Back to the Attic...Ah!

Last night I went back to revisit my old haunt, Attica, after a two month hiatus.

It is a club near where I live which was deeemed by the night life reviews last year as the place to see and to be seen and where the beautiful people go. The label stuck but over time I realised that there is a subheading attached to it too, which is: meat market. Welcome to the hunting safari park for white male expats where there will be plenty of extremely unwilling local girls to be hunted. Now that I think of it, it works the other way round too where the local girls become the hunters and the white expats standing around in crisp shirts are there waiting to be hunted. Most of my local male friends are so anti-attic because of this that they'd rather be thrown into the river than to step in there.

There was a time when I basically went there every living weekend ad nauseam and spend many a sunday just recuperating (remember it is non-monsoon period so surf is zero and there is nothing else to do). And then I stopped. I have had it up to my throat and I could feel myself retching to just think about it. So why on earth did I go there? First, it is free entrance for me. Second, my friend sometimes spins there so I'd like to give him support because I get invites to other parties from him. Third, the music is good. Fourth, it is one of the nearest to my place I can even walk home. Fifth, the age group of the crowd is just about right so there are no pimply teenagers prancing around trying to pick you up.

Thanks to Gio I was cajoled, dragged and pushed to enter that place again last night. Well, it was definitely way better than the hotel club we went to ealier where people danced to a bad Maroon 5 cover. All my three male friends proceeded to go about their hunting business and I was left trying to dance on the dance floor that was too packed for comfort. People trashed their bodies back and forth in reckless abandon, people trying to walk in and out, some sleazy guys eyeing you up. After two hours I decided to leave.

Lesson numero uno: don't come with only male friends here because they only want to hunt and it feels stupid dancing by yourself because then the other males who are hunting would think that you are there to pick them up too. It is pretty disconcerting when you are dancing and then some guy would snake their way to your sphere and started dancing with you. I never knew what to do. They would look at me and smiled so I would smile back but muttering under my breath, "oh just frig' off will ya" and then look up to the ceiling in the hope that they would disappear. Most of the time they don't. Instead they would throw hopeful glances at me which forced me to turn my body 180 degree away. I mean, what do they expect me to do? Chat them up and get their phone numbers? For pete's sake if they'd just start with a nice hello and ask first. But then again..

One of the male friends Pat told me that the science for any white guys to pick up girls over here is as simple as ABC.
A: Wear a (T-shirt) crisp shirt on your evenings out.
B: Put on a pair of nice slim-cut tailored pants.
C: Perch yourself in any bar and wait for result.
The last time he did that he got five phone numbers thrown to him without him moving a finger. God bless him though because he said he found the whole affair so stupid and the girls stupider.

Which brought me to the conversation I had with Gio last night. We were sitting at some cafe eating our chocolate cakes and whilst sitting we noticed how the passersby would walk past us with scrutinizing look. I knew what their thought bubbles read: "Ooh, another ang-moh (pink-faced man) with an SPG."

That's the thing here. That people would immediately label you when you are an asian seen hanging out with a white. They don't care if you are just friends enjoying an innocent cup of coffee. Do I blame the locals for being narrow minded? Do I blame the expats for sterotyping the asian girls? Do I blame the SPGs for bringing bad name to the female population here? Or do I blame the Blair the Bush the Howard and the Merkel? It irks me. The whites think that you are another SPG, the locals think that you are another SPG, the SPGs think that you are another SPG. It is no wonder that sometimes I think I am an SPG too (Okay, the last statement was not true). And because I don't know them I can't perform my aikido moves on them lest the police consider me a public hazard and proceed to handcuff me.

When I landed back here five years ago I was crossing the street and saw this fat-arsed caucasian crossing the street swaggering. I repeat: swaggering. I took a double look because I haven't seen anybody swagger in real lives before. Not in London, not in Paris not even in Sydney and excuse me, this guy here is swaggering? My mind immediately listed the following questions:
(a) Good looking? Answer: no
(b) Stylish? Answer: no
(c) Cool? Answer: no
(d) Smart? Answer: not too sure
(e) Rich? A: looks like some redneck just winning a lottery

I thought it was going to be a one-off incident unti I spotted many more of them dotted all over the island. Well, they mostly congregate at certain spots, for example, like the club above. I mean, these guys are probably invisible back home and upon landing on this exotic island paradise they are deemed god whose feet the tribe worships.

Maybe I should open a pedicure shop catered to them. I would then employ people to wash, pamper and beautify their feet so that they (the feet) will be more pleasant to be worshipped at.