Saturday, May 10, 2008

Bukit Panjang LRT Woe, Birthday Celebration For Family Member, Friday Night's Out at St James Power Station

Bukit Panjang LRT Woe:
Well, the photograph wasn't very clear because I was already quite bored so I could not bothered to take a proper picture. The fact was that I was stuck at Bukit Panjang LRT for nearly 25 minutes because something failed at the LRT side and eventually I was forced to take a cab out of the town because the delay was too long.

This is the danger of being overly-dependent on a single monorail transportation system such as the LRT for a entire town. No doubt there were buses and taxis to serve the residents of Bukit Panjang too, but those were few and far between, and are probably in serious short supply if the LRT trains break down at inconvenient times such as during rush hours.

Perhaps they should build another rail above the current one so that if one fails, another can continue to function? In any case, I am glad the place which I lived in is well-served by all modes of transportation imaginable.


Birthday Celebration For Family Member:

Last Thursday, my family celebrated the birthday of one of my family members and as per the usual practice, a birthday cake, some nice foodies and a birthday meal were in place for that. It was simple home fun and I suppose this means another year of good fortune to come to enjoy one's stay on this planet yet again.

The birthday cake - nice smooth fudge covering a chocolate-flavoured cake. It's abit dry on the inside but nevertheless tasted great because it's a birthday cake! =)
The birthday lunch for that day - yummy rice (rice is expensive so must eat up all the grains no matter what), vegetables and freshly-roasted duck meat (plus one piece of roasted meat from my mother - who adds it because she thinks it will look nice since she saw me taking photos of the food on the table. Hahaha). It looks like a simple meal but considering this family member barely even spends more than one day in the house at any point of time, it tasted heavenly.

Friday Night's Out At St James Power Station:

It was Friday night and I happened to end my lessons earlier that day so making use of the chance to continue to entertain The Holy Bitch, our next stop was St James Power Station - where the dance, music, drinks and the crowd are. But before that, we needed to fill our stomachs first so we made our way to an undisclosed branch of Han's restaurant to have our dinner.

This is what The Holy Bitch ordered - a chicken chop set meal (which also consisted of a soup, a piece of garlic bread, a slice of watermelon and a cup of coffee). If you haven't tried Han's chicken chop, it is actually very nice - not too oily and the meat is smooth to the taste and matched well with the crunchy hashbrown and the lightly-seasoned vegetables.
This was my dinner - grilled fish dory set meal. Han's used to serve some better fish set meal but apparently this branch did not have that kind of fish anymore so I had to make do with fish dory - which is delicious too but the portion had shrunk in size. Still, dinner was nice because the restaurant was not too crowded when we went there and we had a good dinner.
What is this blurry photograph all about?

Ice-cream. Haagen Daz Almond and Nuts Ice-cream. Costs $4.89. Free treat from The Holy Bitch in return for my dinner treat at Han's. Walking inside Harbourfront MRT station from Cheers. In defiance of supposed MRT rules because we were deliriously happy eating our ice-cream to care much.

We were on our way to VivoCity after dinner and The Holy Bitch was so nice to give me a treat of the really expensive Haagen Daz ice-cream and so off we went eating our ice-cream and doing window-shopping.

Taa-Daa! We finally reached St James Power Station at around 10.15pm and it was really really crowded. Our first stop was The Boiler Room - the cover charge was $20 per person with one standard drink but the best part was that with that entry stamp, we could also visit any of the clubs at St James Power Station so it was worthwhile.

However, the moment we stepped into The Boiler Room, we wished we had came earlier because the whole place was jam-packed. Every table was fully occupied with people toasting drinks and the bar counter was like a warzone - with glasses, jugs and bottles coming in and going out at an eye-popping place. Apparently, The Boiler Room was already abuzz way before 10pm but it was still a great experience seeing all those people and of course the live band cracking up jokes onstage to entertain the crowd.

We did not use up our standard drink there straightaway because there wasn't much room to order our drinks, let alone find a place to stand to drink so we hopped over to Dragonfly, hoping to find some room there.

Woohoo - Dragonfly was even crazier because the crowd were already hopping up and down with drink glasses in their hands at the music. The band had started playing and it was wild and even more crowded than The Boiler Room. The Holy Bitch did not really like the retro music being played that night so we club-hopped again - this time to St James Power House.

St James Power House is located right at the back of St James Power Station so we had to take a short stroll looking at all the beautifully-dressed people who are out to impress everyone else coming in. Our re-entry queue was fast and within a minute, both of us were in. The place was really smokey and the music was heart-thumpingly loud because the stereos were located just one two metres overhead.

The Holy Bitch liked the House Music and Trance Music played so we found a nice place by the bar counter and ordered our drinks. The standard drink coupon at The Boiler Room couldn't be used at other clubs so we ordered in cash - our first round of drinks was bourbon coke because The Holy Bitch was experimenting with as many different types of drinks as she could stomach. Bourbon coke turned out nice enough - not too much ice-cubes and a reasonable amount of bourbon and the coke was fresh too even though I preferred more bourbon in a $10 glass.

The crowd was relatively smaller than the previous two clubs so we waited until the place was heated up and at around 12pm, the crowd reached a good capacity and the music started to blast up. We were musing between ourselves over two girls who were behaving prominently in the club that night and entertaining ourselves by watching their antics: One girl was extremely high - dressed in black and white - she was literally jumping up and down to the music for nearly two hours. She must be deliriously happy. The other girl was quite the opposite - she was deliriously emotional and quite drunk after drinking and dancing that she was literally sprawled over the bar counter. Her boyfriend and friends were busily trying to comfort her but she seemed to be sobbing uncontrollably somehow and did not manage to recover even after two hours.

The Holy Bitch was musing about how drinks can bring out such extreme behaviours in people and I was replying her that most of the time, people get high over drinks for two major reasons - they are either extremely happy or extremely sad. On hindsight, maybe they are just trying to use the liquor to figure out if they are truly happy or sad inside. We ordered our second round of drinks - vodka orange - and stayed on at St James Power House. It ain't bad inside but it sort of lacked the live entertainment or the active deejay but we enjoyed ourselves there for the better part of the night before going back to The Boiler Room to use up our standard drinks coupons on bourbon straight.

The Boiler Room was even more crowded than the first time we went in and wanting The Holy Bitch to order the drinks, I gave her the coupons and she frowned because she was afraid to push through the bar counter madness (it was her first time to order drinks over the counter) but I said the experience would be unforgettable and so off she went while I followed her but keeping my mouth shut throughout.
The Holy Bitch finally succeeded after struggling to get through the service crew and the other patrons of the club, shouting out our orders in order to be heard and waiting for our drinks to come above the din. It was complete madness but great fun seeing all the action over the bar counter. We finished our bourbon straight - which The Holy Bitch loved but I gave it a thumbs-down because the ice-cubes had melted and the bourbon became pretty much tasteless because of the delay at the bar counter - our drinks were waiting at a corner but the service crew was too busy to notice our drinks melting away. Still, we admired how the service crew for staying sane amidst the crazy pace there.

When we both left St James Power Station, it was already 3am. It was a good Friday Night's Out. =)

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