Alcohol and Me

I have been wondering for a while now, what is so nice about alcohol.
What triggered me into writing this? Yes, its YOU who triggered me to write this by ordering that bottle Heineken the other day. :)

My history of alcohol is as follow.

My first drop of alcohol was when I was in primary 2. It was tuak. For the benefit of those who are not Malaysian, it's a homemade alcoholic drink made from fermented coconut sap. I was tricked by my parent's friend, saying that it is barley during his house warming party. The young and innocent me, who was a great barley drink fans drank it without hesitation. To my horror, it was bitter and it tasted funky. It smells too. Too bad I gulped it in already. And suffered greatly due to the aftertaste.

My second experience of alcohol was when I was in primary 3, not even a few months after the first. It was a Carsberg this time. This time it was during a family gathering. Here's the story. My mum kind of "experimented" if I can tolerate more to seafood by giving me the second deadliest of the crustacean - the CRAB! despite knowing I have allergy toward seafood. If you think my mum is cruel, she is not. Here's the reason why. My aunt told my mum that a child allergy tolerance will increase as he grows. My mum barely wants to know my "progress". So, after consuming what my indian friend describe as the uglisest food he ever seen, my throat started to itch very badly, inside. In a frenzy to stop the itching, I grabbed the nearest glass i can find and emptied the content into my mouth. The nearest glass happened to be my dad's carlsberg. It was so bad that I got sick the next day. And from that day I swore to never touch alcohol again (and until today I blame my aunt for that incident).

And I never did until February 2009. My friend treated me to Japanese sake in another of the parties. It was quite refreshing from the smelly alcohol from my previous two encounters. And it made me say to myself, "Hurmm... Alcohol doesn't taste that bad, maybe I should drink it more often." But too bad for alcohol, instead of redeeming its status in my heart, it dropped lower than it was before just a few days ago due to my fourth encounter.

THE HEINEKEN. Curse the night I went out with my friend to the Sense bistro. It's not that the alcohol has any real taste, it just stinks. Everything was ok until that night. I couldn't sleep properly because my stomach is rumbling non stop. And the next day, the effect became worse. My muscles twitched randomly at very random moment. Although its not the knee jerking kinda twitch, it is very annoying and distracting. Furthermore, I had a very bad headache that morning. It felt as though my face got rammed by a bullet train.

Sorry alcohol. As you can see, it's not due to the adverse effect on health that stop me from liking alcohol. It is just my history with alcohol ain't that sweet. Alcohol lovers, don't take it personally.

note: I'm very proud of my dad. He was an alcoholic when I was younger. He used to drink non-stop throughout a chinese wedding dinner (takes about 3-4 hours. and usually he will down like 15++ bottles, no kidding) and still sober enough to drive home. But he managed to abstain himself from alcohol just because my mum asked him to as [ her birthday present? peace offering? I'm not that sure about the whole story]. The point is he stopped consuming alcohol and I'm proud of him because he did that and he did that for his family.