The Urban Hermetic: November 2009

Some people asked me this year if there will be a Samhain ritual like last year... well... the answer is "No" because of the lack of space and this year's infernal rain... which lasted from 6 to after 12 midnight on 31 Oct.

I'm feeling a little bit sad because just a few days before Halloween, I got an email via an email blast from the faeries. It was an announcement for an event and I was kinda glad that they had found a new place.

Initially I had thought that the new space would be near Novena MRT, opposite from the church, however, as it turned out... the new space is a 5 stop bus ride via 21 or 131 from the bus stop opposite of Novena church. The ride itself takes you to somewhere in Balestier, and you stop at Shaw Plaza. The place is opposite of that, in a single storey complex of buildings with an Indonesian name.

I don't think that I'll likely hold a ritual at the Faeries' anytime soon in the next year or so cos well... the space that was rented out was too small. In fact, it is a single room that's slightly smaller than my own bedroom even... haiz :(

I had spoken to one of the faeries about some pretty big shop space at the same building that Da Bear's is at currently, but I think even with the fact that that decrepit old building has pretty cheap rental for the central shopping district ... the rental price is still probably too high for them...

That is pretty sad... its a real waste I think... they did have a lot going for them.

Anyways, the Halloween event as organised by the Asian Civilisation Musem was actually a big success. There were tons of people at the event when I arrived at 6pm + and they actually did have the free drinks and ice-cream as promised in the promotional advertisment. I was really quite amazed because there are usually a lot of terms and conditions when free stuff is involved. Most of the time you don't end up getting what you came for. ... Well, I felt that the drinks COULD REALLY have been better with MORE BARCARDI in the drink....:P There wasn't enough of the alcohol to actually taste the thing.

Apart from the rather alcohol-less drinks, the museum staff really outdid themselves and decorated the entire place with black cobwebs, giant spiders (some people actually made off with them) and severed doll limbs covered in blood. There were also performances, including a rather interesting faery dance and some rather entertaining magic shows.

However, because of the rain, quite a lot of people were not able to make it. In the end, Wolfy and I ended up being the only ones who attended the event. :P

It's quite a pity because many people were very sporting this year and came dressed up in rather nice halloween costumes. I think that tha local cosplay community also got wind of this event and not surprisingly many of them ended up in the best costume competition. I honestly don't think Wolfy and I have a good chance of winning the bottle of barcardi because there was some really really strong competition.

However, I was quite surprised by the amount of people who requested a photo with us... Apparently, when we went on the museum tour, we found out that the Singapore Paranormal Investigators (SPI) were wandering the galleries dressed up as ghouls to provide a little "colour" to the exhibition area. I think they were supposed to tell us a little bit about the museum exhibits, especially the ones with some kind of supernatural background, but they didn't do that... and I think the people were more interested in taking photos with the ghouls rather than listen to the occult history of some of the museum's objects.

Well, I guess the people thought that we were part of the SPI crew. And I must say we do give a much better background on the supernatural aspects of some of the artefacts than the SPI crew :D

Below are some of the pictures I took at the museum. Unfortunately all the great pictures which we took with the people who asked for our photos were on THEIR cameras and not mine...:P