Entertainment Threshold

N, the daughter of a friend, and her boyfriend (?initial), are staying at E@LGHQ over the weekend. They had flown up to Singapore from Sydney (he thinks) to attend some significant party or other that was cancelled at the last minute, but hey, and so here they are.

E@L was in the lounge room on his comfy chair - a rather maltreated Moran recliner - munching on some walnut and raisin bread toast (from Cedele, IMHO the only decent baker in Singapore) reading The Guardian on his tab (soon to be replaced by an iPad mini - which is needed to read his work email when at home or on the hoof as the VPN is only supported on a PC or on an Apple phone or tab iOS6 - to be replaced on Monday actually [today is Saturday]) when he heard some shuffling near the door behind him. N and (?initial) were preparing to head out. It was 10am, their fast had been broken with scrambled eggs on plain white toast, E@L had noted earlier (where was his?), and they had the whole day in Singapore to investigate, tour, find some fun...

"Where are you off to?" inquired the perhaps over-stepping the mark E@L. (Their lives, right? What business is it of his what they do - they are close enough to adults - N. is 19 or 20 E@L thinks. Whispy-bearded (?initial) looks about 16.)

N is stepping into her outdoor shoes, her hair is slick from a shower. (?initial) is looking sheepish as he holds the door open for her. ("Let's escape quick!" he might be thinking. "This man was screaming like a lunatic at the telly all last night!" [The Cats were in the process of giving away a handy lead - they lost in the end and will not be playing in the Grand Final next weekend - which means that E@L's long-ago booked, high-expectations, wishful-thinking, redeemed-points trip to Melbourne to watch the big Match at the MCG will have lost its savour.])

"We're going to the waterpark. You know, those really big slides and stuff. Then we'll probably find a beach somewhere there." (All of these planned activities are on that small island at the tip of Singapore, Sentosa - So Expensive Nothing To See Actually, as the taxi drivers acronym it ["Acronym" as a verb, surely that's a first! Maybe "acronymize" would be be a better word], which in fact has a lot more to do now that there is a casino/resort and associated family-centric entertainments there.)

"Have fun," says E@L and reverts to his tab.

~~~~~~~~

"What's my day got in store?" asks E@L of himself.

He might walk to Great World City - 45mins to an hour in the humidity and blistering sunshine (it actually looks a bit cloudy - hope the kids find some sun on the beach) - and there settle in at the Spinelli on another comfy chair with a hazelnut-choc spin (although the banana-choc spin sounds a tad healthier - you know, like, fruit) and a toasted sandwich and, maybe, some oatmeal cookies, and definitely with a Kindle book. The Crimson Petal And The White,, most likely (He has 140 books on there to jump between without ever really settling on the one he has promised himself to finish [Infinite Jest and Volume 3 {The Guermantes Way} of In Search Of Lost Time still beckon]) as he has just completed his dead-tree version of Under The Skin, also by Michel Faber (and the film version with watsername - girl with big lips, ah yes Scarlett Johanssen - is being released soon, or maybe it already has, but anyway it is not on the torrent sites yet), a book E@L has had on his shelf for several years and has only been prompted to read it by the awareness of said impending movie, and the new mini-series based on it {i.e. The Crimson Petal and The White} is "coming soon" as well.

And that's about it for E@L today*.

A walk, lunch, a book.

And that's enough to satisfy him. Truly, it is.

Kids, enjoy yourselves risking life and limb.

Someone else who will be enjoying himself is

E@L



~~~~~~~~

* Oh, there's a house-warming party tonight at some friends' new place which is just near Orchard Towers. Sigh. Here we go again.

Guess where we all end up by 2am? Half-naked hookers and three-quarter naked lady-boys and drunken brawls over drunken johns with drunken fuckin' losers from Australia (see video) and existential angst and guilt and toilets ankle deep in piss, vomit and wet toilet paper and alcohol and crowded bars and dim black-light and thumping music and your crotch grabbed at and come-hither-sucker smiles by black hookers from Colombia and white hookers from Kazahkistan and tight-skinned yellow hookers from Vietnam and where do all these men come from and some tears here and some spit there and sprained ankles from trying to pole-dance and rounds of tequilas for all the Filipina bar-girls who subsist and earn their passports back on these $45 shots and body-shots off dark-skinned flat-chested Thai girls/boys who cares by now and massive unexplainable credit-card bills and big gaps in memory and maybe an end of adventure rub-and-tug to calm things down and walk home, 25 to 35 mins, and feel like extruded, plasmatic crap for the next three days.

And on Sunday, a walk up to Spinelli around mid-afternoon for a hazelnut-choc spin and a toasted sandwich - if there are any left - and, yep, some cookies, and then dissolve in an unquietly be-dreamed nap on a comfy chair - if he can find one.

Enough for one weekend.