Flightster

Lemon Acid Demon Water

• by Colin Wright
• on November 15th, 2010
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I slowly take a sip, but I already know what to expect.

It’s going to burn. A lot.

I’ll feel it the most on the tip of my tongue, where I’m already scalded from my last encounter with this particular beverage.

The last time I looked in the mirror, I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue to assess the damage and revealed a pinkish moon-like surface, craters etched into the taste buds, surface-nerves demolished by the intensity of the tartness I had come into contact with.

The horrific tongue-scape was caused by this product I’m holding in my hand. This stupid drink. This lemon acid demon water.

And yet here we are again, making that same mistake.

I try to swallow it quickly and reduce the damage caused to my lips/teeth/gums, but some droplets escape and scramble over to the taste-receptors on the side of my tongue, causing me to do a full-body cringe as my brain gets the message (content of the message: ‘WTF is this idiot drinking?! Ahhhh!!!’).

After jerking around like a marionette in a tornado, my mouth puckers and my lips pull back, air is sucked in between my teeth making a tell-tale ‘oooooosh’ sound before I shout ‘UGH’ and resolve not to take another sip.

But I will. And it’s not my fault, it’s my stupid expectations.

Here’s the thing: the grocery store closest to my apartment ran out of Red Bull a few days ago, and I’ve got stuff to do.

As a rule I try not to get addicted to anything, but when I’m in transit I let my guard down a bit so that I can make use of whatever chemicals might be handy to help me stay conscious long enough to pass through customs/keep driving/not pet too many stray dogs while in a drowsy stupor.

What this means in practice is that I generally avoid caffeine – except for the occasional cup of green tea – but when I was on the Way Below Status Quo Smackdown Road Trip over the summer, I got hooked on the energy drinks that allowed me to make the 14-hour overnight drives from one city to the next (while staying conscious long enough to consume large quantities of alcohol with fellow bloggers and friendly readers when I arrived).

I dropped the habit cold turkey when I finished the road trip, but then it came back with gusto when I decided it was time to launch a trio of new projects upon arriving in Bangkok.

Now here I am, stuck in that same cycle, needing a bit of caffeine to jump-start my brain and finding the shelves empty of Thailand’s upper of choice.

Not cool, shelves. Guess I’ll have to pick up the off-brand.

MISTAKE.

The thing that most people in the Western world (myself included) don’t realize until they really start traveling is that the reliable supply chains we enjoy (that keep our shelves consistently stocked 99% of the time) don’t exist everywhere.

I dealt with this shock first in Argentina, when I found that on certain days of the week it would be nearly impossible to find an ATM that wasn’t out of money.

That’s right, an ATM that simply ran out of cash. Nothing left. No way to get anything from it. And no one to complain to.

After the first one failed to deliver and gave me a head’s up that its stockpile was cashed, I merrily moved on to the next, certain that it must have been a fluke and that I just happened to pick the one bad egg in the batch.

After the tenth ATM proudly declared itself to be empty, I was nearly gnawing on my debit card in frustration, angrily muttering that this is not the way a developed nation should work.

But that’s the thing, there are many developed nations that don’t have a failure-proof supply chain set up like we have in the States. Hell, even in the States things disappear from the shelves from time to time, and I’m sure the ATMs will run out every once in a while, we just don’t see it very often because there are more people employed to protect us from frustration.

But not here in Bangkok. Despite all the awesomeness that can be found hereabouts, ATMs run out of money, street carts run out of food and the frickin’ grocery store runs out of my favorite energy drink while the other brand sits merrily next to the empty, un-restocked gap, looking at me and saying “c’mon bud, you can’t win if you don’t play” (I’m not sure why off-brand energy drinks sound like robotic slot machines in my mind, but they do).

So I played. And I lost. And here I am, destroying myself with mediocre beverages and trying to be productive while shouting to the four winds (and my readers) about how hard life is when you can’t procure the correct drug-drink for your mood.

I guess my point is that you should keep your expectations malleable and your addictions to a minimum while traveling, because if you don’t all you’ll have when you get home are a bunch of shattered pieces of expectation and withdrawal symptoms from un-fulfilled addictions.

*sip*

God that tastes bad.

Colin Wright

Colin Wright is a minimalist, branding expert and serial entrepreneur. While running his blog Exile Lifestyle ,his branding studio Colin Is My Name and his e-publishing business ebookling. Colin travels the world (moving to a new country every 4 months), meeting up with amazing people, giving talks (to audiences ranging from tech industry professionals to college students to Catholic school girls) and hunting down new and interesting experiences.