Blok M update, August 2004

Status report

August has been yet another good month on the Blok. My Bar has been raking it in, D’s Place is doing very nicely indeed, but the big surprise is dear old Oscars. Several times the Reveller has dropped in for a quickie before heading homewards, only to stay for an hour or more to enjoy the music and the company. Yes, the bands are really good, and every number gets a round of genuine and enthusiastic applause from the customers. And the bar staff are great - the old stalwarts have been joined by a lovely bunch of pretty, cheerful and efficient barmaids. All that’s needed is a few more guys and dolls to drop in each night, and the place will be the swinging joint it used to be until a couple of years ago. The Reveller’s hot tip for the month - give Oscars a whirl!

It’s heartening to see that Top Gun and Everest are catching enough crumbs from the table to keep afloat. Top Gun seems to be on the mend, more because of management inactivity than the crazy schemes they’ve foisted on the place in the past, and it’s slowly gathering customers mid-evening. The Blok M regulars wish it well. The jury is still out on Everest. In spite of its size and layout, it continues to pull in a fair number of mid-evening carousers who like a bit of variety in their nights down the Blok, so the Reveller keeps dropping in to support the place.

Schrödinger’s cat

After a few rounds of drinks the conversation at the Reveller’s table is a bit like a rudderless ship - it lurches from topic to topic with a glorious inconsequentiality that James Joyce would have been proud of. The talk eventually gravitates to Lintas Melawai, and in particular the complete unpredictability of the place. "Some nights it’s stone dead, others it’s quite lively - but you just can’t rely on it", grouches one old hand. "You mean it’s a bit like Schrödinger’s cat", chips in the Reveller. Befuddled stares greet this arcane comment, so he drains his glass, lights up a new cigar, and tells the tale of the most famous cat in the history of science.

Erwin Schrödinger must be one of the unluckiest scientists of all time. Although one of the towering giants of early twentieth-century atomic physics, he’s chiefly remembered today for a cat. And not even a real cat - a completely fictional, hypothetical feline. As the great Stephen Hawking puts it so eloquently, "Whenever anybody mentions Schrödinger’s cat I reach for my gun."

In an attempt to show how the randomness of the sub-atomic world can impact on real life, Schrödinger imagines an experiment in which we put an unsuspecting cat into a box that can be completely sealed. In this same box we also put a chunk of radioactive material and a vial of poison gas. Now the experiment is set up so that there’s a 50/50 chance of the material’s decay triggering a radiation detector that causes the gas to be released, immediately terminating the hapless mog’s vital processes.

Once the box is closed the cat has a fifty percent chance of being dead, and a fifty percent chance of being alive - but the only way we can know about its state is to open the box and have a peek inside. So in a philosophical sense, the cat is neither dead nor alive, and its fate depends entirely on unpredictable events at the sub-atomic level. And that just about sums up the present state of play at poor old Lintas Melawai.

Heads nod sagely as the explanation unfolds, and grunts of agreement are made - along with a predictable salvo of salacious comments about cats and pussy and the general unpredictability of some of the young ladies who frequent Lintas Melawai.

Murky pool

The non-event of the month for the great majority of the Blok M regulars has got to be the pool league. Quite a few of the regular players, including the Reveller, have vowed to have nothing to do with the competition, remembering the pure farce into which it degenerated last year. When first announced everyone thinks it’s a great idea - a good excuse for a boozy get-together, an opportunity to meet other carousers from the south Jakarta bars and generally have a great time spiced with a bit of good-natured rivalry in the pool stakes.

But no. What happens is that a Committee is formed to plan, organise and control the event. Now whoever described a camel as a horse designed by a committee got it spot on. The Committee consists of the bar managers and their team captains, and the first thing they do is to rewrite the rule book. Why they should feel the urge to do this beats all the regular players, as there are already perfectly good game rules in existence. Inevitably, by the time everyone and his dog has thrown his penn’orth into the pot an unholy frankenstein is created - and each match meeting is heralded by a frantic last-minute re-write of one or more of the Rules.

But the lunacy doesn’t stop there. Like some self-feeding juggernaut, in the last league competition the Committee issues a diktat that all players must provide a photocopy of their passports - presumably to prove that they’re kosher expats, and not just very large, very pale skinned Indonesians with broad British, Australian or American accents masquerading as bules. At this point the Reveller, who’s been a steady supporter of his team, announces that the Committee has gone right off the rails and withdraws from the unholy fiasco. "Next they’ll be putting up barbed wire barricades to stop interlopers, and patrolling the perimeters with tommy-guns and slobbering guard dogs", quips the Reveller to his mates in the bar as he sluices down a fourth tequila in a desperate attempt to restore his equanimity.

Now if there were big money or high-value prizes at stake, one might understand (but not necessarily pardon) this obsessional lunacy. But no, the local beer company and the cable channel distributor who are the main sponsors of the competition aren’t putting up any prizes other than off-the-shelf electro-plated cups and trophies. Yet the players have got to wear their team’s colours, and absolutely must sport the company logos at every game.

The question that everyone asks - and never gets an answer to - is, what on earth is the sponsors’ money spent on? Who’s getting how much, and for doing what? It certainly doesn’t reach the players, whose only ‘perk’ is happy-hour beer prices for the duration of the competition - if they’re lucky. It’s murmured that in the past there’s been some pretty heavy side-betting going on, and that some good people may perhaps have had a pecuniary interest in the outcome of the pool league.

And the teams. You’d expect them to be made up of the regulars of each bar - but you’d be sadly mistaken. The Reveller vividly recalls the first-ever game of the first Jakarta Pool League, when the D’s Place team consists of a handful of the locals plus an odd assortment of very slick pool players who by no stretch of the imagination can be described as regulars, but are brought in by the management like eight-ball mercenaries. The result is that they hog the show and get to play plenty of games, whilst cheerful amateurs like the Reveller and his mates are lucky to be tossed a token game at the end of the evening to keep them happy.

Pool is a great bar game. It’s sociable, open to all comers, and combines skill with luck in fair proportion. It’s first and foremost good fun, and long may it remain so.

Pumpkins

It’s midnight, the witching hour. As he reflectively contemplates the dregs of his drink and the smouldering remains of his cigar, the Reveller wistfully eyes a clutch of Sweet Young Things slipping out of the bar, down the stairs and into the street. He’s just spent a couple of delicious hours chatting and innocently flirting with three of them, and is looking forward to perhaps a closer acquaintance as the night wears on - when they unceremoniously announce that they’ve got to go home, up sticks and disappear into the night like latter-day Cinderellas.

Relating this tale of woe to a band of fellow revellers the following evening, he learns that this nocturnal disappearing act is becoming increasingly common and that many of the guys are less than happy about it. The girls who do this are quickly identified though, and not unnaturally avoided by the dedicated revellers. So they sit, sad little wallflowers, glumly smoking their way through a packet of cigarettes and wondering why no-one’s taking any interest in them.

We meat again

The Reveller is omnivorous - he’ll happily chomp his way through whatever fodder is set in front of him. But as regular readers will know, from time to time he craves a nice big juicy red steak. Preparing to up and off to Sportsmans, which has good steak aplenty, he’s intrigued when one of the regulars urges him to try the rib-eye in Top Gun, of all places. Now Top Gun, for all its shortcomings, has always been a good place for a snack or a quick meal - but steak?

Curiosity getting the better of him, he sets out to try this culinary delicacy. And sure enough, it’s there on the menu - Australian rib-eye, half the price of American, and with the full monty: chips, side salad and a good selection of sauces and dressings. The only disaster in sight is that the Reveller likes his steak bleu - really rare, with the blood oozing out of it - and past experience leads him to expect it to be roasted just the right side of charcoal.

But what’s this? Within minutes it’s whisked to his table on an iron griddle, sizzling festively and sputtering droplets of scalding fat left right and centre. And it’s rare. Really rare. Blessing his good fortune, the Reveller hacks away with alacrity and enjoys a first-class, tasty slice of steak with a generous bowlful of crisp fresh salad.

Epilogue

In the broader picture, Blok M is a bit like an ocean liner that’s been through some stormy seas and is gradually getting back on an even keel. The dynamics of the place are shifting as the centre of gravity settles on My Bar, and the other dives have to adapt to a changed marketplace. But the good news is that My Bar is attracting back to the Blok a wide spectrum of carousers, who like the new place but also enjoy sampling the variety of Jalan Pelatehan. Even more significantly, its marketing machine is drawing new blood into the street and steadily increasing the number of guys who make Blok M their spiritual home - so everybody wins.

Wrapping up another glorious month, the Reveller looks forward to September. It’s always been a lucky month for him, so with crossed fingers he taps on wood and anticipates another spell of really good revelling.