A Green Halloween
Bryan came up with the concept after last year's Halloween party, so we set about getting it done. You have no idea how difficult it was to look like this:
After a trip to Beach Road Market (where we discovered buying second hand boots from a deaf, almost blind and very aged old man was very challenging), a journey to the camouflage aunty's house, trips to Carrefour (for the toy machine guns and spray paint), failed attempts with the spray paint, a visit to the stage makeup shop, four separate trips to Nippon paint to get yet more customised paint... we were finally ready.
Kudos to Bryan for doing all the painting and inventively searching for solutions to the problems that cropped up. It would not have happened without him. Eugene also minimised the pain for me personally, by running all the costume-related errands on our part. There was a slight mis-match in paint colour so some items were a little darker than the others. But all in all, it didn't really show up except when we used the camera flash for pics.
Putting on the outfits was much much harder than it would appear as well. The clothes were very stiff from the paint and hence abrasive, tight and difficult to manage. It was also really warm under all that face paint. The zippers on the girls' boots were stuck because of the paint, as were the movable parts of our machine guns. But in the end we made do, got it all to work, the costumes came together and all was well.
It was great fun. For me the best part was when we skipped the super long snaking queue at Zouk because we were nominated for 'Best Dressed'. It felt good to literally march past the long line of ghouls, sexy kittens and super-heros and get to the front to get our picture taken and our wrists stamped. Burbur and I agreed that it was great to be toy soldiers. We didn't have to smile, we didn't have to make eye contact with anyone and we could shoot insolent people who touched our weapons. Awesome. We also enjoyed posing and taking photos with all the other costumed party-goers. Every now and then, it's nice to see that there are many Singaporeans who are willing to take the trouble to have a good time, and who are good sports.
Zouk gave out five prizes that night and we won the prize for 'Best Clones'. Whatever that means lah. We got two Blackberry phones for our effort. Celebratory cigars outside followed with Aaron and his friend, Eugene, who both joined our group later in the night. They were in similar gear but because they had a worse paint-match problem than we did, we joked that they were the toy soldiers that failed the QC check and got thrown out.
Of course this now begs the question: Whatever are we going to do next year for Halloween?
After a trip to Beach Road Market (where we discovered buying second hand boots from a deaf, almost blind and very aged old man was very challenging), a journey to the camouflage aunty's house, trips to Carrefour (for the toy machine guns and spray paint), failed attempts with the spray paint, a visit to the stage makeup shop, four separate trips to Nippon paint to get yet more customised paint... we were finally ready.
Kudos to Bryan for doing all the painting and inventively searching for solutions to the problems that cropped up. It would not have happened without him. Eugene also minimised the pain for me personally, by running all the costume-related errands on our part. There was a slight mis-match in paint colour so some items were a little darker than the others. But all in all, it didn't really show up except when we used the camera flash for pics.
Putting on the outfits was much much harder than it would appear as well. The clothes were very stiff from the paint and hence abrasive, tight and difficult to manage. It was also really warm under all that face paint. The zippers on the girls' boots were stuck because of the paint, as were the movable parts of our machine guns. But in the end we made do, got it all to work, the costumes came together and all was well.
It was great fun. For me the best part was when we skipped the super long snaking queue at Zouk because we were nominated for 'Best Dressed'. It felt good to literally march past the long line of ghouls, sexy kittens and super-heros and get to the front to get our picture taken and our wrists stamped. Burbur and I agreed that it was great to be toy soldiers. We didn't have to smile, we didn't have to make eye contact with anyone and we could shoot insolent people who touched our weapons. Awesome. We also enjoyed posing and taking photos with all the other costumed party-goers. Every now and then, it's nice to see that there are many Singaporeans who are willing to take the trouble to have a good time, and who are good sports.
Zouk gave out five prizes that night and we won the prize for 'Best Clones'. Whatever that means lah. We got two Blackberry phones for our effort. Celebratory cigars outside followed with Aaron and his friend, Eugene, who both joined our group later in the night. They were in similar gear but because they had a worse paint-match problem than we did, we joked that they were the toy soldiers that failed the QC check and got thrown out.
Of course this now begs the question: Whatever are we going to do next year for Halloween?