Mexico Medical Student |

Saturday night I went out with a couple of friends from class. We went to a really nice bar called the Bali Bar which is owned by a company that clearly caters to Americans and upper-middle class locals (one of the other bars is called “Wall Street,” so even the names can be in English). I hadn’t been to any bar/club in forever (the closest I get is usually a God-honest pub, which hasn’t been all that long), so I was interested to see how it would go.

It was a great time, definitely worth doing more often. There are two downsides, however. The first is probably universal to all clubs, and that’s the noise. The music was never painfully loud, but from 9:30 to 12:30 it was a gradual crescendo from being able to hold a decent conversation over the music to nearly hemorrhaging my larynx from screaming and using broken sign language to ask, “Do you think we should go somewhere else?” The music mix was also interesting, ranging from unknown Latin artists (good ones), to 50-Cent (talentless thug) and Snoop Dog (good anytime).

The second problem is the cigarette smoke. I haven’t smoked in a long time, but I’m not one of those militant ex-smokers who feels the need to crusade at the faintest whiff of tobacco (as an aside, one year I bought the entirety of my Christmas gifts from saved Camel cash in college). However, I don’t want to smell smoke when I eat, and I really can’t stand that stale ashtray smell of old smoke or a spent cigarette–it’s disgusting. The smell on your clothes after a night on the town will almost always approach that, but it’s usually tolerable. The reek after a night out in Mexico is beyond description. Take the cheapest of the cheap American cigarettes, and that’s a frickin’ Havana Puro compared to the rotten cabbage leaves they use for the cheap tobacco here. Prisoners at San Quentin would spit these things out, they’re so awful (I know, I tried some of them way long ago). At this point, coming home with just Marlboro on me would be a blessing.

Actually a blessing was the foresight for me to stop after the free drink and 4 tequila shots. I was so needing a night out, I could have done quite a bit more and stayed out a lot longer, but prudence (or old age, you pick) kept me from going nuts and allowed me to salvage some of yesterday to get some studying and errands in.

I guess if there’s a point at all to this post, it’s to remember that it’s not where you go or what you do, it’s with whom. And even more importantly, it’s the fact you go out at all, even if it’s by yourself. I need to be reminded and prodded to fight my own inertia to get out and have fun sometimes, even though I never regret it afterwards.