Laneway, night out, the day that flip-flops failed me,

 St. Jerome's Laneway Festival!

Around 1:00 PM I met my Australian friend Ryu at the nearest MRT station. Somehow, despite being a long time sufferer of bitchy resting face, I've managed to make a few friends. I really, really underestimated the timescale of this whole endeavor- I didn't actually end up back home until ~6:00 AM. But first, the festival!

Hey, look at all the white people that turned up! I think like a good 80% of them were Australian, Ryu thought so too

MBS off in the distance behind the main two stages

Early show by XXYYXX. Check out this song. I thought it would have venue translation problems, but it was really quite good.

More Australians. Not pictured: Ryu and I bumped into an earlier acquaintance, a Swede named Sebastian. We'd already bought a pack of clove cigarettes, but then Sebastian introduced me to snus, which is like a small tea bag of tobacco you hold against your gum with your lip. Soooo much nicotine.

Party hadn't really started yet, as the night went on, the beer cups really started to stack up

ERMER GERD, Mount Kimbie! They had some sound issues, they seemed a bit peeved with the fellows in charge of  the microphones. Vocals needed to get mic'd up a lot more

Night falls!

Some Australian friends we made. The woman to the left is putting a fake H&M tattoo on her leg. They were running a promotion where they'd give you an ice cream if you put on an H&M tattoo or were wearing H&M

Checking for integrity

Jamie XX! He played a very 70s sample-based, more-or-less continuous beat. We got a bit bored and beat it for Chvrches

Another bad picture of Jamie XX

Things really heated up when James Blake took the stage

A truly amazing show, it must be said. Check out the video below for an idea. I feel the song of the night was probably this one, CMYK.

 

 Clarke Quay!

During James Blake, we lost Sebastian. Oh well. We found Sarah, a friend from Germany. I guess one good European friend follows another. We decided to take the last train of the night to the famous Clarke Quay (pronounced 'Clark Key'). The bridge over the river was jam-packed with other youth of various nationalities drinking and smoking. Around here I ran out of clove cigarettes.

So many people!

Sarah on the left, a very nice woman whose name I forgot for like the third time on the right

Our host on the left, a Singaporean that kindly put us on the guest list at a club her family owns. On the right is Egle from Lithuania, which I was embarrassed to learn is the bottom Baltic state, not the top one. Whoops, ugly American.

To the club!

Front: Steven, the other American

Flip-flops! Nooooooooooo!

It's now 2:00 AM, but you couldn't really tell. The bouncers wouldn't let me into the club because I was wearing flip-flops! Around this point, literally the strangest thing that has ever happened to me in my life... happened. I'll have to collect my thoughts on this matter before publishing it, but it's hopefully going to be a good story one day?

Anyway,  I waited outside the club, reading History and Class Consciousness. Some local Chinese fellows took pity, tried using their superior language access to get me into the club, but ultimately failed. Anyway, we ended up chatting about Singaporean society and politics. One of the young guys I had a cigarette with turned out to be something of a police officer during daylight hours.

My friends emerged from the club and we headed out in search of cheaper beer. I ended up with a large SKOL.

It was definitely beer

Now it's about 4 or 5 AM, and we got breakfast at McDonald's (which, disappointingly, is almost exactly the same in Singapore) before cramming into a hired van to head back to NTU. At about 6:00, my head finally hits the pillow.