Decadent Weekend.

I probably drank, shopped and smoked more this entire long weekend than the whole of last month. Which makes for a very decadent and expensive weekend.

Most of the boozing and smoking happened on Friday when I met up with the usual gang from Army. After dining and the customary reds and sheesha at Pot pourri (the rest had beer..yawn), the Ah Beng declared that he needed to dance in a proper club with the customary hard liqueur and mixers or he would die of boredom. Which we figured he probably already was anyway.

I firmly rejected his suggestion of Kabuki (again) and was amenable to Powerhouse at St James' Power Station, techno night though it was, given my familiarity with that place on a different night of the week. ^^ The queue at Powerhouse was horrendous by the time we arrived at 11pm so the Beng cajoled us into Dragonfly, that cantopop club beside Powerhouse.

I was expecting the worst. Mental images of some cabaret costumed show where dancers prance about the stage belting out Cantonese songs and expecting the crowd to get happy and tipsy to the process. I was pleasantly surprised. Sure enough there was still the cabaret themed live shows which came on at two separate intervals at midnight and sometime at 2? in the morning.

But other than that, the music was great. You know the kind of Top 40 hits, replete with the popular chart toppers from the late 90s that I seriously haven't heard for years. I mean I haven't heard J Lo's Let's Get Loud in a club since the 2003 New Year eve bash at the now defunct Whynot. Perhaps, the more astute or cynical amongst you might point out, I'm really more 'beng' than I care to admit. If loving to groove to Top 40 hits and music with more lyrics than beats instead of the usual House and the generally disseminated songs is an indicator of 'bengness' then I am unabashedly 'Beng'. Well in that aspect at least, I totally fail for the KTV, hokkien vulgarity sprouting bit.

We plowed through 3 bottles of Chivas amongst the 4 of us and grooved till the lights came on at 5am. The night also afforded entertainment of some sort. 2 gay guys in a huge arty farty group near us got drunk and bitchy which ended up in a real fight with glasses zinging to and fro. A short stumpy lady in a frilly dress (whom the Beng aptly terms as Pui Chai - or literally translated as Fat Vegetable) rushed up to me and grabbed my waist and went "Da Jia! Ta men zai da jia!" I had to spend a good minute extricating myself from her persistent embrace.

As a colleague adroitly pointed out, I seem to have the propensity to attract the wrong sort of attention, namely unwanted, unsolicited physical contact with unattractive (and I'm talking unattractive in the objective sense) women. Which often makes me wonder if I'm subconsciously emitting the wrong kind of signals or worse still fat-women-come-hug-me pheromones. Whatever it is, it's a disappointment everytime I'm appreciating a cutie and get accosted by a pui chai. Shrugs, can't have it all I guess.

Shopping was initially driven by necessity( a few winter pieces for the swiss trip) but quickly hijacked by the wholly impulsive urge for retail therapy and the totally unwarranted inclination for gratification. So what started as a simple 'Ok I need a coat' blitzkrieg mission rapidly degenerated into a no-holds barred rampage and I ended up with 4 bags of clothes. 75% of which weren't for the swiss trip. And no, I wasn't doing my Christmas shopping. CS asked the same question (after another impulsive decision to activate them for some late night RA3 gaming) and shot me a dirty look when I answered in the negative.

You know what they say about retail therapy. It's all fine and dandy, inducing a Prozac-esque high till the bill comes. Then you hit rock bottom and it's time for other forms of therapy. Which is why I've resolutely refused to look at this month's credit card's statement. Till I need to clear the credit limit for the Swiss trip of course. Well, all in good time.

In the meantime, I'll be looking forward to the next two weeks where the Family will be on vacation and I'll have the entire bloody house to myself. Not to mention the attendant peace and zen-like serenity. Time to invite a few friends over for dinner or perhaps even the occasional fling for certain nocturnal activities. B L I S S.