IT IS 11 pm on Saturday night and Club Zouk's MTV Bar is heaving with sweaty young things. The Cure are moping noisily on a wall-sized video screen in the background, young Singaporeans and Westerners are cavorting about in the narrow space between the bar and the walls, flicking V-signs for my camera, screaming into each other's ears.
'Why are we here?' yells Emma from Northern Ireland. 'Drinking. Drinking.' 'What do I like about Singapore? The alcohol and the guys,' says Joe, who's from Australia.
'This is the most happening place in town,' says Jem, whose crew cut reveals that he's currently doing his National Service, but who nevertheless explains that he plays in a hardcore band.
'It all happens with music. Everyone's in a group - alternative, hardcore, metal, whatever - we're all brothers and sisters. We do music together, we go out to party together, we get drunk together.' And then what? Stay up all night? Drink some more? Maybe grab an aerosol and spray paint a few parked cars in an exclusive suburb after tossing eggs and even bricks at them? Emma suddenly gets serious.
'Do you know what happens when they cane you,' she says, grimacing. 'They, like, do it, then wait for it to heal, then do it again.' She shudders. 'Mike Fay? I know one of his friends. He's gone now. The kids don't talk about that much. Ever since that it's changed here. Before, I used to go out and my Mum didn't worry but now she says be careful. You could go to the wrong place, do the wrong thing ... you have to be careful now, otherwise you're f****d.' BACKTRACK two days and those thoughts may well be passing through the mind of Shiu Chi-ho. It's 2 pm on a typically sweltering Singapore afternoon but rather than sitting in class or shooting hoops on the basketball court, the 17-year-old Hong Kong passport holder is brushing his way through a crowd of news cameramen outside the Havelock Road Subordinate Courts and stepping into a lift heading for the seventh floor, for Court Two and an appointment with pain.
He cuts a striking figure. Tall, well-built, handsome. Instantly recognisable because of his part in a scandal that has reverberated around the world. He is in court, surrounded by journalists and sensation-seeking spectators to face sentencing on charges of vandalism.
As the courtroom gradually fills, the hubbub slowly decreases. Then, at 2.25, Shiu is separated from his father, mother and sister and escorted to the dock. Casually dressed in jeans, denim shirt and white T-shirt, he has been idly gazing about the room, but now he settles into his seat facing the judge's stand and waits, gaze lowered, unmoving. It's his moment of truth and he must know it isn't going to be pleasant.