Jigger and Pony


This evening I went for a drink after work at Jigger And Pony, a cocktail bar on Amoy Street. It was happy hour when I arrived, which meant a mixed drink would be only fifteen dollars. That isn’t the bargain it sounds like, because after you’ve had one, you’ll have another, and before you know it you have to be scooped off the floor and poured into your pyjamas, a broken (drunken) man.
And fifteen dollars isn’t "only" fifteen dollars. That’s still a fairly hefty wedge. Then again, by storing my bottle of gin on its side in the fridge, I’ve lost quite a large amount of booze through leakage, which suggests I should leave alcohol to the professionals, shut up, and just pay the price when I have to drink.

Anyway, there were two or three different gin based cocktails, one made with Tanqueray and one with Beefeater, and I figured the second would probably be horrible and plumped for the first, a delicate concoction with lavender, in a champagne saucer. This wasn’t bad (not as good as a Southside, in my humble, gin-sodden opinion) but the flavour was probably ruined by me hamfistedly stuffing spicy potato crisps into my mouth while I drank.

Always eat before you drink. And if you can’t eat before you drink, make sure there’s something to eat which won’t overpower the flavour of what you’re drinking.

After the gin, I should have gone straight home and straightened up, but instead I necked a bottle of beer and then rushed off to find my wife and child, even though at that point they were just blithely wandering through City Hall MRT station, a couple of miles away. So I could have stayed behind and done my liver and wallet a bit more damage.

When I finally caught up with them and got to tote my daughter through Chinatown, it was to yet another strange musical accompaniment. To celebrate Mid Autumn Festival, tonight they were singing a Mandarin song to the tune of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus". That’s slightly stranger (and more upsetting) than the Swedish cover version I once heard (sung in a mournful Scandinavian voice that suggests the child is watching his parents’ marriage be destroyed by that lusty Father Christmas), but what made it harder to stand was at ten p.m., just after we’d settled the baby, when the yodelling started, and continued at full force for the next five minutes.

If you can tell me what right anyone has to yodel, when they’re not halfway up an Alp, please tell me. Otherwise I might spontaneously combust in a combination of rage and confusion.

I suppose the real problem here is that two drinks is just not enough. Either drink from 6pm until 6am, or not at all.


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