Soju, or, if you ain't cheating you ain't trying.

Last Thursday we had the traditional dinner that we do with our Korean customers during a successful installation. This usually consists of a feast at a restaurant nearby to the range paid for and hosted by my company but directed and chosen by the Koreans.

This installation we went to a Chinese restaurant, mostly because one of the guys is quite old and the Koreans wanted to find a place with tables and chairs. The feast was great and I'll have a separate post on the food (which you may have already seen), but this is about the drinking, which is an integral part to a Korean dinner.

Dinner drinking starts with one of the engineers breaking out the two bottles of Johnny Walker Black that one of my engineers bought in duty-free and toasts all around. Then begins the low level individual drinking.

In this phase there are shot glasses placed on the table, but fewer glasses than people. These are strategically placed along with a couple of bottles of soju in the midst of about 6 people. There are about 3 shot glasses and the rule at this point is that you never pour your own drink, you can only poor a drink for someone else. So someone pours you a shot and you down it. But then you have to pass the glass to someone else in your local group and then they take a shot. The only real requirement is that just about everyone gets a shot at this point and the senior people from my company make sure and toast the senior Korean. He is only drinking scotch at this point and when you exchange a toast with him you just pour him a sliver.

So of course I am participating at this point, but I'm getting a little more attention than everyone else at my group. This is because I am the "target", the new project manager, and my 'staff' and the Koreans are conspiring to make this my worst nightmare. But they are backing off and as the food comes the pouring slows down and it is only between course that more shots are foisted on me. Also the rules begin to change. Now when someone brings you a glass, you have to down it and immediately pour them a shot and they down it. It looks like this:
Random Korean staff pours me a shot of soju. I am bound to accept gracefully from the Koreans, but at the end of the dinner (and I'm not sure we got to the end because the last course was noodles, when I think it should have been fruit).
Once I've taken the shot, I hand him the glass and pour for him. I have to pur with my right hand only and only with my left hand over my heart as in the picture.

Nice custom, unless you are the target and there are 13 Koreans trying to exchange shots with you and only one of me. As the courses wound down they were lining up and Koreans I hadn't even met were insisting on pouring me a shot. At this point I made them tell me their name and what system they were working on in English before I would let the pour. Here's what the table looked like near me before the serious drinking started. All the bottles in this picture are empty, brown is beer bottle, green is soju bottle and tupperware is tea.
The dishes in the bottle line are the typical korean meal accompaniements; kimshee, raw onions and garlic, more kimshee made of stuff other than cabbage and the really hot kimshee.

I don't know how much I drank, more than 30 shots. But I cheated. I did drink every one of the shots poured for me, but one (I put that one in Burnsed's soup), but I made sure that I would walk out under my own power without ralphing. I did manage to carry that off as I walked the 6 or 7 blocks back to the hotel under my own power to the amazement of all. I didn't barf until after I got back to my room (probably saved me from alcohol poisoning) and tried to drink a bottle of gatorade. I hate to say it, but as I've gotten older I have to resort to tricks that I would never have tried when I was younger if I want to keep up with foolish drinking. Extra points to anyone who can guess what tricks I used.