The Social Overachiever

Let’s face it, I’m none too fond of people in general.

I’m not overly sociable and, to be honest, I’m pretty much a behavīor Nazi when it comes to people I’ll spend time with.

I’m not very tolerant of stupidity or foolishness.

I’m not tolerant of much of anything at all.

As a consequence, I don’t have a plethora (!) of friends.

But the friends I do have are people that I respect and genuinely like and hold in high esteem.

So when I have the opportunity to spend time with them, I am always grateful.

Last week, I overachieved socially in a number of ways. Please allow me to share them with you.

I was recently recruited to become part of the What’s Good? Conspiracy blogroll by Bad Boy Ben Lo. He actually appreciates my vitriolic spew, and for that he can have my firstborn.

I’m not sure where the little snot gobbler is, but my lawyer is doing the paperwork as we speak. Ben will certainly make a better father than me.

Never mind that.

Ben was in town for the DC Spring 2011  Spring Fashion Show. He was busy as hell with work, since this is a business trip, but he invited me along for a business dinner with his bosses, What’s Good? model  Shandy, and Ryan Hui and his wife Candace.

At Nobu.

At the Intercontinental.

I met Ben and Shandy at their hotel and we walked over.

Shandy is the What’s Good? model of whom I have previously written:

This is like me wearing a t-shirt that says“What’s Angry ?”

Ryan and Candace met us at the restaurant.

I made sure Ben took photos because I know none of you vituperative jackanapes would ever believe that Sean the Cultural Barbarian ever set foot in Nobu (except maybe to make a drug deal).

Note: The photos in this post were borrowed from Bad Boy Ben’s blog  and  his friend (and now mine) Jerry’s Facebook page.

But here’s me at Nobu:

No, I can’t ever be serious. Why should I?

The food was reallygood.

It was probably exquisite, but

a) I don’t use that word and

b) I wouldn’t know exquisite if it bit me in the @ss.

That would be exquisite, actually…

I am very grateful to Ben (and his bosses) for allowing me the opportunity to go someplace I otherwise wouldn’t go.

It was Shandy’s first trip to Hong Kong, so I made sure she sat facing the island skyline as it got dark. I tried as best I could to speak Cantonese with her (she doesn’t speak much English), because I know what it’s like to be the linguistic odd person out at a social function.

Hard to believe that I appear in a sentence containing the words social andfunction.

Also, people were talking a lot about style and fashion, two subjects pretty far outside my own purview.

Note that I did not appear in the sentence withstyle andfashion.

Still, I enjoyed listening and trying to imagine what they were referencing.

After dinner, I managed another social miracle: Drinks at Felix.

At the top of the Peninsula.

Best HK$60 ginger ale in the world.

I didn’t even get thrown out. Must be getting old.

So the next day, I went to Central. I even set foot in Lan Kwai Fong (after a liberal application of the necessary medicated cream to minimize the incipient rash) .

Because I was going to a fashion show.

That was invitation only.

And I had been invited.

It was at Volar (Voler?), and it was very nice.  They had laid out the club with a catwalk and everything:

Ben was the DJ for the evening, and I was lucky enough to get a chance to see him at work:

****

“Where’s that Godd@mnRight Said Fred song?!?!?!”

I met Ben’s friend Jerry Ka, and we shared a lot of laughs and other assorted silliness:

You can trust us. Really…

Ben was showing off his very impressive camera. How impressive?

The f@#$ing thing can take pictures ofitself.

Seriously (?), it actually has a GPS function so that it can tell you where you took your photos. I still say that it can therefore probably tell you where it isif you lose it; Ben called it Lo-Jack for cameras.

No wonder Japan will someday rule the world…

I must have made a good impression on Shandy (or at least not terrorized/alienated her, which the language barrier no doubt beneficially affected), since she wanted to take photos with me:

Ever the gentleman, I made a valiant effort to offset the gross dimorphism:

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If this was video, you would hear my knees screaming in agony.

There was one other photo op I did that had Shandy laughing hysterically, but I’ll let Ben share that one. It hurt my knees even more.

So maybe part of her laughter came from understanding me shout “Aaaahhh! Ho lun tong ahhhh!”

The food they served was AMAZING. Rather than the anorexic sprigs one might assume to be at a fashion show, the restaurant next door (name escapes me, which for dietary reasons is a good thing) provided a magnificent assortment of food with absolutely no redeeming nutritional value that was so good I’d have killed my mother to get her share.

Bacon-wrapped potatoes, deep-fried shrimp, pork ribs, jalapeno poppers, and a bunch of other food so fattening that I (almost) felt bad eating so much of it. But I had help; Candace and Ryan and I formed a cordon around our favorite dishes which were sitting on the bar, and anyone trying to get near the plate was going to pull back a stump.

I also admit that I got a very inappropriate thrill out of eating grossly fattening food in front of models so thin they have to stay indoors during high winds.

I would occasionally wave a pork rib at them and laugh. Because the ribs were bigger than their arms.

Which, let’s face it, is typical of my social retardation. God forbid I tried to make a positiveimpression on anyone, especially a woman:

If I had a swing like that on my porch, I’deat it.

So thanks to Bad Boy Ben and DC Shoes, I managed to have a wildlysocial 48 hours, and go places and see things I never would have.

I got an amazing pair of shoes out of the deal too.

I fully expected to get hit by a bus on my way home, but it didn’t happen.

I live to whine another day…