Crazy Elephants

This week I have mostly been watching a very big TV, which I bought mostly because I had a very big hangover last Saturday. I had a very big hangover because it was KP's birthday. I am not entirely sure what defines a significant birthday, I like to treat all of mine as significant, but apparently this was a significant event and if my significant headache on Saturday was any indicator then it was indeed a significant one.
KP's birthday started innocently enough with a civilized dinner on another significant day; the celebration of the day the English plonked a flag in Aussie soil and claimed it as theirs, it ws quite easy to acquire land a couple of hundred of years ago. But I digress, KP's post dinner celebrations was where the damage was done, in what is now becoming an annual event we ended up in the Crazy Elephant. This meant we needed to drink Jaeger Bombs and tequila, it had been a while since I bombed and not much has changed they still re-arrange your brain cells and make you a bit silly.
In fact so inspired was I by the Jaeger that I agreed to go to Attica, possibly one of the crappiest excuses for a bar in Singapore. I guess they wouldn't get too many patrons if it was called Shithole but that would be a far more appropriate name for the place. Picture a pretend classy place full of social x-rays and sleezy expats and that is Attica. The dancy part of the place is reached by walking up a furlined staircase, a bit like walking through a giant black furry tunnel and then when you get to the top is full of lots of furry tunnels walking around like they are the coolest of cool. It can not be stressed enough what a shithole this place is but the furry tunnels who patronise this place seem to think this place is the duck's nuts and a serious nightclub.
To be honest things were a little blurry, but I am told it was because of this we ended up downstairs again apparently. I am not entirely sure when we left but it was en masse and I magically ended up in the house, wrong bedroom but right house. Reidy had to come in cover up my starfish impersonation that was apparently scaring people in the lift going up and down outside the bedroom. And that is how I ended up buying a big tv.
Prosperity and Longetivity are not typicaly things you would associate with McDonalds, but apparently it is. In the lead up to Chinese New Year and the year of the golden pig they have brought out these little morsels to enable you to enjoy a prosperous life. Can't say I am tempted looks like a pair of turd burgers to me.
Finally this week I bought a crab called Matt for the fish tank for really no other reason than I have a friend called Matt who is actually Crabby. But I am curious to see if Matt and Pinchy are going to fight, it's a bit like one of those Discovery Channel shows where they try to work out who would win a fight between a whale and a squid. So I will keep you posted on who is the tougher; crayfish or crab.

MUSE Amuse

This week I have mostly been thinking about this time last week when I finally got to see a decent bit of live music when MUSE stopped by on their way down to Aus. For a 3 piece these boys make some noise, even in an outdoor park like Fort Canning. It was a sensational evening all round, the rain stopped raining, the breeze started breezing and the crowd started jumping. It was the most excited display of excitement I have seen from the locals, they were having a ball.
So was I, especially when I discovered there were waitresses at the beer tent, I couldn't imagine that working at the Big Day Out where the waitresses would most likely disappear into the mosh pit with the beer never to be seen again by customer or employer. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better I wandered into the crowd with Dappers and felt like a giant at a blue light disco, not a boofheaded big bloke in sight. Except for me, but I wasn't in my way so I didn't count.
But then it got even better as I was wondering what to do to for a beer and discovered I had subconciously landed 30 metres from the stage on a perfect latitude with a beer tent with no customers that was only 5 metres away. Where were all these magical beer tents coming from? Don't know, don't care they served their purpose of keeping my hops flavoured fluids up.
I might be sounding a little bit gushy about this whole MUSE thing, but they did break the live music drought for me in spectacular fashion. Even KP, who said that the next time I was going to some blokey grunge band to not ask her had changed her tune by the end of the night.
I read a review in the Straits Times that said they were good but the light show was disappointing, was the writer blind? why did he even care about the lights, I would watch them by torchlight and be happy. It only served to enforce my theory that the Straits Times has been out sourced to a local high school and the majority of the writers are 14 and a half years old.
Anyway enough of the MUSE ramblings, with ears ringing we shuffled down the hill for a beer with the Japanese version of Reevey. Turns out he is very much like the Singapore Reevey and likes to hang out in BQs but wasn't drinking flaming Lamborghinis this time. The bar did well out of Reuters that night and drawing stumps at 1:00 on a Wednesday morning seemed like a really cool thing to do. It seemed less cool later on Wednesday morning, but I got through it and then went out for Elliott's birthday night, but a couple ofjumbo Hoegaardens and a bad sausage sent me home early. Quite a good thing I think.

Pinchie Two

This week I have mostly been coming to grips with a new year and dealing with the first full week of the year. The tropical festive season was a quiet one, grounded due to fast approaching new addition to Reidy and Smithy's world, we hung out in Singapoo.
While the locals seemed to have reasonably grasped the Christmas concept, as far as eating and drinking goes it actually panned out to be just another day for most locals. As we headed up Orchard Rd to our lunch venue we were a little stunned to see all of the shops were open as per usual and quite a few locals do what they do best and shop. But thinking about it, it's actually quite a good thing particularly of you get caught in a present stand off with your partner, or if you give a crap gift you can duck down the road for a quick upgrade under the ruse of popping out to get some milk.
Chrissie Lunch was at the Equinox, I think it is the island's highest restaurant, it certainly is a long way up. The view at night is stunning, the view by day we found out is quite drab, so was the food as it turned out. It was an interesting day, particularly as we only really knew one person on the table.
We had been told that one of the table members was a "bit of a character" and it didn't tke long to find out which one. He was the one frequently regailing us with some fuity tales of derring doo of his army days, capped off by regular Sean Connery impersenations. Mostly harmless though, unlike the table full of Molly Malones' regulars who set off a fire extinguisher at their table, but this is apparently not enough to get thrown out of the Equinox on Christmas Day.
New Year was at the Hyatt, where they turned on a pretty amazing buffet that Reidy is still talking about in terms of the amount of desserts and chocolate consumed. Apparently there is a limit to how much free French champagne I can drink, but soldiered on when they told me the price of buying a beer. Entertainment came in the form of the Ultimate Kylie show and Bjorn Again.
Nice Aussie influence there, but not people I would typically go and see, but I was little surprised to see Paul Nelson pretending to be Swedish and playing keyboards. I thought he was walking around coastal Victoria, but actually he was tickling the plastic ivories at the Grand Hyaytt on Scotts Rd. More disturbing than that was the number of spotty expat kids that were there, it made us feel a little bit like we had crashed a school dance there for a while until the numbers dwindled as they disappeared off for a new year's pash.
The new year has got policing off to a cracking start with the aprehension yesterday of a naked man swimming off the East Coast after a 3 hour standoff with police. Having finally convinced him to leave they gave him some shorts for the walk out of the water, whisked him off to the hospital for a check up and then after a clean bill of health promptly arrested him for public nudity.
The New Year has also meant the arrival of a new Pinchie, he has a big set of claws to fill but he has already shed his shell once so is well on the way to doing so.