Monday, January 01, 2007

2007 marked the first New Year countdown which I, quite simply, just slept through. I was too tired to try and stay awake given the prospect of Danny Tengalia's marathon set at Zouk earlier this morning. It felt a little strange, not spending NYE with anyone at all, and listening to my neighbours - and even their maids - partying outside. But it was partly my fault; I had an incredibly late night the night before, only managing to get some sleep at around 6.30 am.

I was awoken by T. at 2 am when he called to ask what I was up to. I got dressed, and headed down to hideout for what turned out to be a mostly R&B party, and did my best to catch up on the revellry by starting my night off with a Bacardi 151 and ginger ale. I'd been meaning to try it for some time now, and I guess starting off the new year by attempting to destroy my liver ain't too bad a way to go.

After a while, we headed to Zouk, but we weren't able to get a cab at all, nor even get through to the phone lines. Such is the usual new year's eve predicament. So we ended up walking from Circular Road all the way to Zouk. As my friend, J., put it after he found out, "that's quite a long walk." We finally arrived around 5 am, after over 20 minutes of walking and a lot of swearing on my part.

And thus began the 7.5 hour dance marathon. Spurred on by a much needed vodka red bull, we joined in Danny T's musical journey. He had started spinning at 1 am, but if I was going to stay till the end, I knew the only way I'd last was to arrive later. Apparently, I missed out the part where he blew his top and told off the people who were requesting trance tracks to be played after he dropped one rather trance-y track. When will people learn? DJs are DJs; they're not jukeboxes. I like familiar tunes as much as the next person, but I do respect that a DJ wants to bring us to a certain destination and detours aren't necessarily welcomed. And for someone who's been around as long as Danny T, and who knows music as well as he does? I'd much rather let him lead the way than demand he play stuff that I know.

And one thing about a Danny T marathon set? You need a lot of fuel to last the journey. I ended up drinking two Stellas, one at 7.30 am and one at 8.20 am. I never thought I'd welcome a beer so much so early in the morning. The good thing about his sets is that they are incredibly danceable - from progressive to tribal to disco - and hence, you tend to dance off any incidental effects of alcohol very quickly.

Even though I missed out on the Singapore countdown, we had two countdowns in Zouk while I was there: one at 12 pm, when Lincoln had mistakenly informed Danny that it would be 2007 in New York, and the real NY one at 1 pm.

That's right, I was in Zouk until 1.10 pm.

I didn't think it was possible, and at some points, I thought dying would be preferable to the continuous dancing I was doing because my feet were really aching, but hey, I was part of history in the making the very first day of 2007, and really, how many people can get to say that? I didn't dance all the way though, sadly. I stopped at 12.30 pm, but really, there were no other females - well, certainly no other single females (i.e. females who weren't still there because their boyfriends wouldn't leave - who lasted that long. I'm rather proud of myself for that... especially if you count the long walk from Circular Road that preceded the dancing!

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