The Run by our Mystery Run Reporter: Half Cut

Well, who better to write the run report than one of the hares (any complaints please see me and you can be next weeks Mystery Run Reporter).   Tongue in cheek and taking liberties, I declare it an ‘excellent run’ (okay, okay I heard ‘good run’ from the circle). 

The route took the runners on a good hard run along Upper Bukit Timah, coming back to Old Jurong Road, right into Bt Batok East Ave 2 and then working their way to Bukit Gombak Stadium, up over the hill through Bukit Batok Town Park and back to Hillview Bukit Batok East 2, through some jungle and back into the park and home.

As I was back at home recovering from setting the run I can only talk about setting the run.  When we started off it looked like it could rain but we were hopeful.  Not too be!!!  Fifteen minutes into it, the downpour came and stayed with us for a good half the run.  Our flour turned to damper and our wet toilet paper was being torn off in chunks rather than strips.

We encountered mad dogs, locals burning money for THEIR good luck and uprooted trees.  We had a great trek planned off Bt Batok East Ave 2 through the jungle but when we ventured in it was a no goer – trees lying on the jungle floor making it inaccessible. 

But, all in all, not a bad run.

The Circle by Half Cut

Circle began at 07.59 pm.

What did we think of the Run Good Run – see above – excellent if you listen to Half Cut.

Tell us about your On On: Red Lantern, 12 S$ per head

Next Week’s Run: Circle Jerk & Eleven, Chestnut Avenue mid way, Red Lantern

Virgins: Steffen

Returnees: Juice Extractor, Skidmark, Captain Red Arrow, Marie, Chastity Belt, Thunder Bolt, Temp Erection, Knobby Boy Scout

Visitors: Tools, Malcolm, Fiona, Tara

New Members: None

Do we have a Hare Whip? Half Cut and Legolas

Milestones:  The Dirty Old Men Club (Cock Radio, Shaggy Dick 2 and somebody else) 

Mystery Whip: Eleven  

(Editors note: They were also talking about how many times per night the different lovers are able to perform. Somehow G-String had a benchmark of 5 times and nobody else seemed to be willing to commit any numbers. CP)

Mystery Mystery Whip: Little John

Cock Radio bet his left testicle again that we were going to have a Mystery Mystery whip.

The Prick:  Shaggy Dick was called out as a candidate for the Prick.  He came back from a school trip last Friday and sorely in need of a beer went out to test the waters in lieu of coming to hash.  He had a long race planned on the Sunday morning so was aware that he shouldn’t do too much damage but after half a dozen beers this idea evaporated into thin air and he carried onto Orchard Towers at a very late hour. What happened after that – the only answer we received was a Uhhhhh.  Well deserved.

A.O.B.

GM Business:

Circle closed at 08.40 pm.

Half Cuts Plagiarism:

Here I go for the poetry lovers again – another piece from Janice Tay

     Straits Times Sept 19^th 2009 – Letter from Kyoto – ‘Brain on fire?  Go blue to stay cool’ Summer burns the brain.  Air that crackled with static in winter and stayed crisp through spring finally sags into a clinging film that wraps like a second skin.  Encased in sticky air, the body traps heat inside, building and building it up until the brain starts to cook.  When this happens, smoke can sometimes be observed escaping from the ears.  It’s worse on days when the clouds have been scorched out of the sky.  With nothing between sun and skin, the rays sear the brain straight into well-done without stopping by rare or medium.

The Japanese try to beat the heat through methods both physical and psychological.  One of these is the colour blue.  Come summer, clothes, store decorations and wrapping will appear in shades from aquamarine to indigo.  They lie like a cold compress over the eyes, soothing the heat rash inside.  It’s a case of fighting fire with sapphire.

One August afternoon, I duck out of the broil and into a eagashi shop in my neighbourhood.  There’s just one glass case in the shop, which sells only five kinds of Japanese sweets.  Under a shelf of manju buns and red bean jelly, a powdery blue cloth winds like a stream at the bottom of the case.  A turquoise bowl holds one end down as light and dark blue glass pebbles lie scattered around.  The pressure gauge in my mind, vibrating in the red danger range, subsides into orange, then settles in green.

Also in the showcase is a cobalt bowl holding two baby watermelons.  Not much bigger than golf balls, they were picked before they could reach full size and the jaw-dropping prices they fetch in Japanese supermarkets.  Watermelons aren’t just fruit – hideously expensive fruit – they are signposts to the season, much like the colour blue. 

And there’s plenty of blue at a festival beside the Kamo river in the east of Kyoto city.

Much of it is in the yukata, the single-layer kimono worn in the hot months.  Turquoise, navy, ultra-marine – visitors and stall-holders have put on pieces of the sky and sea.  So what if summer has set your brain on fire, say the yukata.  Here, have some blue.

One strategy to help you survive summer is water.  At the festival is a stall dedicated to getting visitors to take their shoes off, slip on a pair of slippers and step into the canal beside the river.  Even the suggestion of water seems to bring relief.  This may explain the colour of the Japanese summer:  Blue reminds most people of water.

Over in the river, six men are wading out to floating bamboo poles.  They each tie one end of a roll of cloth to a pole, then fling the bolts like fishermen casting nets.  The bolts unfurl as they fall, splashing in the water, coloured ribbons rippling in the current.  This is yuzen-nagashi – washing kimono cloth in a river to get rid of excess dye.  The paste used in the dyeing technique is called yuzen.  Once a year, the process is re-enacted in the Kamo river, where so many kimono silk tongues once lapped at the water.  Stretching my neck, I glance up.  Right above the craftsmen, the sky is also washing cloth.  Streamer-like clouds lie neatly racked to one another as if they have been tied to some great, invisible pole.  But the sky, bright with the last of the daylight, must be a more vigorous laundryman, for the clouds are white.

I stand with a river at my feet and another above me.  Between the azure and the indigo, the dried sweat sticky on my skin washes off like paste from kimono silks.  Now is the summer of our discomfort made glorious winter by this sum of blue.

This ocean of blue exists only because summer does.  For some pleasures, you have to sweat.

On On On On!  

Scribed by Half Cut

Confucius Says Phil-osophy:  Don't worry; it only seems kinky the first time.

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