Its been a week of firsts. Last friday (not exactly within the week, but what the heck), we had the most exciting class chalet ever. I know superlatives are overused, but its kind of hard to beat this experience.

On the first night, we went clubbing. We were prepared to leave our chalet for dinner and then the club at about 8:30pm, but ended up waiting over an hour for latecomers.. ONE latecomer actually. Deciding that we shouldn't wait any longer, we raced to get taxis to bring us to Clarke Quay, where we stopped at Central to wolf down our dinner at Yoshinoya. The reason for such hurriedness is the $10 extra charge per person, on entering the club after 11pm. Multiply $10 by 15 people and you can see why we were rushing everywhere!

On an experienced clubber's recommendation, we went into Zirca for an entry cost of $15 per person. Our unlucky Leong Wen had to pay $25 as he arrived at 11:02pm. It was definitely expensive, though the entry fee also included entrance to Rebel and Lunar, two nearby clubs of the Hip-hop and Mandopop themes respectively. At the time of our entry, the club was relatively empty, hence we stoned around for the good part of an hour. The most exciting thing that happened was perhaps trying to give directions to Leong Wen on the phone, with 110 decibel music in the background.

Things picked up at midnight, when people began flooding the dance floor of Rebel. Zirca was still rather empty, so after getting our complimentary vodkas from the quieter Zirca bar, we migrated to Rebel. The alcohol definitely helped to loosen our inhibitions, and also our joints, as we decided to join the dance floor. I guess its not an experience that can be described by words. The crowd, the heart-thumping music, the atmosphere. The first of firsts in the upcoming week.

On the second night, we wisely decided to carry out our plan at 7pm instead of 9:30. For tonight, we were going to cycle from East Coast to Marina South in search of a steamboat dinner. Nothing extraordinary happened at the start, as we cycled along the East Coast Park cycling path. Until we reached a dead end. From there, we cycled on roads, across roads, carried our bikes over barriers, attempted to cycle on a one foot wide path (before quickly being stopped by a kind policeman), and broke god knows how many traffic rules. Halfway, we said goodbye to a classmate, while welcoming another, and continued our journey. As we cycled deeper into a construction area, I found it strange that there'll be any food around. Upon a quick interrogation of the specifics, I realised we were trying to find the Marina South steamboat road. Which my parents and I had tried to find 2 months ago, and found out that it had closed down long ago. So basically we had cycled for almost 3 hours, to find a place that doesn't exist anymore.

Fortunately, we had a backup plan to go to Lau Pa Sat for a quick (and tasteless) dinner, and a well deserved break. It was almost midnight that we began our journey back to the chalet. This time, we were much more familiar with the roads, hence we avoided the cycling across roads, and chose instead to carry our bikes up and down two flights of stairs. Well, at least its much safer. The length of the journey was less than half of what we took to get to Marina South, hence we had a relatively early night of sleep.

On the wednesday after the chalet, Muse was coming down to Singapore for "The Big Night Out", together with Saosin and Rise Against. A few of us had planned to go for it long ago, and we were quite excited today. In the evening, I had dinner with Bryan, where he found extremely cheap books sold by MPH, due to their renovation. I bought one for $8, when it normally costs $35 or so. Brand new! The $100+ books were going for $15, but we couldn't find one that was even worth $15 unfortunately, thus leaving for the Indoor Stadium with only 1 book.

Actually, this was my first rock concert (outside of school). The third 'firsts' of the week was the most exciting by far. Saosin was good, while I thought Rise Against was mostly just noisy, but they saved the best for the last. Muse spent almost an hour completely redoing the stage with their own props and instruments, and you could tell the crowd was extremely excited. We managed to squeeze to the second row of our standing pen, which was still a considerable distance from the stage as we had bought the cheaper tickets (better than the sitting ones though!) And so, Muse came on, people cheered, they started with Uprising, and everyone cheered even more. After two hours or so of moshing and screaming, we were dead tired.

Being true Muse fans (not), we rushed to the loading area of the Stadium, where performers are supposed to exit by, hoping to catch a glimpse of them up close. Sadly, we waited for an hour in vain, and no one knew where the band was. It was getting far too late, so we left. After getting a drink, and a painful $15 taxi ride home, it was the end of the third night of 'firsts'.

Tonight was the fourth night. If I didn't have to do this in chronological order, it may be much more epic to end this blog post with the Muse concert. But I guess this is clearer, so I'll just have to describe everything as epically as possible. After dinner, and a short bit of rest, my parents and I went to watch Avatar in 3D at Ang Mo Kio Hub. I think I watched a 3D movie before when I was really young, but I can't remember so this counts as a first too. It was a great choice of movie for this 'first'. The visuals were absolutely stunning, and the movie was totally immersive. The 2.5 hours passed quickly, feeling like only an hour, as I was engrossed with the detail of Pandora, the fictional planet in Avatar. I'm guessing the movie would be just as brilliant in 2D, but 3D really helped to push it to the next level. Despites being a fan of fantasy art, I'm still amazed by the creativity of the movie creators. The plot was cliche like any Hollywood movie, so I guess to call this a brilliant movie really says something about its visual and audio effects.

And that concludes the most interesting week, probably of the whole year, and the past two. I'll have to brace myself for the unending boredom of the next 6-7 months, save for the heart attack inducing A-levels results collection. And I can't believe I spent an hour blogging.