Читать книгу Nightlife [Confidential] Volume 1 - Ivan Boone's Lim - Страница 5

While clubs in Singapore, just like anywhere else in the world, maintain a discretionary policy as far as entry into their premises is concerned, they also reserve the right to check the contents of bags that are carried by patrons.

Which means, simply, it is entirely up to the establishment’s management to decide whether or not to let you into the club and that if they do, it is within their rights to open up your bag, not to check on the brand of makeup or condom you use, but to make sure you are not attempting to bring in a chainsaw, a nuclear weapon, a general-purpose machine gun or any such device which could endanger the other patrons in the club.

Oh, they would also hope not to find any suspicious chemicals that could be recreational or illegal drugs.

Usually, if a bag is checked at all, the bouncer or staff would shine a torch into it and the bearer would be admitted in after a cursory glance at the contents.

Making sure the club is secure is a very good practice, of course, though patrons at the receiving end of such a routine check can sometimes feel they are being picked on.

Whether these checks are stringent enough or not, an astonishing number of embarrassing items somehow slip past the bouncers at clubs. Thank goodness none are life-threatening, so far.

Take for the instance of the guy who who was seen at the VIP tent at one edition of ZoukOut, Singapore’s premier beach party.

He may not have been the fittest-looking guy on the beach, but he was carrying a very stylish designer bag. That bag was already attracting quite a bit of attention, when its owner decided somewhat abruptly that he needed to remove something from within.

He unzipped it at a precarious tilt, unfortunately and very unceremoniously spilling some of the items from it onto the bench on which he had plonked himself.

The people nearest to him in the tent gasped, their eyes transfixed on a single item: It was a mouldy packet of salted peanuts, now almost empty, its contents strewn all over the bench and on the sand.

Heaven knows how long that packet of peanuts had been left to rot in that designer bag, but neither the wife nor I stayed long enough to find out as we made ourselves scarce in case, like the possession of drugs, we became guilty by association.

Another instance involving nuts had a hide-and-seek element to it. At a club popular with mature patrons, a group of partygoers who looked to be rather well-heeled were seen passing several conical paper packets around. These contained “kacang”, a Malay term for nuts, and you can still see some of these being sold at cinemas where they were once a must-have item before they slowly died out in the 90s.

Anyway, the “kacang” gang were told very politely by a manager that bar snacks were available, whereupon the conical paper packets disappeared into jackets and handbags while members of the offending group hung their heads in shame after declining to order anything from the bar.

But, to our horror, the white packets re-emerged the moment the manager left the table, the look of contrition on the faces replaced instantly with puerile smirks and unapologetic glee. I wouldn’t have blamed the manager had he secretly wished for someone in the group to develop an instant, fatal peanut allergy. But to his credit, he pursued the matter no further and left them to their devices as they continued making absolute idiots of themselves, much to the disdain of the other patrons.

We were not present at the final transgression, for it was a club manager who told us the following story: During the early hours of a weekend when the club was beginning to get quite crowded, he noticed a group of middle-aged patrons helping themselves to “kueh” (a vernacular term for cakes) from a large plastic container which one of them had whipped out of a giant supermarket plastic bag.

“Damn low class, lah,” he lamented. “They think picnic or what. If they were in a park, OK lah, but here...” he trailed off with a facepalm

Did he attempt to stop them?

“I told them lah, but they continued,” he said, shaking his head in despair. “What to do?”

But he did cheer up when we suggested he may have been interrupting their DIY attempt at food and liquor pairing.