With no language familiarity I tried to seduce the girls with my eyes, taking the opposite approach Goshie took the opportunity to straight out ask for dirty sex acts, enjoying the freedom of knowing they knew not a thing he was saying, and thirty painful hours later Epi was in hospital with severe food poisoning.

Blood tests confirmed that the cause was, drum roll please, Sashimi! It’s freaking disgusting stuff, but I was willing to let him feel that way, I cannot not say thankyou to generosity and free beer. I just wish these generous types would introduce the chef to fire.