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.