Review of Pelangi Pride Centre's launch party at Mox Bar, 6 May 2006

In case those of you who didn't attend are curious to find out what happened, here's my experience of the event:

I left my place at 4:15 pm, thinking that I would arrive just after 4:30, not too early and not too late. That would be about right for a little mingling and in time to catch the first performance. But as fate would have it, I had to sweat like a pig for an hour changing a blown-out tyre in the infernal heat, and having to pump it up to boot because the spare too was flat. I thought it best to change out of my glad rags for the chore because I didn't want to turn up smelling like a putrid sock.

After all that huffing and puffing, I finally arrived at about 6 pm and was pleasantly surprised to see an enormous crowd of well over a hundred people milling about at Mox. The whole collection of GLBT books on the mobile shelves had been pushed all the way to the rear to make way for patrons and the performers.

On entering Mox, one was enticed to sign up as a member of Pelangi Pride Centre, giving one's name, e-mail address and contact number. I don't know what I scribbled because my near vision is blurred with my contact lenses on due to wretched presbyopia brought about by advancing age. I was given a tiny lucky draw number which I couldn't read and later had to ask Dinesh Naidu what it was, to be in the running for a lucky draw prize.

There were 2 rows of booths on either side, manned by volunteers from AfA, RedQueen/Sayoni, Safehaven/FCC, ADLUS and Heartland. I didn't sign up with any of them because I'm not a lesbian, Christian, Buddhist or sports enthusiast. I did, however, ask one of the kind souls at AfA for a demonstration on how to put a condom on one of two irresistible wooden phalluses on display and he gladly obliged. After the sheath was on, I took a sniff at the lubricant and found that it smelt like peanut butter...almost good enough to eat! I fingered the rubbered sculpture and asked, "What if you want to suck this thing?" He replied, "Oh, there are other condoms for that purpose." Lemme at 'em.

Dinesh told me that I had missed Cyril Wong's performance, singing and playing the piano at the same time. Damn! I had so much wanted to video Cyril in action as his classical crooning has received rave reviews and the segment would have been integral to the recording of the whole event. Too bad.

I met Clarence Singam, who had also just arrived and he was kind enough to introduce me to some of the key movers and shakers of gay organisations in Singapore. What a goldmine of information they turned out to be. All the more accurately to document the unfolding of local gay history with...heh, heh. According to Kelvin Wong, Alex Au was busy helping gay-supportive electoral candidates hand out flyers on Election Day and thus could not make it.

I thought I had better support Mox for their magnanimity in accommodating Pelangi and ordered a drink. I couldn't believe the price - 3 bucks for a fruit punch! Is that a knockout special opening offer or what? I'm going back for much more if they stick to this rate.

The only gripe I had was that the music was a trifle loud and it was not exactly conducive to conversation or reading. I had to strain my ears to catch other peoples' names and ended up hoarse tweaking my own volume to match the din.

Let's see, who were the people I met there...from Oogachaga were Daniel and web administrator Hisham whom I recognised from his Yahoo! profile photos and who was unfortunately relying on crutches due to a gouty attack, poet and author Yisheng, film publicist Qianxi, PPC organisers Eileena, Charmaine and one other lovely damsel, organisers from Safehaven and ADLUS, Yang Fa of AfA, Sylvia Tan of Fridae in her handsome new buzzcut with partner Amanda in tow, and Thomas Ng. I saw Miak whizzing past.

The second scheduled performance was by a certain Wendy who accompanied herself on the guitar. The mike aimed at her fret board didn't pick up her strumming loudly enough, so she quipped, "If you can't hear my guitar, treat this is an acapella performance." I thought that was rather witty. Wendy sang about five of her own compositions in a row to an appreciative audience.

The finale was the lucky draw. I videoed some of it and was fiddling with my camcorder when Eileena and Dinesh announced the winning number for the first prize - a pair of tickets to Fridae's Nation VI at Phuket in October this year..."ticket number 154". What? I couldn't believe my ears. That was the very ticket I was holding in my hands! I strolled up to receive the envelope and gave both Eileena and Dinesh grateful pecks on the cheeks.

I'm not an octopus so I couldn't video myself collecting the prize.

I'll be uploading some still frames of the event soon. All faces except those of the organisers will be pixellated because I don't know who's touchy about being videoed and who isn't.

=See also=
 * Pelangi Pride Centre

=References=
 * Review of Pelangi Pride Centre's opening at Mox Bar on Saturday, 6 May 2006 by Roy Tan on SiGNeL:, see video:.

=Acknowledgements=

This article was written by Roy Tan.