The Black Forest Of Katong

There I was, standing awkwardly outside Katong Mall at 11 pm on Boxing Day, having just been told by the mall security guard and the 7-11 staff that they were absolutely sure there was no Black Forest Bar in the basement, and in fact that the entire building was closed.

At this point I was sorely tempted to go home, since the wisdom of scouring the dodgy bars of Katong (basically, that would be all the bars of Katong, and there are lots of them) in search of a random ang moh I only knew on the Internet seemed debatable to say the least. Also, the ah peks in the coffee shop across the road were giving me curious glances, even though I was dressed quite conservatively because of a party I’d attended earlier. Also, I had a geography teacher in school who we used to call Black Forest for puerile reasons (it wasn’t racial), and the words still make me giggle.

So there I was. And then suddenly, I spotted a sheet of paper stuck to a wall, with Black Forest Bar and a down arrow scribbled on it, and a little stick figure turntablist. I followed the arrow into the bowels of the building, and when I heard Dizzee Rascal in the distance I knew I’d finally found the right place.

I was a little shy, because it’s always weird meeting an Internet person in real life, and I didn’t drink enough to really reduce my inhibitions either. This was, however, a good thing when Jacob played The Knife’s Heartbeats, because that always makes me imagine thrashing around in suffocating black velvet. Anyway, Jacob and his friends were a lot of fun. I wasn’t just impressed by his record-playing choices, but also his karaoke choices, which included Lemon Tree and It’s A Small World After All. This is clearly an ang moh who truly understands the joy of karaoke.

I’ve never sung karaoke in a bar area, just the tacky faux-opulent private rooms in lounges, but I wasn’t spared. After telling J my number one song for the year was Toxic, I later found it cued up on the karaoke system and the mike thrust into my hand. I did my best but without the air stewardess uniform I felt like a phony. I followed this by mauling half of An Jing with my speech-defect-quality Chinese, and belting out All Out Of Love with Joe Ng. The thought crossed my mind at some point that I was singing karaoke with a voice that had been played on John Peel. My geekiness deepens by the day.

Oh, and Black Forest Bar is unbelievable. It has a pond with actual fish in it, and fake greenery everywhere, and it’s almost completely empty. Alec, the next time you come here I’ve got another so-shit-it’s-lovely bar to take you to!

Exactitude

After the ang moh food overload of Christmas, we headed to Joo Chiat today for belachan chicken, claypot seafood beancurd, sweet potato leaves, and, my favourite, fried lard with a bit of tau chio fish on the side. There’s been a lot of talk lately about Geylang spreading its Tentacles of Vice into Joo Chiat, but I didn’t really notice any more sleazy KTV bars and massage parlours there than there always have been.

However, the shop across the street from Joo Heng was called “Purplish Trading”, which made me happy.

The Mitre Experience

It takes a special sort of person to appreciate the Mitre Hotel, which is why the only people I’ve ever taken there have been the Orgers and Alec. Last week a second Orger outing was organized by Don and Yen, who hadn’t had the “Mitre experience” yet but were determined to before the place either got a) more popular or b) razed to the ground by order of the public safety powers that be. And of course, as we knew they would, they loved it. (Read Yen’s love here.)

We perched on the dusty couches, sipped our sub-$4 beers, and talked about ghosts. (Terry and Don had just seen Shutter and were impressed.) At first we were the only ones there. Later, a couple swam into view, apparitions emerging from the black deeps beyond the porch lights. At some point a dog started howling in the distance.

I forgot to bring my camera this time, so these pictures are from when I took Alec there. They’ve been left fairly dark and dingy rather than sexed up too much in Photoshop, but still don’t even come close to evoking the atmosphere of the place – they lack the creepy walk up the driveway, the smell of musty decay, the feel of the brittle upholstery crunching beneath you as you sit down and crane your neck at the gaping holes in the ceiling.

Interior of Mitre Hotel bar
From the bar, looking towards the door
Mitre Cat
On the wall next to the bar
Old Door Grill
A close-up of the door grill, including the pack of stray chairs which lurk outside

Up Where He Belongs

I didn’t vote for Will in Pop Idol 1 because I was running a debating tournament on the day of the finals. I couldn’t vote for Fantasia in American Idol 3 because duh, I wasn’t in America. I’ve never voted in an election in Singapore because until recently my MP was the Prime Minister and my constituency was walkoverland. So tonight I took all the votes I’d never cast in my life and threw them all at Taufik.

Taufik Batisah, for the amount of money I spent voting for you tonight I could have bought a brand new Devendra Banhart CD at HMV’s usual exorbitant import price BUT IT WAS ALL SO WORTH IT BECAUSE YOU WON, CONGRATULATIONS TAUFIK BATISAH!!!!!

NON-MALAYS FOR TAUFIK, BIG UP YOURSELVES!!!

[The final was actually rather bad. Both of them seemed worn out, and who could blame them. I would be worn out too if you expected me to sing The Reason and All For Love and look as if I was enjoying it. Sylvester was unmitigatedly terrible on It’s My Life, Taufik’s voice sounded strained for the first time ever on the new song, and oh yes, the new song is really lousy.]

But anyway. In every Idol competition I’ve watched, my favourite has won, which is nice. It must suck to lose. Then again, I’ve always thought it must also suck to appear on national television doing incredibly moronic smirks and juvenile rock posturing, but apparently that didn’t seem to bother Sylvester much. As much as I cuss and swear along the way about the superficiality of the Idol public, it does usually seem to get it right in the end. Yay for talent!

This Is KNN

My Civil Procedure paper was wild. Two fiendishly long questions and 40 short questions in 3 hours, each one of which involved frenetic flipping and re-flipping through voluminous notes and statutes, with an exhausted mind that had gone completely blank. I don’t know why anyone even bothers with extreme sports when they could be getting their adrenaline rushes from doing death-defying examinations in Civil Procedure.

So anyway, after an indulgent dinner at Michelangelo (Me: This panna cotta is so wonderful, it’s solid cream! Everyone else: Michelle, that just sounds really gross), I was reading IS on the bus home and found finally, finally, a DJ at Zouk who I’d bother leaving the house for! Meat Katie! He was there last Saturday. Kan ni na.¹

I have to echo Laces’ plea for Zouk to bring in some interesting DJs and stop being so goddamn pedestrian. I want Diplo and Michael Mayer too. Also DJ/Rupture. Also Akufen. Amon Tobin. The Scratch Perverts. And world peace.

As I do every now and then, I was surfing around to find out how London is, and found out that DJ/Rupture was at 93 Feet East with Supersoul on Sunday, Ty is at Cargo tomorrow, and Eclectic Method are doing weekly video mashups at Herbal.

Again I am reminded of my grim theory that if the amount I saw and did over four years in London is anything to go by, the amount I’ll have missed this past year and over the next six is just…depressing. Then why, you shriek in aggravation, do you keep CHECKING UP ON WHAT YOU’RE MISSING, MASOCHIST? The answer is: because one of my biggest fears is ignorance. I would rather know what’s going on where things actually happen, even as it makes me chafe at my limited options here, than escape back to London years from now and be completely out of touch with everything that used to excite me so much.

In the meantime, I’m sitting at my computer listening to Amon’s Solid Steel Presents and shouting KAN NI NA to a funky beat.

¹ Definition here

A Taufik/Olinda Final, Please

  • Sylvester was bizarrely bad this week, it felt like watching a car crash. After junking his previous identity (which I actually liked) for a less radical hairstyle and a lot of gummy smiles (while he was about it he might as well have junked the pathetic rocker poses which no one above the age of 12 should find cool, but alas, he didn’t), this week he seemed to have completely lost grip even of that second tenuous identity, and instead just tried to be everything to everyone.

    I mean, Music Of The Night? (Or should I say, Der Music Of Der Night?) Has he heard Michael Ball singing it? And if he has, why did he even think for a second that he could? I haven’t cringed so much since Christopher Lee’s Josh Groban attempt, and even then at least Christopher had the right type of voice and good diction, neither of which seemed within Sly’s reach in this performance. His other two were less embarrassing but still stunningly mediocre compared to what I have come to expect from him. Boyzone’s Picture Of You??!! Ozzy Osborne run for covaaaaa, this man is truly a bad boy rocker. Kiss From A Rose is a nice song, but so hard to sing well that even Seal himself screwed it up when he tried to sing it live at the Oscars, and I think it was also slightly beyond Sylvester’s ability tonight.

    Sly’s biggest mistake this week was in song choice. Music Of The Night and Kiss From A Rose need to sound effortless. Boyzone was actually a pretty good match because there are some similarities between his raspy style and Ronan Keating’s, but out of the cesspool of crap that is Boyzone’s repertoire, he certainly reached right down to the bottom and groped around. Sly is a good singer, who has impressed me many times in the past. But tonight confirmed that his rightful place must be third.

  • Olinda has the best voice in the competition, but I keep longing for her to grow some stage presence. As far as I’m concerned, that’s her biggest inadequacy. Her size and build is fine with me. I’d rather look at bubbly funky-haired Olinda than, say, the surgical (and sartorial) nightmare that is Nicolette Sheridan.

    But it was just awfully disappointing to see a performance of Holding On For A Hero that sounded even better than Fantasia’s, but featured Olinda just…well…bobbing around. Hopelessly Devoted To You was a boring song boringly performed. Olinda is not good at looking dewy-eyed, although she’s fine at conveying less sweetie-pie emotions. Don’t Cry For Me Argentina is a case in point, especially that one brief shining moment (brownie points if you can name the musical those last four words come from) where she thrust the mike downwards so that her (fantastic) high note wouldn’t deafen everyone, and she was utterly compelling.

    I want more of those moments from Olinda, which is why I don’t want her to leave this week. I want to see more of those moments from her in the finals, where she really does deserve to be.

  • Every week I worry about Taufik the same way I used to worry about Fantasia – after such a good performance, how is he going to top that next week? And then I see him the next week and am amazed, and so I start worrying about the week after. True to form, if he gets through this week you can bet I’m going to be worrying about whether he can top Ain’t No Sunshine in the finals.

    Unlike Sly, Taufik did know how to sing a song from a musical, and knew how to change his voice accordingly. Unlike Olinda, Taufik knew how and when to just ground himself and radiate presence even while standing still, and I don’t think anyone can deny that where dancing is concerned, he’s head and shoulders above the other two. The only criticisms I could make are that he did go flat a number of times during This Is The Moment, and his outfit for True To Your Heart was awful, but really, assessed in completion, Taufik ruled this night.

But! DO NOT ASSUME TAUFIK IS SAFE. Sly has crazy teenage minions, and Olinda has money. If you think Taufik’s pretty good but can’t be bothered to vote for him, then for the first time ever on this blog I must appeal to your sense of patriotism. Just imagine Sly representing us at World Idol. Cringing? Good. Text 2 to 43657. VOTE FOR TAUFIK.

Mustafa’s Macho Masala

So after The Vagina Monologues on Saturday we headed to Little India. We wandered down the main thoroughfare and found ourselves on Desker Road, where some of our number insisted on seeing the back alley “sights”. It was quite significantly more sordid than Geylang, and was one of the rare situations where even I felt uncomfortable. After dinner we eventually ended up in the wondrous temple of consumerism that is Mustafa Centre. While staggering through the food section, I found these Indian instant noodles and bought them in a fit of endearment.

indian instant noodles

I had the Macho Masala this morning. It was pretty spicy, but I was man enough for it.

Non-Malays For Taufik!

All the Mandopoppers are going to vote for Sly because he sang Jay Chou’s An Jing, and all the aunties are going to vote for Olinda because she sang Teresa Teng. I dare not make any predictions for Daphne, because I generally find it easier to understand why someone would vote Bush for president than Daphne for Singapore Idol, but lots of people obviously do like her.

I thought Taufik sounded great on both songs he sang. I did miss his nifty moves, but given that every fast Asian pop song I have ever heard has been unmitigatedly terrible, it was probably the right decision to stick with the ballad and the smooth mid-tempo number. Which means…do not relac one corner! UNDILAH TAUFIK!! (How weird is it that I know how to say “Vote for Taufik!” in Malay, but not in Chinese?)

Fantastic Damage

So I’m broke, exhausted, and have exams in less than twenty days which I haven’t started studying for yet, but at least I had a good weekend. Reasons why:

  • Resfest (more detailed review intended in future post), and the pleasing coincidence of attending it with the only two people I know in the world (Benny on Saturday, Jeremy on Sunday) who I can uninhibitedly discuss music with. (James, from what Alec’s been telling me, by the next time we meet I hope you’ll be the third!)

  • Showing Benny bits of Singapore I actually like. We had dinner at Satay Club under the flyover, and later walked all the way along the river from the Asian Civilizations Museum to Cocco Latte. Cocco Latte didn’t disappoint either, from the surprisingly good mashups (from all my Internet searching it’s rare enough that I even hear one mashup I rate highly, but they played quite a number) on the ground floor to the great mix of hip-hop upstairs. Benny had already been saying “Have I mentioned I really love this place?” at regular ten-minute intervals downstairs, but once we went upstairs and the DJ was playing stuff Benny didn’t know I think that sealed matters as far as respect was concerned. (Random fear, though: the place is getting more and more popular, which makes me worry that it will eventually fall prey to my two pet peeves about Phuture – the ridiculous overcrowding, and too many gropers.)

  • Feeling virtuous for making it to 11.15 AM mass, despite only having three and a half hours of sleep (and even less than that the night before). Of course, I also felt as if I was about to keel over and die, but that suited today’s theme of making painful sacrifices for one’s faith remarkably well.

  • Coming back from mass bleary-eyed, and finding a beautiful bouquet of flowers waiting. Today marks three years with Alec.

flyover by night
The view from the Satay Club at dusk.

Time To Vote

Right, crunch time’s looming and it’s time to declare my candidate of choice:

Taufik for Singapore Idol! Great moves, pretty good voice, consistently entertaining to watch and, in my view, the best overall performer remaining in the competition. I think Olinda’s great too, and she might actually do better for us on a world stage because her voice is so unique, but Taufik’s the one I want to watch every week.

Also, if Ken Lim’s none-too-subtle comments about Taufik’s “niche appeal” to one particular race are actually true, then there probably aren’t enough Malays in Singapore to secure a victory for him, so he needs my vote more than the chinks in the competition do. Non-Malays For Taufik! Who’s with me?

[Yes, this post is deliberately parochial. Blogging my views on the US presidential elections would be pointless, since (a) I’m not American and (b) I suspect none of my readers support Bush either so I’d just be preaching to the converted anyway. Also (c) Ralph Nader is not going to win so to pursue the ultimate goal we are left only with Kerry who (d) does not fire me up but who at least does not fill me with alternate parts rage and pity. Not quite the stuff of illuminating blog entries, is it?]