Purses and Puke
I came home sick from work today. Basically I went out Saturday night and got completely shithammered. Sunday I was nursing a pretty severe hangover, but had mostly recovered by the evening. I then went out with the girlfriend of a guy I know here to a secret store which sells super-realistic knock-off purses. I bought two of them for my girlfriend for Christmas. (I’m not blowing any surprises here, I told her to send me requests for what type she wanted.) I got her a Chanel and a Prada, about $5,000 worth of purses, for about $120. The Chanel one even comes with a little card and booklet certifying its authenticity. These are perfect replicas.
Basically there are three grades of knock-offs here, A, B, and C. Type C are the obvious fakes, you can find these for sale in little carts on the street. Type B are better quality, you find them in the markets, but they’re still obvious fakes. Type A are the good ones, virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. These were type A. The location of the store is a well-kept secret because the government, as a member of the WTO and beholden to protect intellectual property, is cracking down on the really good fakes, thus the secrecy. (Baby steps. First purses, then DVD stores. But the black market will always meet the demand.)
After we bought the purses we went out for a quick meal of noodles and some kind of beef. It tasted quite good, nothing dodgy there. This morning I woke up with a sick feeling in my stomach. I went to work, made my morning coffee, and within an hour I was retching it back up. Maybe it was the ice in the drinks on Saturday night, which I am sure are made from tap water, or maybe it was the beef noodles, but something got to me. I just felt worse and worse so I took off, came home, drank a little Pepto Bismol, and took a nap. Now I feel okay. I just made a sandwich and seem to be tolerating it well, so hopefully it was just a temporary thing.
