I Summon Up The Power Of Banana Clan

I never thought I’d say this about a Heineken party but Wednesday night was the best clubbing I’ve had since returning from England (August 2003).

Koflow and a local beatboxer set a blistering pace from early on with an excellent set. I’d gone with fairly low expectations of Herbaliser, not having bothered to listen to anything by them since 2001, when I bought and was underwhelmed by Very Mercenary, but how wrong I was. They started with Witness, which I never got sick of despite its ubiquity, and did a well-paced, diverse and consistently danceable set. Not the best I’ve ever seen but pretty much on par with a good Xen night, and that’s good enough for me. They also managed one of those rare “How did I not realize how great this was to dance to before??!” epiphanies for me with Get It Together, which never used to be one of my stand-out tracks on Ill Communication.

I loved the venue (Timberlux Centre) too. I’ve had great times at small beautiful Cocco Latte but miss having space to go a bit mental if the music so moves me. Cavernous converted-_________ venues encourage uninhibited and shambolic dancing, which is infinitely more fun than the self-conscious controlled dancing which is socially necessary in smaller spaces. Also, you don’t even need good music in order to enjoy your uninhibited shambolic dancing. I still have fond memories of prancing around wildly with Nick and Vish at a freezing New Year’s Eve outdoor party in Glasgow – to Azzido Da Bass.

It’s amusing how many of the same strangers I keep seeing at the musical events I go to. “That Malay guy with prominent cheekbones was at RNDM,” I said to Alec. “Yeah, that petite Indian girl was there too,” he said. I don’t recognise many Chinese faces except Joe’s though, we generally all look same to me. I’d like to start talking to all the familiar faces at some point.

Not Reading Literature Is The New Reading Literature

If I hadn’t seen it on the front page of the Straits Times, I’d have dismissed the article (headline “Literature winner read only 3 novels in 2 years”) about the Singaporean winner of the Angus Ross prize as a satire on the Singaporean education system. I was about to go into a rant about the unfuckingbelievableness of it all, and then found out that Nicholas had already done it for me, complete with characteristic acerbity and extracts of the article’s most offending statements.

All I will add is that I dearly hope Ms Candice Wan Shu Ting was misquoted several times by the journalist who interviewed her. If she was, she has all my sympathies for being portrayed as an astoundingly arrogant teenager who deserves to be spanked hard with every book of the Western literary canon (just to start with). If she wasn’t, if I ever meet her I don’t think I’ll be able to resist asking, ever so casually, “Read any good books lately?”

Give Us This Day Our Daily Beer

Outside the Joo Chiat KTV lounge where Alec was turning tricks last weekend, this humble altar moved us deeply and reminded us of the profound insights we can gain from other religions. We are seriously considering incorporating certain elements of this beautiful offering into our own worship.

Altar with beer mugs
Give that god a Tiger!

Happy Easter, everyone!

The Ayatollah Of Joo Chiat

Many of my friends have been asking how Alec’s job-seeking has been going. I am pleased to announce that on Sunday, he was given his first job in Singapore. It was in a KTV¹ lounge in Joo Chiat².

A friend of a friend needed a Caucasian for a TV commercial she was shooting (it’s only for a competition, not for normal TV), and since Joo Chiat is right up our alley, he agreed to help out.

The ad was for an expat magazine, and it focused on helping expats fit into Singapore culture. Alec’s role was to walk down the corridor, enter the KTV room and greet his Singaporean friends enthusiastically, after which they would all sing a Hokkien song with great gusto. During rehearsals, initial ideas of teaching Alec the whole song were hastily reassessed in favour of teaching Alec one line. But he took this line very seriously. Neither of us know what it meant, but by God he brought tears to my eyes.

He got paid a small token, but I’m pretty sure the neighbourhood hookers enjoy a more attractive remuneration package. This means I need to work on pimping him out a bit better, especially since he finally got his employment eligibility visa on Monday. After collecting it, he checked to see that everything was in order. It was, mostly, except for the bit where his nationality was “Iranian”. The mistake’s fixed now, but I’m still calling him Ayatollah for the rest of this week.

¹ May have once been used in an attempt to make karaoke look hip and trendy, but is now just a synonym for karaoke.
² A neighbourhood near where I live, with a burgeoning sex industry.

Everybody In The Club Get RNDM

The Attic at Mox is a thoroughly endearing venue, but I can’t come up with any trendy designspeaky reasons as to why. In fact, I have a feeling that what endears the place to me is its almost meticulous lack of trendy design. There are random lights from Mox, random rows of airplane seats along a wall, random stage at one end, random DJ booth on the other, bar with random selection of alcoholic beverages, and lots of randomly dressed indie types. In other words, it was the perfect place for RNDM.

Astreal’s set was marred by problems with their amps, which meant that some songs were played with only two out of three guitars. I still enjoyed it, but it meant less crashing guitar noise, which is never a good thing.

I had been looking forward to finally seeing the much-hyped Tiramisu, but ended up a little disappointed. Apart from the undeniable showmanship of their frontman, there was little I found distinctive or interesting about their songs. Sort of a mix between Built To Spill and Hefner, but without any of what I like about either band. I’d still watch them again, though. Rizman Putra’s eyeballs fascinate me.

After Tiramisu I suggested we take a break for dinner, whereupon Ida suggested we eat the surprise birthday cake she had brought me. :)

I didn’t manage to see many of the later bands on the schedule, for the unusual reason (unusual for me, anyway) that I got caught up socializing. Downstairs in Mox with my childhood fags, upstairs in the attic telling Tessa how much I miss the life she’s living now, here a random, there a random, everywhere a random.

We’d originally intended to leave at midnight for Grandmaster Flash at Zouk, but then Poptart started spinning and there was no way I was going to leave while Sonic Youth’s 100% was playing. As one song led to another, I decided that there was no point leaving somewhere where I was having such a great time for somewhere which almost inevitably enrages me.

Indie club nights aren’t any cooler than 80s nights; they’re all about jumping around haphazardly to songs which were staples of your youth, and screaming “I AM THE RESURRECTION AND I AM THE LIFE!” along with everyone else. Actual dancing is an afterthought, and actual good dancing is virtually impossible. Not that any of this is really relevant while you’re going apeshit to Idioteque. I had a blast.

Zouk Off

The most positive emotion I can usually summon up for Zouk is extreme indifference, but that changed on Friday night, which was one of the worst clubbing experiences of my life. (Not the worst. I reserve that rare honour for the Limelight on Shaftesbury Avenue in London. If you’ve been there, you’ll understand, if you haven’t, don’t.)

I have never seen a gig get as technically fucked up as the Chicks On Speed gig did. The moment they started it was obvious there was something wrong with the sound. Their vocals were getting drowned by their music even though they were virtually shouting. Throughout the gig, they kept begging the sound people to turn up the vocals, to no avail.

The gig was interrupted numerous times by assorted technical failures. Each time this happened, the club’s DJ would start playing music while the problems were being resolved. Fair enough, but the group shouldn’t have had to scream repeatedly to him (on their too-soft mikes, now getting drowned out by the DJ’s music) to stop every time they were ready to resume.

After the show had drawn to a screeching halt for the second time, the audience had halved. This was unsurprising. Even the way they usually sound on record, Chicks On Speed are possibly too much for anyone with limited musical horizons to stomach. On a sound system that wasn’t able to handle them (unlike the Esplanade’s, where even Tortoise’s loudest, most discordant moments were completely bearable), they could only have sounded pleasant to people who regularly take pleasure in abrasive noise. Thankfully, a fair number of us were in attendance. We stayed and cheered them on, and they made the best they could out of a bad situation.

We headed to Phuture after this, and were joined by two friends of mine who had come along just to wish me a happy birthday. We started dancing, but rapidly became bored with the bland, unimaginative hip-hop that was being played. Phuture was less crowded than I ever remember it being on a Friday night. Perhaps people who know better have finally deserted it, now that places like Cocco Latte are going from strength to strength.

Bored, Alec and my two friends went to get drinks. At a bar that wasn’t in the least bit crowded, Alec was still waiting for his drink fifteen minutes later. My two friends weren’t doing well either. After inquiring about their drink orders, they were told that they hadn’t made any. Given that they had used up their drink coupons on these mythical orders, this was rather dismaying. While discussing this at length with the bar staff, my friends were assertive but never in the least bit disorderly or physically aggressive. Nevertheless, on his way to escort them out of the club, one of the security personnel shouldered me aside and trod heavily on my foot.

To cut a long tedious story short, it took them nearly an hour of wrangling with the management to get their drinks, after which time no one was in the mood to actually drink them, or stay in the club. Since the music in Phuture had continued to be achingly dull, leaving was no hardship.

It was almost amusing. Benny and Alec (on their first visit to Zouk) already knew my views on Zouk before we went there, but once we were in I didn’t actually have to say anything to try and convince them further. The experience spoke for itself.

I’m Shorty, It’s My Birthday

As I mentioned before, I’ll be out and about this weekend following 50 Cent’s command, which will be great after two spent in confinement. (To anyone who’s just surfed over from Mr Miyagi, I’m not Zoe Tay, I just had chicken pox).

So if you happen to be at the Tortoise gig tonight, or watching Chicks On Speed tomorrow night at Zouk, or at Mox on Saturday for RNDM, or Zouk for Grandmaster Flash after that, come wish me happy birthday!

Perhaps you wonder how you’ll recognise me, given that I don’t have a picture of myself on this blog. Easy – just look out for a hot girl, funkily dressed and surrounded by adoring men. That’s not me. But it might well be my friend Ida or my friend Kelly, so then you can ask them to point me out.

Like A Poussin With Its Head Cut Off

Okay, so after a couple of conflicting medical opinions, it now appears I probably do have chicken pox, although the antivirals I’ve been taking have rendered it incredibly wimpy – poussin pox, if you will. It looks like I’ll have to miss work till the end of this week so that other people in my office don’t end up doing the chicken dance too, but I really can’t see these wimpy pox surviving the weekend. Alec is still considered infectious because of a lousy two (TWO?!) spots which haven’t scabbed over yet, but I hope I’ll be able to see him quite soon. My mum continues to show no signs of infection but she’s not out of the woods yet.

So apart from occasionally channelling Lady Macbeth and whiling away the afternoons with a warm sleepy cat on my belly, I have no other real agenda for the coming week apart from deciding how I want to celebrate my birthday the week after.

Very pleasantly, my problem right now is choosing between an excess of options. The day itself is sorted because of the Tortoise gig at night. Surprisingly, even Zouk has a half-interesting lineup for that weekend, with Chicks On Speed on Friday and Grandmaster Flash on Saturday. And lastly, Tiramisu and Astreal (my new favourite local band, sorry Observatory, I’ll still support you but walls of crashing sound with ethereal vocals by a hot girl playing an oversized turquoise guitar straight out of the Jetsons kinda push my buttons a bit more) will be playing at the first RNDM night at Mox, also on Saturday.

With so much to do, I’m reconsidering my original idea of just throwing a house party, simply because I don’t see how I can fit one in.

The Sky Hasn’t Fallen Just Yet

This isn’t much of an update, but here goes anyway.

On Saturday evening, I noticed an outbreak of spots I didn’t remember having on Friday. For most people in my situation this would be clear evidence of chicken pox, but for someone like me who has lived my whole life with eczema (except for those four blessed alabaster years in England; now I think about it, I really should have given in to Alec’s miniskirt requests while they were still a viable option), it could just be a exceptionally bad skin day.
Read More “The Sky Hasn’t Fallen Just Yet”

I Don’t Feel Like Chicken Pox Tonight

I suppose a fall had to come some time.

Alec has come down very unexpectedly with the chicken pox, and the two people he spends the most time with in my family – my mum and I – are the ones who haven’t had it yet.

Yesterday my mum and I went on a frustrating trek to get post-exposure treatment for ourselves, where all but one of the doctors we went to weren’t aware that there was even such a thing as post-exposure prophylaxis for chicken-pox. (We knew this because my uncle used to work at the Communicable Disease Centre.)

Finally, in a clinic near work I found a doctor who was aware that vaccination could be used, but wasn’t sure about antiviral medication. I gave him the relevant materials which my uncle had emailed us, and after studying them he decided that the best treatment for me would be antivirals, although for someone with my level and time of exposure to the virus there’s no guarantee anything will work. Meanwhile, my uncle had decided that the best treatment for my mum would be vaccination. And then they found out that aborted foetuses are used in the vaccine, so she now refuses to take it, and will just wait and see if she gets the disease.

I’m worried about Alec, who is alone in his flat with no one around to check on him, and cut off from his job-seeking because he doesn’t have Internet access. I don’t want my mum to get chicken pox because she’s 62 and I’m worried about complications (which can be pretty bad for adults). I don’t want to get chicken pox because for the first time in a while I was actually planning to not have a shitty birthday this year, and now the uncertainty of it all means I can’t really plan anything until it will possibly be too late to plan anything. Also, any disruption in my pupillage may fuck up my trip to England in June and attendance at Tamara’s wedding. Also, there is the trifling matter of the entire swing dance camp Alec may have infected over the weekend, including two pregnant women and a 91-year-old. It’s possible they’re already immune, but he called the studio to warn them anyway.

Obviously there are bigger problems in the world than these, but that doesn’t make them any more fun to deal with right now. Which is why I could only manage a wry laugh when I found a new link to my site from sockparade this morning, with this commentary:

Supergirl.
Found by a pal when looking for Ayn Rand quotes. She doesn’t refer to herself as Supergirl or anything, that’s just what we called her until we knew her name was Michelle. She’s been to more countries and done more great things in her life than I could even think up. She has a ridiculously huge knowledge base of good music and good reads which makes anyone a cool cat in my book. Why do people from Singapore have such interesting lives? She doesn’t write as consistenly as Dooce but read this and you’ll be hooked.

I’m extremely flattered by the kind words, but I can’t say I’m feeling that super right now. :(