Sold Soul (a fiction of epic proportion) continues...

(This is an ongoing online novel started as a fictionalised events of my life. Its based on true events not all experienced by me but there were some total fictions too)
The Hard Rock years were where I started to take my nightlife seriously. I was always curious about the queue that forms outside of the Hard Rock Cafe in Kuala Lumpur and the music that they were playing. I was further intrigue when I was told of the going-ons inside it by one of my batch who was closed with some seniors, who had passed the permitted age of 21 years old to enter into the HRC, as it was known. It seems that they were always playing particular songs by U2 and Beatles which will accelerate into a type of dancing by the whole waiters and waitresses there. They were also one of the earliest place where live music were played by resident bands interspersing with disco musics.

I was already bored with going to disco which were playing musics that you have to dance to, to enjoy. I was not much of a dancer and was always at on how I tried to imitate other people dancing style. I just couldn't get my body to follow the rythm. The Hard Rock year started when we became undergraduate. Some of us was still have not turned 21 years yet but we did manage to beat the system. When we became undergraduate, our batch was joined by a few others who came in either through the STPM examinations or mature students sent in by their respective institutions. Of the latter, there were the police department, the fire department and MARA. We were also joined by those who were unlucky enough to have to be in Form 6 while we spent the government money passing through matriculation with nary a worry.

As first year undergraduate, we were required to stay in hostels within the university and this made us quite perturbed as we were split and we have to share rooms with strangers. I had to put up with a very mature student who did not really care whether I was in the room or not and it suit me just fine. I can't even remember his face or his name now. Most of my batch were in another blocks of hostel and I was always in one of the room there. There was always a bed free for me to sleep in. This hostel was where we get to know new friends and shared a few memories. One of the most memorable things that we did was playing cards until late into the morning while listening to the newest happening radio channel then called Time Highway Radio (now it becomes an Indian radio channel). When there was a call-in session, we would called in and told our friends to listen to ourselves talk.

There were a group of us who kept long hairs as these were the time when Metallica released their Black Album and Nirvana was considered as the coolest band around. Any VHS video, live performance and good live bands playing their songs were sought like they were what determined how we scored in our final exams. The said group was what started me to go to Hard Rock Cafe KL every week. Their long hair would be swinging in unison, in head banging style, as the music of Metallica, Nirvana or Ugly Kid Joe, blared out of the speakers.

We always get in early as the cover charge for entrance to HRC only starts at 11pm. We would stuffed ourselves at the mamak stalls at the back of Concorde Hotel and then enter the HRC lounging at the bar or joined any one of those regulars who were already joining the rat race. We would wait for the table to be set aside and the dance floor to be cleared. The door would then be closed and the doorkeeper would start to guard the entrances for admittance. The steep price of RM21-00, as it was then, would be imposed. At 11-15pm, we would go out to the sidewalks around HRC or the lobby of the adjacent hotel, waiting for the band to come out and play. We would, before going out, without fail, obtained the hand-stamp which would be stamped on our arm, which would give us the ticket to enter back again.

The cost for us to be there were always not more than RM20-00 which was mostly in paying the transportation, either cars or public transports, and some food. If we were late in getting in, we would beg or find any one of our friends who would help us get in without having to pay anything. HRC had seen me watching people went by and events such as the launching of a new radio station called Hitz. Those years were hectic as we felt that we could breeze through without having to really study. Heck, we even went to HRC on nights where the next day we had exams.