Wednesday, May 31, 2006
None of your...
Within a span of 2 months, 2 people have approached me to talk about business.
One of them was a schoolmate from junior college days whom I’d lost touch with, while another was a hall mate, one of those “hi-bye” acquaintances whom I bumped into infrequently and for fleeting moments.
It’s always nice to catch up with friends from the past and make new friends from the present, so I readily agreed to meet them over coffee and lunch. After exchanging some pleasantries and discussing recent happenings in our lives, it started with an innocent question.
“Have you ever thought of running your own business?”
Being my own boss has always been at the back of my mind, a thought for the not-so-near future but definitely an option, and I’ve always believed in giving fair hearing to new ideas, so we talked.
What they explained to me was multi-level marketing, together with seemingly academic aspects of finance and business which at times went over my head. Big numbers and names were thrown around, and ambitious visions were outlined. Concepts like “passive income” and “pro-sumership” were linked to material desires and dreams of early retirement, as well as noble intentions to provide for family. Workplace frustration was also a constant theme through out, borne out of a desire to break free from the shackles for employment.
To cut a very long story short, I politely but firmly turned them down. I won’t go into the reasons why, but we can discuss it in private. Neither will I say if it’s feasible or not, I’ll leave that for you to decide.
I haven’t heard from those 2 since then though. I’m sure they’re busy with business.
One of them was a schoolmate from junior college days whom I’d lost touch with, while another was a hall mate, one of those “hi-bye” acquaintances whom I bumped into infrequently and for fleeting moments.
It’s always nice to catch up with friends from the past and make new friends from the present, so I readily agreed to meet them over coffee and lunch. After exchanging some pleasantries and discussing recent happenings in our lives, it started with an innocent question.
“Have you ever thought of running your own business?”
Being my own boss has always been at the back of my mind, a thought for the not-so-near future but definitely an option, and I’ve always believed in giving fair hearing to new ideas, so we talked.
What they explained to me was multi-level marketing, together with seemingly academic aspects of finance and business which at times went over my head. Big numbers and names were thrown around, and ambitious visions were outlined. Concepts like “passive income” and “pro-sumership” were linked to material desires and dreams of early retirement, as well as noble intentions to provide for family. Workplace frustration was also a constant theme through out, borne out of a desire to break free from the shackles for employment.
To cut a very long story short, I politely but firmly turned them down. I won’t go into the reasons why, but we can discuss it in private. Neither will I say if it’s feasible or not, I’ll leave that for you to decide.
I haven’t heard from those 2 since then though. I’m sure they’re busy with business.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
A simple dish
I was at my grandmother’s for dinner the other day. I hadn’t seen her in a long while, since campus living and studying seemed to overwhelm just about every other aspect of my life. She came from Guangdong, as did my grandfather, and speaks the sei yap variation of Cantonese, though over the years much local slang has crept into her lingo. In my younger days I remember her loud booming voice (of which I inherited some) admonishing myself and my cousin for various infractions, though I never quite completely understood her. To this day, my knowledge of Cantonese remains patchy.
She lives with one of my uncle’s family in a simple 3-room HDB (public housing) flat, and she’s always had a maid to look after her. Amazingly, every maid that comes and goes finds a way to communicate with her in pidgin Cantonese, no mean feat considering that most of them came from Indonesia.
Coming to 90 years of age, in recent times she’s been in and out of hospital for a number of ailments, at times coming close to death but for the intervention of skilled doctors, a keen desire to live longer and generous doses of good old-fashioned luck. Her once heavy-set face has long since given way to folds of jowls and her hair, which used to be grey, is now predominantly white, but she occasionally displays her prowess in numbers at Blackjack or Mahjong. Once, even after coming out of hospital from a close-shave and still in a weakened state, she still had the presence of mind to meticulously count the stack of notes that my father gave her as her monthly allowance.
Which brings to mind my father’s reminiscence of his grandmother’s reputation at the market as a terror, someone who would remove the banana stumps from a bunch of bananas or the heads off prawns before weighing, and giving hell to any stall-holder who dared to question her questionable practices.
But back to dinner. Another amazing thing is how she managed to teach each maid to cook the dishes and make soup exactly the way that she used to. One dish that graced the table that evening was a personal favourite of mine and my father’s from those days. By culinary standards it was nothing spectacular, simply a haphazard stir-fry of diced long beans, tau kwa and chai poh (pickled turnip, I think) sprinkled with sliced red chillies, but since yours truly has a penchant for both crunchy and spicy stuff, this dish was the perfect combination of ingredients.
And I recalled the old place where she lived before this, before my grandfather passed away from lung complications. It was a pre-HDB, 4-storey block that never saw a new coat of paint after the first, designed with fully utilitarian intentions rather than aesthetic. There was an identical block opposite with a small open patch of overrun grass in between. A cracked cement path running down the middle branched off to the entrances, flanked by old gnarled pong-pong trees that deposited their fruit all over the place. It was in this grass patch that my cousin and I kicked a soccer ball (or pong-pong fruits) around, played badminton or otherwise made merry. The whole place is now a grass patch, and the closest equivalent to this kind of public housing still in existence today can be found in the old parts of Tiong Bahru.
A large drain canal ran on the side of these 2 blocks, with a smaller canal running perpendicular to it just outside the balcony of my grandmother’s unit, which faced the opposite side of the grass patch. Not exactly river-side living, but at least there was the smell of the sea. Sort of.
And inside it was congested. 1 living room, 2 small bedrooms and a tiny kitchen, and it was in this tiny kitchen that the extended family took turns to have dinner. Once the foldable wooden table was opened and people sat around it to eat, there was hardly any space for anyone to walk in or out. I always remember the place with a heavy yellowish tinge, dimly illuminated by a lonely lightbulb in a quaint lampshade overhead. Electrical sockets were solid affairs in cast brown bakelite on thick wooden boards, and there was even one of those old style cupboards specifically meant for plates and utensils and for keeping food, the kind where the doors had some green netting to keep out flying insects and the legs stood in metal dishes filled with water meant to trap crawling insects. If anyone can remember what they were called, do shout it out.
It was on that same foldable table in that tiny kitchen that I saw this familiar dish regularly. Food was never wasted, and any infractions were again met with admonishment from my grandmother. Even watermelon slices had to be eaten cleanly, arbitrarily defined as the resultant peel surface not being more than 50% red.
Of course, these thrifty habits have faded off, since my grandmother now lives a relatively more comfortable lifestyle. Still, I guess there’s a part of me that remembers where it all came from, when we’d pour the soup into the plate of rice and drink it off the plate to make sure every grain of rice was consumed.
“Ah Fai*, zong oi fan moh?” (Do you want more rice?)
“Mm oi lah, ngo ho bao” (No, I’m quite full already)
I still managed a few mouthfuls of diced long beans, tau kwa and chai poh though.
* That’s an abbreviation of my Cantonese name.
She lives with one of my uncle’s family in a simple 3-room HDB (public housing) flat, and she’s always had a maid to look after her. Amazingly, every maid that comes and goes finds a way to communicate with her in pidgin Cantonese, no mean feat considering that most of them came from Indonesia.
Coming to 90 years of age, in recent times she’s been in and out of hospital for a number of ailments, at times coming close to death but for the intervention of skilled doctors, a keen desire to live longer and generous doses of good old-fashioned luck. Her once heavy-set face has long since given way to folds of jowls and her hair, which used to be grey, is now predominantly white, but she occasionally displays her prowess in numbers at Blackjack or Mahjong. Once, even after coming out of hospital from a close-shave and still in a weakened state, she still had the presence of mind to meticulously count the stack of notes that my father gave her as her monthly allowance.
Which brings to mind my father’s reminiscence of his grandmother’s reputation at the market as a terror, someone who would remove the banana stumps from a bunch of bananas or the heads off prawns before weighing, and giving hell to any stall-holder who dared to question her questionable practices.
But back to dinner. Another amazing thing is how she managed to teach each maid to cook the dishes and make soup exactly the way that she used to. One dish that graced the table that evening was a personal favourite of mine and my father’s from those days. By culinary standards it was nothing spectacular, simply a haphazard stir-fry of diced long beans, tau kwa and chai poh (pickled turnip, I think) sprinkled with sliced red chillies, but since yours truly has a penchant for both crunchy and spicy stuff, this dish was the perfect combination of ingredients.
And I recalled the old place where she lived before this, before my grandfather passed away from lung complications. It was a pre-HDB, 4-storey block that never saw a new coat of paint after the first, designed with fully utilitarian intentions rather than aesthetic. There was an identical block opposite with a small open patch of overrun grass in between. A cracked cement path running down the middle branched off to the entrances, flanked by old gnarled pong-pong trees that deposited their fruit all over the place. It was in this grass patch that my cousin and I kicked a soccer ball (or pong-pong fruits) around, played badminton or otherwise made merry. The whole place is now a grass patch, and the closest equivalent to this kind of public housing still in existence today can be found in the old parts of Tiong Bahru.
A large drain canal ran on the side of these 2 blocks, with a smaller canal running perpendicular to it just outside the balcony of my grandmother’s unit, which faced the opposite side of the grass patch. Not exactly river-side living, but at least there was the smell of the sea. Sort of.
And inside it was congested. 1 living room, 2 small bedrooms and a tiny kitchen, and it was in this tiny kitchen that the extended family took turns to have dinner. Once the foldable wooden table was opened and people sat around it to eat, there was hardly any space for anyone to walk in or out. I always remember the place with a heavy yellowish tinge, dimly illuminated by a lonely lightbulb in a quaint lampshade overhead. Electrical sockets were solid affairs in cast brown bakelite on thick wooden boards, and there was even one of those old style cupboards specifically meant for plates and utensils and for keeping food, the kind where the doors had some green netting to keep out flying insects and the legs stood in metal dishes filled with water meant to trap crawling insects. If anyone can remember what they were called, do shout it out.
It was on that same foldable table in that tiny kitchen that I saw this familiar dish regularly. Food was never wasted, and any infractions were again met with admonishment from my grandmother. Even watermelon slices had to be eaten cleanly, arbitrarily defined as the resultant peel surface not being more than 50% red.
Of course, these thrifty habits have faded off, since my grandmother now lives a relatively more comfortable lifestyle. Still, I guess there’s a part of me that remembers where it all came from, when we’d pour the soup into the plate of rice and drink it off the plate to make sure every grain of rice was consumed.
“Ah Fai*, zong oi fan moh?” (Do you want more rice?)
“Mm oi lah, ngo ho bao” (No, I’m quite full already)
I still managed a few mouthfuls of diced long beans, tau kwa and chai poh though.
* That’s an abbreviation of my Cantonese name.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Ladies and gentleman, this is your captain speaking...
After observing several instances of tagboard spam on other blogs, I've decided to remove mine. If there's anything you want to shout out, just leave a comment.
Monday, May 08, 2006
For those about to rock
Moving out of hostel didn’t seem quite the nostalgic event it should be. Maybe not yet.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been occupied with my job hunt. After moving out in the space of 1.5 days, I went for my first job interview the day after, which was today. I would say it went quite smoothly, though I won’t speculate, more for myself than anything else. I’ve pretty much hit the ground running, going straight from student life into the job hunt. That’s probably a good thing, knowing the things that I’m liable to be up to when I get too idle.
Nevertheless, I think there’s space for a little bit of reflection here, and who else more befitting than the irrepressible KR Rockers.
It’s almost funny to think that in my first year, I was debating in my mind whether to join Rockers or not. At that time I was still a bona-fide blues-wannabe, not quite sure how I’d fit into a performing group that does all sorts of songs for the residents entertainment (well, most of the time anyway). Playing Top 40s radio hits was quite unimaginable then, and even up till now it’s still not entirely my cup of tea.
One thing it did though, was to forcibly broaden my musical horizons and open up my ears. In fact, that was the main reason why I ended up joining them. I like to throw myself into the deep end once in a while just to see what comes out of it, just like my choice of military vocation and Final Year Project. Four years on, I think it turned out pretty well. I’ve enjoyed playing some songs I never thought I’d ever play, I’ve met some fantastic companions on this musical joyride, and I’ve played some memorable gigs and venues, both inside and outside of hall.
It has been a part of my musical growth, and I would say that my non-blues music experiences have influenced my blues side and vice-versa, though which one more than the other is debatable. More importantly, it has been a part of my personal growth and perhaps the most memorable component of my hall life. Indeed, it is the part of my hall-persona that most of my fellow residents would immediately associate with me.
Which is both a good and bad thing. I do wish I could have been known as someone other than “the guitar guy” or “the guy who always reads newspapers in the lobby”, but then again I guess some form of notoriety is better than none at all. Some people tell me I’ve been the subject of many an admiring glance (or just a few) for those fleeting moments when I wielded my trusty six-string, but being the clueless fellow I’ve always been, I guess I’ll never know. Unless you’d like to let me know. Umm…please?
In any case, as I enter this job hunt, the same feeling of uncertainty when I first joined Rockers abounds. So does the anticipation of the unknown and the relish of jumping into the deep end once again.
Wish me luck.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been occupied with my job hunt. After moving out in the space of 1.5 days, I went for my first job interview the day after, which was today. I would say it went quite smoothly, though I won’t speculate, more for myself than anything else. I’ve pretty much hit the ground running, going straight from student life into the job hunt. That’s probably a good thing, knowing the things that I’m liable to be up to when I get too idle.
Nevertheless, I think there’s space for a little bit of reflection here, and who else more befitting than the irrepressible KR Rockers.
It’s almost funny to think that in my first year, I was debating in my mind whether to join Rockers or not. At that time I was still a bona-fide blues-wannabe, not quite sure how I’d fit into a performing group that does all sorts of songs for the residents entertainment (well, most of the time anyway). Playing Top 40s radio hits was quite unimaginable then, and even up till now it’s still not entirely my cup of tea.
One thing it did though, was to forcibly broaden my musical horizons and open up my ears. In fact, that was the main reason why I ended up joining them. I like to throw myself into the deep end once in a while just to see what comes out of it, just like my choice of military vocation and Final Year Project. Four years on, I think it turned out pretty well. I’ve enjoyed playing some songs I never thought I’d ever play, I’ve met some fantastic companions on this musical joyride, and I’ve played some memorable gigs and venues, both inside and outside of hall.
It has been a part of my musical growth, and I would say that my non-blues music experiences have influenced my blues side and vice-versa, though which one more than the other is debatable. More importantly, it has been a part of my personal growth and perhaps the most memorable component of my hall life. Indeed, it is the part of my hall-persona that most of my fellow residents would immediately associate with me.
Which is both a good and bad thing. I do wish I could have been known as someone other than “the guitar guy” or “the guy who always reads newspapers in the lobby”, but then again I guess some form of notoriety is better than none at all. Some people tell me I’ve been the subject of many an admiring glance (or just a few) for those fleeting moments when I wielded my trusty six-string, but being the clueless fellow I’ve always been, I guess I’ll never know. Unless you’d like to let me know. Umm…please?
In any case, as I enter this job hunt, the same feeling of uncertainty when I first joined Rockers abounds. So does the anticipation of the unknown and the relish of jumping into the deep end once again.
Wish me luck.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
The Write Stuff
Announcing my debut article for Uberture. Yet another avenue to spread my blues-based rhetoric.
To give you more motivation to check it out, the girl posing with Jon (heads up: turn on your TV on May 21) is kinda hot.
To give you more motivation to check it out, the girl posing with Jon (heads up: turn on your TV on May 21) is kinda hot.
Soul of a Man
Yet more forays on Youtube.
I saw this one a few years back, but it remained etched clearly in my mind, a surprisingly well-recorded black-and-white footage of one of the most intense bluesmen I’d ever heard, Eddie James House Jr, otherwise known as “Son” House.
He was a colourful character, to say the least. Disgraced preacher, convicted of shooting a man, unrepentant alcoholic with a penchant for corn whiskey, he could have as well been the blueprint for the stereotypical (if not overly-cliched) bluesman lifestyle. On this video he played one of his best known songs, “Death Letter Blues”.
He didn’t play the guitar, he beat up on it. If not for the fact that it was made of metal, it would surely have been demolished. His monstrous right hand flailed unsteadily at the strings while on his left, a steel slide went up and down the neck, wringing out a hypnotic drone that was pushed on by the incessant pounding of his feet on a wooden platform. From deep down in his chest came forth a tortured baritone possessing the power of opera but none of the refinement, sounding like an aria gone horribly wrong, with the dark tale of death and unrequited love completing the picture. The whole performance had an awkward tension to it, teetering dangerously on the edge as though he would have keeled over any moment like a man possessed.
I watched the whole song with my jaws agape, not quite knowing what to make of it. I knew I had seen something powerful, the raw intensity of a human soul that knew no desire at that point other than self-expression. Its source, however, eluded me. Till then I had been studious in my approach to the blues, dutifully listening to the guitar work of the greats and learning what I could, approximating what I couldn’t. My nascent attempts at singing the blues were conscious efforts at straining to hit the right notes, more an exercise in hand-eye-mouth coordination than musical expression.
Son House changed that. The primal yet brutally effective nature of his music struck me as something to aspire to, a musical awakening of sorts. It was then that I realized music had to come from a deeper source, not from crooked tadpoles or numbers and lines printed on paper. When he played, it felt more like a confessional than a performance. There was no way anyone could have believed at that point of time that he didn’t live the words of his song. Maybe he did.
Looked like there was 10,000 people standin' round the buryin' ground
I didn't know I loved her 'til they laid her down
Looked like 10,000 were standin' round the buryin' ground
You know I didn't know I loved her 'til they damn laid her down
Now ain't that the blues.
I saw this one a few years back, but it remained etched clearly in my mind, a surprisingly well-recorded black-and-white footage of one of the most intense bluesmen I’d ever heard, Eddie James House Jr, otherwise known as “Son” House.
He was a colourful character, to say the least. Disgraced preacher, convicted of shooting a man, unrepentant alcoholic with a penchant for corn whiskey, he could have as well been the blueprint for the stereotypical (if not overly-cliched) bluesman lifestyle. On this video he played one of his best known songs, “Death Letter Blues”.
He didn’t play the guitar, he beat up on it. If not for the fact that it was made of metal, it would surely have been demolished. His monstrous right hand flailed unsteadily at the strings while on his left, a steel slide went up and down the neck, wringing out a hypnotic drone that was pushed on by the incessant pounding of his feet on a wooden platform. From deep down in his chest came forth a tortured baritone possessing the power of opera but none of the refinement, sounding like an aria gone horribly wrong, with the dark tale of death and unrequited love completing the picture. The whole performance had an awkward tension to it, teetering dangerously on the edge as though he would have keeled over any moment like a man possessed.
I watched the whole song with my jaws agape, not quite knowing what to make of it. I knew I had seen something powerful, the raw intensity of a human soul that knew no desire at that point other than self-expression. Its source, however, eluded me. Till then I had been studious in my approach to the blues, dutifully listening to the guitar work of the greats and learning what I could, approximating what I couldn’t. My nascent attempts at singing the blues were conscious efforts at straining to hit the right notes, more an exercise in hand-eye-mouth coordination than musical expression.
Son House changed that. The primal yet brutally effective nature of his music struck me as something to aspire to, a musical awakening of sorts. It was then that I realized music had to come from a deeper source, not from crooked tadpoles or numbers and lines printed on paper. When he played, it felt more like a confessional than a performance. There was no way anyone could have believed at that point of time that he didn’t live the words of his song. Maybe he did.
Looked like there was 10,000 people standin' round the buryin' ground
I didn't know I loved her 'til they laid her down
Looked like 10,000 were standin' round the buryin' ground
You know I didn't know I loved her 'til they damn laid her down
Now ain't that the blues.
