In life there are two types of skills. First up: the ones you possess that people use in their day-to-day job. Using PowerPoint or Excel, translating French into Russian, performing open heart surgery or finding a loophole in the law that gets someone off the hook who was caught speeding after drinking enough bourbon to kill a small elephant. The second are those you’re born with: the ability to run quicker than the guy who sits next to you at work, singing in tune or touching your nose with the tongue. These are generally fun and good for parties but are in general, useless in the real world. The third are the important type. The ability to do relatively mundane things that most people can’t do at all or at least not as well. And the importance of doing them is that they save the same two priceless commodities that are worth their weight in gold in the corporate world: time and money.

You know what they are. Fixing a small fault in a car, getting your computer to work, putting up some shelves, using a credit card to get into your house when you’ve locked yourself in or knowing what you need to do to remain in a lower tax bracket. People who can do this stuff are valuable people, make no mistake about it. Because over the course of a lifetime they will save you endless hours and countless dollars by possessing these skills. You need to befriend these people. Go in search of these people. Stop them in the street if you have to. Offer them a small bribe to become your friend if that’s what it takes.

I’m one of these people. I have a god-given talent. I don’t possess any of the skills mentioned above but I can make a mean Caipiroska. That’s right. A Caipiroska is to cocktails what Facebook is to websites. Someone tells you about it, you have a go, you like it, you’re hooked. You may flirt with other cocktails just as you may visit other websites but you keep coming back because you know that there’s no substitute for that cool, sweet yet slightly acidic, lime-based nectar.

Cool, refreshing, tasty and appealing at any time of day. The Caipiroska is the mother of all cocktails.

And believe me when I say that making a good one is a skill. Remember that quote from Napoleon Dynamite when he tells us that “girls like guys with skills.?” He’s damn right. They do and most girls like cocktails so serve them a good one and you’ll be in their good books. You can be the star attraction at someone else’s party, the good host at your own, the guy who brings an uncomfortable or boring situation to life through a few cuts of a knife, mixes of a spoon and crushes of a handful of ice cubes. Making a Caipiroska costs less than a dollar to make so think about that the next time you’re charged 10 bucks for one in a bar just because Justin Timberlake is playing in the background and the bargirl who mixed it for you has a nice ass.

Ho to make the perfect Caipiroska:

• Slice one and a half limes into quarters (6 pieces) per cocktail and place them in a cocktail glass.
• Add two table spoons of Demerara sugar. White sugar can be used but the end product won’t be quite the same.
• Wash your hands. Using your thumbs and index fingers, try to extract all the juice from the pieces of lime until most of the sugar is moist from the lime juice.
• Use a spoon to mix the sugar further until the sugar becomes like a thick syrup.
• Take 6-8 ice cubes and crush them. If you have an ice-crusher (manual or mechanical) great, if not, place them in a tea-towel over a hard surface and bang them with a hammer until they’re crushed.
• Pour the crushed ice onto the sugar/lime until the glass is filled ¾ of the way up.
• Fill the glass up with chilled vodka, stirring vigorously whilst you do it. This should be about the equivalent of two standard shots, or roughly 50 ml.
• Stir the bottom of the glass whilst you drink it to avoid the sugar settling at the bottom too much.