Wouldn't Mind More Lessons
Yesterday I went for a bash organised by my Hall. It was held at some club called the Butter Factory--a rather odd sort of name, to be sure, but then again it'd sound much worse in Malay. (Even though I can't figure out what the translation would sound like.)
Anyway... I went there around 11--one hour late. I blame the buses for being completely stuffed with people at 10pm. In the end I had to take a cab with a senior (the Corn), and we got out of the cab far too early and wound up about 200m away from the club. It wasn't too bad for me, but the Corn was wearing high heels.
(And she was running. I shudder at the damage to her heels.)
Anyway, the Butter Factory is actually a kinda nice little place. The wall decor is a little disturbing, though... flowers with skulls for heads and little gnomes with more flowers sprouting out of their fingers... but I very much liked the section of the wall that was covered in pixelart. Kelvin would have approved, I think.
I suppose it's a pity the dance floor was so small, because it did get rather crowded around 1am when the alcohol began taking effect and people began losing their inhibitions. And a few people suddenly turned up after work.
It was, overall, a definitely new experience for me. After all, it was my first time ever in such a place... and... hmm... I wonder how I'm going to document everything... I suppose the best thing to do would be to simply put everything in chronological order.
So I arrived at about 11pm, in time for the very end of the pageant preview and to see the emcee start yelling at everybody to get the party started. This meant that the DJ went to his post and started putting on the songs, and everybody surged to the bar to get their (free) first drink.
I didn't join the immensely long line, but drifted around looking for familiar faces. I found two or three; unfortunately two of them refused to dance and one of them danced far too well. I gave up on trying to make conversation after I realised that audible speech would have left me hoarse after the first ten sentences, and then some server or other drifted up to me and I asked for a tequila.
It so happens that tequilas are served in cute little glass glasses with a slice of lemon. I estimate I got about 20ml of tequila... and unfortunately I hadn't drunk half of it before the expertly dancing familiar face (Hair Twist) told me to just sip it instead of gulping it down. I took her advice because my throat was burning. This in itself wasn't a bad thing, but it meant I was now carrying a little glass half-full of alcohol around.
And then the Corn, who was standing in front of me, turned around rather too quickly (or maybe I was rather too near her) and her shoulder rammed into my glass, spilling most of the remainder down her arm (she was wearing a sleeveless something). I thought at the time that God was cheating to keep me sober--even though my alcohol threshold seems quite high (for a habitual non-drinker).
I later went to hang around the edges of the dance floor, watching other people groove to the beat while all I seemed capable of was nodding and swaying imperceptibly. I admit I turned very green, although under all the strobe lights I probably also turned blue, purple, red and deep brown (when there weren't any lights on me)--everybody else seemed to have been born dancing. Especially since there was this bunch of guys and girls near me (Hair Twist amongst them) and they were dancing like crazy--really good moves (from what my limited exposure tells me).
And there I was, trying to imitate their moves without too obviously staring... it was difficult, I tell you.
And that's pretty much the summary of the entire few hours I spent there: I hung around, yo-yo-ing between the dance floor's edges and the quieter fringes, trying to loosen and imitate the moves while on the floor and trying to memorise all the moves while off it. It was broken for a short time when some random guy walked up, yelled "WHY AREN'T YOU DANCING?!" in my ear, and pulled/pushed me into the middle of a bunch of similarly blurry-looking people.
And then he produced a jug of beer, which he divided amongst myself and 3 other guys. That tankard was huge... and apparently we were expected to down the thing in one shot. So I did so--I wasn't likely to get drunk from that--and since I saw no more beer forthcoming and there didn't seem to be any conversation going on, I drifted back onto the dance floor.
Sometime around then, one of the better dancers from Hair Twist's group yelled at me to loosen up and "let it happen", to which I tried to yell back that nothing was happening anyway. Apparently my efforts to remain invisible had not worked--or maybe it's not that hard to miss the only guy on a dance floor who isn't dancing. I did stick close to that group after that, though. Since I did wish to learn to dance (impossible though it might have been), I might as well have done it there... That guy turned out to be a teacher-in-training, who's planning to teach Chinese or Moral Education. (All his friends insist that the next generation of Singaporean students is in serious danger.) I think I'll call him the Emoticon in case he appears on this blog again--the Corn seemed to flirt quite a lot with him--and besides that's how he strikes me: you know, emotions written all over his face.
(And also because he seems to enjoy acting cute.)
I got back to the room at almost 4am, after a prolonged supper and a chitchat session at the bus stop between myself, the Corn, the Emoticon, and Court (another Malaysian senior whom I bumped into there).
I woke up this morning at 12pm, to the lovely sound of rain pouring down in torrents; and I haven't done anything all day except study separable equations and homogenous equations; go for dinner; take my Freakonomics back from Marsh (he's read 6 pages in 3 weeks!); phone Gobble; talk to my grandparents over Skype (my cousin has a computer plus webcam plus headset, although he doesn't know how to adjust the focus); and blog. And play the occasional game along the way, but that's purely incidental.
Right now, though, I just wish there were lessons for such sorts of dancing; I wouldn't mind signing up for 'em. The Corn said practicing wouldn't be any use, but I'd like to be able to do more than look out-of-place next time I visit a club...
(Although this post is sure to send my mom into conniptions at the idea of me in a club and dancing. Ha!)
Anyway... I went there around 11--one hour late. I blame the buses for being completely stuffed with people at 10pm. In the end I had to take a cab with a senior (the Corn), and we got out of the cab far too early and wound up about 200m away from the club. It wasn't too bad for me, but the Corn was wearing high heels.
(And she was running. I shudder at the damage to her heels.)
Anyway, the Butter Factory is actually a kinda nice little place. The wall decor is a little disturbing, though... flowers with skulls for heads and little gnomes with more flowers sprouting out of their fingers... but I very much liked the section of the wall that was covered in pixelart. Kelvin would have approved, I think.
I suppose it's a pity the dance floor was so small, because it did get rather crowded around 1am when the alcohol began taking effect and people began losing their inhibitions. And a few people suddenly turned up after work.
It was, overall, a definitely new experience for me. After all, it was my first time ever in such a place... and... hmm... I wonder how I'm going to document everything... I suppose the best thing to do would be to simply put everything in chronological order.
So I arrived at about 11pm, in time for the very end of the pageant preview and to see the emcee start yelling at everybody to get the party started. This meant that the DJ went to his post and started putting on the songs, and everybody surged to the bar to get their (free) first drink.
I didn't join the immensely long line, but drifted around looking for familiar faces. I found two or three; unfortunately two of them refused to dance and one of them danced far too well. I gave up on trying to make conversation after I realised that audible speech would have left me hoarse after the first ten sentences, and then some server or other drifted up to me and I asked for a tequila.
It so happens that tequilas are served in cute little glass glasses with a slice of lemon. I estimate I got about 20ml of tequila... and unfortunately I hadn't drunk half of it before the expertly dancing familiar face (Hair Twist) told me to just sip it instead of gulping it down. I took her advice because my throat was burning. This in itself wasn't a bad thing, but it meant I was now carrying a little glass half-full of alcohol around.
And then the Corn, who was standing in front of me, turned around rather too quickly (or maybe I was rather too near her) and her shoulder rammed into my glass, spilling most of the remainder down her arm (she was wearing a sleeveless something). I thought at the time that God was cheating to keep me sober--even though my alcohol threshold seems quite high (for a habitual non-drinker).
I later went to hang around the edges of the dance floor, watching other people groove to the beat while all I seemed capable of was nodding and swaying imperceptibly. I admit I turned very green, although under all the strobe lights I probably also turned blue, purple, red and deep brown (when there weren't any lights on me)--everybody else seemed to have been born dancing. Especially since there was this bunch of guys and girls near me (Hair Twist amongst them) and they were dancing like crazy--really good moves (from what my limited exposure tells me).
And there I was, trying to imitate their moves without too obviously staring... it was difficult, I tell you.
And that's pretty much the summary of the entire few hours I spent there: I hung around, yo-yo-ing between the dance floor's edges and the quieter fringes, trying to loosen and imitate the moves while on the floor and trying to memorise all the moves while off it. It was broken for a short time when some random guy walked up, yelled "WHY AREN'T YOU DANCING?!" in my ear, and pulled/pushed me into the middle of a bunch of similarly blurry-looking people.
And then he produced a jug of beer, which he divided amongst myself and 3 other guys. That tankard was huge... and apparently we were expected to down the thing in one shot. So I did so--I wasn't likely to get drunk from that--and since I saw no more beer forthcoming and there didn't seem to be any conversation going on, I drifted back onto the dance floor.
Sometime around then, one of the better dancers from Hair Twist's group yelled at me to loosen up and "let it happen", to which I tried to yell back that nothing was happening anyway. Apparently my efforts to remain invisible had not worked--or maybe it's not that hard to miss the only guy on a dance floor who isn't dancing. I did stick close to that group after that, though. Since I did wish to learn to dance (impossible though it might have been), I might as well have done it there... That guy turned out to be a teacher-in-training, who's planning to teach Chinese or Moral Education. (All his friends insist that the next generation of Singaporean students is in serious danger.) I think I'll call him the Emoticon in case he appears on this blog again--the Corn seemed to flirt quite a lot with him--and besides that's how he strikes me: you know, emotions written all over his face.
(And also because he seems to enjoy acting cute.)
I got back to the room at almost 4am, after a prolonged supper and a chitchat session at the bus stop between myself, the Corn, the Emoticon, and Court (another Malaysian senior whom I bumped into there).
I woke up this morning at 12pm, to the lovely sound of rain pouring down in torrents; and I haven't done anything all day except study separable equations and homogenous equations; go for dinner; take my Freakonomics back from Marsh (he's read 6 pages in 3 weeks!); phone Gobble; talk to my grandparents over Skype (my cousin has a computer plus webcam plus headset, although he doesn't know how to adjust the focus); and blog. And play the occasional game along the way, but that's purely incidental.
Right now, though, I just wish there were lessons for such sorts of dancing; I wouldn't mind signing up for 'em. The Corn said practicing wouldn't be any use, but I'd like to be able to do more than look out-of-place next time I visit a club...
(Although this post is sure to send my mom into conniptions at the idea of me in a club and dancing. Ha!)
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