82 - Clubbing in Singapore.

Wow, it's been eleven days since I last blogged. I think I'm going to use my day off today to prepare some more blog posts to be published throughout next week. I've been really thoughtful lately, but just hate that I haven't expressed those thoughts on Blogger.

So, since I last spoke to you all, I was heading off to Singapore. My mother wanted to see an Air Supply concert, and she had correctly assumed that I would be the only one who would agree to go with her all that way just to see a show. Singapore was, to me, a good place to visit. They had nice food, and a beautiful combination of sand and sea called Santosa beach. It seemed like a very pleasant place to live. And everywhere, I could see people who enjoyed living there, the expression on their faces revealing a feeling a lot like mine in how I love residing in Hong Kong.

We were only there for four days and three nights, and my mother and I had both taken three days off work just to be there. On the first night, my mother permitted me to go out clubbing and bar-hopping. The nightlife in Singapore was fantastic. It's a place called Clarke Quay, and it consists of a whole line of restaurants, bars, clubs and pubs, that line the banks of a river. It seemed a lot cleaner than Hong Kong's partying districts, and a lot less crowded, even though there was still a lot of people.

After scouting the area for an hour or so, asking various bouncers for the entrance fees and the availability of an open bar, I routinely bought some breath mints from 7-11, and paid twenty Singaporean dollars to enter a nightclub called Zirca. It was quiet at around 9pm, but I waited 'til the party started, as it usually does on a Thursday night. Three young-looking people seated a table seemed sociable and welcoming, so I joined them. We ended up dancing to pretty much the same boring tunes they play in Hong Kong. Singaporeans certainly have a lot of energy on the dancefloor, but by 2am, I just couldn't keep up with them, I wasn't feeling up for it, the alcohol started making me miss home, and so I went back to the place where my mother and I were staying in.

When I got home, my mother bade me go to the bedroom. I went, and as soon as I stepped in, she gave me a big, heartful hug, and said in Chinese, "You worried me to death!"

My mother has a keener interest in health and safety than I do. She always hears stories of the malicious things people do in different places. There are innocent, Indonesian girls that get raped in the middle of the night when they're alone. There are love interests who you think you can trust, who may tell you they have nothing wrong with them, but in actual fact, have a sexually transmitted disease like AIDS. And then there are young guys like me, thirsty for alcohol, who might get served a drink that contains some sort of sedative, so that the strangers behind the bar may carry me off into a world of crime, and teach me how to deal drugs illegally (and God knows what else), and transform me into a monster that will also, sneakily and heavily, sedate other young boys for generations to come, to keep the future of drug trade alive.

While I was having fun in Singapore's clubbing district, my mother was alone, creating an untrue image, of which I will never know the exact nature of, in her mind, of what might have happened to me, in the most unfortunate sense. I actually regretted going out that night, and I did not go out for the next two nights we were there, because of what transpired on the first night. I felt sorry to her, for worrying her. It's understandable because she hardly approves of me going out at all, even here in Hong Kong. She doesn't know that Singaporeans are friendlier than Hongkongers. She has no idea that Singapore and Hong Kong have two of the lowest crime rates in the world, Singapore's being even less than Hong Kong's. And, she doesn't know just how often I go out.

It's logical for her to worry, with what she doesn't know.

I have no doubt that I will return to Singapore some day, to properly experience the nightlife there without anybody worrying me. I guess when you go on holiday with your mother to a foreign country, some things will never change and you still can't go out drinking, whether you're finally 18 years old or not, because it worries her. It always will.