ZoukOut 2010

As much as I have a disdain for numbers, I believe there are merits for its invention, like giving value to money, undermining my pay cheque, making hot women contactable and remembering milestones.

And when we are validating our holidays, lives and blog worthy material against the backdrop of that imaginary party calendar, then there isn’t one that is bigger than ZoukOut on our sunny island. And how best can I commemorate this momentous event that is helmed by a line up of trance acts that will give even eunuchs an erection, then putting it in statistics.

7 – is the total number of ZoukOuts that I’ve been to over the years. I can’t say that every one of it has been enjoyable or memorable, but I can’t complain much when I don’t even like the idea of dancing with sand between my toes to begin with.

The fact that I’ve continuously and religious subscribed to this dance festival is perhaps telling of my penchant for parties, or maybe this holy tripartite of booze, bikini and babes just supersedes any excuse not to party. It probably even makes having a fire rave party at a petrol station sound like a great idea.

$720 is what I spent on drinks that night - not even counting what the other guys bought -, so you should know that I had enough Red Bulls vodkas in me to give even ammonia in my pee a serious bout of insomnia. It’s unbelievable, if I peed on the sand enough, I probably had enough Red Bull in me to coax it into dancing as well.

1 is the number of cup(s) of beer I had. Let me recount, I started my day at 10am and I had every intention of partying till the break of dawn – and maybe beyond if my feet was blister free – so if my bar experiences served me right, while beer is great for explaining overweight issues, burping and getting ugly people laid, it is not going to help me survive the night.

2am is probably the time when I first got a drop of alcohol down my throat. I am not proud of this, but I’ve learnt that as we get older and brash ambitions, stamina and binge drinking capacities slowly divorces us, we need to learn to pace ourselves or risk an early surrender to fatigue and inebriation.

3 is the number of people I saw participated in a fight which started over spilled beer. If you put your drinks on the ground and expect people to not step on them at ZoukOut, is as optimistically moronic as collecting your feces on a Petri dish and hoping it blossoms into a rose garden. In any case, there were two topless men fighting and one brave woman trying to break up the fight - sounds like Jersey Shore to me.

4 is the number of unopened packets of cigarettes that I had with me on entry to ZoukOut as a favour. I think that is a record.

5 is the number of hours I spent at ZoukOut. This was enough because my only intention of being there was purposefully built around the fact that Tiesto was going to be spinning. This man is to Trance what Michael Jackson is to pop music or what KY jelly is to gays; an integral part of life.

The disappointing thing was that he was no where close to that deliverance of euphoric education that he had when I last went for his gig at Port Dickson. The music was as engaging as a deaf choir in a meat market and it was hardly the visual spectacular than I had envisaged.

I was expecting a carnage of fireworks that would have made National Day look like the musical fountain or an entrance with substantial grandeur that would make landing on the moon look like it was filmed in Disneyland. And the exit was.. hell I didn’t even know he ended. A spaceship to beam him away would have been a good finish if you asked me.

11 am was when RotiPrata finally answered my calls. He had gone missing all night and apparently, he woke up with his pants half down, lying on the grass patch in the middle of Ang Mo Kio, with no recollection of how he even got there – and he didn’t even have cash on him to begin with.

This story took the cake completely and our hypothesis remains that he was gang raped, then dumped out the car. It sounds way cooler than what actually happened anyway, so I will keep it as that.

For as much as ZoukOut has been a carnival of decadence over the years, I think I’ve hit a plateau for the corporeal feast of half naked bodies – well, half of them actually should be wearing more clothes because fats only looks good when you put nipples on them – because I am too pampered with plush sofas, air condition and excellent bar services to want to be squeezing through an army of sweaty bodies.

But I’ll never learn, or maybe I don’t want to because perhaps deep down in me, I know that surrendering an attendance at ZoukOut is sign of growing up. And I don’t want to. And in the words of some retro male singer minus your dumb mambo hand signs,

"I want to be forever young”