Having missed STRIP last semester, I was curious to find out what a Science bash was like, and so I went down with a trusted associate to have a look at Dare 21". In short, it was disappointing (and not just by my standards).

While waiting to go in, I noticed that there were lots of JC girls milling around Orchard Road. Maybe they wanted to try their luck, but were underaged and anyway probably measured 42 inches from top to bottom and so didn't qualify for free admission.

I was speculating about how much they'd have to jack up the ticket price by to cover the cost of free entry for girls who wore 21 inches or less, but figured so few would qualify that the effect on ticket prices would be negligible.

Along Orchard Road, there were walking billboards advertising the bash, but what I found more intriguing was that there was a girl hanging around and helping out one of the walking billboards who was presumably part of the organising committee. Although she was wearing a flared tube top, she was also wearing jeans, which struck me as curious, since she was not even making a token attempt to hit the 21" target.

After some dillying and dallying, I managed to persuade my trusted associate to help me take a picture as photographic evidence of this curious juxtaposition while I queried the lot of them on it (more on the lack of said photographic evidence in this entry later). In response to my queries, the people milling around admitted that it was a gimmick. I said they couldn't jolly well expect people going for the bash to Dare to wear less than 21 inches if they didn't either, showing that they didn't believe in their own gimmick, and they replied that "we choose not to" participate in their own gimmick.

On entering China Black, I noticed that almost everyone, even the girls, was in jeans. I asked my trusted associate, "Why is everyone in jeans? They don't even make an attempt," and he replied, "Welcome to Science". I also didn't see any girls with freaky hair, but then I don't think Science bashes are promoted that way.

I am given to believe that most bashes have some sort of program, which helps to move the night along instead of letting participants mill around, get wasted and pick each other up at their convenience. Dare 21" did not have one, however, so I was left to my own devices as to how to entertain myself.

At 10:25pm, I surveyed the scene and found that the club was mostly filled with guys, and not that fully at that (those who came later were probably coming to club rather than for the bash itself). At 10:40pm, I did another survey and counted perhaps 3 girls who might pass the 21" test (one of which was wearing a jacket so I wasn't sure, but my educated guess was that she stood a good chance of qualifying, sans jacket). I'd actually brought a secret weapon - a length of measuring tape, and was contemplating when and how to use it. However, all the girls who seemed to stand a chance of qualifying were escorted by possessive-looking males, and lacking a gang of groupies to shield me (my trusted associate, though loyal, would not be sufficient to guard against the fury of an oversexed boyfriend and is a self-declared pacifist to boot), I decided not to test the power of male jealousy when amplified by loud music, a dark environment, booze and a strange request. This phenomenon also puzzled me, because I thought (and have and had been told) that people went clubbing to pick people up and to be picked up, so going with a significant other would defeat the point.

Some people then started squeezing onto an incredibly small platform ("sticking together like goldfish defecation") and gyrating their hips. How this was supposed to be a form of dancing I couldn't tell, since there was no space for them to do anything except shake their arms in the air and grope each other. My trusted associate then proclaimed that: "Science people wouldn't hit the dance floor... Those that we saw just now are probably not Science students."

At about 11pm, I took another round around the place and counted 7 girls who might meet the 21" criterion. However, half of them didn't look like they were from NUS students, let alone from Science. I also ran into a familiar face who suggested, when I lamented my lack of skill at discretely taking photographs in clubs, that I wait till everyone was drunk before pretending to know people and aking photographs of them, but unfortunately I judged that having 2 trusted associates would not be sufficient protection against a club full of irate Science guys.

A while later, I was sitting on a couch passively observing the scene, which wasn't changing much save for the number of participants increasing, when the boyfriend of the girl in the flared top whom my trusted associate had taken a picture of stormed up to me and started shouting. He said that "a building is public property. My girlfriend is not public property", and so he was very upset and demanded that I delete the photograph. Recognising that argument with him would be futile, as with a SAF regular, I deleted the photograph, despite the lack of local laws against taking photographs of people for non-profit purposes in public without their permission (only France, I'm told, mandates that one ask for permission before snapping). So I suppose the moral of the story is either to set up CCTV cameras in the name of "security" or to disappear after taking your photographs, at least if you are outnumbered by the irate parties demanding deletion of your snapshots. I hope that recollections of events are not private property as well; I don't think I've been so indignant since Slavery. His friend was quite apologetic though, to his credit (the friend, not him).

After this incident, my mood was understandably soured, and anyway the normal club crowd was filtering in, distorting my observations, so when my trusted associate got bored and suggested that we scoot, I barely hesitated before leaving the denizens of the club to their "fun". I mused about what he should do the next time I came up with a stupid idea such as this, and he said he would hit me in the ass, and I heartily agreed.

[Addendum: When I left at almost 12, the organisers were downstairs. A friend who left at 2:30am said he saw them sitting downstairs at that time, and someone who left at 1am saw them doing accounts. So even the organisers didn't believe in their own bash.]

(I actually have a few photos from this ill-advised expedition, but to prevent my trusted associate's corpse from appearing in a gutter in Science on Monday, as well as more irate people complaining that they/their significant others aren't public property, I won't post them)