Showtimes

Exhibit A
In Exile @ Alliance Francaise
Gilles Massot & Tay Kay Chin

(Damn, Abigael beat me to blogging about it.)

Our first photography exhibition opening in months turned out to be one big reunion. As expected, there were the usual suspects from the photographers-and-auxiliary-people crowd that we hang out with: Abigael, Beeker, Randy, norwegianwood, Kiv, and others who don't blog and therefore shall go unnamed here.

But it was the unexpected encounters that gave things a little extra kick. Count them:

Former Student Number One, whom I'd run into at other exhibition openings this year, but I certainly didn't expect to find him playing the designated wine bottle-opener at Thursday's shindig. Through the typical Singapore-is-a-small-island all-you-need-is-two-degrees-of-separation connections, it turned out that he'd gone on a photographic expedition with Kay Chin and hence also knew ---

Former Student Number Two aka panaphobic, who showed up just as I was about to take off. Woman, you are alarmingly skinny. Don't make me march over to your dorm room and feed you. All these workholics, I tell you ...

And the most delightful encounter yet: A longtime, longlost friend from school/camp/cousinly associations. She moved back to Singapore some time last year, but we haven't seen each other in --- well, possibly not since last century, if I can be dramatic about it. The friend she was with asked how we knew each other and we kind of exchanged a long look that said, "This could go any number of ways, not to mention take any number of hours to recount how exactly it is that we are friends," and settled for: "Uh ... friends from school. Yeah, school. A long time ago."

Funnily enough, I only ran into the latter two people because, as Abigael notes, our posse (ha ha) took about a half-hour to say our goodbyes to all the different people we knew at the exhibition. We'd say, "Okay, let's go now!" --- then find that Randy'd vanished into the exhibition, then another friend's friend had just arrived so she needed to show her around, then Abigael spotted someone she'd forgotten to say goodbye to, then I met someone, then ---

Meanwhile, Terz and norwegianwood waited in the drizzle outside for us. (Don't worry; they had cigarettes so they were well-occupied.)

Eventually, there was bak chor mee at Bedok (Stellou, where were you? This was on our list!!), where Terz and beeker took advantage of the fact that the first five minutes of a videoconferencing call on their 3G phones is free and waved their phones around the table of friends until we were all laughed out. Boys, I tell you.

Exhibit B
While You Were Sleeping @ The Esplanade Tunnel
Darren Soh

I got there a little late, thanks to a little medical non-emergency, so I missed Darren's speech (sorry, dude!). Besides admiring the photographs, I also learned that with my vacation tan, one glass of wine is more than enough to flush my complexion and have people staring at me like I'm sort of shameless lush who crashes parties for the free wine. (Er ... ) Damn this healthy circulation system of mine.

Snatches of conversation over dinner at Lau Pa Sat afterwards:

"I'm really happy tonight. No, I'm not gay."
"It was our first date, and he asked if he could hold my hand. So I broke up with him."
"I mean, who takes the bus at 8:30 in the morning? Um, okay ... I got up at noon, and I didn't realise till about 2 what had happened, when people kept calling to ask if I was alright."
"You will never feel any worse than this."
"You can experiment with her all you want."
"He's a bit psycho and you let her go off with him?!"
"Feel this paper, man ... "

And the million-dollar Mac line of the night (some knowledge of Tiger OS may be required):

"Men are like widgets. Women are like Spotlight." (TM Nic)

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