LWE Chapter 7: Bar Tales #3

A pub with no name

Singapore called. Well, a guy I’d done freelance work for in Singapore called. Said he’d left the PR firm where he’d been working when I freelanced for him when I first got back from Australia in ‘88, and was now on his own. Would I like to work for him? At that point, my best friend, Gan, was living in Singapore and I had had quite enough of working for the altitudinally-challenged emperor-wannabe at McCann so I said ‘yes’ and right at the end of ‘89 I found myself in Singapore.

Within a few years, I was married and even became a father. During this time I used to hang out at a pub within a restaurant along Orchard Road. The pub itself had no name (though it was sometimes referred to as The Cellar even though there was no signage bearing that name as far as I recall) - it simply sat beside the Jack’s Place Restaurant and might even have been the only entertainment venue that that F&B group ever managed.

And a band with no name...

We simply called it Jack’s Place when we needed to name it and it was in the basement of Yen San Building along Orchard Road. Besides the pub not having a name, it also had a band that didn’t have a name! Terry Mortimer, Hans Vernie and Philip Teo sang together, usually under the moniker ‘Terry, Hans and Philip’ though that wasn’t really the band’s name. Every now and then there’d be a joke and a half-hearted attempt to name the band, but nothing came of it.

Like I did at Rennie’s, I used to hang out there quite a lot at some point. Jack’s Place was completely different though - it had live music for one thing, and lots of people coming in an out. A much busier and noisier place than Rennie’s which didn’t even have piped music if I remember correctly. To get to Jack’s Place, you walked down a set of stairs and turned left into a short corridor. To the right was the restaurant and to the left the entrance to the pub.  The pub had, like most other pubs, subdued lighting. A large central bar faced you when you walked in the door. Some seats ringed the bar, and more tables and chairs were to your right, between the bar and the stage. On the left of the stage was another seating area.

The place was just right for me as I started a new chapter in Singapore. The music was great and the ambience likewise. And the pubgoers who came in groups, kinda knew each other as well. My own group - Gan, my then-girlfriend Jessica, Andrew Chan (who used to phone me at Rennie’s) and one or two others used to go regularly. We got quite close to the band, to William the bartender, and to the waiting staff, many of whom had worked for Jack’s Place for some time.

This picture ©SPH via NLB and is part of an article published in the Straits Times on 18 August 1989. The article can be accessed at the link below.

Jack Daniels at Jack's Place

William poured a mean JDCoke (Jack Daniels + Coke for those unfamiliar with rocket fuel terminology). Thinking back now, perhaps some cosmic influence dictated that my favourite drink at my favourite watering hole of the late 80s and early 90s would share the same first name…  

The band would start playing around 9 (I think) and played a lot of 70s and 80s stuff. They were good musicians - make no mistake about that. I reckon Terry Mortimer is one of Singapore’s best bassists. He had pedigree too, having been part of the contest-winning trio Tony and Terry with Spencer. Hans played lead guitar and usually did all the other fandanglingly stuff with diskettes (remember those?) and drum beats etc, on some machine, and he sang. Really well. He also loved to talk about new age stuff and would often mention Shirley MacLaine… Philip Teo played guitar and sang as well, sometimes in a falsetto even. They served up a lot of rock and roll, some britpop, some 70s classics and more. There was music from America, The Eagles, Kansas, Alan Parsons Project, CCR, The Beatles... Much of it we could sing along to, most of it we preferred to let the pros do it. And they did it well. 

A year or so later, when Jessica and I were preparing to get married, we met Nigel Tan and his fiancée Anna at a marriage preparation course we all attended. Turns out Nigel was also a frequent customer at Jack’s Place and he and his bunch of friends used to sit on the left of the stage. We knew there was a bunch of guys there often though we hadn’t introduced ourselves. But finally became friends - lifelong friends as it turned out.

Nothing much happened here, someone said.

Someone once said that nothing much happened at this pub without a name. Well, perhaps - I never saw a fight, for one thing. I never saw someone pass out drunk. I also never saw an unhappy face. So what did I see?

I saw friends having a good time. I saw staff whom we knew by name and who knew our favourite drinks so much so that we never even had to order a drink - it would arrive at our table when we came in. I saw a bunch of musicians who played with talent and heart and who gave us hours of entertainment. I saw guys and girls singing along with the band and feeling darned good. In fact, I think that, contrary to what that fellow said, quite a bit actually happened at Jack’s Place. 

Like many good things though, it all came to an end eventually. Jack’s Place decided they didn’t want to run a pub anymore so took back the space to expand the restaurant.

The band moved on to Europa at International Plaza and some of us went with them - including William the bartender. I walked in for the first time there, and waved to that familiar face behind the bar. I found myself a table and scarcely had I put my book down (yes, some habits die hard) when the waitress brought me a JDCoke. ‘What’s this?’ I asked ‘I haven’t ordered yet…’

She replied ‘JDCoke. William saw you walk in and asked me to serve you this.’

Those were the days…

Note: The article referenced above is available at:
http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19890818-1.2.77.3.1?ST=1&AT=search&k=%22Hans%20Vernie%22&QT=%22hansvernie%22&oref=article

LWE Chapter 6: Bar Tales #2

From a Hungry Go Where review - see below for link

Contrary to popular belief, pubs and bars are not places where you get drunk, behave boorishly, get into fights, pick up girls or whatnots. Pubs are places where you have a quiet little makan, where you read books on spirituality or new age thinking, where you have deep philosophical conversations with your closest friends, and where you receive phone calls from schoolmates living 400km away… Well, OK, maybe not all people or pubs, but for me, Rennie’s was this.

In those days, my daily routine was simple - an early start at McCann (I would get in around 6 - 6:30 in the morning) then work until about 6 or 7, go home for dinner then after a short rest, off to Rennie’s, usually armed with a book. On the days when Existential Crisis dogged me, I would often ring Yew Leong and Michael and we’d meet for a beer and a chat. And often, Oxtail Soup too. There were others I would meet up with, but this was the regular group I had.

I would go to Rennie’s maybe 3-4 times a week and each time stay until midnight or so then head home for a 5 hour nap before repeating the process the next day. I have, fortunately, never needed much sleep and 5-6 hours a night has often sufficed.

I wasn’t very close to Rennie and Trudy and preferred to sit quietly in the back portion of the pub. There was a bubbly waitress/cashier named Rose whom I did get along with. She was a diminutive thing, often partially hidden behind the L shaped bar counter, but she would often call out a greeting when I arrived and that was nice. There was also a waiter named Zul I believe (or was it ‘Joe’? My memory fails me) who will feature in anther story soon.

The Phone Call Thing.

It was not uncommon to receive phone calls at the pub and I was one of those who’d sometimes have my name shouted out a few moments after the jangling of the phone. No modern technology? Hey, we got by…

One of my oldest friends is Andrew Chan who then lived and worked in SIngapore. One night as I sauntered in, book in hand, Rose looked up and immediately called out ‘Hi, John! Your friend Andrew called from Singapore. I told him to call back at 10:30!’

‘Thanks, Rose!’ I called back and as I walked in past and acknowledged the regulars who preferred the front portion of the pub, I glanced at my watch. It was almost precisely 10:30…

Even I had not realised my routine was quite so fixed or obvious that the waitress in my local pub knew of my comings and goings...

The Ming Thing

Besides work, Yew Leong, Michael and I often lamented the lack of female companionship in our lives. Typical young-guy stuff lah. One night, we were sitting at our usual place, bemoaning our lot, when suddenly Yew Leong said ‘Hey there’s a good looking chick sitting at the bar!’ Now as I said, the bar is an L-shaped thing. The long part of the counter was parallel to the wall and the short part of the L had its back to the inside part of the pub, which is where we usually were. The wall between the two had a large aperture in it which in later years was covered with a clear perspex window. Back then it was a unrestricted opening. Just at the curve of the bar sat an Anchor Beer barrel, a decorative item that right then, obscured the sight of this goddess from me. Both Michael and Yew Leong could see her but her beauty was elusive to me, without any obvious craning or standing up.

Instead I summoned Zul who was leaning against the wall at the end of the bar. He immediately popped through the open doorway into the back and came to us. We got on very well with Zul so I chose to jestingly berate him. ‘Zul, how can you do this to us?…’

The poor guy looked genuinely shocked and asked ‘What happened, guys? What’s wrong?’

I looked at him in mock sterness and replied ‘There’s this beautiful chick sitting by herself at the bar, and you know the three of us guys are lonely, and you don’t even introduce her to us? How can?…’

Zul visibly relaxed and said she used to come to Rennie’s every now and then and he would introduce her. And he did. And that’s how I came to meet Kuan Ming Ying, or Ming, as she introduced herself when Zul dragged her to us.

It’s been close to 30 years since that meeting and I can’t even remember her face now, though I do know the guys weren’t wrong in their initial description. She worked for Schering, the pharma company and we stood around chatting for a short while. I did call her a day or two later. And we went out for dinner and drinks. And then again the day after. And the day after that… And almost every day for the next 2 weeks, in fact. Each night was a wonderful few hours of eating, drinking, chatting, laughing, joking and connecting. 

It was on the 2nd date I think that she said she was actually leaving to go overseas at the end of the the following week. She’d been transferred to the Berlin office. And so we went out every night, kind of to make up for the fact that we’d only had that short period of time before she left. 

We talked about life, the weniverse and everything. We talked about her work (contraceptive products, mainly), my work (trying to be subservient to a head with Napoleon-Syndrome - and failing), the world, Richard Bach, destiny, fate, who God is, where we go after we leave this life, and more. It seems we could go on and on for hours and not be bored. And yet we had that travel date looming over us.

And so I saw her off at the airport the next week, we wrote each other for awhile and I know she eventually hooked up with someone, and I eventually left McCann and went to work in Singapore. 

And I never saw her again.

From a Hungry Go Where review. See below for link.

The Lat Thing

A few years later, I was in PJ again with my (now-ex) wife, Jessica, and we popped in to Rennie’s for some Oxtail Soup and beer. There were only a few other people in the pub at the time and lo and behold, one of them was Lat! The world-famous cartoonist, whose work I absolutely adore, was sitting at the bar with another man having some drinks and a quiet chat.

I explained who it was to Jessica and we agreed an autograph would be essential so we wandered over and interrupted him.

‘Err… sorry. Excuse me for the interruption, but we saw you and we’re huge fans (a little exaggeration was in order I thought) and I wonder if we could impose on you for an autograph, please?’

Lat and his friend both smiled at us, not at all put out by the interruption. Lat chuckled and said ‘Oh, fans! ha ha OK sure…’ and reached for a paper napkin. He borrowed a pen, then looked at me with a glint in his eye and said ‘I’ll only charge you one ringgit…’

I replied with a laugh ‘Oh my wife has come all the way from Singapore you know…’

Without skipping a beat, Lat said ‘Singapore? Oh then it’ll be TWO ringgit!’

And we all had a merry laugh as he sketched out a little Mamat for us on that napkin. And no, I didn't have to pay a thing...

I kept that napkin for years, and hope it’s still with me. Years of shifting houses and the divorce has meant some stuff may now be hidden somewhere or even left behind so I’m not sure it is still in amongst my piles of mementoes. I’ll probably check for it when I have some free time. It’ll be a little yellowed, I’m sure, but the memory of that short encounter is still very much with me.

I have a few more memories of Rennie’s to share and maybe will compile them into another post. Whether I do or not though, those memories remain within me and the sharp edge of the pub’s closing cuts a painful tear in those memories. Not blood, but tears, almost, pour out from the wounds. As I said at the start, pubs are not just about beer and whisky, they’re about friendships, conversations, growing up, growing closer, even growing apart. Rennie’s was this and more. I shall miss it.

Pictures above taken from: http://www.hungrygowhere.my/dining-guide/tried-and-tested/best-oxtail-soup-in-the-state-rennie-s-house-of-oxtail-pj-*aid-4f803101/

LWE Chapter 5: Bar Tales #1

I went for a cup of coffee a couple of days ago and walked past an old haunt of mine. In the late 80s, when I still worked in KL, I used to hang out at a pub near my home - Rennie’s House of Oxtail. Yes it was a pub, and yes it served the most amazing Oxtail Soup. 

A quiet, dingy place, frequented by newspaper types, it was a great place for me to have a beer (RM3.10 in those days!), grab a bite (Sambal Sandwiches were really nice and spicy, and the Oxtail was heavenly), do some reading or catch up with friends.

As a young, insecure and not-especially-talented bigmouth in advertising, I used to meet up with some friends sometimes, just to blow some steam or to cry on each others’ shoulders. In those days in KL I used to be close to a couple of guys, one of whom was Yew Leong, who went on to amazing things with LeoBurnett and who of course, married Yasmin Ahmad. He is an amazing talent who deserves all the accolades he’s received and continues to receive.

Another friend I hung out with was Michael Choo who was in IT and he and I shared a passion for Macintosh computers. It was in fact the Mac that was the focus of my work at McCann-Erickson at that time.

And it was my work and the people I didn’t enjoy working with there which was often the focus of my discontent.

So on the days that I felt a mismatch - and this was a frequent occurrence - with my work environment or the world in general, I would often give these two guys a call and we’d meet at Rennie’s, have a few beers, lament the stresses and unhappiness of our lot and talk about our dream jobs. Yew Leong’s was to sell fish. I thought the life of a security guard would be better suited to me… No worries, no stress, just bliss. Or so it seemed.

When I felt a mismatch with the world, I wanted to be a security guard and Yew Leong wanted to sell fish.

To be fair, there were many days I felt all was right with the world and in those pre-mobile phone and pre-internet days, I often turned up at Rennie’s with a book in one hand and sat in the inside section where it was quieter, had my beer and whatever makan, and did some quiet reading.

Rennie’s was eponymously named after Rennie Klaassen. I didn’t know him well though we did exchange a few words every now and then. He passed on some years ago and his widow, Trudy, continued to serve up good Oxtail Stew and nice cold beers for some time. She passed away last year and we had hopes their son might continue the business…

And so as I parked the car just in front of Rennie’s on the way to the coffee place just a few doors up to meet with my old friends Debbie and Hannes, I had a close look at Rennie’s and noticed a couple of things. The sign that hung at an angle near the front door was gone. There was a ‘For Sale’ banner hung at the first floor though whether that was for the upstairs unit or not was not certain. So as Mei and I stepped onto the five foot way, I was looking for more telltale signs that would reveal if my old almost-daily haunt was still operating.

And I pulled on that door knob for the last time and peeked inside...

Some binging and banging from inside filled me with dread. The door was unlocked and I pulled on the door knob like I had done countless times in the past. The scene that met my eyes confirmed my fears - the place was gutted, the tables and chairs all gone. The signs on the walls had disappeared and 3 young chaps were poking and jabbing at the false ceiling, making it fall in pieces onto a growing pile on the floor.

Turns out they’d taken over and this was to be an Italian restaurant. ‘Come and support us, yah?’ one of them called to me as I slowly closed the door. I smiled at him but as the door shut on Rennie’s for the last time for me, my mind was silently saying ‘Hell, no.’

Not that I wished ill for their business. Being in F&B, I actually hope very much that new ventures are successful. It’s just that for me this space would forever be Rennie’s. I could not walk in and not remember the signs behind the bar, the staff who knew me by name, the same faces on many days of the week, driving home after a few hours, feeling a little refreshed or rejuvenated, with a little more hope for a better day on the morrow.

This place just has too many memories and I will forever hear the echoes of them if I sat down to a dinner of pasta and prosecco. 

Photo from TimeOut.

Photo from CiliSos.

I’ll share some of those memories here soon, and maybe if you’ve never been a patron of the place, you’ll then have a better idea of why the closing means what it means to me.

Note: A few weeks before this, my favourite pub of my Singapore years also closed. I’ll write about that separately.