A Movable Feast

Adepts of the lore of the Charisma Card and its sacred rites may already be on top of this, but E@L has been out of Singapore circulation for nigh on a month now. Things have happened, changed, altered; subtle shifts in the folds of dark matter contained within the fabric of the universe have scattered light into otherwise misty crevices of reality. Yada, yada...

Called out for catch-up beers in, of all the cheesy places, Boat Quay, E@L wandered into the milling throng of beer swilling bankers and their 50' Zombie Divorcee office managers desperate for a casual Friday Campari and lemonade, the latter under the impression that the guys care about them until that time when those lads tell them to fuck off and head en drunken masse to the 4FoWs.

E@L threaded his beer belly past their heaving beer bellies, like a camel through the eye of a couple dozen other camels, and weathered the gauntlet of leech-like touts screeching at him to try their chili-crab and a free beer in their BEST of all the indistinguishable rip-off slop Chinese food restaurants (one uses that word loosely) along the scintillating waters of the picturesque riverside, which, by the by, deserves better than this.  He made it to BQ Bar where another GFC of bankers milled.  His buddies (timorous non-bankers) hovered hesitantly at the periphery of the bully boys and sipped on THEIR Camparis and lemonades until E@L arrived and upped the ante to low-carb Pure Blonde beer.

At the periphery is where the action was, as it happened.

"Check this," said M@, and E@L turned to see a flock of Filipinas, flocked out in LBDs and high heels moving past them through the gauntlet, ignored by the restaurant touts,  along the block towards Harry's and Penny Black.

"They've wandered past here several times, up and back, while we've stood here waiting for you," said M@. "There were more..." and as he said this another gang of four in tight skirts did their best to effect a sashay past some prospective banker ATMs.

"Presumably they're on a recce from the new bars on Circular Rd," he said.  For you out-of-towners, Circular Rd is the curving stretch of partly gentrified old shop-houses behind the tourist friendly rip-off area, the notorious drinking hole Boat Quay.  This is the spot where rapscallions like Barings Bank bringer-downerer Nic Leeson once used to moon the barmaids and generally do British alcoholic things till the wee hours, bringing some notoriety to an otherwise boring Government approved socializing area for foreign talent.  E@L tries to avoid it as much as possible.

"Circular Rd?" queried E@L. "Since when?"

"Since they cracked down on the bars near Duxton Hill."

"Holy hell" opined the rather stunned E@L. "This going to cast a new light on the old 'Just going down to Boat Quay for a drink with boys' sort of excuse by the married lads."

Three groups of girls wandered by in the time it took to down two beers. 

One of the guys in E@L's group left, as his apron strings tugged from too close a range, so M@ called for the bill and he and E@L headed round the corner to grab a bite at their old standby, the Thai Smile Restaurant. As they walked under the verandahs of the narrow old shop-houses, they were eagerly waved at from across the road (see photo) and coquettishly grabbed by the crotch on this side of the road, as bar after of bar of swarming black-dressed Filipina hookers tried to entice, nay, drag them into their demonic lairs.  A door was opened and bodies lunged forward from out of the gloom, their faces lit by ultraviolet, their teeth long, sharp and blue... it was like a scene from a horror movie where blood-thirsty harpies descend to feed on the flesh of the living...

This is Circular Rd! This should not be happening here.

The usual scenario of the past is for a vaguely Chinese, laconically indifferent girl in a short skirt to look you over and dismiss you as she sits on a high chair in front of some Koreans-only club, or to sit similarly uninterested as you glance into the depths of a dim-lit drinking hole where several ah-bengs smash at a billiard balls on a sticky table and wait for the next drug deal to go down.

This is where the NORMAL ang-mohs go (or walk past I mean). Not the sex-tourists.

At least not until now.

They were there, now they are here, like the bubble of a string balloon. Press here, the bubble pops up there.

It is a movable, unstoppable, force of nature.

E@L