In Continuum.

Settler's Cafe

Half past eight this morning, I was walking through the empty student lounge to the other block when I noticed something different about the place. Something was different about the lounge, but not the emptiness. Friday mornings in the student lounge are usually occupied by emptiness, free of students and other people or objects common in a school compound. But there they were, cluttered in the middle of the student lounge, tables with red table clothes spread carefully over the top, metal trays placed on stands, just waiting for somebody to fill them up with steaming hot breakfast. Fake flowers were placed everywhere, the kind that you find at the front of a podium on the stage, the pretentious ones. Somebody important was coming, but I didn't wait to find out - occasions like that feels repulsive to me, and it also meant that the favorite hangout by all students was officially taken up for the day.

The student lounge, the glorious student lounge. The student lounge is a place for students to lounge around without a care or worry, not for some fancy party for the big shots in school. A bunch of us were unhappy about the arrangements, frustrated that the celebrations in the atrium had to be spilled into our own private corner in the school. It was the only place where the students could do pretty much anything, even if there are signs around the lounge telling us not to do pretty much everything. The security guards and the janitors seldom have any power over what the students do, because we are usually as obedient as they remain in the vicinity. Our old ways reveal themselves right after they disappear around the corner of the lounge entrances, the only place outside of our own home where we call, our home - in between classes, at least. It was the Mecca and the Jerusalem of students, and the fact that I was supposed to spend four hours in a place other than the air-conditioned lounge completed with numerous sets of power sources was beyond me. I had to find somewhere else to kill the time, somewhere else to rot before the next class starts. Then Naz and I came up with an idea, which really wasn't an idea. We wanted to go to Kerri's place, unannounced. Exploiting that plan, we went ahead with our other accomplices - MJ, Pao, Jeannie and Sherry.

Halfway through our journey to Kerri's, Kerri called to say that she was alone in school and terribly bored. Something about walking down Ford Avenue scared the living daylights out of home, but we weren't so far from the truth either. We were on the bus to her place, and we did have the intentions of waking her up from her beauty sleep. Either way, we ended up walking through the empty street of Holland Village, with Sherry rescuing me a million times from being ran over by random taxis that bolted out of nowhere. Holland Village in the day felt kind of like a twenty year old theme park without a renovation, though not nearly half as bad. Most of the bars and the pubs were closed, with their giant rusty gates drawn down and their chairs stacked on top of the tables. There were only a few restaurants opened, and the skies were turning into a dull shade of gray, as if gray wasn't dull enough to begin with. We took shelter in the Coffee Bean for some time, taking in the smell of coffee beans and other bakeries. No wonder everybody loves Holland Village, I thought to myself. There is a little corner for everybody.

After a brief stay at the Coffee Bean, the bunch of us decided to skip the other classes altogether. You see, nothing happened for CSE today, and Angelica went through MCQ questions which she already posted on the portal. I really didn't see a need to go to those classes at that time. Besides, it was a Friday, and it was a good enough reason to turn our brains off and have some brainless fun. But of course, we didn't exactly have a very brainless afternoon, but rather a rather fulfilling one in contrary. Settler's Cafe was just around the corner, and we figured that it was probably the best place to kill a whole lot of time before the time runs out for the Friday. So the bunch of us risked randomly bolting taxis to the Settler's Cafe, and waited for a few minutes before it actually opened at 1130am. Settler's Cafe is pretty much like Mind's Cafe, probably with a cooler name and worse food. But still, I guess most of the people were there for the boardgames, and we were no different really. Being the first customers at that time - and for the next two hours or so - we felt like we owned the right to create as much noise as possible, and nobody would give us cold stars. Besides, it was Settler's Cafe, you are supposed to enjoy yourself there.

Naz recommended Taboo - my favorite game - and Cramium - my new-found favorite game. I've never played Cramium before, but it works pretty much like Quelf, if you guys remember me blogging about it some time in July or August. Both games have the same objectives of getting to the middle of the board, and both games require you to answer intellectual questions like word puzzles, anagrams, charades, drawings, general knowledge, etcetera. So we basically grouped ourselves into two groups of three, and started going through the rules with Naz. Both teams begin on the same point - the small purple brain. At every small purple brain(Four in the game), you get to choose what questions you want to answer from four different sets of cards. The first kind of card - called the Creative Cat - involves the players to either sketch the words with their eyes closed, opened, or use the clay provided to mold the answers in a given period of time. Data Head cards require the players to either answer a true or false question, a multiple choice question, or a trivial question - they are usually terribly difficult. There is the Word Worm, which involves either anagrams, word puzzles, or requiring the player involved to spell words backwards or forwards, whichever is named on the card. This set of cards also involves familiar games like hangman by filling in blanks, or finding out the definition of very obscure words - like Presenteeism. The last and my favorite, Star Performer. This stack of cards require the player to play out a role from a film or a television show with speech, or act out an activity or a thing silently, or hum a random tune provided - which ranges anything from Britney Spears to Abba. The other rules are pretty easy to follow throughout. Answer correctly, and you get to roll the dice. Answer wrongly, you remain in the very same space.

The game quickly heated up, and we all found the cards that we were good at. Naz was good at Word Worms and Data Head cards, but they are still very subjective to his intuitions. Sherry was the girl with all the intuitions packed into her head, and you have to trust whatever her guts tell her, because they are usually right. She doesn't exactly have a forte in any stack of cards, but her intuition goes a long way, and in a creepy way at that. MJ is good at anagrams, and he managed to guess "Instant Coffee" from a string of unrelated English words. You should have seen that glow of triumph in his eyes when he got the words right, because apparently anagrams are the hardest puzzles to solve in the whole game. Then there is Pao, the master at drawing and molding anything the cards require. Just give her anything, and she is probably going to mold it out for you, perfectly. Hell, she even managed to mold BUDDHA, beat that. Jeannie is good at...well, she was better at Taboo, at least towards the later part. But at least her depiction of the movie 'Gladiator' was rather interesting. For me, I was good at drawing and molding as well, but my forte was with the Star Performer cards. As a person who is not exactly afraid of humiliation, I rolled about on the floor and stripped to an imaginary pole, and to a curious kid that stared in from the other side of the glass. Not to mention belly dancing, and pretty much every other characters from Sean Connery, to Captain Kirk, to Jackie Chan, to Cruella De Vil, to Inspector Clouseau. I was unbeatable in that stack of cards, and I still remain as the only person who hasn't lost a single round in the games. Even Naz lost a few times. Ha.

The most amazing thing happened when the boys were playing against the girls, which was completely against their wishes. The boys wanted it, the girls didn't, so we ended up in a coin toss. Fate spoke, and the boys were separated pushed into the same groups anyway. However, it wasn't all bad news on Venus either, because the girls had an uncanny ability to come up with wrong interpretations of the right answer. It must not make sense here, but allow me to continue. Sherry was supposed to act out "Louise Armstrong", and she was allowed to do whatever she wants to play out the character in a given amount of time. Of course, we all know that Louise Armstrong is the guy with that really unique and distinctive voice, the same guy that sang," I see trees of green, red roses too. I see them bloom for me and you. And I speak to myself 'What a wonderful world!'" Yeah, that guy. Sherry, however, thought it was Neil Armstrong, that guy who took the small step for man, the great step for mankind. So she started describing the night sky outside the window, the moon and the stars, the man to step foot on the surface of the moon first. Naz and I knew that the girls got it completely wrong, especially Sherry who was so into the character. We were just waiting for the time to run out, or for the girls to get the wrong answer. But of course, Pao - being as smart as she is, came up with the answer. She yelled, with absolute certainty and confidence, at the top of her lungs - "Louise Armstrong!"

So, the girls got the answer right. But it was clearly a wrong interpretation on their part, because I'm sure Louise Armstrong wasn't singing about the moon when he also sang," What a wonderful world", because the moon is really quite an uneventful place. Sherry got the wrong man, and Pao mistakenly got the right man without knowing she actually got it as wrong as Sherry in the first place. Naz and I stared at each other for the longest time in disbelief, not too sure if it was because of the girls' smarts or their luck. We gave them the thumbs up and the game went on like that for the next couple of hours or so. It was probably the best in-between-class activity I have ever been to. At least I didn't have to go to the awful toilet and disappear there until my friend comes to find me, like Quelf.

Anyway, the usual Taboo madness went on, with Sherry exploding into a million different strange noises and a few vulgarities - which I have never heard before. I guess Taboo seriously brings out the best and the worst in people. MJ's clue "The place you go when you want to..." was rudely interrupted by his own frustrations when he didn't want to answer it anymore. So right after he said that line, he threw the card away and went "SHIT!". That was when the Naz-Will telepathy thing started working, and we said - simultaneously - "Toilet". Which wasn't so far from the right answer, if 'shit' was indeed supposed to be part of the clues given. I was also tempted to say something else when MJ said "When there are a lot of people in the elevator you...". I had to say it, and let's admit boys. Boys still love fart jokes. "Fart", I said. I couldn't help it, so sue me. But I don't do it in crowded elevators, I swear.

It was a great day, making our ways to the big purple brain in the middle of the Cranium board, and the thick stack of words in Taboo. The Singaporean version of the game actually had a couple of words Sherry wasn't familiar with, and she was really confused with the word "Chingay". "Well, I think this guy is gay." It was so funny, I almost died. But anyway, the lunch at the food court and the talks we had were really enjoyable as well. I mean, that was the kind of gatherings I like, the kind with a bunch of friends just sitting down next to each other, talking and talking, and a game once in a while. I guess that's probably why people really love Holland Village, because time just passes by without you really knowing it there, just those times spent with friends and hanging out as the afternoon goes by. The night never really ends at Holland Village, and the days never really begin. It's one of those places that are rather timeless, and probably a place I'd learn to love more in the days to come.

I've been living too far away from this place for too long, so you cannot exactly blame me for not knowing it earlier. A cup of coffee at night, or just sitting there with a book and a drink, talking to random strangers, catching up with life. Such a beautiful sight in my books, such simplicity. Settler's Cafe, probably and most definitely the place we will be visiting again, if we run out of places to go on Friday evenings. I don't suppose Jonno is going to like visiting the place all that often, but I do suggest Settler's Cafe to make a rock wall behind their store to accomodate for him. In the mean time, I am definitely going to make my way down to that Holland Village - why Holland, by the way? - more frequently now. The sight of Wala Wala made me think of Corinna standing in the crowd, calling me because her favorite band played Yellow so many nights ago, when things were still peaceful and calm between myself and the ol...I shouldn't go there now. I shouldn't. It is late, and I really shouldn't. Stop. Stop...stop.