death warmed up

"Pray tell dear friend, what brings you to be bed-ridden on this gloriously clear and freezing Beijing day?" I hear you ask. "Moreover, why are you not at work?"

The answer my friends, is Hotpot. That's right, bloody hotpot. Now as anyone who knows me will be aware I am partial to a morsel of food on occasion, and never one to back away from something different. And so it is with hotpot.

Skye happens to love it; hotpot that is. And I have on several occasions tried to discover what she finds in it, indeed I have tried to discover what just about every living person in Beijing finds in it, and alas last night I believe i found it...

You see hotpot, as the name suggests is a cooking style whereby the restaurant sets up a huge boiling pot of (some say) flavoured water, and then supply the raw ingredients, to which, one applies to the boiling water, and 'hey presto' hotpot is in the house.

Throughout my time here I have had all kinds of food stuffs from the belly of the pot. Mutton, pork, beef, ducks blood, ducks tongue and even noodles!

I have to say I have never really understood the fuss. Its almost completely flavourless, and remind me again why I am paying tons of cash to cook my own food?

So anyway, because Skye's mates here all love hotpot, I find myself, week after week, sitting around the pot, trying to dig out some thing or another from the opaque water with chopsticks and wondering whether the stench of the boiling broth with ever wash out of my hair.

Give me stir fry any day.

"The epiphany, sir, get to the part about the epiphany!" you mutter, wondering whether i will get to the point or merely ramble on for hours as usual.

ah yes, the epiphany. So last night, after yet another hotpot meal, with Skye's mate Elissa and her cousin mark who have just spent 3 weeks touring around china (who incidentally are staying with us until Mark flies home, and Elissa moves back to Shenyang), we head home and go to bed. Come 3 am, I'm feeling a little restless and having trouble getting back to sleep. Then it hits me, the epiphany, square between the eyes, well actually closer to my thighs really! To steal a quote from a friend of ours facebook site here in Beijing, "[Alan] no longer thinks SHART is a funny word".

Sitting there on the toilet, while the 'guns of Navarro' and at least 5 million horses trot their way to freedom, I was hit by another epiphany... the dreaded 'choice'.

That's right my friends, the hotpot (or at least its secret ingredient) asked me the simple but impossibly challenging question:

"would you like to sit on the bus, or drive?"

what is one to do? I ask you?

Keep in mind, this isn't my little bachelor pad in Alexandria, I'm not the only one that using this bathroom, and indeed, we have two strangers sleeping in the spare room... what to do?

Luckily for all parties involved, I was able to drive the bus for a short distance, then become a passenger without major incident. I was certain last night that Death himself had come to Beijing to mock me, and yet refuse to take me... after all, imagine the mess I would of made of the pearly steps had there been a queue at the gates.

Alas Death did not take me last night and instead, the hotpot continues to inflict suffering upon me. Indeed as I sit and type I wonder if I'll be able to fin...