October Update
Blok M update, October 2005
Status report
What a month it’s been for the Reveller! Barely two months after settling into a new job it folds, leaving him high and dry without warning. So all energies go into networking, following up job ads and sprucing up the old CV. Happily a new billet has been found and the Reveller is once again among the ranks of the employed, so now it’s on with the show, full steam ahead, shoulder to the wheel, action stations - and any other clichés of your choice. The outstanding diaries and updates are currently being written up, and will be posted this week.
Ramadan has been a rum kind of a month down the Blok. After all the nail-biting and fevered speculation, it turns out to be the most relaxed in the Reveller’s years on the Blok. After anxiously peering over the parapet at the beginning of the month the regulars cautiously move into top revelling gear, and after a week or so the bars are all in full swing. As the fasting month closes, the final week is a living wonder and merits recounting in some detail.
A night on the wild side
It’s the night of Wednesday 26th October. As he slips into My Bar the Reveller senses that it’s going to be a doozie. Ordering a plate of their tasty lasagne and a bottle of ale to wash it down, he settles into his favourite spot next to the dance floor and enjoys a reflective snack. Now lasagne is a very effective stomach-liner, a perfect base for the copious intake of alcohol that is sure to follow, and the very smell of it conjures up happy memories of leisurely days under Italian skies. All that’s missing is a glass of raw, sharp Chianti to complement the savoury softness of the pasta.
Alas, wine in Jakarta is always expensive, and all too often of bad or indifferent quality. The Reveller, an erstwhile lover of good wine who has tippled his way round most of the classic wine producing regions of Europe and knows his Asti from his Albilo, puts this down to ignorant storage rather than the basic quality of the wine. His current favourite is an unpretentious little Chateau Carrefour at less than a hundred thousand rupes a bottle - a bog-standard, no-nonsense Beaujolais that drinks very nicely.
As the early evening guys bustle in the bar starts to fill up, and there’s a pleasant air of jocular expectation - the place positively oozes bonhomie. Some of the older girls wander in, two or three at a time, and take up their regular positions around the bar. Indeed, the hour between nine and ten has been rather cruelly dubbed ‘Jurassic Parking’ by the Reveller and his mates.
A little later, and the Sharks start to arrive. To pursue the Jurassic Park metaphor, these are the raptors of Blok M. Strutting past in their burnished elegance they flash their eyes over every male in the bar, calculating to a nicety the commercial potential of their unwitting victims with the speed of a Cray supercomputer. They move into action with rapid precision, as they want to ensnare their prey before the younger competition takes the field.
Next, the young girls start to arrive, singly and in small groups. They usually head straight for the ladies toilet, where chrysalis-like they transform from plain girls into stunning Sweet Young Things. Off come the jeans, on go the minis and the shorts; off come the tee-shirts, on come the slinky, skimpy, shimmery little tops. She goes in like a wet blanket, and comes out like a wet dream.
Now the odd thing, to the uninitiated reveller, is that the Sweet Young Thing doesn’t stay in the bar, but trips straight out again with hardly a glance at the guys. But don’t be fooled. Like an actress peeping through the stage curtain to see what kind of a house she’ll be playing to, she’s got the measure of the bar and the commercial potential of the by now comfortably primed regulars. As she flits through the door and into the street, she draws her deadliest weapon - her handphone - and SMS’s all her friends with a concise and very accurate sitrep. She then trots across to her favourite warung and squats down with the other girls to enjoy an evening snack and catch up on the gossip.
The Sweet Young Things appreciate the importance of timing. They make their grand entrance at about eleven o’clock, when the action’s really getting under way. With flashing smiles and outstretched arms they rush up to the guys they know, hoping to achieve ‘Most Favoured Girl of the Night’ status, or take up action stations at strategic points around the bar.
As night draws on the live band ratchets up the pace and volume of the music, until by midnight the whole bar is thundering to the beat. The crowd is a swaying, heaving mass, with guys and girls shoving their way in all directions through the throng as they search out their perfect partner for the night. There’s a little tiff further up the bar - one girl has returned from the toilet to find that she’s been claim-jumped, her best friend guiltily swapping handphone numbers with her beau. In front of the Reveller, a couple of sharks have pinioned a hapless innocent and are salaciously caressing their way into his favour. Smiling knowingly the Reveller wishes the girls well, because the guy isn’t up for it. Every evening he’s there for the beer, a bit of harmless window shopping and a chat with his mates. A serious tactical blunder, and no cocoa for the two girls tonight!
One of the Reveller’s gang has finally caught a guy, and it’s their second night together. Putting on an act that would have done Sarah Bernhardt proud, she goes into a marvellous rendition of Love’s Young Dream, clutching him with passionate desperation. The guy, alcoholically besotted, is clearly torn between lust and love. Lust prevails, as five minutes later they’ve sloped off together.
The girls are in hunting mood, and pounce from guy to guy with lecherous intent. As soon as they realise that one chap isn’t interested, off they shoot to their next target. It’s a bit like a game of sexual musical chairs - when the music stops, there’s always one girl left over. The feeding frenzy continues unabated for the next hour, after which most of the guys who were on the prowl have caught the girls who were chasing them and whisked them away for a night of synthetic passion.
The Reveller is canny enough not to get embroiled in any liaison that night, but to chat up a few of the girls with a view to making a more leisurely acquaintance over the weekend, and leaves for home at about one thirty in the morning.
If Wednesday night was lively, Friday night is wild. Really wild. By eleven o’clock My Bar is packed to the gunnels with totty of every shape, size, height, weight and age, plus all the My Bar regulars and a huddle of Bugils refugees - instantly recognizable by their neatly pressed long-sleeved business shirts and tastefully coordinated ties. And still the guys pour in, drawn by the furry magnet.
Drinks are ordered and consumed in vast quantities, the bar staff struggle to keep up with the pace, and the din is overwhelming as everyone shrieks to make themselves heard above the noise of the band. The place isn’t just humming, its pulsing like crazy. Guys and girls have to resort to gesture and sign language to communicate, making the whole scene look like some ghastly parody of a puppet show as hands and arms wave like demented semaphores.
By midnight the girls have turned completely feral and prowl with deadly intent. Anything in trousers is fair game, and the Reveller is wickedly groped by a dozen or more Sweet Young Things as he staggers down the main aisle between the bar and the dance floor with a look of bemused innocence written all over his face. It’s more like a killing field than a bar, and any pretence at romance or courtship has gone right out of the window - it’s nature red in tooth and claw, the "You Tarzan, me Jane" mating call of the wild.
As he fights his way out sometime after one thirty in the morning dragging a dazed but smiling Sweet Young Thing behind him, the Reveller reflects that it’s been a truly vintage night - one of the best he’s experienced on the Blok.
Friday is a hard act to follow, and sure as eggs Saturday night in My Bar is a bit of an anticlimax. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak - the Reveller, who has blurred and fragmentary memories of staggering home some time around four the previous morning, is not at his freshest and sits nursing a Diet Coke as he reflects on the perils of temptation and the iniquities of venal excess. After supping a bowl of sop buntut in an attempt to pacify his rebellious stomach he feels nicely fortified and much mended, and switches to Pernod.
The evening starts very slowly, guys and girls trickling in lethargically in dribs and drabs. The Reveller wonders if they feel like he does, and earnestly hopes that they don’t. But time heals all wounds, and like some ancient piece of long-neglected machinery the bar slowly picks up momentum and creaks and groans into life.
As they sit watching the spectacle unfold It slowly dawns on the Reveller and his good friend Captain Birdseye that there’s something missing - and yes, it’s the Sweet Young Things. As a troop of rather mature girls with builds that a Sumo wrestler might be proud of walk past, the Reveller turns to the Captain and says "Jeez, I hope the floor loading can cope with this!". Even more tragic is the disappearance of his favourite gang of Sweet Young Things, who leave within five minutes of coming into the bar, never to return, along with others of their friends.
By midnight the place is like the Last Chance Saloon - hordes of no-hopers desperate for money and hounding the guys, a real mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. The action is lively enough though, and the Reveller stays until about one o’clock, all the while gently discouraging the predatory advances of girls who look as though they’ve escaped from their cage on the Dark Side of the Club.
But just as he’s on his lonely way to the door there’s a beatific moment of pure magic - in walk two of the gang, looking like lost little lambs. Apparently they’d drilled a dry one at BATS and returned to My Bar to lick their wounds and try for late-night pickings. Drinks are called for, and carousing starts up again. In for a penny, in for a pound, shrugs the Reveller, as he winks at his favourite Sweet Young Thing and nods towards the door. Message received and understood, she grins excitedly and runs to get her bag. The rest, as they say, is history.
With more than three hundred members who’ve made upwards of 2,500 postings, the forums are at last moving to the centre ground of the Blok M web site. The Reveller is delighted, as he’s always seen the site as a community resource, a voice for the guys (and girls) who love the old place and want to throw in their penn’orth. It’s also a way of providing our visitors around the world with a flavour of the bar conversation, and a feel for the characters who carouse alongside the Reveller.
Here are two examples of the chats:
Reveller: If you’re in Blok M on a Friday or a Saturday night, introduce yourself to me in My Bar any time after 9pm. My revelling spot is the end of the bar next to the dance floor, facing the main bar.
Rosco: Numero uno spot strategically speaking, since it’s next to the doorway to the ladies. Sooner or later, they all walk past….
Reveller: Even better is the fact that you can watch the dance-floor action, swivel 180 degrees and face the main bar, swivel 90 degrees right to see the main door, swivel 90 degrees left to see the toilet entrance. This location is also on the main bar staff serving route, so you can get a replenishment very quickly.
Rosco: In military terms = Decisive Terrain. Whoever holds it controls the battlefield. You have an MSR (Main Supply Route) to your rear, you have visibility across the entire AE (Area of Engagement) plus Most Likely Route of Advance, and TOs (Targets of Opportunity) are passing your frontage. The crowd at the bar and at the tables channel the targets into your killing ground.
Ah yes, but the Manoeuvre Theorists will claim that self contained mobile forces cam dominate the AO (Area of Operations) with aggressive patrolling. They use flexible logistic supply chains, operate from temporary firm bases and rely upon speed of engagement to secure the objective. If the target proves to be too difficult they bypass it and move on to a better target.
Liken this to the guys who buy beer from passing waitresses, stroll around the bar, move from table to table saying hi to the girls, trying their luck.
Incidentally this is quite serious. More Generals spend more time arguing about the merits of Manoeuvre V Static warfare than anything else. Or at least they did until Fourth Generation warfare (terrorism etc) reared its head. A simple analogy of 4G warfare is a SYT who surreptitiously slips you a beer mat with her name, phone number and “meet me outside in 5 minutes” written on it.
Reveller: Damn me if that doesn’t describe exactly what I do when the static option fails! Quite often, when the place is full, I park my beer at some strategic spot (usually next to the pool table at the far end, or next to the cash desk at the door end) and forage in those vicinities. Each location is good for getting quick replenishments (on secondary supply routes), and has the advantage of being a bottleneck so that victims can’t scarper before I reach them through the throng.
Thinks.. maybe I missed a brilliant military career!
The second exchange is a response to a question of which is the Reveller’s favourite organ - the heart, or another one. Diplomatically misconstruing the word organ, the conversation goes like this:
Reveller: My favourite organ is the wonderful instrument in the Royal Albert Hall in London, where I used to spend many a happy evening attending concerts when I was a student.
Booty Lover: Hammond B3 is my favourite
Rooter: The ‘Father Willis’ organ at RAH is truly one of the grand musical instruments in the world. Between 2001 and 2004 it was totally refurbished and now is apparently even more resplendent (I haven’t heard it yet).
The Hammond B3 is a superb instrument, but it cannot compare to the grandeur and majesty of a pipe organ in full voice. The RAH organ has 9,999 pipes, some of them 32 feet tall!
Well, off topic I know, but are there any pipe organs in Indonesia? I suspect there may be one at the Catholic cathedral up near Gambir but I’ve never been in…
Harry Flashman: Crikey, we’re not all great big boorish oafs after all? Whodathunkit?
So why not have a browse round the forums and dig out the gems for yourself? And if you’re a Blok M regular, throw in your own thoughts, reactions and opinions!
Epilogue
What a month! A real roller coaster of a Ramadan that begins with a whimper and ends with a bang. It’s a vintage time for the Blok, which never fails to provide everything a guy needs for his recreation, relaxation and revitalization. This, he reflects as he chugs homewards in his bajay, is about as good as it gets.