Miss Teen Singapore
Posted by qmonkey on August 31, 2007
Well, I have a small pantheon (if that’s not a contradiction) of stories, which, when I run out of post ideas I slowly whittle down - this is one of them. Lets call it Miss Teen Singapore - bound to get some hits aren’t I ?!
A few years ago I spent a year living and working in the beautiful island state of Singapore. My friends were mostly British and Australian ex-pats, along with their local wives, girlfriends and a couple of locals who played in our football team. One of the wives was a bit of a minor local celeb, she did some promo work and presenting at events and the occasional TV slots. I’d only really been there for a week or so when I was invited to one of the events she was hosting, I was told it was a fashion show. So I thought its a Tuesday night, I’d nothing else on, and a load of the guys from the football team were going might be a bit of craic.
We arrived quite early to the nite club where it was taking place, and by show time I found myself part of a group of pissed up pale skinned blokes who’d had 6 or 7 Tiger 
beers and were looking forward to checking out the ladies (if you know what I mean).
To be fair to us (at this point in the story im still referring to US rather than THEM and I), we thought it was a fashion show, in a nite club and that it would be perfectly ok to be a bit lairy and photograph everything that moved - you’ve guessed the problem here haven’t you.
It was more than an hour or so in until we realised that we were actually watching (and a-whooping and a-hollering at) 15-16-17 year old girls parading around in sometimes not very much. I few of us started get back our peripheral vision and notice that we were the only ones making any noise, and that everyone else was looking at us (possibly parents).
If memory serves me, I was actually at the loo when the police arrived. Now, in Singapore the police don’t take any nonsense, I don’t mean they might grab you by the arm a bit tightly, I mean if you give any lip you can find your self with 10 lashes, and a month in Changi Prison on bread and water.
Fair to say I was reasonably concerned - it was miles more trouble than I’d ever been in before, but through the alcohol and the adrenaline of it there was part of me was quite excited. It wasn’t until afterwards I thought to myself, this is the kinda thing could end up with me on the sex offenders register!
No one was actually arrested but we were told to leave, and it made the dammed news the next day! I learned a lesson about gradual escalation of jeopardy until you’re some where you don’t want to be. Similar to the frog vs. boiling water parable.
