The WINE Pack

Don’t let the sweet demure smiles deceive you. These are all Indonesian-Chinese, bankers and killer drinkers. Long after the floor start spinning under my feet, they can continue drinking and walking straight. They are adept at both Singlish and Indonish. They can roll their tongues as well as Julie Andrews and say “badder” instead of “better”, “usurl” instead of “usual” and sing “Tuesday” to the tune of “Juicy”.

The grouping was formed by accident, over a betting pool on who will get knocked off American Idol each week. Soon a treasurer was needed to keep track of who won and who lost. Being compulsive tabulators, the treasurer’s report comes with Excel spreadsheet with graphs and pie chart. An e-newsletter was started and only the elite, in-crowd, trendy, fashionable, popular and stylish were given the password. The common fund would be spent on drinks. And since there was none who could out-drink a certain girl from Jakarta, she was anointed President of the WINE Foundation. (Can you finish a bottle and a half of wine and still tell jokes in fluent Hokkien? Posers need not apply.) Being the least steady on my feet and having no LV handbag or Gucci purse in my possession, I’m only the occasional guest star to the set.

Fortunately, I was privileged to be at one of the member’s apartment for some home-cooked Indonesian dinner one night. Said member lives in posh condo off River Valley Rd, on a high floor overlooking the town. Said member ordinarily private and shy, but otherwise the nicest and most considerate of persons. Once, taking a ride in our car, she took out her curlers and used it on her hair for a while and afterwards asked, “Curlers, anyone?”, as if that was the most natural thing to do.

Said person’s sister has recently given birth and the WINE foundation had something to drink to on the occasion of the baby, whose name is Ethan, born of Indonesian-Chinese mother and French-Vietnamese father, celebrating his first month.











The president who was very alert, later wrote, in a very presidential way, “We were VERY DELIGHTED to be part of this BIG event at the comfort of said member’s home. The food was delicious and we ate every single morsel of mee sua that we were offered with great speed. Ethan of course was the highlight of the occasion though it was just for a short moment we were acquainted.” As a token of our exclusivity, we sat down for a formal, restrained and sober portrait… As mentioned above, do not be deceived by the sweet smiles…

Chup