Festive Season

This week I have mostly been getting ready the year of the dog, Gong Xi Fa Cai. Maybe it was the whole festive thing, maybe it was Lou visiting, maybe it was the overseas visitors with work, maybe it was trying to forget I wasn’t in Phuket anymore but I found myself either drunk or hung over for a good part of the week.
Possibly the most entertaining evening was the Sunday where a quiet meal got out of hand and I ended up staggering home at 1:00am, making for a fantastic start to the week.
The entertaining bit came from visiting the Crazy Elephant, which had always struck me as a stupid looking place. But as it turns out there was a lively night of live music tucked away amongst the neon and ultraviolet light and dumb jokes flashing up on the many TVs in the place.
Turns out it is a blues place and Sunday is open mike night, where anyone feeling up to it can get up to strut their stuff with the house band. I was wondering why there were so many moustacheoid, high pants wearing Indians in the crowd. Turns out they were there to play, and they did it pretty well. The first bloke to get up was an aging non Indian dude from the US who thought he was pretty hot shit, but he had nothing on the act to follow who pulled out his shiny guitar complete with a wahwah handle and let rip. Aging dude left in disgust having obviously been shown up by the guitar playing prowess of Sandeep Highpants. Strangely enough I saw Sandeep outside the Standard Chartered bank in Tampines 2 days later. Dull accountant by day; axe wielding guitar playing maniac by night, fantastic stuff.
Second most entertaining event was a chap in the normally busy BQ bar who took his shirt off, poured sambuca in his hair and set fire to it. Impressive party trick, but a very strange thing to do, even stranger his hair didn’t burn.

Villa Dilla

This week I was mostly in Phuket, which to state the obvious was nice. Even the warning about being killed for trafficking drugs was nice: “Welcome to Phuket” it read, “Offenders against drug related crime will be sentenced to the highest penalty” it was then signed off “With Best Wishes Phuket Governor” Very polite people the Thais.
We had assembled with several other drinking buddies of Elliot the foot drinker to celebrate his 30th. He managed to secure a sensational villa that meant we only needed to leave the place to play golf. We would ship the staff a couple of bucks each day and they would turn it into booze and amazing Thai food that would make your bot a little hot.
Luckily we didn’t need to go far to cool down with a pool next to the dining area, which of course meant I was obliged to show off my finely honed bombing skills, crafted over a decade of landing bum first in the Canberra Olympic pool. Managed to pull off some fine bummies, runny turnies, horsies and a couple of old school can openers.
In an unrelated bombing incident one of the guests fell down the stairs on the first night, split her head open and cracked a couple ribs before passing out cold. Monkey said he didn’t push her, but he was the only other person around and was behind her at the time. Fortunately we had a doctor in the house, unfortunately he was rocket scientist. Although he could put a great model together showing the forces of gravity and the impact to the head he suggested they perhaps should seek medical advice instead.
So the now delirious and bleeding victim was driven by a still drunk Elliot, accompanied by a non medical doctor, his Thai wife acting as interpreter and a guilty looking Monkey around the island looking for a clinic. We were getting up for breakfast, just after they had arrived back home. A long night for some and a cracking start to the holiday for others.
We might well have been off to the clinic later that afternoon as another guest went bungy jumping determined to win a bet. He maintains he wasn’t scared but after 2 false starts he made his awkward fall towards a mosquito ridden swamp. With what can only be described as a brain explosion he grabbed the rope on the bounce back up and was probably lucky to not lose an arm. It did cause a sensational bruise though but I don’t think he was sober enough to feel the pain thereafter.
After an action packed 4 days we moped on home, leaving the rest of the crew and some new comers to destroying their internal organs. If you have a spare $13k USD I can thoroughly recommend this place for a week. http://www.villagetaways.com/villa.php?vid=13&cid=8

Miscellaneous Offences

This week I have mostly been dodging the law, not because I have done anything particularly bad, but because the New Year has been heralded by what appears to be an upping of the tension in the upholding of the law. The highly illegal morning crossing of Orchard Rd fills me with a sense of excitement as I fly in the face of the jay walking laws. However the other day, just before I set off the curb I looked up to narrowly miss being hit by a bus and spotted the cops hiding in the bushes and some across the road booking some other thrill seekers. Lucky, crossing the road within 50 metres of a crossing attracts a $500 fine and that would have been a particularly crap way to start the working week.
Why are the cops wasting their time on such trivial matters I hear you ask? Well they’re not, they are also upholding the pretty vague Miscellaneous Offences (Public & Order & Nuisance) (Assemblies & Processions) Laws. Some time ago a fair amount of drama erupted over a call made to 911 to complain about a white elephant being strapped to the railing of the Buangkok MRT.
The station opened recently, to even more controversy. Some bright young things at the Raffles Girl’s School printed a run of “Save the White Elephant” T shirts and were planning to sell them to raise funds for charity at the gala opening. An unusual display of outspoken initiative was dampened somewhat when police reminded the girls they could face prosecution if they failed to obtain a permit to sell them. They then went further to warn them they could be arrested should they wear the shirts en masse. Nice
But the most interesting abuse of the Miscellaneous Offences laws was the unfortunate incident where the neighbour of Mrs Wong of Woodlands was spotted nude in his bedroom getting ready for work each morning. Mrs Wong called the local press followed by the cops and them man was promptly embarrassed and then arrested.
At the time of prosecution he was facing a 3 month jail term and a $200 fine. I don’t actually know how this unfortunate incident panned out, but I did hear the officials were delaying sentencing, instead recommending he undertake a psychiatric assessment.

Kitchen Toilet

This week I have mostly been acclimatising to life back in Singapore following a very fine Christmas New Year break in Aus. It certainly leaves you questioning why you would ever want to live somewhere else after visiting over this period. Sydney has to be one of the more festive places in the world to enjoy Christmas New Year, and a big thanks to everyone who accommodated us and found time to drink, eat and fish with us.
The scarcity of fish made it more of a harbour cruise outside the heads, maybe I just scared them off with my Chopper Reid fishing stance.
After the hideous 44˚C on New Years day it was good to get back to Singapore to cool down. What wasn’t good was coming back to a construction site dumping ground in the lounge room and a toilet sitting in the middle of the kitchen.
Eager to remove as many of the unsightly bathroom and toilet fixtures (only 2 to go now) from the unit we agreed to the downstairs toilet being fixed in our absence. This was in an effort to stop us raining turds and wee down on the BBQ pit. I don’t think we actually were, but I was told our toilet was leaking down there so I would like to think we were doing a good job of it. Following some fairly irate conversations we now have a clean unit, a new downstairs toilet and the rest of the condo can now BBQ with the peace of mind that is indeed a bratwurst not a poo on their plate.
Singapore’s tourist catch phrase is Uniquely Singapore and I was pleased to note that Singapore seems to have upped the tension on its uniqueness in our absence. A blank wall at the City Hall train station had assign up apologising for any inconvenience; another sign told me not to lean on it. Maybe it was meant to be read the other way round, don’t lean on the wall and sorry for the inconvenience, I don’t know.
There is a unique courtesy drive going on the trains right now, Courtesy Ambassadors will be recognising courteous behaviour by dishing out tokens of appreciation. Wearing deodorant, cleaning your teeth, standing more than 6 inches from your face and not trying to bring a lung up through your nose would get my token if I were an Ambassador. But I am not, which is probably a good thing because I would never reach my token quotas of appreciation based on those criteria.
Some other Uniquely Singapore things spotted this week included Star Wars being classified as Romance in Borders, which would leave many a geek questioning their sexuality and a tin of Sweet and Sour Pork being the choice of vegetarians who shop at Carrefours.
I was trying to describe what it was like living in [Unique] Singapore to a mate back in Sydney, the more I went on about the more we realised Singapore is actually the “Truman Show” movie in real life. If this is the case and people are actually watching our lives unfold on TV I would appreciate if they could let me know so I can sort out how to attach a magnifying lens to my willy. Thanks.