Episode 494: My First Kasbah Experience

Someone said during today's seminar that my introductory paragraphs on Haiti, which I wrote between my lecture and seminar yesterday and then fired off from a computer in Rootes Social, sounded like a column from The Guardian. So tempted to switch to writing about this subject for my non-fiction portfolio instead of the decline of the study of modern languages in the UK. If anything, the Haiti introduction makes for way more interesting reading, now that I compare it with the proposal I sent to Jeremy Treglown. Anyway, still plenty of time to worry about that! Went to Kasbah for the first time ever after tonight's rehearsal. Now when it comes to clubbing, I've got a set of complicated, if not entirely original, views. To begin with, I believe that fundamentally, all clubs and the experiences they provide are fairly similar. Due to that, there is a part of me that instinctively rejects the entire thing as a waste of money and time. (Given that entry to Kasbah costs a fraction of what your average Singaporean club would though, the money factor is less of an issue. Was also pleased that my NUS Extra card was accepted as ID, although I told a white lie and said my passport had been stolen and the card was thus my only proof of identity in the whole wide world.) On the other hand, there is also a part of me that responds to the whole atmosphere of a club: thumping beats, drinks, the crush of bodies on the dancefloor. (How can you not dance to something like Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance'?) It's like for the night, you can forget yourself among your friends, with the assurance that the next morning, everyone else will be too hammered to judge you anyway. (I'd like to mention at this point that I only had one drink all night.) It's a feeling that can get pretty addictive. Anyway, for once, I left a club not feeling like the entire thing wasn't worth what I paid for it and that I never want to do it again. So yeah, I can see why people would return to Kasbah, week after week. Oh, and I also picked up £20 off the floor on my way out. Now if that happened every time I went clubbing, I'd definitely do it more often!