i’ve taken a vicious and irremediable dislike to the supreme court bar room, which looks twice as big as the one in the state court and smells of polished leather and air-conditioning. the carpets are like closely manicured lawns, the sofas stiff and deep a person might get decompression sickness getting up from them again, and the lights shine bright overhead and from every pane of wall like elongated ovoid gems. high court lawyers tend to be richly-clad and loftily indifferent: there are only dignified exchanges, quiet but significant words between powerful men, you never see anything like the rowdy, locker room jollity and soapbox vociferousness of the state court bar room, which i used to hate but have learnt to enjoy.in the state court bar room all of the furniture is old: some are colonial-era cast-offs from the high court. the armchairs, dark blue once, are no longer plush — i doubt they had ever been particularly so — but they are pleasantly worn-in. a copy of the straits times peregrinate from table to table throughout the morning until at midday the various sections lie wilted, well-thumbed and unwanted in some corner. there is wifi: the password is readily available on the walls. the lighting is always dim; a ground floor lounge, it nevertheless gives the impression of being a basement space.
the kopi uncle, a mr foo (hainanese, naturellement), stands behind the kitchen counter as he has for perhaps decades and chats merrily to each lawyer who comes in and will make you not only the various permutations on singaporean coffee/tea of -o, -c, -kosong, -siewdai and beng, but also on occasion sandwiches (english not american) and keep fresh tomatoes and cucumbers on the counter for that purpose. an auntie assists him on some mornings — this is only one of her several part time jobs, she explains to me one day.
my learned mentor fcm says our bar room resembles the business class lounge of a small provincial airport in a not terribly developed country, and in fact when it is crowded the numerous black trolleyed briefcases and preponderance of suits give the impression of an intermezzo between planes. the men come in and hang up their jackets in the closets by the entrance (some doze between hearings in their shirtsleeves); the washrooms and the entryway have wide wall mirrors for one to adjust one’s dress before reappearing in front of a judge.
near the centre of the room there is a large, black, and very ugly round table, rumoured through its history to be bugged by the isd boys. (i’m told by the kopi uncle that the great francis seow himself, in his troubled days, sat at that very table, strategising.) notwithstanding the tapping jokes people talk loudly and freely, without a thought for political correctness, some of which upsets me at times but which i’ve also come to appreciate: this is a space which is free and privileged. when people step into the bar room they leave behind the public areas of the courthouse and their public personae fall away — nobody hides their views, nobody cares about being overheard, everyone equally tunes out from or openly listens in on other people’s conversations; two tables away someone pitches in mid-argument with their own opinion, over at another table some bawdy talk, another group in a different corner are raging about something a prosecutor or a judge said. i love that, because it means the state court bar room is a space which is free — not free from judgment, but free from self-censorship.
unfortunately the state court bar room closed five weeks ago for renovation (alas bar room i knew him horatio) and i have not yet visited it since its reopening last week. this is by way of elegy for the old room, and with some apprehension as to its new look.
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