Soup

I'm souped to really get down to doing the stuff that I want to do:

-- Learning how to make chicken stew + dinner
-- Dealing with Syinconnect stuffs
-- Actually practising what my teacher taught on guitar
-- Going out and have fun.

I couldn't really blame the guys who put me into 14 days. I needed it. The experience was far from primary but the money was the key. How else do you think I was able to get the Zoom H4N so soon? And that Duncan Distortion? I love my guitar even more now by the way.

I wonder how next year's going to be like. Not going to be easy. It gets harder one sem after the other. Doesn't help that ppl are trying to outsource and avoid dealing with you. Hmmph.

Oh yes, my hard disk fabulously crashed on me - thus as of now I no longer have my extensively-stale collection of music in my possession. It's interesting how something as semi-tangible as music can be rendered non-existent with just a press of a button. Can you imagine how it'll be like if someone pressed a button and your hair just disappeared?

I'll need all the resources I can get to get back my music collection. Chang?

I'd like to have some campbell's soup right now. With peanut butter bread. Maybe with some chwee kueh. I think it'll work.

The Fall of Troy - Straight Jacket Keelhauled (live 2008)

Contrary to what spammers and pornbots say on my website, this blog is not dead. It's just in hibernation. Today I happen to accidentally dig my toes into its soft belly and it's woken up to growl at me. Naughty dog.

Exams 3/5 down. Can't wait for life-course and human rights to be here and over with. Thereafter, I can bring my brother out and have some fun.

Ok that sounded very wrong. I mean my good brother, in all flesh and hair. Ok even wrong. I mean my good brother, in all excitement and boredom at the same time. Oh my god this is not going where I want it to. I mean my brother, Dick.

WAT THE HELL!!!!!!!!

I mean, my kin. My brother who's the other son birthed of my mother and my father. Yes. He's excited because Big exams are over for him. And he's bored cos I can't bring him out to play yet.

Been enamoured with scale patterns and the acoustic lately. I realised you could actually not know any single 7th chord and still play like a freakin' pro. All you need to know is your entire scale pattern, start on the low string anywhere in the scale, and play a corresponding string of notes/melody on the first few strings. You can become Tommy Emmanuel without having to have a teacher! Somewhat.

Been tussling over getting a pickup upgrade Vs. getting a new pedal. I love my current drive, tone really rocks, and with the equalizer it's just-so-boomz. Wow boomz. But there doesn't seem to be enough grit, my chords doesn't sound clear enough on full distortion, and shit happens when I twist the volume knob. Poor Judy is falling apart!! Ok maybe all we need is a pickup upgrade. Then I'll save my money for the Zoom H4N to record our demos and save on millions of jamming money.

And also invest in some clothes, food, and most importantly, with really important people. I wonder. You never know what she's thinking. Friend or foe? Acquaintance or something else? I don't know, and maybe I don't care. I'm enjoying time spent like that as it is.

I wonder if I'll be able to come up with new material with the band soon. Phaedre, I really want to finish the second song - and write a third one. Then we can thup 2 more covers, and we can go whack the stage already. Wow.

Damn, with so many things in mind, I've become something close to a scheming planner and then a mechanical automaton that carries out these plans with clinical precision. Yeah soon I might need to go to the clinic to ask for sleeping pills. Can't sleep well man. And yes I've got to see the dentist to fix my bleeding gums. With bleeding gums you find that your health becomes seriously compromised in some positions. Not that I know what these positions are.

I've got many interesting dreams lately. What have I been dreaming? I dreamt I saw a lecturer making out with a secondary school girl outside my secondary school staff room. Another one I saw someone peeing into the swimming pool of some really high class hotel. I know Phaedre's got some really weird dreams but it doesn't beat mine. The nightmares of a creative mind.

And The Fall of Troy has got another NEW ALBUM!!! Sounds pretty much like Manipulator!!! And that's really Boring!!!

Sigh. What happened to the chicken squawks.

The Fall of Troy - I Just Got This Symphony Goin' Live

Just totally what I mean.





Oh Gosh.

Inspiration must come after despair

It's an issue, always an issue - how do you run a three-people band?

One bassist, One Drummer, One guitarist.

Someone has to sing!

I've come to the level when I can sing to simple syncopated rhythms. Like let the chord ring and you sing over it. It's the easiest way to sing, play, and dance at the same time.

I thought I was getting somewhere lah, and yes I'm getting somewhere, if not for the 7th month processions going on. Readings and projects automatically fill that void, if not for a fervent desire against symbolic violence against children. It's largely their fault that children all across the world do not have very bright futures, and they deserve the upheavals against child labour. Unfortunately no one mainstream enough seems to understand that it's really their politicians' fault that there's so much sand and grime in our children's lives.

Heck, even the term "Child" is a intrinsically violent term lah. Who is a child? Who is not? If I label people from other countries as "Others", can I avoid calling them "Children"? That way I do not have to extend the children rights in my country to your country.

Sometimes common sense is not enough. If you're advocating/campaigning/mobilizing a cause, and if you're using the tired rhetorics that the bigger, 'global' NGOs are using, and you seem to feel like you're doing the world a whole lotta good, then chances are you're doing negative stuff man. The need to inculcate personal habits of critical thinking and deep reflexive rationalization of your cause, WHY you are fighting it, and the reasons you give - are they sound? Read up more, incorporate a wide base of diverse opinions on the matter. Don't get bought into some flimsy pamphlet printed on 'green' paper. It's your responsibility to reflect on what kind of social change you want to see - and to do that you need to expose yourself to wide range of diverse, sometimes even opposing views. I personally believe in the dialectic practice, clash two opposites together you know, and the end result is something much stabler than what you had previously.

That's why I find it imperative that in this period of my life, I listen to radically-different music that is at once quirky, progressive, sometimes very funny too, and all capable to cover at least 2 or 3 of human emotions. I'm listening to The Fall of Troy now, and damn.... I've never come across anything so smooth yet so radically-prog. Here's a video, but you know you can always listen in the player at the side, provided they dun give you a stupid 30 seconds preview.

I mean, how in civil music society does the bugger do it?? Sing and play such complex lines like nobody's business. If you can teach me how to do it I don't mind being your sociology tutor for the next 2 sems.

I feel I've fallen to the deepest darkest despair after looking at the trio play. Three-people band leh!!! And it's not like Breaking Benjamin the kind of ring-the-chord-and-sing-over kind leh. Wah lao.

On a lighter note, there can only be Inspiration after despair. This promises to be the next level I'm getting to.

What would you fight for?

Our lecturer asked us whether we felt Singaporean today. And if you did, what was it that made you feel Singaporean? A slight paraphrase later the question became, what would you fight for?

To me, the answer is as clear as daylight. Thou shalt fight for your country simply for the Singaporean girls here.

Not just any girls. Singaporean girls.


They're worth fighting for.

I went to Borders today.

Zooming through black concrete and finally stopping after a flurry of moving tv screens, I moved out of the train and into the underpass. Amidst gaudy flashing images that threatened to make one feel inadequate and pseudo-human cultural samples that promised a commercially better identity, I climbed the escalators one, two and three before catching the faintest smell of paperback through the chilly aircon. Raindrops stippling down the cone.

Boy was the place big. Been years since I last went. "The Shock Doctrine" - a book I've been reminding myself to get. Check. A little further down I saw Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea. A bit too long. No idea who that is too. Down the shelf came Toni's Sula. Now that's a favourite! The Bluest Eye. Paradise. Make a mental note. Dragging my feet around the next shelf. Jiang Rong's The Wolf Totem. Reminds me of Gao's Soul Mountain. Hide one copy in the gaps of the topmost corner.

The Devil wears Prada? Eew. What's all these Chinese writers using sex to sell their book? And science fiction is not Star Wars. What happened to Ray Bradbury? What's with The Unofficial Biography of Obama appearing in the social science section. Whatz.

Milton's Paradise Lost. I start wondering why I keep walking around in circles and not choosing anything. My hands slide in and out crevices between the plastic covers, gasping for air and hurting at the nail folds. My right foot starts aching in the arch and I start to limp. My back feels numb from the squatting I've been doing. Then I realised why I had been so troublesome. Perhaps I wasn't looking for a really interesting setting. Or a twisted plot. Or even Naipaul's House for Biswas. I knew then, that I must be desperately searching for time.

Sigh. The magazines seem much more appealing. Short reads, easy digestion, captivating images. Ooh there's Top Gear Singapore now. Torque... Guitarist magazine. Ah. Kerrang. The truth behind Michael Jackson's death. Hmm.

Time to go! Bassist is waiting at Dhoby Ghaut. Oh Aravind Adiga's White Tiger. Hmm.... maybe next time. Perhaps next time, these books wouldn't look like white elephants anymore.

Eh, here's an update.

But I've got nothing to say.

But I want to complain. Complain about the swimming pool I frequent. In mock complaining style often used by bitchy girls and disgusting guys. I think it'll be fun pretending to be someone else for a while.



- I seriously DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FRIKKIN' HELL the people at my swimming pool near my house are doing. It's so damn old, you can just smell the shit's that been piling up in there. And the lockers too, it's so difficult to use, I don't see how ANYBODY can actually learn to use it within 3 seconds flat. I think I'm about the only one smart enough to understand it lah.

And the changing rooms, it's like OMG FRIKKIN' iikky!!! Like, the floor tiles are like, yellow?? And everything is like, so open, there's no privacy! Sure, you can go into the cubicles and change, but when you step in it's so EEEEWWWW inside!! Like, strands of hair clumped together to form a ball, plasters swimming around, and in the drain, you see what resembles like a dead rat with some sharp pointy tail at the end. EEEWWWWWW!!!!

I really can't stand the pool also! Why can't these people, who are living off our taxpayers' money, seek to renovate the stupid place?? The pool is like, contaminated with all these plasters flying around in the water lah. Like seriously, so many people cut the fingers in one day? Or is it accumulated over ONE FREAKIN' YEAR???

There are like, so many old uncles and aunties swimming around in the pool everytime I go lah. Like, so old already still want to swim meh? Can they just swim somewhere else? And also, there are always SOOOOO MANY PRC nationals swimming in the pool almost EVERYDAY. And they just stand near the side of the pool and make so much noise. And you know what's the best part? Some of them can't swim!!! Like wat??

Then on alternate days there's this woman who swims in the evening. She has to swim in that butterfly style all the time lah. I tell you, there's nothing graceful about "Butterfly Style" The woman just practically splashes water on EVERY SINGLE DARN LIVING THING in the pool. Talk about social consciousness!

Can't stand all these people lah. Only know how to spoil my day. I feel like I no longer have any space or privacy in this world lah. Sometimes I feel so depressed that there are so many stupid people around me. Haaaaaaiiiiizzzz. -



On a side note, I think there has to be some mechanism for people to express disgust and nausea in a funny and entertaining way that is socially acceptable. Can you imagine bitching about something in a deadpan manner? Might be possible. But then again, it really depends who you are with. Can't complain like that to your favourite girl eh?