Nightlife [Confidential] Volume 1. Ivan Boone's Lim
![Nightlife [Confidential] Volume 1 - Ivan Boone's Lim](limg_read695671.jpg "Nightlife [Confidential] Volume 1 - Ivan Boone's Lim")
In which case it’s not just evil, it’s illegal too in our part of the world.
But back to the question of what people find interesting on a night out:
Aside from the evil, hedonistic indulgences such as drinking and smoking, getting out is a wonderful way to relax, particularly after a tough day at the office or an especially gruesome week of work.
You get to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise see during a normal day. And with the assistance of alcohol, you’d find yourself less inhibited so you would be more inclined to make new friends. Your chances at this endeavour improves, too, if the new friends you are attempting to make are suitably and similarly lubricated.
You would also be in better stead, with your inhibitions dissolved, to have deep and meaningful conversations with friends and people you enjoy hanging out with.
There’s also entertainment: Live music in various styles and languages, dance music in various sub-genres, comedy clubs with comedians who become funnier as you drink , and sports-themed bars where all you really need worry about is the score.
For youngsters, it seems a lot simpler – dress your best and head to your favourite club, get intoxicated and see where the night takes you.
Older folk, I’ve noticed, seem a lot more selective, though there are, of course, exceptions.
A dear friend of mine hangs out mainly at two places – one, a dingy hole in the wall whose main entertainment is a run-down television set showing music videos from a video-cassette player or a laser-disc player, while the other is a somewhat rustic pub in which he has some control of the music selection. He’s probably seen the same music videos played hundreds of times at the former but reacts with the enthusiasm of a teenage rock-music fan each time they come on. And at the latter, he would, between swigs of beer and whisky, occasionally click on the mouse of a laptop at the bar to select the next 10 or 20 songs. While he appears to have an aversion for big dance clubs, he seems perfectly at ease once he has a beer in his hand. And although what he finds entertaining may bore the tears out of someone like me, it functions more as a backdrop to the more important activity of hanging out with his friends.
Another friend, much older than the rock music fan, would head down to his neighbourhood locale early in the evening when he is off work the next day. He would soak in whatever entertainment is available, whether from a live act or a CD, play darts with whoever cares to join him at a game, and then stagger off after his sixth or seventh half-pint of beer, usually before midnight. He chuckles a lot during the night, never gets into any argument with anyone, and avoids contact with quarrelsome former colleagues, leaving the premise for an adjacent bar should he get whiff of the impending arrival of any such character.
Yet another, much older than the previous two and who doesn’t look a day older than 70, would find himself in the most intense clubs drinking as many as five times a week, often with different groups of people at each outing. He almost always has a smile on his face, either from the effects of the drink he has just consumed or simply the anticipation of one.
And finally there’s this one guy I know who would be most adventurous when it came to nightspots, going to the most fashionable clubs and quite often, really obscure bars. He would observe the decor of an establishment, get completely immersed in its entertainment, talk to as many people as he possibly can while there, and discuss these with me afterwards as if he were researching the nightlife.
Amazingly, he would sometimes do this while he was designated driver, whereupon he would refuse to touch a single drop of alcohol the entire night. Which goes to show that you don’t have to be completely inebriated, or even slightly intoxicated, to have a good night out. And it’s not that he doesn’t enjoy his drink: he loves a good whisky and a thoughtfully-prepared cocktail. Astonishingly, he isn’t even an old bloke who has drunk the contents of several bars dry in his lifetime – he is still only in his early 20s.
Aside from the entertainment and company, going out also affords you many sideshows, because the night somehow seems to have its own rules. This book details some of the many sideshows I’ve witnessed, which is often more interesting and definitely a lot more memorable than the actual entertainment programmed by the various outlets.
There are more than a thousand establishments in Singapore serving alcohol and offering various types of entertainment. There are so many things you can drink in a night – from beers and spirits to wines and cocktails. Even a soft drink, if getting drunk is not your thing.
If you haven’t yet embarked on that wonderful journey into the night, this book offers its recommendations, and stories from the bars so you’d know some of the things to expect. Drink what pleases you and go where you like, for there isn’t a good or a bad drink just as there isn’t really a good or bad place to go. I say this to my friends all the time: There isn’t a bad whisky – just a whisky you don’t particularly fancy, and one that you like very much. Nobody can prove conclusively that the whisky he likes is better than yours. The same goes for nightspots.
I hope you’ll find one that you truly like, for whatever reason best suits you, where you can enjoy your favourite tipple all night, whatever it is.
Cheers.
NO NEED TO BRING YOUR OWN
While clubs in Singapore, just like anywhere else in the world, maintain a discretionary policy as far as entry into their premises is concerned, they also reserve the right to check the contents of bags that are carried by patrons.
Which means, simply, it is entirely up to the establishment’s management to decide whether or not to let you into the club and that if they do, it is within their rights to open up your bag, not to check on the brand of makeup or condom you use, but to make sure you are not attempting to bring in a chainsaw, a nuclear weapon, a general-purpose machine gun or any such device which could endanger the other patrons in the club.
Oh, they would also hope not to find any suspicious chemicals that could be recreational or illegal drugs.
Usually, if a bag is checked at all, the bouncer or staff would shine a torch into it and the bearer would be admitted in after a cursory glance at the contents.
Making sure the club is secure is a very good practice, of course, though patrons at the receiving end of such a routine check can sometimes feel they are being picked on.
Whether these checks are stringent enough or not, an astonishing number of embarrassing items somehow slip past the bouncers at clubs. Thank goodness none are life-threatening, so far.
Take for the instance of the guy who who was seen at the VIP tent at one edition of ZoukOut, Singapore’s premier beach party.
He may not have been the fittest-looking guy on the beach, but he was carrying a very stylish designer bag. That bag was already attracting quite a bit of attention, when its owner decided somewhat abruptly that he needed to remove something from within.
He unzipped it at a precarious tilt, unfortunately and very unceremoniously spilling some of the items from it onto the bench on which he had plonked himself.
The people nearest to him in the tent gasped, their eyes transfixed on a single item: It was a mouldy packet of salted peanuts, now almost empty, its contents strewn all over the bench and on the sand.
Heaven knows how long that packet of peanuts had been left to rot in that designer bag, but neither the wife nor I stayed long enough to find out as we made ourselves scarce in case, like the possession of drugs, we became guilty by association.
Another instance involving nuts had a hide-and-seek element to it. At a club popular with mature patrons, a group of partygoers who looked to be rather well-heeled were seen passing several conical paper packets around. These contained “kacang”, a Malay term for nuts, and you can still see some of these being sold at cinemas where they were once a must-have item before they slowly died out in the 90s.
Anyway, the “kacang” gang were told very politely by a manager that bar snacks were available, whereupon the conical paper packets disappeared into jackets and handbags