Feeling Old in a Club

Written by Ruey of The Ruey Review
Updated 20 July 2012

Cindies, the notoriously trashy club in Cambridge

Last week a very good friend from my undergrad and banking days came to visit me in Cambridge. He was a very shy guy in university but then he later became a club-dwelling party-animal, some may even call him a “club-rat”. Anyways, he was very very excited about the notion of heading to a night club even in a medieval town like Cambridge so I took him out to a trashy night club famous for its unpleasant smell and skanky, classless under-aged girls. The club is called “Cindies”. However, from this point the ridiculing of this crass lame excuse for a night out shall stop as any further comments can be interpreted as insults on my dear friend considering the amount of fun and excitement he had on that night.

This story is about me feeling incredibly old at a night club filled with young trashy girls. I am sure many guys my age, or even many older than me would be excited about the idea of heading to a club full of extremely young girls in skimpy outfits. However I am not one of them. Young trashy girls, or even young girls for that matter, just don't arouse me the way a sheep can arouse a male Kiwi.

Putting the issue of the quality of females aside, I am at the age where I realized the reality of a club NOT being a good place FOR ME to meet women. I envy the people enjoy meeting members of the opposite sex but I am not one of them. This is because I can never hear what anyone is saying with the music so loud. Also, because I simply lack what many people refer to as... "game". Even when I encounter females who try to pick me up (Yes, even I can attract women, clubs do tend to lack lighting ok?), I feel very intimidated. After all, they are strangers in the dark.

The one thing that made me feel very out-of-place and extremely old was the MUSIC. I realized after a while that I recognized only 20% of the songs played in the club. Moreover, these 20% that I recognized I didn't even know their titles and artists. I had only heard those songs from the previous nights out, which I do perhaps once every one or two months. I cannot even tell you which songs I heard because I really don't know them.

So, that was my grumpy old man's rant on a club that youngsters go to. There are people who can continue enjoy clubbing going into their 30's. Unfortunately I am not one of them. I am too old to be anticipating "getting lucky" at a night club and too old to be recognizing what music is "in" these days. Yes, I'm a hater and I'm old and grumpy, bite me.

Punting on the River Cam

Written by Ruey of The Ruey Review
Updated 27 March 2012

“Punting is not as easy as it looks. As in rowing, you soon learn how to get along and handle the craft, but it takes long practice before you can do this with dignity and without getting the water all up your sleeve.”

— Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (1889)

Punting is darn difficult. There, you’ve been warned. If you think you can just take a lady friend to the River Cam without any prior punting experience and impress them with a romantic time on the water, you’re in for an embarrassing Fail moment. First, it is very difficult to punt straight, and it is not easy to fix the direction of your punt as it requires a lot of strength. The punt pole has much more width and weight than you’d expect which makes it hard to move in or pull out of the water. This means you are very likely to get yourself trapped in circling in the same spot and get your sleeves wet during that time. Lastly, but very importantly, while you struggle to move the punt the way you want it to move, you need to at the same time avoid collision with other punts.

Lebanese Food, FRIGG'N AWESOME!!

Written by Ruey of The Ruey Review
Updated 10 January 2012

This place was frigg’n AWESOME!! That pretty much sums up my piece about my first Lebanese meal.

Near the end of 2011 I had the privilege of meeting my friend’s boyfriend, who is a Lebanese. We were deciding what to eat for dinner, and instead of heading to China town like I always do when meeting up with my Taiwanese friends in London (to clarify, Taiwanese food is not Chinese food, they also have Japanese and Korean restaurants in China town right?), I suggested we head for some Lebanese food. Nassim, my new Lebanese friend was very excited and enthusiastic about taking us to try the healthy, and tasty food of his homeland.

Maroush, the name of the restaurant, I ain't lying

For this meal we headed to a tube station called Edgware Road. Beware, there are two very close stations of the same name!!  I don’t know how the London city planners allowed such ridiculous error to occur. After having gone to the wrong Edgware Road station, we went to the Edgware Road station on the Bakerloo line. We were in Arab town.

The restaurant was called Maroush, and according to Nassim’s friends, it is the best Lebanese restaurant in London. This claim was supported by the near 30 minutes queue before we were seated. The food did not disappoint and was well worth the wait!!

European-Living: Underdeveloped and Needs Improvement

Written by Ruey of The Ruey Review
Updated 28 December 2011

Europe is the origin of the Renaissance where mankind took a leap in scientific knowledge. This advancement still plays a large role as a basis for our current understanding of the world. England is the home of the Industrial Revolution which changed the way we produce materials, gain and accumulate wealth, thus improving the living standards of a major global population up to this day. So I came to this continent anticipating a high-quality lifestyle based on advance technology and development.

I found my positive enthusiasm largely misguided. The most important parts of any human being’s life are to eat, drink, sleep, urinate, and defecate. “What goes in must come out”. Thus shitting is just as important as eating. In this article I would like to express my frustration with the lack of utility development in the European shit-taking infrastructures, specifically, the lack of the anus-wash on European toilets.

Fig.2- Very nice toilet from Taiwan,
with proper anus-wash on its side

Fig.1- Nice wash room isn't it?
    nice because the toilet washes your ass.

Back in East Asia, after taking a big soft sticky steamy lump of shit, with anus-wash, I can clean my butt-hole within minutes. All it takes is 5 to 10 seconds of gentle warm water rinsing of the poo-poo hole, which the anus-wash does for you with just a press of the button, and a little hula-hooping exercise with your waist to get all corners of the “daisy” circle cleaned and you’re done. In the United Kingdom, it can take me up to 20 minutes to get the sensitive area cleaned especially when the fecal matters just expelled from my body have a high level of wetness. This is the Twenty-First Century, why in the world do I have to wipe my own ass? The worst thing is, if you wipe too hard, you may injure the sensitive, vulnerable area, and if you clean with laziness, the itch that you’re going to have for the rest of the day will also be unbearable. For the purpose of writing this piece I even found an online health forum where suffering men discuss related anal health issues. I say don’t go to the doctor’s, just buy toilets with anus-wash from either Taiwan or Japan, or move there. I have seen though, some efforts to try and resolve such problems with non-Asian ways in continental Europe as shown in figure.3. However, with this device, which is separate from the actual toilet, you cannot easily control the warmth of the water, you have to move and squat over the thing, and with the direction of the water going forward you’re going to get your balls covered in shit! Why would the Europeans come up with such real-estate consuming solution anyway? Just buy the more advanced and civilized toilets from the Far East I tell you.

Fig.3- Very poor attempt to save their ass holes  by continental Europeans 

Fig.4- Nice bathroom for a  student dormitory?
Nay, it sucks because one needs to wipe
his/her own ass after taking a dump here. 

I say the Europeans must at times drop their pride and accept the fact that they are in some aspects of living inferior to non-European peoples. Adopt the advanced East Asian ways of taking care of their shit after taking a shit. This will both improve the lives of those living in Europe and the visits of those who came to the continent to enjoy other aspects of the European lifestyle and culture.