The lame new year celebrations | mutated enzyme

Went to Shawn’s house at roughly 8.15pm to attend his BBQ party - Andy and Heng Li were already there.

The food’s okay, and with the presence of Yen’s (Shawn’s sis) friends, we laughed a lot and she’s possibly one of the funniest characters I’ve seen in ages.

So we waited till 12 midnight, and boy, there’s zilch glamour and celebrations in it. We tuned in to Hitz.fm, and listened and waited for the countdown. All we got was some “Top 100 songs of the year” and the countdown begins with a ticktock of a clock (it literally chimes for about a minute). Did the DJ scream “HAPPY NEW YEAR!”? No, he didn’t. The ticktock ended and Christina Aguilera’s Beautiful song was played.

I know, it’s the tsunami incident, and we have to mourn the victims. It’s not that I don’t mourn nor feel that the deaths that occured were nothing, but as a lady in Australia puts it and sums up what I think (and I’m lazy to set up an argument here): “You still have to got something like this [fireworks] otherwise people won’t have any hope.”

So, after we sat on the chairs outside Shawn’s house and finally got bored, we went to our friends’ house to scream “HAPPY NEW YEAR”. We went to Gopi’s but he wasn’t at home. We walked to Heng Li’s, his bro just came back and Shawn and a few others happily wished Happy New Year.

Walked to Wai Hong’s house..and gave him a Happy New Year call service. His neighbour’s family looked at us from the window above XD (I can imagine all the racket and noise we were causing).

We watched some Michael Jackson’s 30th Anniversary concert on StatWorld when we reached Shawn’s house, and Die Another Day till about 3am or so. We then went out to Tanjong (mamak) till 4am+.

Then we went back..and played cards (“choy dai di”) till 6.30am. We initially didn’t want to sleep, but one by one they sleep; beginning with Shawn, Andy, then Heng Li, leaving me staring at the fan and ceiling for ages.

Sleeping next to Shawn means a chance of getting squashed, which his thighs did to my legs and I was somehow forced off the bed.

Heng Li was the earliest to get up and went back, at about 10am. Shawn woke up at 12.30pm, me at 1, and Andy at 1.30pm.

So that’s about it. A brand new year.

I recently found out what my condition is. My face flushed bright red when I drank the vodka cocktail+juice, and red wine. Apparently it’s a bloody genetic condition that happens in 50% of Asians, because they have a mutated enzyme present in their body which couldn’t break down the alcohol into aldehyde dehydrogenase effectively.

Oh yes, I’ve researched about this a bit and got some pretty good Bio-related info; thank goodness for some of the protein/enzyme/amino acid knowledge I’ve obtained from my Bio lessons during Form 4, ‘cause I was able to fathom about half of what they were saying.

So, they call this condition as “alcohol flush reaction”. This condition is irritating as well as embrassing because I got people comment and looked at me all surprised for seeing my face flushed bright red. And I’m not even drunk.

Bleh for a social drinker.