December Diary
Blok M Diary, December 2004
Blok M is a great place to see in the new year, so at nine o’clock on New Year’s Eve the Reveller hops into a bajaj and chugs festively up to Jalan Pelatehan. The streets are even more clogged and cluttered than usual. Lads wheeling towering barrows of brightly coloured tinsel horns and hooters career across his path, and crowds of buyers mill around the vendors of illegal fireworks who are doing a roaring trade on Jalan Fatmawati. The street buskers and wannabe musicians who serenade hapless bus passengers enter into the spirit of the occasion, and even the beggars seem a tad less inert than usual.
Jalan Pelatehan is all dressed up for the occasion. Lights and decorations festoon the entrances to the bars, and there’s a steady stream of carousers rolling into the street. The Reveller’s needs are few and simple - he’s peckish, he’d like to greet as many of his old friends as he can, and he’d like to see in the new year with the biggest gang possible. Food means Sportsmans, old friends means Top Gun, the largest crowd must be My Bar, so the itinerary is quickly settled.
Walking into Sportsmans the Reveller is greeted by an amazing sight. The ceiling is covered with balloons from which brightly coloured twisted paper streamers dangle down to the floor. The smartly turned out staff are all wearing rather natty domino masks, and the boss is wandering hither and thither dispensing good cheer. The food issue is soon settled, a big juicy steak and all the trimmings washed down with an excellent bottle of New Zealand merlot. After a most enjoyable meal the Reveller ups sticks and wanders out into the street.
So it’s across to Top Gun, where there’s quite a crowd building up and everyone’s looking forward to seeing in the new year. The Reveller spots a couple of his buddies at the far end of the bar, well primed judging from the looks of them (and the clutter of empty bottles on the bar). A pleasurable conversation ensues, with one of the guys regaling them with his latest batch of appallingly off-colour jokes and cringe-making anecdotes. As the girls wander in the Reveller and his mate greet them cordially, and then swap yarns about the ones they’ve been with. "That bunch over there are in exactly the same place as I saw them on my first visit to Blok M seven years ago", nostalges the Reveller. "And some of them have been around a good bit longer than that", chimes in his mate. It’s agreed that they’ve weathered well and still look passably attractive in the dim light of Top Gun.
As eleven o’clock draws near the Reveller’s group decides to uproot itself and get slotted into My Bar ready for the celebrations. And not a moment too soon, as the place is filling up quickly and seats are at a premium. Within minutes supply lines are established and a flow of bottled beer is initiated. There are quite a few of the Reveller’s erstwhile conquests doing the rounds, so cheerful greetings alternate with flirtatiously petulant pouts of "why you no see me any more?" and similar accusations. But it’s all good-natured, and a great party spirit is building up.
By midnight the place is packed, and just before the chimes free Tequilas are handed out to toast the new year. Cheering the boss and his generosity, the crowd bawls out inebriate greetings as a couple of dancers clamber on to the bar and start their gyrations. And there’s just the right balance of festive decoration, choice of music and commentary from the MC.
As he’s swept along by the celebrations the Reveller raises his glass and toasts all the readers of the Blok M web site and wishes them the very best for 2005. Reflecting that in 2004 the site received more than 64,000 visits from good folk in no fewer than 140 countries, it’s been a good year all round.
The case of the shrinking disco
No, this isn’t a Sherlock Holmes mystery, but it’s just as puzzling to the bemused denizens of Blok M. The scene of the crime is D’s Place upstairs bar and disco, which has been brutally lobotomised. The disco annex is now sealed off, so as you walk in the door there’s a blank wall on your right, painted a tasteful shade of black. The Reveller’s first reaction is that a great opportunity to create just a little more table and/or seating space has been missed, and the empty wall doesn’t do anything for either the comfort or ambience of the place. The space between the toilets and the steps to the (now defunct) VIP bar is a miniscule dance rostrum with the usual floor to ceiling mirrors behind it, and the sound system speakers - two whopping great boxes - have been plonked either side of the central pillar.
Of course this arrangement makes fewer people fill the place, and four dancers look like a heaving throng - which is clearly the management’s intention. In a sense, though, this is an admission of defeat, an implicit acknowledgment of what the Reveller and other Blok M long-time regulars have been saying to an unresponsive management for quite some time - that a combination of the loud lousy music and tampering with the timing of the Ladies’ Lucky Draw has driven away both guys and girls in sufficient quantity to have a noticeable impact on customer numbers. This is a great pity, as the disco had become a firm favourite with the Reveller and many of his cronies, and was set to hold up well even in the face of stiff competition from down the street.
After two weeks of being thrown open for voting, the Reveller’s online poll provides a fair consensus of how the Blok M regulars rate their bars and discos. As of the sixth of January the results show a pretty clear picture. The "best overall bar" rating goes to My Bar, which pips D’s Place to the post with 32% of the votes to 27%. The "best bar for girls" award is a runaway victory for My Bar, which also sweeps the table for the "best bar for music" rating (a full head clear of Oscars and Everest, which score about the same). Not surprisingly, "best bar for pool" is won by Sportsmans, with Everest in second place just ahead of Top Gun in third. Sportsmans is the clear winner of the "best bar for food" category, with Everest a distant second and nowhere else in the running. As to the "best disco" award, this is a one-horse race and My Bar is the clear winner.
The poll is still up and running, so if you’re a Blok M regular do drop in and cast your votes. You can check the current bar ratings at any time by following this link.
Blogging has now hit the big time, and everybody’s jumping on the bandwagon. Academics are burning up research grants analysing the phenomenon and generating lots of highfalutin Big Words to describe it, media folk are branding it the hottest thing in newscasting, and some governments see it as the thin end of a very big wedge in losing control of the dissemination of information within their borders.
Fine, but what’s all this got to do with Blok M? Well, when the chips are down the Blok M web site is, in essence, a blog. It’s one guy’s personal reports of life on the Blok as he sees it, a regular diary of events and people. So now the Reveller can come out of the closet and admit that he’s a blogger.
In response to overwhelming public demand a year or so back (OK, a mate asked the Reveller to do it), the Heirloom Edition of the Blok M Chronicles was created. This contains everything from the site - the entire collection of Updates, Diaries and humorous articles - in a single, nicely formatted and easily downloadable document, so you can read the Reveller’s ramblings wherever and whenever you want.
But like Topsy, the document just growed and growed until updating and maintaining it became a bit of a nightmare - so the Reveller has decided to release it in Adobe PDF format only. The whole thing is now bookmarked so that you can jump to individual Updates and Diary entries, and of course with it being in PDF format you can search for individual words or phrases.
It’s less than a megabyte in size, so if you’re interested hie thee to this link - the Heirloom Edition download.
Epilogue
One year closes, another one opens. Blok M goes on its happy-go-lucky way, and we all wish it, too, the best for the new year. But there are clouds on the horizon. As he trundles homewards in his early-morning bajaj, The Reveller reflects that he’s not alone in feeling that the place has lost some of its unique character and crazy vivacity over the past year - and that there’s a worrying staleness some nights, a jaded air about the place. Let’s hope that it regains its momentum and returns to its feral state.