Fed Up

No, I don’t drink. And no, I won’t have any even if you force it down my throat.

It’s a matter of choice. I choose not to get red-faced or pissed drunk because I like it that way. It’s never about money because chances are I already have more of that than you do.

By the way, even though I don’t drink, I know my Merlots from my Cabernet Sauvignons. You don’t have to be able to drink to have general knowledge.

On Wednesday night I had to endure one of the most trying experiences of my life when I was dragged to a wine party by an extremely pushy girl who happened to be my tutor.

This young lady, all of 21 years of age, was assigned to be my helping hand by my academic supervisor, who was worried that his very first foreign student might have difficulty adjusting to the new environment in Okinawa. Although there was never really a pressing need to ask for her help, I relished the opportunity to make a new friend, but our age difference sometimes made communication difficult so we gradually stopped meeting each other on a frequent basis.

Two months ago she called with an invitation to a wine party held by the boss of a firm she was interning at and I finally relented after running out of excuses not to turn up.

That decision turned out to be for the worst.

She told me there would be wine, a “sumptuous dinner” and “plenty of opportunities for networking” so I simply assumed that the event would be held at a restaurant. Instead, my tutor, who was already heady at half past 8 in the evening from drinking too much wine, showed me to the spartan premises of an office that looked suspiciously like a temporary set-up.

The moment the door opened, I wanted to leave. What she termed a “wine party” was in actual fact a collection of two men and three women cramped uncomfortably into sofas that were adjacent to a lone armchair where the boss was seated. There was wine all right, but the only food on the table were thin slices of tomato with mozzarella and tuna pesto.

One male staff member was wearing an apron and made to serve drinks and food while the rest of them engaged in pointless banter. The boss, a porky man with a punch perm and ugly teeth, tried to impress the women with tidbits from his money-making seminars and oily invitations to his company’s summer house in Karuizawa.

Turns out the man makes his dough from selling hogwash to people who didn’t know any better, and my tutor probably fell for it and thought she was hobnobbing with society’s upper crust. The women were assembled by my tutor on her boss’s instructions and all of them were young and very impressionable. They were all wide-eyed and hanging breathlessly to the boss’s every word, and I was sitting there wondering what on earth was wrong with them. The two other men, who turned out to be interns at the firm, retold an experience when they were pawed by tai-tais when they were parading at a fashion show arranged by the boss.

I lasted for one exquisitely painful hour and mumbled an excuse to leave.

To add insult to injury, I was asked to pay 2000 yen for two slices of tomato that I ate and the wine that I didn’t drink.

The final piece de resistance? She actually had the gall to advise me to send a personal email to the boss to “thank him for the kind invitation” because “that’s basic business courtesy in Japan”.

To put things straight, I PAID for my torture that night. He should be thanking me instead for wasting my time on his shady party. And no one needs to lecture me on Japanese business customs because that was all I did for four years in Singapore. My thank-yous are reserved for those who deserve it, not some oily man bent on getting young girls drunk on cheap wine.

My tutor called me twice the next day after she realized that I didn’t heed her advice on sending the email to her boss. I didn’t pick up her calls and I probably won’t ever do so again in future. Half of me wanted to tell her she’s in for a shock, but watching her waxing lyrical over her glass of wine, it might already be too little too late.