everybody has a favourite alphabet. mine's G (for GAY, GROIN, GENTLEMEN, GODDESS and perhaps GOOBLEDEGOOK). of course, a favourite alphabet must also lead to a much detested one. one needs to balance out both sides of the spectrum, you see. and i have to say, Q has to be the most redundant alphabet of all (which is the reason which fuels my hate). don't get me wrong, not that i totally hate Q. i mean, afterall, Q brought us the words QUADRICEPS (yum yum if you've got nice ones!) QUEER, QUEEN and QUIDDITCH. but she gave us equally distubing words like QUILL (who on earth even though of writing with a feather?), QUALITY (the 'IT' word nowadays for ISO certification and often associated with audits and auditors; not that they give any work associated with quality anyways), and QUEUE. QUEUE being the topic that i shall be talking about today.

i hate having to queue for anything. i get very impatient with old folks transferring money at ATMs. i get pissed off when teenagers insert last minute orders of McSpicy set meals at McDonald's. i start using swear words when people are 15 minutes late for their appointments (not that i'm any better at sticking to punctuality).

and that was the case at MOS when my clubbing mates, April and Gina, had to queue for 2 hours just to get into a free party. obviously it was a free party (sponsored by whosgoing.sg) and everyone wanted to be early so that they could get 1-for-1 offers on house pours and shit. given that MOS housepour jugs are 41 bloody dollars, it really did make financial sense.

at 8.30, the queue was scarce. only 30 plus teeny-hip-hoppy-boppers trying very hard to act like a posse of cool people. AND ALL OF THEM WERE UGLY JEANS AND RANDOM T-SHIRT WEARING CHINESE PEOPLE. like can somebody give me an eeeeeeyurrrrrr. at 9.25pm when the three of us finally joined the queue it was already about 200 plus people. and thus began our long wait for admission. it's free lah, we can't complain. but the irritating thing that drove me nuts was the fact that people were still arriving out of nowhere to join the queue. it's like the queue decided to indulge in some binary fission and simply split and grew more people out of random places. friends of friend of friends of friends joining the queue halfway. that's really screwed up.

when we finally did get into MOS (that was already 11.15pm), the three of us were (to quote an army term) happy like fuck. given that we had braved the humidity and cigarette smoke in our clubbing attire, it was worth it. but alas, another queue awaited us: The Bag Counter. apparently the bag counter was full. i have never come across a bag counter that was full before. the counter staff told us to come back in a half hour's time to check again. so we had a round of $41 drinks. 30 minutes later, we checked again, the staff told us very nicely to bugger off and come back in another 30 minutes. like what the hell right?

so we did the incredulous, we partied with our bags. and thank goodness that i didn't carry a humongous bowling bag to club that day. i think the public who have watched public service announcements one too many times at the MRT stations might have thought that it was 'a suspicious-looking baggage' (reason for being suspicious: the colours were too clashing) and immediately reported me to the MOS staff.

anyways, it wasn't until dear Gina had the brilliant idea of dumping our bags in the toilet that our spirits were lifted. and by dumping, i don't mean like we flush our bags down the toilet bowl in the hope that they will resurface sooner or later in the rivers of Clarke Quay (the same way you sometimes see blood-stained sanitary napkins floating down the rivers of Singapore too).

and this is evidence that sometimes in life, if you want something, all you gotta do is ask nicely. april and gina asked the nice cleaner auntie whether she could put her stuff in the janitor's closet. auntie (bless her soul) was really sweet enough to allow it. and thus bag-free and (given the waiting time at the bag counter) alcohol-free, we had the time of our lives with another three more jugs of expensive house pours. it did cross my mind that someone would sneak into the closet and steal our bags. but 3 hours later when we decided to leave MOS, our bags were still safe in the (somewhat dehydrated and clorox-smelling) arms of our dear cleaner auntie.

thank the heavens that we didn't have to queue for a taxi post-clubbing. if i had to, i would definitely start using my 2nd favorite letter of the alphabet: F.

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