Mmmmm. About 11:45pm Saturday night, and I’m sitting here drinking my end-of-the-month beer. I have this little ritual that I do at the end of each month. In celebration of having made it through another calendar month, I drink two or three large bottles of Singha beer. Good stuff. And life is still good. Minor aches and pains associated with getting older, for me and the wife both, but no major health problems. We live in Bangkok and so have beaten wintertime. Right now, we have a couple of two-day-old baby pigeons living in a flower pot out on our balcony.
I drink beer at other times, too, of course, but not nearly as much as when I was younger. But I never miss my end-of-the-month beer. It’s a time to take stock and make sure I’m where I want to be. I am.
I like your idea, though… good to take a seat, kick up your feet, and take stock of your life here and there. Often we just… go too fast and six months fly by and you can’t remember much except work and a couple social interactions.
Mmmmmm. It’s the end of the month again, and I’m enjoying my end-of-the-month beer. A little after midnight here. Just turned July.
A Canadian friend returned last week from Ireland, where he attended a writer’s workshop. He brought me back a can of Beamish Irish Stout, which he proclaims is now his favorite beer. I’d never heard of it, but he’s right. It’s goooooood stuff. Now I’m kicking back with a good Singha, a Thai brew.
I give my father a very nice single malt every year for Christmas. He’ll pour out a couple of glasses just before noon on Christmas day and we sit about looking at the stuff everyone has just exchanged. It’s a very nice time for me, just right then at that moment. I suppose it’s something I’ll wish we’d have done more frequently.
I haven’t tried Chang, but I hear it tastes like it’s already been through the elephant at least once.*
At the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, our guide, “Mammoth”, pointed out one of the big bull elephants taking a leak, and invited us to sample “Original Chang beer”!
Back when I was a single guy, beer constituted a more significant portion of my weekly caloric intake. Usually several nights a week we fellers would be at a sports pub, pool hall or local watering spot and we’d manage to quaff a few. In the ten plus years since I married though, that’s been on a steady decline until several years ago when I just quit altogether. Three years, no beers.
So a couple of months back I’m in the specialty grocery store I frequent and see a bottle of Chimay in the cooler. A nice, big, brown, beautiful bottle of sweet, rich Chimay. A timely earthquake knocked it off the shelf and into my cart and I took it home to grace the fridge.
My wife’s not normally a beer drinker either but since trying a sip when I finally cracked the Trappist nectar open, she’s come to her senses and now we’ve settled into an infrequent ritual. Every once in awhile when it simultaneously calls out to us we’ll share a tall bottle of Chimay, which allows us about a glass and a half each. It’s not on a monthly schedule, but it probably does work out to something like that. In such moderation and with such a splendid, sweet, delectable product, it is indeed something to savor.
I love Singha. They were carrying it in the local grocery store and I made it a point to buy some periodically so they’d keep it in stock. Unfortunately, I made an ill-advised foray into being healthier and drinking beer less often, and they quit carrying it.
Ironically, in Thai, there is no “ha” on the end of the word. It’s pronounced simply “sing.” But in Thai letters, it’s spelled Singh, with a little symbol over the H letter that indicates a silent letter. That almost always signifies a foreign word, since straight Thai has no silent letters. In this case, the word is from Sanskrit. It means “lion.” No one knows how the “ha” made it onto the end in English, espeially since there is no “A” on the end in Thai.
Yes, you either love or hate Singha, it’s like that with everyone here, too. I love it. Chang is an evil brew that I won’t touch. Many of the bars, especially in Soi Cowboy, will keep Chang at a special low price all night long, but I’ll not touch it.