what a rough day

on my way down to boat quay last night, while waiting for the mrt, scenes of the conversation i had earlier with jl kept running and re-running through my mind. i was rudely distracted from my thoughts when i witnessed a fight between 6-7 indian teens and what looked like 3 thai/cambodian/nepalese men. one of the indians was accusing the other party of staring at him; a heated argument ensued, and following that was one flared-up indian boy throwing punches and kicks at the innocuous- and bewildered-looking thai/camb/nep. it subsequently went on to become quite a noisy and messy scene.

the audacity and senselessness of it actually made my blood boil, and i wanted very much to start slamming a few of the perpetrators against the wall/floor/___(enter very hard and damaging surface here) - instead i just walked away and avoided being a part of the pandemonium. it was slightly amusing that they obviously didn't understand each other's taunts and curses, and it was more than a little bemusing to have encountered such a sad case of immaturity on a national holiday eve, when everyone was supposed to be enjoying their evening out.

you would think it couldn't be more dramatic that this, but when the train arrived, they actually brought the battle into the train, pushing and tussling their way through the carriage doors, inexorably inconveniencing and intimidating the other passengers - it was really frustrating to watch. thankfully, there was an mrt staff nearby who heroically ventured over in urgent strides and single-handedly dismantled the childish skirmishes with quite some authority and professionalism. he deserved some applause from all of us commuters but, being singaporeans, naturally there was no public demonstration of appreciation. fucked up but true.

as it turned out, unfortunately, that wasn't to be the last piece of violence i had to endure before the end of the night. after managing to guzzle down half a bottle of martell neat and lose his sobrierity in 20mins, mr ahl, who had recently experienced a painful breakup, decidedly left vogue to do some pub-hopping. fast-forward to next scene: ahl was in a very bloody mess, a violent rage, and a vicious vice-grip from a visibly flustered rg at the foot of the stairs leading up to the pub. after almost half an hour of anxious persuasion and appeasing from the rest of us, he was finally convinced to be led upstairs to clean up his wounds, and afterwhich, to our great relief, plonked face-first onto the sofa and started snoring away. what a night he's had. hmm. what a night i've had.