(Drunken) Nights & Days

Some of the other highlights of the past couple of months:

Singapore Flyer

A few of us – 23 to be exact – went on the Singapore Flyer at the same time. The views were gorgeous but not something, I would suppose, that we would have enjoyed had it been a much smaller group. Anyway, we sneaked in a bottle of JWBL inside and had a gala time doing ‘moodi’ shots. Ha ha.

Sri Lankan Dinner and Dance

Every year the Singapore Sinhalese Association organizes a Dinner & Dance for all Sri Lankans living in Singapore and this year, a record number from our group of friends decided to attend.

Therefore we arrived in all our finery – sarees, dresses, sarongs, kurtas, jeans – and proceeded to disgrace ourselves thoroughly. Since we were so delighted to see each other (after, oh, I don’t know like 2 days) we stood around and caused a real big racket which prompted the emcee to shout at us to sit down and shut up several times over. Again, we sneaked about 5 bottles of booze. Maybe that explains the racket we caused.

Our tables won 2 bottles of wine, a Samsung MP3 player and a Rice Cooker and I got pulled up on stage in Idol like fashion to be one of the three people who were in the running for the 1st prize of the Lucky Draw – a 2 way ticket to Sri Lanka! Anyway I got booted off… ha ha. Sad.

Also ended up dancing on chairs like real hooligans with fellow hooligans Shavanka and Aftab!! And also when the alcohol had run out, ran around tables finishing off other people’s unfinished drinks only to find out that fellow hooligan Aftab had done the same thing too.

KL Trip

The Lanka Lions (a Singaporean cricket team consisting of some of our friends – Ram, Kevin, Aftab) went to Kuala Lampur, Malaysia for a cricket tour and through some major planning and inevitable logistical nightmares (most of us being Sri Lankans, what would you expect?) a lot of us accompanied the team.

While there, we did what we do best – procrastinated, made fools of ourselves and clubbed like fiends. We did a bit of shopping too. Bought a lot of chewing gum and cigarettes, smoked a lot in public places like IN CLUBS (yay!) and generally had a good time rushing about trying to do a million things at once.

Our first clubbing stop was Rum Jungle in Bukit Bintang. I would suppose it’s one of your usual-looking clubs but with the combination of awesome company, really good live music, indoor smoking and cheap as fuck drinks, the place basically outdid any other clubbing experience I have had in Singapore in the last couple of months. We also made a trip down to Zouk but ended up only entering Loft (the RnB equivalent to Phuture in Zouk Singapore). Basically the place plays the same kind of music but there’s more than ample space to do dance and have a good time. Super super. Everything’s rather super no?

Also visited this really horrible club Raven (the only place open at 4am on a Saturday morning). It looks, feels and sounds like a total druggie place. The music is deafeningly loud, the lighting almost pitch black and the bouncers and staff looking like a combination of Ellen Burstyn in final stages of Requiem for a Dream and a dacoit movie made in Bollywood during the 80’s. Amidst shouts of how our testicles were vibrating we left the club in a jiffy.

Oh yes, we also watched some of the cricket played by our friends on the Lanka Lions team and attended an official dinner hosted by them in the night during which we were regaled by Sri Lankan uncles singing about their ‘bum-bum badero’s’ and Aftab and Ram singing censored Baila since there we so many kids there. Hilarious.

Our last few hours in KL, Harsha, Swapnil and I (since we were taking a separate bus out) hung out at KLCC where we fulfilled Harsha’s obsession of eating some Dunkin’ Donuts and from where I bought cheap-ass ipod headphones and 2 books – We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver and Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. Currently reading the book by Shriver now and it’s turning out to be an awesome read.

Anyway, got back to Singapore by 8pm Sunday and that was that! Monday was a complete horror story at work. Arrived at work at 7.45am on Monday and left at 4am on Tuesday. Life sucks! Haha.

Birth of Niece

My niece was finally born. I had known it was to be a girl-baby some months previously but my sister had forced secrecy upon me because her husband didn’t want to know and she didn’t want him to know that I knew. The whole, how can father not know but brother in law can know potential controversy. You know what I mean right? Happens so often…

Anyway, she is the cutest little thing ever and she was named Sara. She also gets cock-eyed when there’s a camera in front of her….. Now I know she’s my niece. Apparently my eyes go about in all directions too when I am drunk.
Pictures of her are up on facebook. If you know me, you probably have the address of my profile already. If you don’t, you probably don’t want to see my niece anyway.

December 07/January 08 - Trip to Sri Lanka and India

Was away from Singapore for 3 weeks in December and January during which I went to Colombo to chill with family. What with my grand-aunt having passed away a couple of months previously (God rest her soul in peace) and my sister having married and eventually moved out of the house, it was a bit strange to only live with my mother in the house. But I think it was really great that she and I got to hang out and bond (I use this word loosely because if I were to tell her anything about my personal life, she would lock me up).

Hung out with heavily pregnant sister too and visited her house once or twice.. very nice. Very young-urban-professional kind of place; although neither of them are all that young, urban or professional (ha ha…ooh mean!). If they were, they would not have got married and even if they did, they would not talk to each other or have time to meet up with each other, much less have the time for a baby.

She also hosted a dinner at her place where close family were invited…. Food was brilliant and quite fun to be around cousins after such a long time. So Christmas was spent in Colombo too and I can’t really remember what we did…. Maybe nothing? Surely not? Clubbing I am sure..!Spent time with Ashan, Nishanthi, Inoshi, Hasira, Ashanie, Harshi, Shavanka, Shawn, Afshan, Israth.... a lot of fun. Oh yes, also met Shiny and Kevin in Colombo who were there for Shiny's best friend's wedding. So while Shiny was at the salon at Galle Face Hotel getting her hair, nails done, Kevin and I drank beers by the beach. Was a really good day!

So yes, flew to Chennai for a few days and met Pavs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So good to meet her and gossip and shop and do best-friend stuffz. We had a really fun lunch at Zara where she, being a smart-ass, ordered the foulest long island iced tea. It was terrible and had she had the stomach to finish it, some serious room-spinning may have happened.

I stayed with Dad’s sister which as usual was the most relaxing experience ever. Her house, although situated right in the middle of the city is actually located in a relatively peaceful lane with 2 massive trees in the garden. Therefore this lends the house a very peaceful and cool quality in which you can totally chill out. The only thing I can’t stand about that house, in fact, Chennai in general is that there are so many fucking mosquitoes buzzing about. You only have to bend down when you are watching TV and blindly thwack the area around your legs, and I guarantee you there will be 4-5 blood splatters on your palms. Disgusting? Tell me about it! I experienced that about 20-30 times the 4 days I was in Chennai.

I also had the time to color my hair a brown that turned out to be quite black color at Pavs’ family salon – Bounce! Go check it out. The service is brilliant. Ask for a guy called Murli. He may not be all that cool or glamorous (i.e. gay) looking but he is very good at what he does. Anyway, the brown-black color was super as it hid all my grey! Plus he also gave my hair a bit of a twist and although it only lasted one day, I lived that whole day with a confidence in looking like a trendy fucking bugger.

Cousin also took me out to this place called Casa Picola (correct me if I am wrong) and Mocha which is supposed to be India’s latest coffee-house sensation (see Barista – India’s latest coffee-house sensation circa 1998). Mocha’s built very well; it’s got an indoor and outdoor area with the latter being shaded with a few trees and the furniture being a mix of the traditional table-chair thingi, and swings and big comfortable couches. The menu selection is great with loads of great desserts and really complicated and exotic sounding coffee. But what really impressed me was the selection of shisha they offered. I can’t remember most of them but I tried out something called Nirvana which totally lived up to the rants of how totally superbly awesome it was. Try it!!!!

Went to some clubs – No. 10 Downing, Rhapsody and some restaurants which I don’t really remember and in each of them I just had a really good time. It was so refreshing to be away from work and the pressures imposed on you by the managers and assistants of the world.

Flew to Bangalore on the morning of the 31st of December. Was totally excited about the night since it was the first time in about 10 years that I had spent NYE in India with cousins. And even though some of my cousins did not make it to the Bangalore Club for the festivities, I had a really great time. The highlights of the night: Bacardi Cokes selling for about S$0.80 and a band that pulled off live performances of World Hold On and Gasolina and without any hint of hesitation played all the latest Hindi stuff from Om Shanti Om etc. Brilliant. Needless to say, I got wasted and don’t remember anything after perhaps 2am. But all the same, super super times.

The rest of the Bangalore trip was spent hanging out with cousins – special mention to Manoj, Vanita and Ritika for making it a great one. Places I visited were Couch (latest addition to my family’s portfolio of business ventures). It’s a pub/lounge/restaurant that is situated on M.G Road and serves great food. Again, ate at some awesome Chinese restaurants but I never remember their names…

Flew back to Colombo on the 4th of Jan and back to Singapore on the 5th. That really sucked balls!

Only bad thing about the trip: during the first 168 hours I was in Colombo, 44 of them were spent on work-stuff. Disgusting. It’ll take me some time to get over that experience.

sound familiar?

What is it about sadness that makes me feel like blogging again? I think it is only when I am sad that I feel that talking to my friends may not be good enough, may not make me feel any better. When I do pen things down, while I am typing, I feel infinitely worse, because the most pathetic self-pity will manifest itself but afterwards when I am finally uploading the damn post onto the damn blog, lightness takes over, and I think that is the lightness that will make me sleep at night.

So talking about self-pity, let me talk about the reasons for my sadness. One word: Rejection. I do not think I will ever be at a certain age or level of maturity to take rejection without it causing my mind to spin out of control. It gives rise to a spectrum of unbearable, self-loathing emotions that make me really really bad company to have around.

And to make it all the more sweeter, what if this rejection is accompanied by a declaration of love for another? What if this ‘another’ is one of your closest friends? What if there’s some history between yourself and this close friend? What do you do then? I believe calling this the mother lode of irony would not be too much of a stretch.

Love triangles happen all the time and I have seen my fair share of them but in this case, there is an undeniable link that exists, however, most pathetically, these links that form are reluctant, hesitant, stuck in a world where reciprocity does not exist. Perhaps it’s easier when reciprocity does not exist, because, then, jealousy becomes baseless with no one to blame, and rationality has an easier time kicking into place.