Trial by Fire

The response I gave my cousin when she asked if I wanted to join her for lunch was, “Oh, I would love to but I can’t. We’re having a Fire Eating Competition at work.”

The Challenge

The night before, at a local bar in downtown Mountain View, we all gathered for drinks after our off-site meeting. I was enjoying my single-malt, cuing in every once in a while to the banter going on amongst my colleagues when I heard a distinctive voice above all others, “A hundred to one, you’re not gonna finish it.” As the Raptr office manager, my ears are trained to pay attention to everything going on.

The feeding frenzy circled in, “Do it, Pat! Bet ten and you’ll get a thousand bucks!” Pat’s response, “I don’t know if that’s enough incentive for me if it’s as spicy as you guys say it is. I don’t want to die.” He had the opportunity we all wanted and a few felt slighted by his nonchalant demeanor at the chance he was presented with, “What more of an incentive do you need than to beat Dennis?”  But that wasn’t enough. The comment that pushed him over; “it’s all mental, dude.”  That’s why I know you won’t do it. Keep in mind, I don’t hink anyone has ever seen Pat genuinely upset and this is the closest I’ve ever seen. He looked at Dennis, chuckled and said, You’re kinda pissing me off. He was in, a dollar to Dennis’ hundred.

That same night, Baz sent me an email with the address of the location and links that pertained to this restaurant, including a MythBusters segment on this restaurant’s Fire dishes. I prepped an email and we had 10 takers. At 12:30 pm we were off in 4 carloads to a reservation for eighteen, some went merely for entertainment purposes. We pulled up to a dinky shopping plaza in Fremont where our nemesis, My Thai, awaited us.

The Trial

We ordered the dishes that would put us to our doom along with a drink of whatever we thought would help us along in our struggle. Some ordered Thai Iced Tea, some ordered Coconut Milk, while Michael decided upon a new strategy: to numb himself to the heat with two beers. While waiting, we scoped out their Wall of Flame to look at who our predecessors were and more importantly, to locate Dennis’ photos amongst the many on the wall.

Kevin refused to watch the video clips as to not psych himself out. Dave brought a workout towel to quench his perspiration (even though he only ordered Mild, instead of Fire but we won’t mention that). Ranah brought his own decanter of water. I tried to convince myself that it was going to be so spicy that I was going to puke to psych myself out. And Aaron came equipped with a camera to capture our pain.

The Rules: 1) It can be any dish 2) The spiciness level has to be Fire 3) There can be no remnants left on the plate 4) It has to be finished in the allotted time frame

We had 40 minutes.

Ranah, Thomas, Kevin, Michael, and myself ordered curry with rice. Pat, Hacky, Tommy, Rico, and Wally ordered noodle dishes. The reason why it is important to state this fact: there is speculation that the noodle dishes are harder to finish.  O_O

Ranah annihilated his dish within less than 10 minutes for 1st place. Dennis stated, and I quote, “Wow. I’m impressed.” That’s huge. Michael’s booze-drinking technique landed him in 2nd place. Thomas trucked along not far behind without one whimper or grimace, coming in 3rd. Pat, with a hundred bucks on the line, triumphantly came in 4th. After a choking/coughing spell where I thought my eyes were going to get launched out of my head, I happily came in 5th. Finally, Kevin, with his hands shaking, and a sweat of determination on his brow, defiantly brought us in for the finish. The six of us smiled for a group Polaroid and were placed on the “Wall of Flame”.

The Aftermath

A few of us felt a bit of a high, some claimed hallucination. The Noodle Eaters were disgruntled and stated that the Curry Eaters had an advantage because the curry was easier to eat. We provided Pat as proof otherwise and surmised that the real reason for our success was the leadership and inspiration Ranah provided to our side of the table.

All in all, our fire eating competition was a success. We showed determination and pure mental will power and the willingness to try, successful or not. And plus, Monday’s topic of Breakfast Conversation was worth it: informative and graphic, as usual, it circulated around bowel movements and fiery sensations below the waist.