Singapore Diary: Bars, Clubs and Nightlife

I moved to Singapore a little over two months ago.  I don’t think I’ve written about the place yet, not consciously at any rate. That’s partly because my heart is still in Glasgow and home –in my mind- is still the converted two bedroom flat I shared with Fatboy and Massifer in Kinning Park. Happiness –it seems- is sitting around hungover on the mattress-turned-futon in our little kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, chain-smoking and arguing over whose turn it is to do the dishes and finally deciding to order Chinese takeout and watch episode after episode of 24. Let Jack Bauer deal with the real world!

The other reason I’ve avoided writing about Singapore is that the times when I’ve put fingertips to keyboard have usually been the times when I wished most fervently that I were someplace else. These urges –though not infrequent- owe more to my personal circumstances than any inherent disagreement I have with this tiny country. So while I’ll maybe talk about my fuckedupness in another post, I feel Singapore has more than deserved a little travelogue from my side.

I should say straight away that I have not been to the zoo or taken the Duckbus tour or even gone to the beach. In short, I’ve kept clear of the touristy stuff - partly because I was broke and mainly because doing touristy stuff is only fun when you do it with a group of super-fun people who beam and flash V’s at each other’s cameras in truly ironic fashion, dripping hipster-cool. Not really, but kinda. Going to Planet Hollywood to actually admire a wax statue of Captain Jack Sparrow –as opposed to sticking a finger up his bum or holding a lighter to his cock or something- is just lame.

I have however paid considerable patronage to the watering holes in my part of town putting me in a position of some authority to comment on the nightlife in Singapore. First things first: Singapore is expensive territory for those fond of their drink. Same goes for smokers. A pack of 20 will set you back nine to ten dollars if you go local, and 12-ish for the big, foreign brands. I quickly settled on LD Lights as my brand of choice – they’re cheap ($9.50) and taste like Mayfairs, my brand of choice in Glasgow. I picked Mayfairs because they were cheap and reminded me of Wills, my brand of choice in India. Because they were cheap and… there may be a pattern here.

Singapore does have quite a few decent outdoorsy bars, especially along Arab Street and on those little streets off Orchard Road. I’ve always had a soft spot for drinking under the night sky, and those streams of little bulbs all wrapped around your chair or a tree or whatever. Most of these places also show Premier League football which is fantastic on a Sunday night. While I stand by my statement that drinking is an expensive habit here, Singapore is one of those lovely little cultures that truly mean and celebrate their ‘happy hours’. You can usually get a couple of beers for under ten dollars most places till nine pm which is not cheap, but who doesn’t love a bargain?

On to the clubs then : Most of the clubs I went to were in Clarke Quay. The Quay itself is a beautiful little stretch, especially at night, all lit up with a great view of the Singapore Flyer and a row of pubs and clubs and restaurants. The Flyer is a giant wheel that is also a restaurant – no kidding, you can book a box, pop open some wine and have dinner while doing circles in the air. It reminds me of the London Eye and made me all misty-eyed one particularly drunken night, but on reflection it seems only logical that one giant wheel would remind me of another.  Still, I have promised myself to go on one of them dinner rides when I find me a lovely little lady who can speak five languages, loves to travel, does unspeakable things with her tongue and will always say reassuring things about my writing abilities. Either her or Mom – whoever’s first in town, really.

Ok, so Clarke Quay. The place houses my favourite bar in the country – it’s called In God We Thrust which in my humble opinion is a refreshingly literal name for a heavy metal bar that lets women drink for free if they’ll grease the pole. That’s right, they have a pole. Yup. On the few occasions I’ve had the pleasure, there have been some fun live bands, rock n roll and gyrating, pelvic-touting metal chicks. What’s not to like eh? I’m not going to crib about the prices because they cost about the same as most places and they’re the only venue I have been to that plays good music non-stop.

Which reminds me: I’m yet to find much musical variety (or indeed any good music) elsewhere. I’ve heard of a few decent live venues and intend to check them out one of these days, but so far the clubs have just been ridiculously cheesy and bass-heavy. The closest I’ve come to a live venue is this place called Chijmes, which is basically a big courtyard on Orchard Road with lots of nice little bistros and bars spread out inside. Pricey, airy and nice. I was only there for half an hour, but I remember somebody playing Creep, X-factor-style, on a rickety acoustic guitar and thinking “that song does not deserve Radiohead anymore” and nearly choking on my very urbane German weissbier.

If you’re hellbent on going clubbing, I would suggest Souk (which is not in Clarke Quay at all, and is a long, confusing bus-ride from where I live) which has a fantastic 1-for-price-of-2 deal till 12 am on weekends, and of course that other Singapore staple, shit music. Not to mention hordes of teenage hormones, acne, braces and more shit music. Credit where its due: last time I was there, they had an 80s pop dance floor in a little room on the second floor, full of –you guessed it – superfun people dripping hipster-cool and being ironic. Me, I just really like Kate Bush. 

Speaking of bush, I’m told Singapore is a fairly familial, conservative culture. This would explain why the Singaporean women in clubs all tend to be college students who think Aerosmith is a job title in aviation (“what, like a pilot?”) or distinguished, older members of the species who somehow missed their sell-by date and regale you with stories of loneliness and suffering (“I’m 32, who will marry me now?”). Where the hell are all the smart, funny, normal mid-to-late-20’s folk? Oh that’s right, they’re probably not hanging around discotheques, doing the Moonwalk (ironically) and freaking kids out. Still, there must be a way to meet them dames. (Mom, when the hell are you visiting?)

Now, I’m always beating myself for living in a part of town that could be any city really – there’s nothing exotic or Asian about the architecture or the food or even the people here, just cement and bricks and busy career-people. My only glimpse of tourist exotica so far has been this place about twenty minutes away by bus called Tunjong Pagar where I saw this really Shaolin-looking building which I’m convinced is a temple and intend to check out this weekend. There’s also Duxton Street nearby which is not very exotic at all, but plays host to my favourite spot in Singapore – this great little bookstore called Littered With Books. But Singapore has so many nice bookstores that I’ve decided to write a post exclusively about them.

A few metres up the road from Littered With Books is a roomy Irish pub whose name I cannot remember but had a gorgeous sitting area out back with wooden benches and tables and grass which may not sound like much but I could live my life like that, sipping Guinness and reading a beloved book, propped up against the wishing well in the middle of the garden. Oh, did I forget to mention they have a wishing well? They do. There’s also a unicorn who moonlights as a bartender (it may have just been a friendly Sri Lankan, I’m not sure), a big Tottenham Hotspurs flag on the wall and –a tearjerker, this- one wall is filled with photographs of a wedding that was held in the bar. It was of an Asian couple with Anglicized names like Jim and Wendy or some such, and quirky little captions above the photographs or maybe I imagined that part. Anyway, it was all very sweet. I must be getting soft in my old age. 

I’m not sure this post has been educational in any way, but I would like to confirm a rumour I had heard about Singapore before I arrived : there are no drugs in this country. No raves, no pills, not even the faint whiff of marijuana at 4:20am outside a club. I’m usually good at just showing up at these places without even going looking, and believe you me, I’ve looked. Not even a smidge of Ketamine, what with the horse racing community and all. Nope, the drugs are all somewhere else, in somebody else’s head, having a good time and living it up. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so off my Zen these last two months. Maybe it’s all the talk about lack of career direction and losing my looks. Not so much talk as thought, but still. 

Singapore’s also a really safe place – you can stumble around drunk in the middle of the night and some other drunk will retrieve your dropped wallet and tell you to be more careful. Not that they’re all alcoholics or anything but the ones with enough incentive to stay home are presumably not out at that hour, eh. You may want to stay clear off the ‘hostess bars’ in Singapore though– the music is shittier than average, the women badger you constantly for tips and you don’t get so much as a knucklejob. Or maybe you do, but I just can’t stand those places. The carpets smell of rot, the lighting is a jaundiced yellow and you get no peace of mind because you’re constantly worrying that you’re missing out on something by not talking to the girls. So you talk to them and fifty dollars later you realize you’re not. Besides, the whole idea of women being so upfront in their misery is just disturbing. I have nothing against the profession; I just don't want it asking me for loose change when I'm out to forget my troubles. There are enough professional avenues for that sort of thing here anyway; why ruin a perfectly good evening for fleeting hope and false promises? That’s what drinking’s for isn’t it? 

A little closer to the truth

That art will take on new meanings every time you re-visit it has always seemed a given. What I hadn't perhaps realized was that just how different your interpretations are of a beloved work of art four years since you last devoured it body and soul may well be the easiest gauge of how much you've changed as a person. Today, I re-watched one of my favorite movies, Closer (2004), after several years of deliberately not doing so, in fear and awe of of the melancholic depths such cinematic excursions have pulled me under on previous occasions. 

As always, it struck me deeply and left me with an all-too-familiar ache and emptiness, but what stood out most was how differently it affected me the first and most recent times. Closer of course was never going to pass for a love story, dark and blunt and visceral as it is. Popular culture at least, attests to love as a concept that is virtuous and nonjudgmental and somehow more innocent than the bloodshed and violence and self-denial that were considered the epitomes of it's expression until a few centuries ago. 

This is a line of thought I have personally been struggling to come to terms with recently: love as a service Vs. love as a primal, carnal need. If love were as altruistic and cerebral as the former would suggest, surely it  disqualifies a large majority of people from being capable of it? I have not studied the great works but it seems to me that somewhere down the line, the intellectuals have made their own an emotion that on the surface seems most basic to all humankind. And if that is the case, then Closer convincingly brings down the walls of such pretensions to where mortals roam, and love, and fight for love. 

It is this re-proletarianism of love that I failed to imbibe on my previous viewings of the movie. Perhaps, it had something to do with my own environment at the time. I was in university, studying Development Economics (the worst kind - at least finance or investment don't aspire to nomenclatural sainthood!) and interacting daily with a community that was both select -in that they had won many intellectual battles to be where they were- and accomplished, in the conviction that they would one day save the world from all it's miseries by virtue of a piece of paper that pronounced them more educated and enlightened than the masses. It was this feeling of belonging to an exclusive higher ground perhaps that led me to identify more with Jude Law's character, Dan at the time. 

Dan is an aspiring writer, a soft-spoken, articulate, sensitive man who falls for Julia Roberts's independent, sophisticated Anna, an American photographer living in London. We know of course that this will hurt Alice, his girlfriend, played wonderfully by Natalie Portman. Alice, who used to be a stripper, is beautifully scarred and fragile and we wish desperately for her happiness, but we also know that Dan and Anna belong together. They are both ethereal and substantial, they are light-skinned and blonde and tall, they read and critique and enjoy the opera and belong to a world far removed from that inhabited by Alice and her waitressing job and her quirky ways. Larry on the other hand, who is Anna's dermatologist husband, is brash and full of bravado and working class guilt about his good fortune, and -we think- more suitable a match for poor, broken Alice. 

That was my enduring impression at any rate. The movie confounded us romantics then by breaking all the established norms, and leaving Dan confused and alone at the end. Anna goes back to Dan, and Alice who is also American returns to her country, albeit only after both sets of men and women -in turns- indulge one another physically and emotionally. This apparent failure too only served to make Dan more endearing at the time. There was a certain romanticism to the plight of the tormented genius, destined to live a life of solitude surrounded by people who did not understand him.

This is not at all how the movie spoke to me this time. If anything, Larry -steely, vulgar, rugged Larry- is closer to what I aspire to, today. He flaunts his desires and inhibitions with the confidence of a man who will fight to the end, stand up for what he believes in. (I can only attribute this to my own journey from the idyllic confines of a class-neutral, socialistic academic setting to the real world where one lives by the sweat of his brow and no amount of scholarly pretensions will pay your rent.) Needy, wounded Alice on the other hand seems far more desirable than cold and in-control Anna. That may sound patronizing but I really would prefer to rescue somebody than be rescued, which was not the case a few years ago. What I realized is that that 'desire to be rescued' -for the right woman to come along and nurture and fertilize me- was borne out of a false sense of entitlement, a misplaced faith in my own ability to be loved. What these last few years -and heartbreak and letting people down and breaking hearts- have taught me is that love is a privilege, something I can only hope to deserve through effort and will and most importantly, courage. 

The bigger surprise was how distinctly the movie -or my understanding of it- has changed, thematically. I remember laughing a little louder than the situation warranted on my first viewing at Dan asking Anna if she found his book to be a little vulgar. Anna replies that she didn't, because it spoke the truth about sex. Cue more laughter for the benefit of Others. Looking back, I feel more than a little ashamed. Closer runs the gamut from cyber sex to strip clubs to clinical comparisons of smell and feel and taste ("like you, only sweeter") and may well be considered vulgar by some. But it also speaks the truth about sex - how it hurts, causes jealousy, how it can be the most satisfying revenge, how possessive we are of a loved one's body, how it is so integral to the expression of affection. Both Dan and Anna may as well have been talking about the movie. So I reveled in my cleverness, made sure everybody knew there was a joke within the joke, that I was in on it.

But Closer -despite the physical intimation of its title- is not about sex. Closer is a movie about the politics of truth. Truth and kindness. But truth is boring, truth is sexless. As Alice says, in a subversion of that famous line from Annie Hall (1977), "lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off." Truth is boring because it is so functional. It is truth (or lack thereof) that brings people closer, and truth that drives them apart. Everything in between, all the good bits about being in a relationship -as anyone who has ever lost or left a lover will testify- is a lie. It maybe difficult to admit, but all relationships fail at the same point in time - the moment of truth. That truth may be something you refused to acknowledge till then, or something that has suddenly come to light - but it's always truth that renders a person unlovable just as it is the perceived truth that pulled you to him or her in the first place. How long you stay together, how long you enjoy staying together, depends solely on how long you can keep the lie going.

In the manner of all quests for truth, Closer offers more questions than answers. In the movie, Larry, ruffian that he is, actively seeks the truth, thrives on the hurt the bitter truth will cause him. Dan would prefer not to know, or to know a version that suits him or one he is familiar with. Alice on the other hand understands the necessity of tempering truth with kindness, of protecting the truth with half-truths and lies, as does Anna in her own reserved way.

This then would appear to be an exclusively female attribute. At the risk of being labelled a misogynist, men -in my experience- place too much emphasis on knowing and consequently hurting, while women realize that not knowing is just as important, that not telling is just as virtuous. Is all intellectual curiosity necessarily fated to culminate in disillusionment and despair? Are the hearts and actions of men -and women- truths so dark that any great knowledge of them will result in ruin? This would in turn suggest that the cultural intellectualization of love was essentially an act of charity and not snobbery, an attempt to save the less well-informed from the misery of knowing. And if that be true, are women the true intellectuals, the ones who protect the rest of us from Truth?

Closer (Movie, 2004) was based on the play of the same name, also scripted by Patrick Marber (Premiere : Royal National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre, 1997).

                   The blower's daughter (OST)- Damien Rice