The Survival Guide Post - that cannot be posted

We may have the cleanest roads, safest streets and most expensive car prices, but being in Singapore also means that we sacrifice access to a certain clubbing culture. I’m talking neon lights, lap dances, topless dancing and bass pumping rave joints that will make Orchard Towers look like a Sunday chapel. And if you’ve been to a rave joint, then you know it’ll take a lot more than alcohol to survive.

How to Survive a Rave Joint

1. Night Vision Goggles

There is more light from an iPhone flash than there is at a typical rave joint, because clandestine motives are the order of the day. It’s sometimes so dark at rave joints that more people actually die from falling over steps and knocking into pillars than drug overdoses.

So if you’ve not been taking your vitamins diligently or you have general night blindess – or nyctalopia for the well informed nerds – then your best bet is having night vision goggles, because besides this, it’s an essential spy tool for anyone aspiring to be a pervert.

2. Water

Forget your towers of beer, or you magnum sized cognacs because the only thing that truly matters in a rave joint, is water, lots of it for that matter. If you haven’t already realized, no one truly goes to a rave joint to get drunk. They get high, but never drunk.

Bringing your own water is paramount for bargain clubbers because the prices for water at some places will put oil prices to shame. Call it capitalism or cruel marketing, but as my economics lecture used to say, ‘when there is a demand, exploit it’ – or maybe that was Bill Gates.

3. Watch your drinks

Unlike the clubs here where you can leave your drinks unattended because drugs are too precious to be used for spiking strangers, rave joints have more drugs readily available than calories at McDonald’s. Spiking your drinks need not always be of malicious intent, because sometimes that is how fellow clubbers there say ‘Hello’.

Always drink from the same glass, never share drinks with strangers and don’t even think of accepting a random drink, because if you wake up one day in a back alley and discover that your kidney is on sale on eBay, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

4. Glow Sticks

Although glow sticks are essential to rave culture as fingers are to KFC, it really depends on the type of rave joint that you are going to. Commercial rave joints welcome this because most rave gears come with enough reflective strips to qualify as a run-way should the lights at Changi airport blow out.

Underground rave joints however don’t appreciate lights and bringing one along could get you beaten up. Walking in looking like a Christmas tree could cause panic because it looks like a mobile police road block, and there is a lot of paranoia in these places. Trust me.

5. An open mind

They say the best things are experienced without silly inhibitions and trivial judgments, or at least I said that because if your most exciting weekend activity has been Sunday’s communion, then this might be more than you can handle. But so long as you don’t charge in singing hymns, start evangelizing or spraying holy water – because if the bass doesn’t kill you, the patrons will -, the atmosphere will eventually warm up to you. You’ll live.