Ramblings About My Life..

Clubbing At Gatecrasher!

Yeah. Went clubbing for the first time in my life, against my better judgement. I don't particularly like loud music with bass so strong it can literally pound one's inner ears into the brain matter. I absolutely detest staying in an atmosphere that's 80% cigarette smoke, 10% belch and the remaining 10% breathable air. I hate places so crowded one has to knock into seventeen elbows, eight backs and three backsides just to get from one place to another. I don't actually mind the alcohol, though - although these days I limit the amount of alcohol I drink in public after an unfortunate incident involving two bottles of red wine, one bottle of red wine and six paper cups full of undiluted tequila. But still, I don't believe in going to places where I have my eardrums vibrated so badly they turn into mush, have to pay three times the amount for less than half the amount of liqour I'd get at home and mix with a crowd when all I want is to sit in my room and indulge myself in a good book or a nice song.

So. Anyway. I went. Partly because all of my Hallmates were going. Partly because it was what freshers were supposed to do at the start of the university term. But mostly because I had never been into one before and was actually rather curious about what a club looked like from the inside. After purchasing the tickets for this 'social' (I have no idea why they call it 'socials' when all they do is drink, dance, drink some more, and get so pissing drunk - I hardly see any socialising being done besides the few desperate individuals trying to pick up other individuals from the opposite gender), all my Hallmates were pretty excited about the event. So much so until they even did extensive 'planning' online - which came to naught on the day itself when plans changed every 15 minutes. Haha! We are Malaysians - it's in our genes that "we shalt not stick to any plan for more than 15 minutes". Instead, we plan extensively days, or even weeks beforehand - only to improvise when the time to carry out the plans comes.

We met on Tuesday at the cafeteria, had dinner together and finalized our "plans" (a futile effort). After dinner, we met again at the reception and left together for Gatecrasher. The navigator of our party of 13 was Ah Wong again, being the only person who knows the exact whereabouts of the club. We left at 10pm after many delays (people coming down late, people going missing, people forgetting their cameras, etc etc etc), and reached the club at around half past 10pm. Went in, promptly got our free drinks and kinda stood around a table before we realized that it was kind of sad to be doing nothing in a club. Wei Jin brought me upstairs to the balcony section, where I met Suresh (a first year med student from Ipoh) and a few of his friends - I did nothing there but introduce myself and finish my drink in record time. However, on my way down, I met Lisa (another med student, from HK) as well as Tina and Kanako (students from Japan). Talked to them for a while, and then decided to head back down to find my fellow friends.

At the bar, I met up with with the whole gang again. Tommy, Jun Xue, Mark, James, Ah Wong, Su-Ann, Brandy, Chris, Winny, Wei Jin and Hsin Yu were at the little table, standing around, just drinking and looking around. Suddenly, someone suggested that we went to the dance floor and Mark, Jun Xue, James, Ah Wong and Tommy sped off. I didn't want to be left alone, so I followed them. I must have been deluding myself when I thought I might actually enjoy clubbing - but I spent most of my time shuffling around and trying to avoid knocking into other people. Tommy, Mark and Ah Wong were dancing so exuberantly I was fairly surprised at them! Even Su-Ann joined us on the dance floor! After around twenty minutes (approximately 4 songs) of pretending to be clubbing, I gave up and left the dance floor. I found a nice, relatively quiet spot ("relatively quiet" means an area outside the influence of the massive speakers and subwoofers) which was relatively unoccupied and stood there for a while trying to discover if I had any eardrums left.

Then, Marina came along (another med sudent, she's from the UK, a British-born Chinese) with a friend of hers. We chatted for a while (actually, we shouted into each other's ears since vocalization is pointless in Gatecrasher when the music is set to the maximum volume) and they passed me their vouchers for free drinks! Apparently, they don't drink and they were about to go back anyway. After they left, I headed back to the bar to get more drinks when I met Noemi, Rexanna and Yi Yong. I wanted to give them my vouchers but they didn't want it, so I got myself another drink! Wei Jin, who happened to pass by, got the other voucher from me. We stood there drinking for a while until Jun Xue came to us with bad news. Apparently one of the girls got drunk - she had never drank before and she was downing shot after shot! For privacy reasons I won't mention her name here...hahaha... We gathered everyone, left the club and hailed a taxi for the girls. The Drunk Girl (TDG) was insisting she could walk back when she was incapable of walking two steps without staggering and that there was no reason to take a cab! Everyone had to lie to her that we were all taking a cab back - and after the girls left in a cab, the rest of us walked back.

Apparently our "early" departure (it was just before 1am) riled Mark. He had nearly gotten lucky that night, but our early departure ruined his night. "Wahlau eh, I can't believe I'm so stupid to stay with my friends instead of a girl", he kept lamenting. Ahahaha.. We assured him that it was most likely for the better, you know, AIDS, STD and all that unwanted stuff that sometimes comes from a one-night stand. Surprisingly he seemed much better after those reassurances. Hahaha! After reaching Halifax Hall at nearly 2am, I immediately took a bath and collapsed onto my bed. The next morning, TDG seemed to not remember anything from the night before. If she did, it didn't show - I thought she'd at least be embarrassed to see us! Well...that was my first experience at clubbing, and it wasn't astral or anything like that. I had a sore throat the next day - probably too much shouting at Gatecrasher. If I'd learned anything from this outing, it would be that normal human vocalization is a futile task in a club and that one should never bring friends who cannot drink, or have never drank before to a club. Make sure they go through a "boot-camp" of drinking first. I've seen people getting tipsy just by eating chocolates with liquor inside them!

Ah, well. At least I can say that I've been clubbing before.

posted by yong chen @ 8:46 PM