Maybe it’s just a coincidence. The men in the dingy bar are all bald, including the waiter and the one man in the foreground sharing three women scantily-clad in nighties. The waiter seems to be whispering something in one of the hostesses’ ear. The picture funnels towards three shadowy figures in the lighted arched doorway. On the right, a seated man is slumped drunk with face and upper body over the table, while two men, yes bald, look on. Despite the VIP sign, one can gauge the classiness of a place from the cheap plastic chairs and the gaudy chequered floor tiles, and the hostesses are shod in string slippers. Randomly, the artist Noel Parma, better known for his figures with sharp pointed hairdos, pencil-white-lined some ‘cover’ for the two girls in front, one of whom is smoking and the other fiddling with her mobile phone. This bar could just be a pit stop where the action is probably somewhere more discreet nearby or even upstairs. Noel Parma, a familiar face in Malaysia through his association with the Sasaran International Festival, has shown natural ability in painting figures despite being self-taught. He graduated from the Technological University of the Philippines in Drafting Technology. Guess, that technically-inclined mind helps in a better understanding of anatomy. He has also tried his hands at sculpture, and won 3rd Prize for sculpture in the annual Art Association of the Philippines competition, which is of a high standard, in 1998. He had also won the Landbank Mural Design and the Commemorative Stamp Design competitions in 1997 and 1998 respectively. Noel Parma had a solo called Nocturnal Labyrinth in Singapore in 2008, and took part in the Malaysia-Vietnam-the Philippines exhibition at Wisma Soka-Gakkai in 2005, and the Malaysia-Philippines exhibition at Galeri Seni Mutiara, Penang, in 2013 – the year he took part in Sasaran.