The Juke Joint

Shine a light on me

2009-08-17T16:00:00.003+08:00

It has been slightly less than a year since I returned to Singapore and as the requirements of urbanisation and capitalism dictate, the city-scape of buildings continues to evolve and mutate. However, as was the case in the X-men saga, it appears that a quantum leap has occurred.

The flash point seems to have been the staging of the Formula One night race in Singapore, starting off an obsession with bright lights. The advent of LED technology has brought on a massive onslaught of candela, much like how an 8 year-old learns a new profanity and peppers every other sentence with it in a craving for accelerated acceptance into adulthood.

I watched this event unfold on my laptop during an uncharacteristically warm afternoon in Manchester. I had hoped to find some bottles of Tiger in the local supermarket to make me feel closer to home while watching, but that was not to be and I had to settle for an indulgently-sized packet of Indian Delights aka muruku, in eager anticipation of seeing the sights of home.

In-between ogling at grid girls (let's face it, that's what they're there for) and a palm-to-forehead moment involving our Prime Minister and an esoteric weather prediction, my first observation was that nearly everything in sight was bathed in coloured light of some sort. Apart from the usual urban illumination from familiar skyscrapers, everything from historical colonial buildings and bridges to the pirated version of the London Eye glowed an odd spectrum of colours like how I'd imagine a chemically-enhanced Alice in Wonderland screenplay to be. Perhaps that was the intention.

Fast-forward to the present time. A much-vaunted overhaul of the shopping district we know as Orchard Road seems to have centered on the elaborately-designed facade of Ion Orchard, yet another shopping mall with the lofty, if unoriginal claim of revolutionising the shopping experience. A large metal framework forms a contoured surface that serves as a ceiling for the area immediately outside the entrance, towering about 4-5 floors above ground level. At first sight, it looks like a crude wireframe rendering of a 3-D surface in CAD software but its futuristic aesthetic quality comes from the glowing LEDs at the nodes of the wireframe. These extend across the sides of the building to complete what looks like a very organised battalion of fireflies marching across undulating terrain and changing colour on cue.

Another example is Wilkie Edge, along Selegie Road. It sticks out as a curious oddity at the corner of the cross junction, a shiny glass exterior and an obscenely bright LED screen incongruously juxtaposed (I've always wanted to use those two words together!) against the adjacent old-school gaudiness of neon-lights proclaiming the dominance of dodgy KTV lounges and the Chivas and Hennessey they serve in the dated Peace Centre. On the opposite side of Selegie Rd, a row of grotty shophouses goes about their usual business of serving soyabean curd and chicken rice, oblivious to the glare and din of advertisements screaming for attention like a spoilt pre-pubescent heiress. A short distance down Selegie, this show of modernity comes to an abrupt stop as the sights and sounds of Little India beckon.

Up at Bugis Street, the facade of Iluma reminds me of Space Invaders, but this time with aliens intent on forming up to spell words like a National Day Parade rather than destroying the Earth. Situated beside what used to be a hotbed of activity for women and food of dubious origin and hygiene, this mall is an attempt to bring back the tourism heydays of those licentious times with more socially acceptable forms of commerce and night life. At times, I wonder if the facade lights are a nod with a sly wink to the sequinned outfits of the early-day proprietors of that street. In terms of sheer luminosity though, they certainly represent a step forward.

Seeing these examples come into being, as well as similar efforts at Clarke Quay and along the Singapore River started me wondering about what drives the design of our urban landscape. It might be that in order to plug into the increasingly globalised world economy, our city has to give the impression of vibrancy 24-7 and piles on the light show in typically Singaporean kiasu fashion, the long-standing traditions of Geylang notwithstanding.

On the other hand, perhaps it reaches into our deep-seated primitive instincts. Like magpies to twinkling trinkets, we humans have not evolved beyond being fascinated by bright and shiny objects.

The Return

2009-01-27T19:36:00.002+08:00

My academic jaunt lasting slightly more than a year ended a few afternoons ago with the unspectacular act of mailing in my dissertation. The lapse in blogging activity is directly correlated to the intensification of the dissertation work, which lasted up to several months after my return to Singapore.

On top of that, being on Facebook seems to have siphoned off some creative juice and reduced the impetus for writing beyond a single sentence. A somewhat addictive yet hollow form of self-expression, perhaps the fast-food equivalent of maintaining an online presence. It is definitely useful for pictures and its' real-time nature helped enhance online interaction to make up for the shortfall in physical interaction with folks back home, but now that most of the people on my friend list are a phone call away on the same tiny little island, I'm once again yearning for that little spot of cyberspace where I present myself as a distinct entity rather than in relation to a whole slew of comments, friend networks, groups and whatnot. Where people actually click on it to see what I have to say, implying intent and free-will rather than to have it shoved into their feed (chances are one can probably edit some settings to sort it out, but I'm one of those that find life more exciting in analog). It might be slightly narcissistic or I could be doing everyone else a favour, depending on how you look at it.

Anyway, here's one from memory:

My first adventure to The Jolly Angler was distinctly off the beaten track for any foreign student. A dimly-lit, maze-like grid of small back roads behind Manchester Piccadilly station had me wondering who on earth would open a pub in such an obscure location, flanked by warehouses and workshops on one side and relatively upmarket residences on the other, both of which were eerily quiet at 2100hrs. The fact that this was smack in the middle of town where everywhere else was bustling with people being or getting drunk was even more baffling.

It all started from a chance encounter with a brochure detailing the activities for St Paddy's Day, which included a list of pubs with traditional Irish music. Being a sucker for new musical quests and never one to pass up on a good pint of Guinness, I duly embarked on an expedition to seek out these venues, starting with this one near a central train station.

In the darkness of the street there stood a solitary lamp post, illuminating the perpendicularly-mounted pub signboard which has become synonymous with the presence of a watering hole, a welcome sight for thirsty travelers in dire need of refreshment. As I walked up to the entrance in anticipation of respite from the biting chill of evening wind, the muffled strain of fiddles from behind the curtains meant that the session (an informal gathering of musicians to play, what most other musicians would know as a jam) was already in full swing.

While it wasn't quite the proverbial pin-dropping silence as often dramatised when an out-of-towner steps into the local joint, a few curious glances above pints were cast my way as I stepped in, perhaps wondering how lost a wayward tourist could get. I walked up to the bar counter with steely resolve, trying my best to exude a sense of purpose that proclaimed my presence here to be no accident. Naturally, I ordered a pint of Guinness from the bespectacled elderly gentleman, presumably the landlord.

“That'll be 2.50 please.”, said he as his aged, trembling hands threatened to ruin at any moment the immaculately formed head of creamy off-white foam, the product of the perfect pour just slightly mushrooming over the edge of the pint glass and held in place by liquid surface tension. In this instance (and all future instances) the Guinness prevailed, with shamrock intact. I then sat down at a table next to the one around which the musicians had gathered, squeezed in with various other punters conversing with much lilt and flanked by a wall covered with black and white photos of Manchester United teams dating back to before they were anywhere close to the Premier League.

Thus began my introduction to traditional Irish music and the Irish community, enthralled by melodies and rhythms played on fiddles, tenor banjos, bodhrans, tin whistles, flutes, mandolins, guitars, Uilleann pipes, accordions and concertinas by musicians both much younger and older than myself. To the uninitiated, the entire session lasting several hours might have as well been just 2 different songs repeated ad nauseum but me being terminally curious about music of humble folk origins, attentive listening revealed a myriad of (I'm usually loathe to use this tired cliche – these days an excuse for excessive processing and over-production – but perhaps the most technically accurate in this case) musical textures and melodic inventiveness. Even when stripped down to a single instrument, the lively tunes being played never failed to evoke highly-spirited foot-tapping or energetic dancing when space permitted. It didn't even matter sometimes if space didn't permit.

What impressed me even more than the music was the genuine friendliness extended to me by the Irish community. Conversations were easily struck up and upon learning that I played guitar, the musicians insisted on some music from me. I obliged with some initial apprehension, not quite sure how the sounds of African-American blues being reproduced by an Asian chap from far away might come across. Suffice to say, though I never did join them at the table for sessions (not for a lack of asking, but more out of my own prudence), whenever I stayed on after it was over I was always asked to give a tune or two, a request I could never turn down.

It was also through these conversations that I gained insight into the early life of the first generation of Irish to come to England. Chris was approaching 70, a short, stout gentleman whose bespectacled face was ruddy from years in the sun, occasionally enhanced by the day's earlier festivities. He walked with a slight hobble, his knees worn out by long hours of manual labour in his teens. A bricklayer by trade, now retired and a proud father of several musicians as well as a passionate owner of 3 Alsatians, he was never short of narratives of the difficulties an Irish immigrant faced in England. However, there was nary a trace of bitterness as he related these events, something which I always bore in mind as I encountered some trying times of my own as a foreign student, even if they paled in comparison to those of Chris's.

I didn't get to talk much to James, but he always had a ready grin and a thumbs-up for you if you weren't within hand-shaking distance at the pub. Gaunt with the slight hunch that comes with more than seventy years of age, his greying hair with streaks of black was neatly parted in a wavy fashion. He was always dressed in a simple white short-sleeved shirt and black trousers, the most flashy item on his person being the slightly tarnished watch on his hand. However, what struck me most about him was the energy with which he hit the dance floor, exceeding that of someone a quarter his age. His nifty footwork bore some resemblance to the traditional Irish style of dancing, though perhaps not as technical and more a reflection of his free-spirited, uninhibited approach to enjoying the music, always bringing on cheers and hoots of encouragement as he skipped and darted across the floor. I used to think that I would love to be like Mick Jagger at his age, but James has since taken this position in my aspirations.

Over the course of the year I imbibed many a pint of Guinness at the Jolly (a more affectionate abbreviation), all cheerfully served by the landlord Michael or his wife Sheila, who always keep some guitars in the pub for ad hoc musical sharing and appreciated my renditions of blues.

I've also been invited to a baby-christening ceremony for a daughter of Jean-Louise - a mean accordion player with some of the sharpest looking boots I've ever seen – held at a Catholic church, complete with some fabulous food, drink and tunes at the family home after.

I've also shared many a pint and tune with Grace, a fiery red-headed tin whistle player and fiddler whose wild-child tendencies belie an intense passion for both music and life and intense loyalty to her friends and family. I credit her with some of the most lurid jokes I've ever heard and committed to memory. Ask me.

I've also tried some of the strongest alcohol I will ever taste in my life, from an unlabelled bottle taken out of a personal stash that never sees the light of day. Poteen.

Fast forward to my very last evening in Manchester, fittingly at the Jolly after a hearty Italian meal with some of the afore-mentioned characters. After the session, I was roundly serenaded with Danny Boy, a song regarded as a tired old chestnut in some quarters and pigeonholed into Irish culture along with four-leaf clovers, leprechauns and Guinness, about as much as Asian culture gets stereotyped by kung-fu, slanty eyes and General Tso's chicken. It happens a lot more often and blatantly than you might imagine.

However, sung in this context with its original intent, the song bore much more meaning and significance than all the other times I'd heard it. Rounding it off with a healthy swig of Jamesons and heartfelt goodbyes, I stepped out of the Jolly and lingered for a few moments under the solitary lamp post.

With the Irish hospitality of being welcomed into homes and lives etched in my memories and fiddle tunes playing in my mind, I walked down the dark backstreets of Manchester from where I came, this time no longer a stranger. Or wayward tourist.

The backstreets of Manchester

2008-08-28T22:39:00.003+08:00

Apologies to all, it's been a long while. My blogging instinct seems to have been dulled, perhaps by the depressing weather. Nevertheless, here's one I started a while back and recently got around to finish to get things back on track.

Since coming to Manchester I've had to look high and low for places to get my fix of live music and jamming, often taking me into the less-ventured parts of town. Often it is for good reason that they are less-ventured, but being the intrepid adventurer that I am with Danger as my third middle name I go forth where no Singaporean has been before, led by my partner in musical crime who goes by the alter ego Junkhousedog.

It all takes place in a seedy little pub at the corner of a road junction. The paint has peeled to reveal portions of brick wall and the carved wording in the outdated facade proclaims the sale of fine ales, wines and spirits. That's outdated as well. The whole building containing the pub is oddly shaped like a triangle, its sharp corner pointing out to the street where the entrance is located with a single streetlamp for illumination. Cigarette butts, cans and other concomitant litter lie amongst the puddles in the street, swirling with the myriad colours of leaked motor oil.

On one of the flanking streets is an open field dotted with abandoned furniture and car parts. Beside that, construction is under way for a spanking new condominium which would appear rather incongruous in the area. The opposite street going down the other side of the junction is lined with terraced housing which, while showing no signs of abandonment, is always strangely quiet and unlit, even at 2100hrs.

Stepping inside, one encounters the slightly more endearing interior. The usual wooden detailing on the walls and booth seats are de rigueur for an English pub as is the fireplace, which has been largely reduced to ceremonial duties. The carpeted floor is at present an indistinct amalgamation of purple, red and brown, attributable more to spillage than to intent of design. This is perhaps just as well, given the hints of garishness that remain in the corners.

The first thing one would arguably notice is that the clientele is markedly different from that of other pubs, with a greater representation of the minorities in the Manchester population. Still, as is usually the case I'm the odd one out, though in this particular establishment it warrants nothing more than the usual glance to see who's just stepped in.

At one side of the triangular interior a space has been cleared for the band, making the best of tight circumstances. This is where the usual jammers get up to do random songs ranging from Hendrix to CCR, as well as where my partner in crime and myself get up to make our little bit of noise. The area in front serves as a both a passageway connecting the entrance to the bar and a makeshift dancefloor for punters. More often than not they are in various states of modified consciousness brought about through the intake of liquid or gaseous substances. Enough said.

As is the nature of jams it is at times brilliant, though just as often it ends up a pedestrian, lacklustre affair. However, there is one character whom I find particularly intriguing whenever I'm there.

Meet Kenny, long-time regular and jammer.

His mess of white curly hair peeks out from underneath a faded fedora, below which a worn-out jacket hangs on his stooped shoulders, covering an indistinct T-shirt. Streaks of dust and little holes punctuate his pin-striped trousers and a pair of ratty trainers completes the ensemble. Sitting at his favourite spot in the corner of the booth chair just in front of the playing area and nursing a pint glass of what appears to be plain water, he's usually grooving along to whatever is being played, swaying in his seat, nodding his head or clapping his bony hands. Occasionally in between songs, he'll break out into one of his own or a conversation to no one in particular and every once in a while, he'll get up to go around collecting glasses and return them to the bar.

I reckon he must have taken a liking to my playing, having pulled me aside after the jam on one occasion for a chat. At least, that's what I gather from the 20% I understand of his Jamaican/African-accented English. As he speaks, a certain enthusiasm belies his aged face and when we attempt to discuss guitar playing, he'll demonstrate imaginary chords with his left hand on his right arm substituting a guitar neck. Of course, this is accompanied by him singing out whatever was meant to be demonstrated, interspersed with running commentary.

On the bandstand he's seated in front of the drum kit in regal fashion. He doesn't call out the songs, simply starting them and letting the band come in as and when. Having played them countless times, the backing band doesn't take much prompting to know what's being played, though one gets the feeling Kenny would still be playing on even if they didn't. Using only his right thumb to flail downwards at the strings, almost like a drunken Wes Montgomery and fretting simple chords with his left fingers, he manages to churn out surprisingly jazzy progressions. In his characteristic, raspy voice he belts out songs in that same accented English, slightly more in-tune than Mick Jagger is on a good day. The lyrics are indeterminate (to me at least) but the chord progressions are reminiscent of some jazz standards, of which I have precious little knowledge.

His solos are similarly primitive, being neat single note runs not more than 8 notes to a bar, played either slightly behind or ahead of the beat but always ending on the right spot. They're probably not going to impress any cork-sniffing jazz cats, but there is a certain melodic quality in its simplicity that is somehow captivating. In comparison, there are probably players out there who would play more notes in one solo than he would play in a month's worth of jamming. To put it simply, he comes across as something like the John Lee Hooker of jazz.

When he's played enough, he'll put the house guitar back on the stand and shuffle back to his seat, immediately settling into his routine as described earlier with a freshly poured pint of water. At evening's end someone will inevitably remind him of his taxi waiting outside, following which he'll make his way out into the night.

That is, until he next returns to hold court in his humble kingdom on the backstreets of Manchester.

Moments like these

2008-04-17T00:48:00.002+08:00

Manchester hasn't turned out to be quite the hotbed of musical happenings that I expected, but nevertheless there have been bright moments.

One such occasion was on Monday. After having handed in an assignment desperately concluded over the weekend, this was to be an evening of repair and recharge before ploughing into the next assignment. Yeap, that's the postgraduate life.

The venue was the Manchester Bridgewater Hall, considered to be one of the top performance venues in the region, a crowning glory in what is otherwise a rather drab part of town just a little out of the city centre that still bears the trademark architecture of the Industrial Revolution. Sharp, clean edges and a pristine glass facade stood out against the backdrop of brickwall ex-factories, next to a canal which was used to transport cotton and its finished goods before the advent of the combustion engine but now relegated to being a watery decoration, albeit a rather brackish one.

Next to it sat GMEX, an 1800s train station that is now an exhibition centre while in the background, the imposing silhouette of the Hilton towered over most of the city, a glass-clad sentinel standing guard and giving refuge to weary but well-heeled travellers. Topping it off was a curious sculpture in front of the halls' entrance, which was simply a huge, roundish rock. An overgrown pebble, perhaps the beginnings of a VW Beetle sculpture that was never quite finished.

I stepped into the venue with some time to kill, not wanting to spend it waiting outside in the cold. Briefly surveying the well-dressed, wine-sipping sorts who occupied the cafe, for a moment I felt a tickle at the back of my throat requiring the ease of some cool liquid. However, given the proliferation of delicate wine glasses and the occasional bottle of overpriced, under-brewed lager with not a healthy looking pint glass in sight, this tickling feeling was somewhat suppressed. A quick glance at the menu confirmed that this was indeed, just as well.

Out of curiosity, I then headed on to the gift shop tucked away in a little corner under the stairs leading up to the circle seats, and amused myself by looking at the price tags of the miniature instruments locked away in a glass cabinet like a Stradivarius at Sotheby's. The last time I saw anything similar was in a shoe storefront display at Peninsula Plaza. The various other trinkets on sale were a brutal assault on my fiscal and engineering sensibilities, their assigned value being hugely incongruent with their simple nature and attendant low cost of manufacture. Ah, the wonders of gift shops and the patrons who keep them sustainable.

Enough of that.

Stepping into the hall itself, my inner geek eagerly partook of its design in an attempt to correlate it with my area of study, which occupied me in a somewhat meaningful manner until the support act Jhelisa started. A jazz-influenced singer with a powerful voice and some interesting takes on the genre, she and her tastefully minimalist band gave an engaging performance. At times though, yours truly was pre-occupied with identifying the features and subtleties of the hall acoustics, the beginnings of an occupational hazard. It was, nevertheless, a good start to the evenings musical proceedings.

Mavis Staples took to the stage with aplomb. Amidst the intense tremolo-drenched guitar work, a trio of backup vocals and the hypnotic grooves of the rhythm section, she preached to a rather lacklustre audience a strong sermon that made clear in no uncertain terms what she stood for and what her lifelong passion was.

In between songs she spoke of a time and place where segregation and discrimination ruled the day, and a recurrent theme was her affection for her beloved grandmother, whom I reckon was a strong guiding force in such a tumultuous period. She spoke of her time in the family band The Staples Singers, led by her father Pop Staples and of their travels with Dr Martin Luther King on his journey to spread his seminal message. She spoke not with a sense of bitterness, but with a sense of purpose and a good dose of humour.

Perhaps the definitive moment of the evening for me was when she recounted how, in defying a restaurant owner's request for them to leave the premises and in the face of impending police action, a group of them linked hands and sang a song which she then launched into, “We Shall Not Be Moved”. Though this song has been appropriated for various other causes of similar or less worthy note, her heartfelt rendition made it sound like it was purpose-written and it was certainly an excellent cap on a set-list of gritty blues-influenced spirituals and protest songs.

And a gracious front-lady she was, giving her backup singers lead duties as she backed away from the microphone and her guitarist prime stage time to dazzle with blistering fretwork as she took seat at the back, perhaps a concession to age as well but not without clapping along and shouting encouragement. However, at no point of time was it ever in question who was presiding over this court. Though the passage of time had taken its toll on her vocal range and timbre, there was no denying the power and intensity of her performance. She exuded an aura of charisma that only comes with decades spent on the road, borne out of a genuine love for her craft and true dedication to her cause. Absent were the vocal acrobatics that characterises most practitioners of a certain genre that bears little resemblance to its original namesake. Instead, with her earnest, earthy baritone she put the blues back in rhythm and blues, and the soul back in soul.

An evening of repair and recharge it certainly was, although there was still that little tickle at the back of my throat. That was easily resolved.

An open letter to all residents of Eddie Colman Court

2008-02-06T07:25:00.000+08:00

Dear fellow residents,

On this occasion I would like to address certain individuals:

To whoever pissed in the lift:

The acrid smell of your urine might be an indicator of disease in the urinary tract or kidney failure. Possible causes are prolonged exposure to or abrasive contact with areas highly contaminated by bacteria and/or yeast infections. The recommended treatment for such a diagnosis is complete removal of the urethra, urinary tract and all accompanying organs. You need not be concerned about the cost of such a medical procedure, as the services of a skilled butcher have already been procured on your behalf to carry out the surgery with the maximum precision achievable with a meat cleaver. To obtain greater cost savings for you, unnecessary expenditure such as anesthesia and sterilisation have been excluded.

To whoever kicked in the glass door at the entrance:

The glass used in this instance is laminated glass, which consists of two layers of glass with a polymer layer in between. This same material is used in car windshields and gas mask eyepieces and in the event of impact, the polymer holds the shards of glass together so as to prevent injury to innocent bystanders due to extreme acts of stupidity. By adding more laminates and using thicker glass, it will be able to withstand larger impact forces such as bullets without breaking up into pieces. Your investigation of its impact resistance properties using your foot clearly demonstrates its feasibility for use in domestic housing inhabited by a minority of individuals incapable of civilised self-expression. However, you may like to further investigate this aspect using various blunt implements such as your cranium. Should you fail to achieve sufficient impact velocity, assistance will be duly rendered until enough samples are taken to be statistically conclusive.

To whoever is shouting “OOOOEEEIIIIII” in the courtyard between 0100 to 0500 hrs on random weekdays:

The author was conscripted to military service for 2.5 years, during which he was attached to the shooting team for several months. This team undergoes training to take part in the annual AARM (ASEAN Armies Rifle Meet) and he trained in the rifle category, achieving a respectable personal score within that short period before being recalled to his unit for operational duties. There was a time when if given an M16-A3, he would be able to shoot 20 rounds within a Figure 15 (approx. 0.5m by 0.5m) from 300 metres.

If, by some remote chance, the author should come into possession of an air rifle with sufficient range, you will be the first to know about it. He also gives his personal assurance that from that point onwards, you will be walking funny and setting off metal detectors for the rest of your life.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Yours truly,
Disgruntled Resident

Mark my words

2007-12-11T00:50:00.001+08:00

I recently completed an assignment on Leslie speakers (shown on the left), the amplifier used hand in hand with the Hammond organ in jazz, soul, R&B (the real one) and sometimes appropriated for novel purposes by guitarists. To put it simply, it consists of a rotating sound source to add a "swooshing" effect (for lack of a more descriptive term) to the input signal. Some of my favourite players of the Hammond are shown below:

Jimmy Smith:

Jimmy McGriff:

Booker T and the MGs:

The whole point of this post? Apart from the musical content, it is to showcase the exquisite sense of humour exhibited by my British lecturer in marking my assignment. Behold.

All that jazz

2007-11-29T08:49:00.000+08:00

Having just completed a mind-numbing round of assignments, I decided to head out to town and recharge my musical soul at a jazz club called Matt and Phred's near the city centre that everyone told me about.

There was a jam going on tonight and I was seriously contemplating whether I should bring my guitar to get up and play. The jam was touted on their snazzy website as having some of the best talent in the city and they spared no effort in listing the big names who had come to jam after prior engagements. My prudent sense of self-preservation told me that jazz was way out of my league and that I should really just sit there and have a few pints. Even though I have a significant appreciation for several jazz players, I never really got into playing it as I've always found it much too technical and cerebral for my primordial musical sensibilities. The most I've ever done was just a couple of fancy chords and cliched lines, and those were learnt by proxy from blues players with a slight tinge of jazz influence. As a blues-wannabe who's as comfortable in a 12-bar progression as a hog in mud, going up on stage with a bunch of jazz musicians was like racing on said hog at the Royal Ascot.

My reckless sense of self-abandon decided to nudge into the monologue in my head to get a word in sideways and irreverently declared, “What's the worst that could happen?”

I slung my guitar over my shoulder and headed out into the freezing cold.

Even though it was in the city centre, it was located along a forgotten street away from the noisy traffic, tram lines, Christmas festivities and all. A persistent drizzle speckled on my face like minute ice particles as I walked on the uneven pavement past a few garbage dumpsters and wall after wall of graffiti. Strangely bright flourescent lights punctuated the darkness but still left some little nooks and crannies to the imagination. This would have made a classic fedora-trenchcoat-cigarette moment, right before a Morris Minor screeches round the corner and a Tommy gun sprays the street with lead.

A red neon sign that spelt out the barely legible words JAZZ CLUB hung above the door. I stood outside to pause for a while as my breath turned into mist in the cold evening air. After a moment's hesitation and the briefest of contemplations, I went up the steps and through the door.

As was fitting of a jazz club, the lights were dim and even though the no-smoking rule had been in force for several months already, there still seemed to be a certain cloudiness in the air but without the characteristic lingering stench. Quite possibly it was an extrapolation on the part of my mind. The obligatory framed black and white pictures of various jazz people hung on the walls in what was otherwise a minimalist look. Bright lights were reserved for the stage, which was deservedly the focal point of the room and certainly a good sign of a music-focused venue. A neon sign brightly proclaimed the name of the club through a window into the street outside, a fitting backdrop for the stage, half of which was occupied by a shiny black grand piano.

After introducing myself to the person in the charge of the jam, I took up a spot at the bar (as is usually the case), got myself a pint and got down to observing the crowd. A good number of them were sharply dressed though not overly so, and the atmosphere remained relatively casual for a venue of this nature. In the dark I managed to pick out some eye candy for discrete observation in between quaffs, though maintaining this discretion was slightly more difficult when they came up to the bar to get drinks.

Nature called and as I headed down the stairs to the gents, the timbre of a saxaphone rang out in the narrow stairway, much louder than the average hotel toilet piped-in music. When I entered the toilet, I saw a tall guy facing the mirror with a soprano saxaphone and he looked at me rather sheepishly.

I asked rhetorically, “Getting all ready for the jam?”

After realising the redundancy of that question, I braced myself for a wise crack I would have given like “No, they hired me to provide music while people take a dump. You know, to hide the splash and all.”

“Yes, I am doing some warm up before playing” came the reply in an accent that betrayed European origin.

As I went back up I thought to myself; man, these jazz guys really take their jams seriously.

The set started soon enough, and to put it briefly I was mightily impressed as well as mightily intimidated. Self-doubt started to creep in...no, actually it was banging away at the door and telling me to wake up get the hell out of there as if there were a raging fire. I started to question my judgement in throwing myself into a genre that I was rather unprepared for and I had a distinct feeling of inadequacy that wasn't measurable in units of length.

The last time I actually felt this way was a long time back, when I first took the stage at Roomful of Blues and made the transition from bedroom jammer to playing in public. Since then I've taken to several stages and played for crowds of various sizes in all sorts of circumstances, but I never had a rush of nerves of that magnitude. Not till now.

Before I knew it, the bright lights glared at me and obscured my view of anything beyond my immediate vicinity on stage, though on the bright side (haha) it was perhaps the warmest I've ever felt since arriving in Manchester. The band kindly obliged me with a straight blues, and I played along as best as I could without being able to hear myself, being right next to the grand piano with the lid open and the soundboard in full swing of infinite vibrational modes (There you go, I've actually learnt something while I was here).

They dropped to a deathly silence as my turn came for a solo, and so did the crowd. I took a deep breath and plunged in, playing what came to mind as I always did. In retrospect, I played it rather safe instead of going at it full force, much rather like how a tentative and nervous first date would go. Trust me, I know all about those.

As I built up the intensity and volume towards the end of my solo, the rest of the band and jammers followed along until it all culminated in a sharp hit of the snare. The silence continued for what seemed an awfully long time save for the bass plodding along unobtrusively and the high hat fizzing quietly in the background. There was enough time for a few thoughts to run through my head, that I'd done what I could and the next thing was to hope for the best from a jazz crowd. At least no projectiles....please.

To my immense relief there was a good show of appreciation that was markedly more than polite, a sign that I had hit the (mostly) right notes. I somehow felt a few pounds lighter and went back to comping the rhythm, content in the fact that I didn't embarrass myself. The next two songs were a blur; I sort of cobbled together a face-saving solo over one of the standards that I really should have known while for the song after, I was thankfully spared from playing one. After that was done, I excused myself from the stage before the jazz fur started flying but not before expressing my gratitude to the guy in charge of the jam for having them do a blues number for me.
I went back to my pint and resumed my earlier course of action of being amazed by the music that was going on. By the time the night was through, I felt a sense of satisfaction at being able to keep up, while feeling humbled as well and resolving to at least work through some standards. Once again I had thrown myself into the deep end, something that I am wont to do, and come out none the worse. Thank goodness.

The last swallow of my pint went down quickly and I headed out into the now even more freezing cold, with my guitar slung over my shoulder. Back to the woodshed.

Seriously speaking...

2007-10-07T00:43:00.000+08:00

As part of my self-imposed UK survival training regime, I embarked on a small-scale investigation of the various aspects of British comedy. Many hours spread out over the course of the past few weeks were spent on various video sharing websites, all in the name of finding out what makes British people laugh. I present my findings so far:

All 4 seasons of Blackadder:

Rowan Atkinson is funny enough as the mostly silent character in the Mr Bean series, but that’s not the half of it. Whenever dialogue roles are thrust (*feeble attempt at British humour and innuendo*) upon him, he brings them to life with great panache and the entire Blackadder series showcases his thespian talents.

Laughing Matters:

More of Atkinson, this time presenting a pseudo-documentary on comedic elements with an air of academia.

Fry and Laurie:

2 actors who co-starred with Atkinson in Blackadder had their own show too.

Some techniques demonstrated here are double entendre (with comic timing), physical gags,absurdity and linguistic exaggeration.

Of course, the tried and tested method of making fun of Americans always gets a few laughs. This one too.

Glossary:

Comprehensive guide to Brit slang.

As to the direction of my further research, let us just say...

I have a cunning plan.

Lynyrd Skynyrd - On The Hunt

2007-10-04T05:01:00.000+08:00

As is always the case, music features highly in my free (and not-so-free) time entertainment. It’s a bit of a hunt to find the stuff that I like here in Manchester, with the night-life scene tending towards clubbing and the music scene thriving on indie-rock and DJs, all of which I do not care much for. Most of the pubs are nice places to be, especially those with cask ales, but as always there's the itch to hear live music that gets me going.

For the most part, Mancunians seem a friendly lot once I initiate conversation. The impression I get is that the majority of Asian students stick to their own flock and hardly socialise with the locals, with the result being that Mancunians reciprocate in kind. It’s hardly ideal but understandable, perhaps because similiar behaviour was also prevalent during my undergraduate days in NUS.

However, me being the only Singaporean so far does force me to come out and get over the Singaporean attitude towards strangers, in which even neighbours can pass each other without acknowledging each others' existence. Starting conversations out of nowhere is not unheard of, but remains the exception to the norm. Thankfully, I require little coercion in that respect, even less so after some English bitter. Once I demonstrate my reasonable command of the English language and dispel their notions of any communication barriers, new acquaintances are easy to make.

And so in my hunt for good music, I’ve had to go under the radar, away from the maddening crowd with promising results and meeting some great fellas along the way. Here are the bands I’ve caught in chronological order:

Junkhouse Dog Blues Band:

Chicago-style blues with a dash of rock influence. Frontman Junkhouse Dog blows some mean harp in the style of Little Walter.

Old Crow Medicine Show:

Bunch of young guys from Nashville, Tennessee who were passing through Manchester as part of their UK tour. They play the old-timey country and bluegrass styles with a good helping of pop sensibilities, memorable melodies and choruses which had the audience singing along and dancing to the hillbilly beats. In keeping with the bluegrass tradition they had huge vocal harmonies and of course, a blazing fiddle player.

Ernie’s Rhythm Section:

Yet another bunch of young guys, but this time from Manchester and they play the real old –school kind of blues, serving up foot-stomping boogies which pretty much brought the house down that night I went. Among their songs I counted some from Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Little Walter, Lightning Hopkins and Big Bill Broonzy.

Stay tuned, I’m sure there’s more to come.

We've only just begun...

2007-09-19T17:57:00.000+08:00

It’s been almost a week since I arrived in Manchester and I’m slowly warming up to it (literally).

For someone who comes from a tropical island on the equator where it’s summer all year round, England takes some getting used to. If you’d like to try it out sometime, just turn your air-conditioner to the lowest setting possible and have an industrial fan blow the cold air into your face. For added authenticity, get someone else to sprinkle random drops of water into the path of the wind. The cold (or perceived lack thereof) doesn’t faze most Brits, some of them get by with just T-shirt and bermudas while yours truly is wrapped up and still feeling the cold. I’m told it gets worse.

Apart from the fact that I live on the top floor (14th) in a building with an eccentric, arthritic lift, the student accommodation I’m staying in is alright I guess. The dubious stains on the floor carpeting of my room, the seemingly paper-thin walls separating the rooms which afford little privacy of sound and the spartan furniture are things I can get used to. The most important feature of my accommodation is that there is a pub just downstairs that serves the local clientele and is strangely devoid of students despite being in the middle of a student housing area. There’s beer on tap and football on TV, pretty much all I need for a good evening. Some of the crowd are crusty old-timers with faded tattoos on their forearms and once I witnessed a heated discussion (ale-fuelled no doubt) almost come to blows, though almost as quickly as it came the respective parties were hushed and everyone went back to their pints. Not anything more unusual than what we get back home.

Classes haven’t started proper, but we’ve had some introductory sessions with the lecturers who seem a splendid bunch. It’s a small class with a good mix of nationalities, which should make for some interesting discussions. Course content looks rather challenging, being mostly mathematical in nature. For the mathematically average like myself, I foresee either intensive work or panicked confusion in the near future.

I’ve also found some time to head to the town centre and take in some of the city, at both day and night time. The city itself is a rather interesting blend of old and new. Buildings dating from the Industrial Revolution and Manchesters' history as the centre of cotton trade, 19th century cathedrals and churches, olde-style English pubs, modern glass-façade commercial centres and shopping malls, cobblestone walkways and tar roads and even a ferris wheel all seem to co-exist within the confines of the city, though they may not all look congruous standing next to each other. Guitar shops were another necessary feature of my urban scouting expedition, and there were some that will warrant a return visit, even if it’s just to fulfil a strange, innate desire to be surrounded by a wall of guitars.

The nightlife seems to be centred mainly on the clubbing scene, with a whole range of venues that scarcely appeal to my musical and aesthetic sensibilities, apart from their female clientele (more on that in the future). Those venues that do feature live bands focus mainly on genres that are less than exciting for me, but at this stage it is still too early to write off the music scene altogether. I will continue my hunt.

The population in general seems a lot more diverse than what I would have expected. Walking down the streets of Manchester city, there were people of South Asian, Middle Eastern, African and Chinese descent alongside the British in varying proportions. Sitting in the public bus I could hear a variety of languages other than English that were mostly unfathomable apart from the lilt of articulate Mandarin or the familiar inflections of Cantonese. However, for all the diversity there is, how much they really socialise with each other remains to be seen.

And of course, that includes me.

Frank Sinatra - On a little street in Singapore

2007-09-11T14:34:00.000+08:00

That familiar feeling returned the moment I stepped off the bus.

Geylang in all its grimy glory, a sensory treat for the esoteric and a fitting reminder of what I will be missing in UK. The pungent smoke that filled the air came from the burning paper offerings, a custom of the Hungry Ghost Festival meant to placate wandering souls, global warming notwithstanding. The usual smell of automotive exhaust was somewhat overwhelmed though the attendant din was at full force, at times augmented by passing vehicles with boomboxes pumping out unintelligible pulses at the lowest end of the audible frequency range at obnoxious volumes. It was either that or the roar of a turbocharged engine being revved more to fulfil exhibitionistic tendencies than a need for speed on a road where you’re only as fast as the car in front of you.

I'm pretty sure this wasn't the "little street" that Frank Sinatra was referring to.

Stepping away from the bus stop and into the walkway, the sights and smells of the food outlets in the shophouses were unavoidable. The Indian man making prata alternated between flipping the flattened dough in the air to stretch it paper thin and standing behind his teriyaki-like hot plate, lathered with oil and sizzling furiously when the stretched dough hit the plate. At the Teochew porridge stall, pans containing a myriad of dishes of proletarian fare were stacked 3 high across the counter which stretched across half the shop. Not exactly a sight for the indecisive, who aren’t taken to very kindly by impatient stallholders with hungry customers to serve.

The early dinner crowd had already gathered in the coffeeshops, some accompanied by women who wore their occupation on their sleeves (or lack thereof). Bottles of beer and buckets of ice served to counter the evening humidity as they conversed in a variety of languages and dialects, punctuated by guffaws and the slamming of hands on tables. The more sedate ones nursed their beer in silence as the rest of Geylangs’ denizens went on with their lives.

In between the ground floor units there were entrances to a staircase going up to the second floor. Some were dark, dank and smelt of something ripe and fermented that wasn’t wine, while others were dimly lit in a colour that indicated their line of business. A few of them had their….proprietors and employees standing in the doorway, presumably to welcome customers. After squeezing past the crowd standing in the walkway choosing from vegetables displayed outside a grocery store, I jaywalked across the road (as is the norm) to my destination.

A seafood dinner with pals from my first foray into the Singapore blues scene was one of the few farewell gatherings from my circle of friends. Above the noise from the evening traffic on the road beside us and the din from other tables, we recounted the gigs we played over 6 years as we peeled crustaceans and quaffed beer, cursing the lousy ones and laughing at the funny and memorable ones. All the characters we met along the way were recalled with varying levels of fondness. Apart from reminiscing about the past, there was also a fair bit of speculation about the future ahead, in particular my activities in Manchester outside of academic pursuits.

Suffice to say, que sera, que sera.

Music lah!

2007-06-25T23:39:00.000+08:00

I found these on a Youtube foray. I'm posting the links here because the owner of the videos didn't enable embedding.

The Quests doing the Rolling Stones "Satisfaction"

The Straydogs doing their song "Freedom"

The Quests and The Straydogs were just 2 of many bands playing the club circuits and producing albums in Singapore during the 60's. The main influences were the British and American bands, which isn't surprising considering our colonial history. It was my pleasure to have met some of the old hands from that era, in particular Dennis who now runs Guitar77. The pulsing bass line you hear on "Freedom" was laid down by him and he's shared many a tale about Singapores' music scene then. As a newly-independent state in the free-loving 60's, the authorities were obsessively conscientious about maintaining civil and social order. It was a time when sporting long hair was enough reason for a police spot check on the assumption that you were a "band boy". That also meant that you were a drug-smoking hippie. Jukeboxes were banned on the assumption that they would encourage the spread of hedonistic western lifestyles and this continued up till the 1990s.

Of course, Singapore has progressed from those days (the extent of which is still highly subjective) and our music industry has evolved into what it is today, for better or for worse. These videos are just a small glimpse of what it used to be like trying to make it big before Singapore Idol.

Hear ye, hear ye

2007-05-29T01:58:00.000+08:00

I went for a hearing check the other day. Considering the amount of abuse that I’ve put my ears through, I thought it would be best to check if they are still in good working order, especially if I’m going to be relying on them for a living in time to come.

After what seemed like several rounds of taking numbers and waiting in turn, I was finally seated in front of the Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) consultant, flanked by impressive colour posters with more details about the ears than most people need to know. Perhaps not surprisingly, he seemed rather interested when I mentioned my intended area of study and the rational for this hearing test. We briefly discussed the latest developments in the physics of sound before he moved on to examine my ear canal.

Probing into each ear with some sort of magnification device, he declared them free of wax and in good physical shape, still possessing plenty of healthy skin which tends to be degraded in those who are over-enthusiatic or ham-fisted with cotton buds. Following which, he stamped some papers and sent me on my way to the testing room.

Another turn of queueing up later, I was seated on a chair in what I suppose was the control room. In front of the computer hooked up to all sorts of paraphernalia was a window into the adjoining room with heavy padding and a bank vault-like door. The layout was reminiscent of a recording studio, but the vibe was like that of a mental institution.

I guess in a sense, there ARE similiarities between the two.

The tester was a pleasant-looking lady who was probably about my age, which helped somewhat because she proceeded to probe my ears about a dozen times each with an ear pressure testing device, trying out various rubber probe ends to get a result. For someone who doesn’t even use cotton buds in the ear, being probed so many times at one go was definitely not the most comfortable of experiences, especially since the device emitted a droning hum to make its presence heard on top of being felt.

When that was done with, I was glad to finally step into the little padded room. It was pretty much empty except for a normal plastic chair in the middle and a little pink one at the side (for kids taking the test I suppose), as well as some headphones and other miscellanous wires. Mounted on the wall was a pair of speakers and a microphone, but otherwise there was little else to break the visual monotony of the squares of padding. I sat on the chair looking into the control room through the window, though I was half expecting it to be a mirror. Just as well, I wasn’t wearing a leather mask or a white dress.

The instructions were simple enough. Sit down. Put on the headphones and hold on to some button device. Press button when you hear a sound from the headphones. Ok, I can handle that.

The vault door closed with a muffled thud and the steering-wheel-like handle spun half a round. The eerie silence was punctuated only by the sound of my breathing.

Her voice crackled through the headphones “Can you hear me?”

“Yeap.”

“Ready to begin?”

“Let’s go.”

A series of beeps of varying pitch and volume were played, some of which were so faint I strained to hear them even while holding my breath. I mustered all my concentration and attempted to divert all my sensory powers to my ears in superhero-like fashion. I’m not sure if it actually did happen.

The intelligibility test was next. This one was a lot simpler, basically consisting of the tester reading out a list of words and me repeating them. That didn’t require imaginary super-powers.

“Ok that’s it.”

The vault was opened and I got up to leave, but not without a cursory examination of the microphone to check out the brand.

“That’s a microphone.”

It was hard to resist the overwhelming temptation of giving a witty comeback to that line, but I did. What I couldn’t resist though, was the inclination to poke the padding with a finger to see if it was soft. I felt somewhat fulfilled after that.

I was sent back to the consultant (and yet another wait) where he went through the results with me. For all you naysayers out there who claim that I’m going deaf just because you have to repeat yourself to me on occasion, you are badly mistaken and I have indisputable proof.

I don’t have a scanner to post the graph (labelled as an Audiogram) up here, but suffice to say that it averages as a straight line across 250 to 8000 Hz at 10dB. PB Max test at 40 dB stimulus (I presume it’s the intelligibility test) weighs in at a whopping 100% in both ears.

Which leaves only one other explanation.

The rest of you have to go work on your pronunciation.

A journey of a thousand miles...

2007-04-25T00:44:00.000+08:00

I have to admit it was a bit of a gamble.

Quitting my job before even applying for postgraduate studies was not an entirely comfortable thing to do, but circumstances were that I had to quit there and then or hold my peace forever.

And to top it off, brickbats were being hurled my way to throw me off course, by some rather irrational and small-minded individuals. Thankfully the greater sense of humanity prevailed and when I needed assistance, it was forthcoming and with much goodwill.

Come Sept or so I will be headed to Manchester to undertake a Msc Audio Acoustics at the University of Salford. My thought-process and methods of learning/perception are geared towards engineering (Get it? Gear-ed! Hmmm...not funny? Never mind.) while the overriding obsession in my life has been music. To me, this represents that first single step towards the union of my mechanical engineering training and musical distractions to become a bona-fide career choice.

Also, perhaps after studying there I can objectively determine the veracity of the saying that America and England are two continents separated by a common language. Stay tuned.

Walking By Myself

2007-04-06T18:54:00.000+08:00

There I was, standing in the middle of Bangkok with an hour to kill. My companions had gone to get their hair dyed / bleached / treated or whatever it is people do to their hair that I wouldn’t bother with. It was 1100 hrs in the morning but the afternoon sun was already making its overwhelming presence felt. Steamy.

The whole place was new to me and I had no idea what to do, so I did what came naturally. I walked.

Down the street I went, further away from the touristy areas and right into the heart of the average Bangkok neighbourhood. First I stumbled upon a local marketplace, comprising of seemingly makeshift wooden structures that held up the canvas sheets to shade the hawkers underneath. Ducks and chickens quacked and clucked away beside an assortment of fruits, vegetables and meat, with the occasional loud squawk and flurry of wing-flapping whenever a transaction was being made. Live fishes splashed about in shallow pails that held more fish than water while next door, a huge wok brimming with oil sizzled with huge slabs of pork lard being fried. Scooters zoomed up and down the narrow passageway along which the stalls were lined up, weaving in and out among the crowd doing their marketing and throwing up clouds of dust and exhaust that somehow left the raw produce none the worse. In between the stalls, small charcoal pits roasted chicken and fish, adding to the smellscape (I’m sure the word exists) the fresh smells of barbecue, alongside the exhaust fumes and fishy scents.

I ambled along trying my best not to look like a confused tourist, while trying to avoid stepping into the brackish water that accumulated in potholes on the road. Eventually it was futile, for soon enough a scooter came along and ran across a puddle beside me, pretty much soaking my slipper-clad feet. Dressed in a non-descript T-shirt and faded bermudas, I’m pretty sure I would have blended in with the Thai crowd if not for the hat which shielded me from the relentless sun and the bottle of water in my hand, crucial for keeping myself hydrated.

Venturing further into the heart of the neighbourhood, I took a detour on a whim and walked into a small back alley, hoping to find a shortcut. It was barely 1.5m wide and flanked by modest single room urban dwellings crammed side by side, which probably housed a family each. A small drainage canal running through the middle of the alley branched off to the front of each home, where women gathered to do their laundry and chit-chat as their children played. Again similar charcoal pits were set up to roast chicken, spewing smoke which was blown by the wind onto the drying laundry of the home next door. The atmosphere was seemingly non-chalant however, as I walked through the groups of women and children with nary a glance cast at me. Maybe I was blending in pretty well after all.

By now I had no idea how far I had walked, but I knew I had a thirst to be quenched, so I popped into the first grocery store I saw and picked up a can of Chang.

“Yi sib saam baht.”

“Khorb khun kap.”

I popped open the can but paused for a moment before taking my first sip. Perhaps I should have wiped the top part of the can to make sure it was clean before opening it up.

A long, refreshing gulp set me straight after ignoring that thought.

Ahhhh…this is Bangkok.

Oh really?

2007-03-22T01:34:00.000+08:00

Here's something I never did think about. Apparently someone thought this study was worth conducting:

Playing music makes you smart

Scientists have uncovered the first concrete evidence that playing music can significantly enhance the brain and sharpen hearing for all kinds of sounds, including speech.

"Experience with music appears to help with many other things in life, potentially transferring to activities like reading or picking up nuances in tones of voices or hearing sounds in a noisy classroom better," researcher Nina Kraus, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University, told LiveScience.

These new findings highlight the importance of music classes, she said.

"Music classes are often among the first to be cut when school budgets get tight," Kraus said. "That's a mistake."

Experiments started with 20 adult volunteers, who watched and listened to a movie of their choice. "'Men in Black,' 'The Incredibles,' 'Best in Show' were favorites," Kraus said.

As they watched movies, the volunteers also listened to Mandarin words that sounded like "mi" continuously at conversation level in the background. Mandarin is a tone language, where a single word can differ in meaning depending on its tone. For example, the Mandarin word "mi" means "to squint" when delivered in a level tone, "to bewilder" when spoken in a rising tone, and "rice" when given in a falling then rising tone.

The researchers recorded neural responses from the brains of volunteers during the experiments. Half the volunteers had at least six years of training in a musical instrument starting before the age of 12. The others had no more than three years of musical experience. All were native English speakers who had no knowledge of Mandarin.

"Even with their attention focused on the movie and though the sounds had no linguistic or musical meaning for them, we found our musically trained subjects were far better at tracking the three different tones than the non-musicians," said neuroscientist Patrick Wong at Northwestern University.

Wong emphasized these results were seen "in more or less everyday people. You don't have to be a top musician to find these kinds of effects."

Surprisingly, the researchers found these changes occurred in the brainstem, the ancient part of the brain responsible for controlling automatic, critical body functions such as breathing and heartbeat.

Music was thought largely to be the province of the cerebral cortex, where higher brain functions such as reasoning, thought and language are seated. The brainstem was thought to be unchangeable and uninvolved in the complex processes linked with music.

"These results show us how malleable to experience the brainstem actually is," Kraus said of the findings detailed in the April issue of the journal Nature Neuroscience. "We think music engages higher level functions in the cortex that actually tune the brainstem."

Much remains open for investigation. "How much musical training would you need for this to be helpful?" Kraus wondered. "Would music help children with literacy problems? How old would you have to be to see these effects?"

I'll leave you with that and your personal opinions about me.

Techno Blues

2007-03-13T22:18:00.000+08:00

Hello folks,

The first month of the year with no public holidays is nearly halfway through, hope you guys are all still hanging in there.

The IT show just came and went and those of you who bought MP3 players, don’t forget to put some blues in them. For those with new HDTV sets, it’s time for some blues DVD sessions. As for the new PS3 owners….don’t forget to bathe and eat.

However, it is heartening to know that in this age of technological advancement in personal entertainment there’s still a place for live blues, and it’s happening at The Old Brown Shoe this month on the 24th. Even though the technology exists for a live performance to be broadcast to your home, it’s still impossible to transmit the smell of BBQ and the taste of beer through a broadband connection.

So there you have it, a good excuse to come on down and get your blues, booze and BBQ’ed calories first hand.

Start Me Up

2007-03-13T20:53:00.001+08:00

I stepped out into the blinding sunlight, squinting as my eyes readjusted from the yellow fluorescent lights that coloured the interior of the manufacturing plant.

As I walked past the storage yard and delivery bays, I left behind me the insistent rumble of machines running with the torque of a thousand horses; the banshee-like squeal of sintered tungsten carbide plowing through hardened steel at a faster rate than it should; the high-pitched whirring of diamond grinding wheels not unlike that of a dentist’s drill accompanied by a shower of sparks; the acrid smell of gaseous byproducts from bacteria feasting on vegetable-oil derived machining coolants; the ringing of a hammer being mercilessly brought to bear upon wrought metal.

My trusty dustcoat, once a proud hue of navy blue but now spotted with oil and grease stains and other non-descript patches, lay draped over my chair for the last time bereft of the pens, steel rule, safety glasses, ear plugs and assortments of scribbled paper that were regular occupants of its pockets.

Those were sounds, sights and smells that I had become accustomed to over the months and strangely, that working environment held more appeal for me than a sanitised cubicle in a Shenton Way office. But when the time came for a choice to be made, pen was put to paper and the deal was done.

After 15 minutes as the lone occupant of a dilapidated busstop in the middle of industrial heartland, the bus finally pulled up and I got on. As I put on my earphones, a familiar guitar riff brought forth a song that struck home loud and clear.

“Big wheels keep on turning
Carry me home to see my kin
Singin’ songs about the South land
I miss Alabama once again and I think it’s a sin”

Those words were sung in 1974 about a distant land of which I knew little, but the intent behind them resonated with mine.

I know where I want to go and I’m heading there.

Went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees....

2007-02-25T00:12:00.000+08:00

I made a life changing decision recently.

Some are glad, some have expressed shock. A few have been dismayed and disappointed. It was a difficult decision, but one that had to be made.

I quote Elvis, "It's now or never."

Requiem for an online magazine

2007-02-01T20:37:00.000+08:00

Let this post be in memory of Uberture, woefully forgotten and languishing in the middle of 2006.

I had written 3 articles for them, being the cynical, self-deprecating voice for old-school music in what was otherwise an attempt to barge into the "cool" crowd. How on earth I got that gig is still beyond me, but it did hone my writing skills somewhat.

Anyway, here is the last one I wrote for them that didn't get published. It was supposed to fit in with an emotional theme of some sort, but that doesn't quite matter anymore.

***

Music and human emotions share a close, if somewhat abstract relationship. Not in a direct sense like how some people get all weepy watching, well, weepy Taiwanese dramas or suddenly get the urge to stand right on the bow of a Star Cruise liner after watching Titanic for the 15th time running.

And definitely not in a ridiculously long fringe with eye-shadow kind of way.

Some say its about establishing a sort of emotional link between the performer and the audience, while others say its about telling stories that the listeners can relate to. Those inclined to go even deeper might say that music cannot exist without emotion and vice versa, though I can surely point out more than a few examples to argue against the former.

I’ll leave the nitty gritty of that to the musicologists and critics, but one thing I’ll put my money on is that guitar players have some of the most emotional-looking faces.

BB King is probably one of the more widely-known blues names in the mainstream, thanks to collaborations with U2, Diana Krall and the like. When he squeezes out a high note way up on the neck of his trusty guitar Lucille, he likens the look on his face to that of “sucking on lemons”. I don’t know how many lemons he took to get that look, but it works for him.

The late Stevie Ray Vaughn, better known as SRV, probably defined the essence of looking like a hot shot guitar slinger. Flamboyant shirt with cowboy hat and boots, beating up on an already beat-up Stratocaster and shooting off supercharged blues licks. That and alternating between a look of Zen-like transcendence and a totally scrunched-up look, as though he were trying to squeeze his whole face into his nostrils.

There are countless other examples, like Keith Richards doing his pursed lips, drugged-out eyes look (with or without guitar), Santana’s furrowed brows and twitching moustache or Jimmy Page pouting his lips through his curly mop while trying to heft a double-necked Gibson SG. All classic rock moments, captured for posterity on photographs for adoring fans and rocker wannabes.

On top of learning the licks and songs, I’ve been trying to cop some of those looks too. I’ve put together a mental composite sketch of my “emotional guitar moment” face, of me with my eyes closed, facing upwards with a spotlight shining down, as though I were looking up to the heavens for musical nirvana while my guitar gently weeps. Another one would be with me looking down beyond my guitar, a face of absolute concentration with drops of sweat running down the side of my forehead popping with veins, while channeling forth the musical equivalent of a raging tornado from my fingertips.

Unfortunately, photographic evidence brought me back down to earth rather abruptly. The look on my face was less “emotional guitar moment” than “confused / spaced-out moment”. My eyes tend to be glued to my fingers with the look of desperation that comes from not knowing what to do next, as though I were facing an angry girlfriend and trying to figure out if today were a birthday, anniversary or just another one of those days. Add to that a half-open mouth that anyone can lip-read as a “Huh?”, and you have a recipe for rock-image disaster.

Well truth be told, there ARE times onstage when I’m confused (either by someone else, bad sound or plain old senior citizen moment) and when I’m spaced-out (playing songs I’ve done or heard too many times, looking for eye-candy in the audience), but other times there’s another reason why I don’t look emotional enough to be a rock star.

I’m having too much fun.

Yeap, enough fun to have a silly grin plastered on my face. There are plenty of reasons for that, ranging from getting into a happening kick-ass groove with the rest of the band to catching a major goof-up or committing one. Lots of reasons to smile and laugh if you’re playing the right songs with the right people. Come to think of it, the wrong songs with the wrong people would make for an even bigger giggle, but that’s another story altogether.

So what’s to be done? Cheesy grins don’t make for a very emotional-looking rock image. For the life of me I don’t want to imagine what it’d look like if Jimi Hendrix were smiling from ear to ear for the hippies at Woodstock in the middle of a tortured rendition of “Star Spangled Banner” or if Angus Young looked like a kid with candy while churning out “Highway to Hell”. Slash wouldn’t look as cool in his top hat if he wore a silly grin, which is a silly thing to do anyway for someone who smokes while playing bare-bodied. Even if the ZZ Top guys smiled I don’t think anyone could see it through their trademark beards.

Since I’m already beyond “emotional guitar moments” and in the realm of “tak rock lah brudder”, I’ll just do it like Elton John (no, not that way).

Keep smiling.

In the mood

2007-01-25T23:26:00.000+08:00

It started with replacing a blown light bulb in my room, a simple task that took no more time than was needed to screw the old one out, locate a new bulb and screw it in.

As I opened my room door to throw away the old bulb, I was reminded yet again of the loose door knob that needed fixing, something that I was reminded of every time I open or close my door but have been putting off for the longest time.

Since I’m fixing stuff, I’d might as well have a look at it, I thought.

It wasn’t immediately obvious how to disassemble it from the door though, this being my first time encountering such a mechanism. It took plenty of prodding, poking and a couple of false starts. After spying a small hole on the shaft of the knob, I decided to try my luck and poke inside with a sharp pointy thing. It turned out to be a spring-loaded catch for assembling the round knob, and once that was taken out the rest of the whole assembly came out easily from the door.

After looking at it briefly it was pretty clear how it was to be assembled onto the door. The assembly (consisting the opening mechanism and the outside door knob) goes in from the outside, after which a plate larger than the hole is tightened onto the assembly from the other side with countersunk screws. This plate contains a spring-loaded catch that secures the cover we see covering the unsightly hole, after which the inside door knob is pressed onto the shaft with the spring loaded catch. But that wasn’t enough for me.

Since I’ve got it out of the door, I’d might as well have a look at it, I thought.

This is the kind of door knob that has a button on the inside knob to lock the outside knob from turning, but unlocks when the inside knob is turned. I’ll be merciful and spare you the details of that, but the opening mechanism basically consisted of too many fiddly little parts that came apart all too easily but didn’t assemble together very intuitively in a “square peg in square hole” manner.

Let’s put this in context. I had taken my bath and it was getting close to bedtime (that’s working life for you), yet here I was messing around with my door knob and getting my fingers covered in grease. It must have been something in me telling me that I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t put it back together again.

About 45 minutes past bedtime and several inaudible profanities later, everything finally clicked into place without springing out and flying all over my desk (or under, which was the cause for much profanity). I had solved the mystery of the doorknob, not quite a Rubix cube kind of puzzle but infinitely more satisfying, and hopefully something that will come in handy in future. At least if my door knob gets loose again.

So there’s my little streak of eccentricity. I’m not sure if it’s a positive personality trait or not, but I’m pretty sure it’s not something to impress girls with. It just wouldn’t make very good conversation material for dates.

Unless someone out there wants to prove me wrong.

Shameless plug

2007-01-16T22:35:00.000+08:00

I’m not sure why I didn’t do this earlier, but anyway here goes.

For the past few months I’ve been doing a monthly gig every last Saturday at The Old Brown Shoe, an English-style pub beside Coronation Plaza. It’s a small, cozy place with a big ol’ bar counter and nary a stage, just a corner beside the entrance where tables and chairs are pushed aside and enough space is made for us. An old honky-tonk-looking upright piano serves as a fitting backdrop as well as a place to put the mini-mixer and my drink.

The owner is an Englishman teaching at a local junior college, a lover of good music and drink and a nice fella to boot. If you’re on the same musical page as I am you’d kill to catch the acts he caught as a lad, and he’s always got a ready yarn to spin about them. He owns a pub, he loves blues. We love blues, and love to play. Bingo.

And by we, I mean myself and Anjana. We’re collectively known as Malted Milk and we play as an acoustic duo. Acoustic blues is our main genre, though we’re partial towards country and on occasion, we readapt/rearrange/mutilate some more recent songs to our liking. Our originals definitely have a place in our set too, since no one else is going to play them in their sets. I do the guitar and she does the singing, but she plays on a couple of songs as well. I’m trying to get her to play more guitar, mainly to further her musical growth and advancement. While I enjoy my extended beer break between sets.

To top it all off, we call this monthly gig “Barbecue Bob” because the chef rolls out the grill and serves out some serious BBQ to wash down with a solid pint of Guiness or English-style ale of your choice. By some twist of fate, the chef’s a fan of the blues and he plays too, so if he’s not frying them up over the flame then he’s burning it up with us. Makes for a lot of noise and a lot of fun (for us at least).

For January it’s happening on 27th. Mark it down, save your stomachs and throats for the occasion and let the good times roll.

Foresight

2006-12-24T01:31:00.000+08:00

In my line of work, I sometimes require magnification. On those occasions I call upon a simple optical implement that perhaps holds a bit more nostalgia than a device of its nature usually does.

It is basically a foldable, segmented aluminium frame that holds a glass lens above a square cutout with metric and imperial divisions marked out on the side, and folds neatly into a flat unit to fit into a pocket. The words “Made In Japan” are proudly engraved on the body, leaving no doubt as to its origin. A relatively simple design compared to the myriad of inspection devices available on the market, but handy enough to be carried around while still fulfilling its purpose.

How it came to be in my possession, however, requires me to delve a little further back.

By all accounts, my paternal grandfather was a colourful character. Anecdotes of him being a martial arts exponent, motorcycle hell-rider, electrician, hawker of duck-rice and sugarcane juice are common-fare during extended family dinners. Also recalled with some fondness are his personality traits. There was once a discussion about blood-types in the family, and when a question was asked about his blood-type, one of my uncles volunteered immediately that it had to be XO, referring to his fiery temper as well as his love of drink. Another discussion once centered around his bevy of mistresses, some more memorable than the others.

When I was in primary school, I spent some of my school holidays at my paternal grandparents’ place with my cousin, occupying our days with improvised entertainment both indoors and outdoors. My recollections of him are of an elderly man, gaunt and weakened by stroke and lung ailments brought on by smoking, a habit which he did not break even then. He spent the majority of the day lying down on a couch, getting up only to clear his throat of phlegm into a spittoon and occasionally shuffling painfully to the toilet with the aid of a four-legged walker. My cousin and I were about 8 to 10 years old at that time, and already accustomed to the smell of cigarettes together with the sound of his hacking cough. Still, when he spoke he was fluent in English and articulate, as opposed to my grandmother who only spoke Cantonese. His voice retained a commanding quality to it, a trait that was passed on to my father’s generation and probably to mine. More than once I’ve had complaints from colleagues in the office for speaking to them at volumes more suitable for the shopfloor, where the din of production does not favour the soft-spoken.

He passed away when I was 11, finally succumbing to the effects of smoking. After the funeral and final arrangements were done, the extended family started going through his belongings to clear out whatever could be cleared. Among the more memorable ones were some letters, hand-written in a swirling cursive (both English and Chinese) that suggested a certain aesthetic sensibility, as well as an A4-sized B/W photograph of him as a young boy our age then, sitting in the front row of what was an enormous family photograph with his grandfather in the centre, flanked by what must have been at least 7 or 8 wives. I guess that’s the way things were in those days.

There were other more mundane items that were destined for the trash bag, but amongst them I spotted a curious looking shiny object lying in the corner of his drawer. I was fascinated by the way it folded and unfolded, almost similar to the Transformers that were a big part of my childhood. I immediately claimed it for my own and set about examining everything I could get my hands on. It became my prized possession for a few days, after which it was forgotten and went into a corner of my own drawer, overshadowed by other more pressing issues like what excuse to give for not doing my homework yet again.

Almost 14 years later, it has come out of my drawer and onto my office desk, finally being put into service again after a long hiatus. Now that I think of it, I’m not too sure what my grandfather used it for. My best guess would be that he used it for reading, but I’ll never really know.

Perhaps it was incredible foresight on the part of an 11 year old me that I would have use for it down the road.

Or maybe it wasn’t.

Roving Eyes of a Straight Guy

2006-10-24T16:42:00.000+08:00

As a matter of courtesy, I always make it a point to partake of a woman’s beauty if she makes the effort to bring it out. In the best cases it stands out without much effort, though for some it requires much diligence and for others, it’s akin to squeezing blood from a rock.

On this occasion I was on an escalator going downwards to a train station, and a girl of no more than 18-19 was below me, decked out in a denim mini-skirt and gold slippers, bringing to mind an unlikely but oddly attractive combination of Texan cowgirl meets Cinderella (“Giddy’ up, pumpkin!”). As always, my keen powers of observation served me well, bringing her shapely legs to my attention. These were well-proportioned for their length, unlike the chopstick thin waifs I’ve observed floating around, a source of arousement only for those with the most visual orthopaedic tendencies.

I allowed my gaze to linger for a little more than decency allowed, before switching my attention to other subjects. However, the moment she stepped off the escalator, the impression she left on me was shattered like a glass table in a Jackie Chan movie.

For all that her golden slippers were worth, she proceeded to drag them on the cold granite floor with the most awful sound next to nails on a chalkboard, something like dragging a rusty shovel across a tar road. Every step she took was accompanied by that nerve-grating noise, practiced to such a motion that it reverberated perfectly across the underground train station, each step timed to start the racket again before the one from the previous step faded away, resulting in a dissonant cacophony that had me grinding my teeth.

To add to my misery, I had to wait for a friend for nearly 15 minutes, the whole time during which she shuffled aimlessly around the station control and yakked away loudly on her handphone, a virtual one-woman noise machine. I shifted my location several times but to no avail, for my eardrums were continuously subjected to the abuse of her dragging feet, amplified by the acoustics of the low ceiling. Even the din of a commuter crowd could not drown her out, such was the resonance of her slippers begging for mercy.

I decided that for the sake of my sanity and her safety, I had to leave the station and meet my friend somewhere else. As I finally managed to gather my thoughts, something occurred to me that probably applies to musical instruments and everything else in life:

“Even if it looks good, it can still sound bloody awful.”

Idol Chatter

2006-09-24T22:30:00.000+08:00

I just finished watching Singapore Idol and was oddly motivated to seek out this MTV that I saw a while back and left a lasting impression on me.

In this one, Johnny Cash does his take of a Nine Inch Nails song written by Trent Reznor and makes it his own. It starts off with him picking on a black acoustic guitar, his signature baritone noticeably subdued, frail even, but lacking none of the nuance. In all his wizened, wrinkled glory and dressed in black (he was, the Man in Black afterall), he sings a song that pretty much sums up his life juxtaposed against clips and images of his younger days. The lyrics are simple yet poetic and surreal, especially if you’ve read his life story of drug abuse, religious issues, family and love. Ominous monotone piano tolls like a bell throughout, pushed on by pounding acoustic guitars getting louder and louder as he delves deeper into his past and culminating in an abrupt deafening silence.

I’d love to see what he would have had to say if he were to judge American Idol.

But then again, I don’t think he would have made it past the first round.

The Woman In The Hat

2006-09-24T21:48:00.000+08:00

The sight of her strikes fear deep into the heart of any man whose consience is less than clear. She prowls the streets, slowly but purposefully in her search for those who would rather not be found. Her arrival is often unannounced and devoid of fanfare, and those who seek to stay clear of her would do best to spot her first.

And when she does appear, it doesn’t matter which societal strata you belong to. CEO to chef, businessman to deliveryman, all are subject to her scrutiny and the consequences of being found wanting. On any other day she might appear benign, but once she dons her unmistakable trademark garb she possesses a power invested in her by an unseen force that makes its presence felt through minions like herself.

She is…the Parking Coupon Aunty.

It’s funny how an otherwise homely-looking middle-aged woman can wield so much power over the lives and decisions of all drivers. In a country where cars are ridiculously expensive to begin with and fitted by law with electronic transceivers for the sole purpose of extracting money from the sucker behind the wheel, traffic fines and parking summonses rub copious amounts of salt into the gaping wounds already sustained by car owners. As such, those of a slightly subversive nature who try to save a little on parking, either by declaring just 5 minutes later on the coupon (really, just 5 I swear) or park where they shouldn’t, end up playing a dicey game of cat-and-mouse.

She is the leveler of society, meting out punishment to all who transgress without regard for who you are (unless you’ve got a diplomatic license plate) in typically efficient fashion. Once she punches the numbers into that infernal machine of hers that she carries around, it prints out the dreaded white slip that all drivers loathe seeing on their windscreen. Those of us who seek to drive on the crowded roads must submit to her power, resigned to the fact that she represents an extension of that unseen force that will not take no for an answer. Some have tried asking for mercy, begging forgiveness after being caught red-handed while cursing themselves for spotting her just a minute too late. All to no avail.

But in the face of adversity and oppression, a little beacon of light shines in the form of solidarity amongst those liable for punishment. Complete strangers become accomplices in spreading the word of her arrival, and coupons that still have time left on them are passed around in the carpark, the underlying principle being that it’s better to let that little bit of money spent help someone else than to let it all go to that unseen force.

The Parking Coupon. A unique Singapore icon and unifying force of the disparate drivers.

Modern Contradiction

2006-08-21T18:53:00.000+08:00

For someone who works in a profession usually considered “high-tech”, I seem to have an unconventional aversion to certain technological advances.

I met up with an old friend the other day and was greatly surprised to find that he was on time. Incidentally he had left his cell phone with someone else the night before and was uncontactable outside of his home. This meant that he had no way of letting me know if he would be late, thus compelling him to be punctual.

This harks back to the (good old?) days before cell phones, when even pagers were newfangled thingys that people clipped onto their belts to look important. Appointments were made at least a day in advance and people actually kept to the agreed timings, lest they should incur the wrath of those who had to wait. Of course, some people had already cultivated the habit of non-punctuality by then, but by and large most of us still felt some form of obligation to be on time rather than to simply send a text message informing the other parties about our predicted lateness. To this day I’m still a bit of a stickler for punctuality, but tolerance remains my policy (sigh) since I wouldn’t have many friends left if I were to be anal about it.

Another technological advancement I’ve come to distrust in the workplace is email. Somehow or rather, sending emails to people to get things done only works if they actually read their email and even if they do, it has little staying power in a person’s memory (myself included). Of course we have phones, but me being the eccentric sort I never liked talking over the phone, which might explain why I never had much luck with the ladies in those days when talking on the phone for a minimum of X hours a day was a mandatory stage of courtship. Maybe it still is, I don’t know.

So how do I get things done or information extracted then? I do the unthinkable.

I ask them. Face to face.

Usually it’s a short walk across the office or the shopfloor (the part of the manufacturing plant where all the machines are), and ironically it’s faster than it would take for someone to reply to an email.

The best part is that it actually works.

In an age where fixing a car needs a masters in electrical/software engineering rather than a penchant for greasy hands, I am perhaps a rare oddity (among my peers, at least). I don’t trust a computer in any car I drive to save my life apart from ABS. I prefer the purr and roar of vacuum tube amplifiers to the grind and squeal of solid state ones. I still like the feel of holding newspapers in my hands. I don’t need 2000 channels on my TV (heck, I don’t even watch the damned thing apart from soccer and playing music DVDs). I hope the day never comes when I have to tote a Blackberry around and be enslaved to email wherever I go.

I am the antediluvian technologist.

Morning has broken

2006-07-23T09:14:00.000+08:00

I was semi-awoken by the sound of birds chirping and gentle sunlight through my window. In my slightly-less-than-comatose state, I struggled to recall the events of the previous evening. After the briefest of contemplations I gave up and turned over lazily to continue sleeping.

But something was not right. There weren’t supposed to be any birds. There wasn’t supposed to be any sunlight.

The sudden realization hit me like a freight train.

I burst out of bed and glanced at the clock to confirm my worst fears. Yeap, I forgot to set my alarm clock and was now woefully late for work, which was way beyond reach by public transport. If I had jumped onto a cab NOW, I would have been only 15 minutes late, not to mention $20 poorer. I hadn’t even completed a month at work and now I was going to clock in late before I even got my first paycheck. Not exactly a stunning impression to leave on the boss, not in the right way at least. It all seemed like a horrific nightmare and I was hoping to wake up and find that it was 1am, but the pain in my toe as I stubbed it against some random piece of furniture confirmed that I was very much alive, and also very much dead.

Adrenaline kicked in as I hobbled around the room and hastily threw on the first set of working clothes I could grab from the cupboard. I rummaged frantically through my desk for my wallet and phone, spilling some of its other occupants onto the floor. All manner of expletives ran through my head but didn’t have time to come out of my mouth. Dashing to the toilet, I strangled the life out of the hair gel tube and slapped the strangely-alcoholic smelling substance onto my hair before running a comb through like a rake on hay. I grabbed up my bag and did a quick equipment check as I raced out of the door.

All this while, 90.5FM was playing in the background on my Dad’s hifi, providing a grotesquely mismatched 80’s disco soundtrack to my horror movie. He was seated at the dining room table in his pyjamas, reading the papers with a cup of coffee. I’m usually the first to wake up in the morning to get ready and Dad gets up just before I head off to work, so there’s usually this overlap to ensure that I don’t oversleep. Which didn’t quite work out on this occasion.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

He looked up from the papers with a look of surprise and incredulity, like I’d just suggested to him that the world was flat and carried on the shoulders of four giant clowns who were brothers of Ronald McDonald with colour-coded afros and had television screens on their posteriors.

“Are you crazy?”

“Today is Sunday.”

NUS Commencement 2006

2006-07-13T23:02:00.000+08:00

The Valedictorian Speech I Was Never Asked To Give

Good evening, Dean, faculty members, parents, friends and fellow graduates. It gives me great pleasure to address all of you tonight as an average NUS student who’s finally done after 4 years.

As all of you hold your empty cardboard scroll holders in your hands right now, one thought going through your minds should be that now is a good time to graduate. Sure, the job market is looking good and some of us even have jobs already, perhaps having had to sacrifice one day of no-pay leave to sit here in quaint gowns and appear scholarly. The economy is recovering steadily by government estimates, even as the income gap increases and the cost of living keeps going up, starting with taxi fares. The political climate is largely stable in the wake of the recent general elections, thanks to our governments’ diligence in rooting out dissenting views and shutting down sources of criticism in the media.

But those aren’t the only reasons to be glad. While we gingerly take our first steps into the working world, let us not forget the alma mater that we leave behind and look back upon the constant change and evolution that NUS is going through.

The buildings within our campus are becoming a sight to behold, more so with each passing day. Our university admin now works out of a spanking new University Hall after moving out from their recently renovated premises, no doubt an extension of the policy of continual upgrading. Amazingly, this policy co-exists in perfect harmony with campus planning that combines the modern architecture of the glass-facade University Hall with the old-world rustic charm of wooden benches in the most venerable of lecture theatres. Balancing the preservation of our history while forging ahead in modernity is a complex task made to look easy by our planners, who almost seem like they could do it blindfolded.

We must also thank our university for preparing us for the rest of our lives as Singapore citizens, for life in NUS is a perfect microcosm of life in Singapore society. The fee hike to be thrust upon subsequent batches is a reflection of the current trend of increases and was decided upon in a highly expedient fashion, in the context of the above-mentioned continual upgrading and the increasing numbers of professors being hired. As academia of NUS, they are expected to carry out ground-breaking research and write papers to change the world, and they must be paid accordingly in order to attract top talents and retain them. Like every good organization there is a healthy mix of abilities, some of them brilliant researchers and some being excellent teachers. By cross-training and exposing the researchers to the teaching environment, the aim is to bring out the best of their communication skills to share their knowledge with students. This is an admirable goal which they will continue to work towards.

The news of the fare hike decision was also delivered in a utilitarian no-nonsense fashion, after which the university admin sought to engage the student body and allow them to air their views, all of which were duly noted. Again, with parallels to our nations Great Casino Debate, this is a Singaporean way of life which NUS seeks to get students accustomed to. The concept of Asian-style democratic decision-making was constantly impressed upon us, and I’m sure most of us would by now understand the expectations of the social contract for Singapore citizens.

And what would a world-class university be without world-class marketing? If we want to continue pulling in students from the world over (or at least closer to our part of the world), then we must project the image of being an international institution. I’m sure many of you would have seen the advertisements for NUS business school, cleverly aimed at a generation brought up on Beverly Hills 90210 and Friends. The portrayal of an American household and a prospective American student foregoing many of her prestigious local colleges in favour of NUS is a fantastic piece of image management, perhaps surpassing that of even our armed forces recruitment ads. For this, I must single out the NUS business school marketing team for applause, for their creative and liberal use of advertising license.

*stops to take a sip from an unmarked stainless steel flask*

My fellow graduates, after having watched each and every one of our relatively large faculty come up to this stage individually to collect the piece of paper for which we have toiled, I’m quite sure the foremost thing on your mind (as it is on mine) is having to wake up before sunrise to head for work the next day. I therefore conclude this speech, and wish all of you the very best.

And good luck.

Jimi Hendrix - Hey Joe

2006-07-08T01:36:00.000+08:00

The first week at work went by slightly faster than expected, perhaps due to the need to sleep early in order to catch the World Cup semis and head straight to work after.

It’s the typical office environment. Bright fluorescent lights, plasticky desks and cubicle partitions, the constant whirring of printers and photocopiers going about their daily business and the background symphony of machines on the shop floor pounding and grinding to the beat of the omnipresent baton of production. I spent most of the week reading up and trying stuff out on the computer to get up to speed, in between the various administrative matters of being a new employee.

During this time I met one of my best friends in the office. His name is Joe. Everyone say hi to Joe.

“Hi Joe.”

Yeap, Joe is the kind you want to have with you in the office, especially one as ridiculously air-conditioned as mine (for a tropical country, we’re really crazy about it). He keeps you awake when you’re sleepy, keeps you warm when you’re cold, keeps you occupied when you’re bored, makes you look more hard-working than you really are and always beckons you to the pantry. I meet Joe maybe 2 or 3 times a day as per required, with empty mug in hand.

The humble coffee bean has evolved from being the sustenance of hardy nomads to being the sustenance of sedentary office-folk. It is the 2nd most traded commodity after oil, but I have a feeling that most other industries would collapse without it, with billions of office-folk falling asleep at their desks or convulsing sleepily on the floors of their pantry from caffeine withdrawal. Even the police forces(what, donuts without coffee?) and militaries would not function, which might in turn lead to social and global turmoil. If some of the so-called terrorists and nuclear-wannabes wanted to annihilate their enemies, they would perhaps do better spending more time and money on a coffee plant disease than on misguided ideologies and launching missiles.

“Insolent fools! You have crossed us for the last time! In an hour from now, we shall unleash the Coffee Flu upon this hapless world and there’s no way you can stop us! Each and every coffee bean will try a wretched death and we shall laugh over your tired, sleeping bodies as we march into every city and town to achieve world domination!”

*cue evil laughter*

I shudder at the thought. Let us be grateful and give thanks as we sip our cuppa joe.

“Thanks Joe.”

Once in a lifetime

2006-07-02T16:24:00.000+08:00

I went back to NUS the other day to pick up my graduation gown for Commencement 2006 and for the most part it was pretty smooth, apart from the pinch of having to pay the rental fee. Truth be told, if my parents didn’t want to go I would have saved the money and spent the evening on something else more productive like say, beer with pals or conjuring up a new blog entry.

But anyway, after I went through the miscellaneous stations and picked up all the paraphernalia, I was immediately approached by a lady selling plastic reproductions of degrees (the kind that doctors and dentists always hang on their walls for credibility) and she was pretty nice about it, helping me to pack the thousand and one items which threatened to spill out of my arms. Following which, out of obligation I went to view a display of all their products.

My sense of obligation ended there however, and making references to my limited budget in no uncertain terms I declined to place an order, instead asking for a name card, citing possible future considerations.

That was not the end of it. Photo studios had shrewdly set up brightly-coloured booths along the only way to the exit, proudly displaying portraits of scholarly-looking people posing in the gown to wow people into wanting one of themselves. Next to them was some memorabilia store with all sorts of graduation-themed knick-knacks like teddy bears in graduation gowns (complete with gold-rimmed spectacles), T-shirts and mugs and other what-not. The whole “feel-good-about-graduation-whoopee-it’s-over” mood seems to be a good excuse to cash in.

I couldn’t avoid the photo studio though. Dad was strangely keen to have portrait photos of the family taken for the first time and I didn’t have the heart to refuse, even though my aversion to being photographed has been well-documented. He even booked the studio before I went to collect the gown. True enough, holding uncomfortable poses and smiling awkwardly till my cheeks went numb were the order of the day, but worst of all were the unrelenting flashlights that gave me a headache for the rest of the day, almost similar to another unfortunate incident involving flashing lights.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m just not the sort to accumulate (or at least not pay for) nostalgic trinkets. I prefer to look to the future without being excessively shackled to the past, just as how I’m thinking more about my first day of work tomorrow rather than Commencement. Teddy bears will become unsanitary dust balls and paper scrolls will yellow with time, but the knowledge and experiences are the ones that will stay with me.

They say it’s once in a lifetime.

Thank God.

You never know

2006-06-18T20:03:00.000+08:00

We were doing what we loved, making music.

It was an impromptu jam at a guitar shop, yours truly playing bass and a fellow picker letting rip over a 12 bar progression. The thing about such spontaneous eruptions of musical expression, even with strangers, is that sometimes it’s brilliant and other times it’s comical, but it’s always good fun.

The sound of a falling stool behind me put a stop to it. We turned around to see a fellow customer being helped onto the floor, convulsing in a fit while his arms and legs were held out stiffly in an awkward position.

The guitar and bass went back on the wall and we sprung into action. The customer in question was laid flat on the floor, still convulsing violently and starting to foam at the mouth while his bloodshot eyes rolled upwards. An awful gurgling noise was interspersed with wheezing, and a few of us were gathered around him, trying to hold him so that he didn’t hit himself on anything. Others standing by whipped out their phones, trying to contact an ambulance and his family.

The saliva that flowed out of the corner of his lips soon took on the bright red of blood, and at this point someone prompted us to turn him on his side. The religious among us started putting their hands on him and prayed out loud, while I held on to his torso and legs to keep him on his side. Frantic running footsteps resonated in the corridor as someone ran to find a doctor in the building.

The medic and doctor came and by the time we carried him to the ambulance, he had stabilized and was semi-conscious. Last I heard he was doing alright.

***

This incident prompted me to look up the courses of action to be taken in the event of someone getting a seizure, since no one in the shop was really quite sure what to do, instead relying on a mish-mash of opinions and following whichever seemed the most logical then.

So here it is, from http://www.epilepsy.org.uk/info/firstaid.html

DO...

Protect the person from injury - (remove harmful objects from nearby)
Cushion their head
Look for an epilepsy identity card or identity jewellery
Aid breathing by gently placing them in the recovery position (shown in the link) once the seizure has finished
Be calmly reassuring
Stay with the person until recovery is complete

DON'T...

Restrain the person
Put anything in the person’s mouth (At that time someone actually suggested putting a spoon in his mouth)
Try to move the person unless they are in danger
Give the person anything to eat or drink until they are fully recovered
Attempt to bring them round

Call for an ambulance if...

You know it is the person’s first seizure
The seizure continues for more than five minutes
One tonic-clonic seizure follows another without the person regaining consciousness between seizures
The person is injured during the seizure
You believe the person needs urgent medical attention

***

Someday it might be useful.

The Write Stuff II

2006-06-18T15:22:00.000+08:00

Here we go folks, my second article for uberture, music-based as always. Being chronically less-than-hip, I'm not too sure what to make of the rest of the website, but I'm sure everyone can find something to look at there even if it's just eye-candy. Aye aye.

The Unknown Song

2006-06-06T14:04:00.000+08:00

Living at home for the past month or so has reacquainted me with the sights and sounds of my neighbourhood, as well as getting them used to having me around. The most common feature of my immediate surrounding soundscape is that of my next door neighbour playing mahjong in the afternoons with her fellow retirees. However, today the usual chaotic clatter of plastic tiles hitting each other was strangely absent.

A short downpour had just come and gone, and all that was left was a light drizzle. My neighbour’s birds began chirping again after being overwhelmed by the sound of rainfall, interrupted only by the light rumbling of distant thunder and occasional punctuation with barks.

And as suddenly as the rain came, a voice broke out in song. A female soprano gave a rendition of a song I had never heard before, but caught my attention nonetheless for the timbre of her voice and the inflections that she sang with. It was gentle in tone yet commanding in projection, and I stretched to look out the window to investigate the source of this impromptu musical outpouring. The mythical Sirens came to mind, but I feared not for I was not a lonesome sailor out on the open seas. Not in the literal sense at least.

She was sweeping the floor of the residence next door as she sang, occasionally bending down to pick up wayward twigs and tie up rubbish bags. Music and song were probably her means of alleviating the tedium of household chores, much like how the early Afro-American slaves sought to get through the laborious day through work songs and cleverly-disguised protest songs. Like them, she too came from far away, though in better living conditions and employment terms. In all probability, she had a family to finance back home and a future to build for herself.

Not all of her compatriots have had it easy though. Increasingly shocking cases of maid abuse surface from time to time, ranging from overwork, reckless endangerment to outright assault and mutilation. The relationship between maid and employer is a complex one, subject to much interpretation between the two parties but skewed enormously to the part of the employer. Absolute power over another in servitude can bring out the best and the worst in human beings, and the perpetrators range from the uneducated to the well-heeled professionals. Surely, such cases are the minority but the sheer ferocity of the abuse being meted out sometimes begs the question of how many more suffer in silence, even if to a lesser degree that nevertheless cannot be condoned.

Not wanting to be caught in a potentially embarrassing situation, I backed out of the window and contented myself with listening in anonymity.

For as long as she felt like singing.

The Mountaineer

2006-06-06T01:36:00.000+08:00

A drop of sweat fell off his brow onto the dry rock below as he stood on the summit.

The climb was never easy. The ascent got off to a good start, with lush grass underfoot and a gentle slope which was testing without being excessively tiring. Not exactly a stroll in the park, but not Mt Everest either. As the journey went on, the vegetation took on a different hue in progressive shades of brown, until all that was left were tumbleweeds blowing in the wind.

Towards the middle the terrain became rockier and the gradient swept steadily upwards, until at some points it was passable only by vertical climbing. At times the rock grips crumbled in his sweaty hands and distractions were never far away, circling around him like vultures over carrion.

Occasionally there were angels who whispered encouraging words amidst the howling winds, but being transient beings they were unable to extend a helping hand, nor was it their place to do so, for this was an ascent that each individual had to achieve for himself. The treacherous terrain threatened to throw him off, and at one point a loud mocking voice resonated in the valleys, attempting to plant the seeds of doubt in his mind.

But he would have none of it. Even as the chances of reaching the top started slipping out of his grip, hope and dogged determination pushed him up just a little bit at each step, maintaining a mathematical possibility of success, however remote it might have seemed.

And yet here he was, surveying the land before him from the top as he propped up a foot on a wayward rock. He took a long, refreshing gulp from his canteen filled with his beverage of choice, and allowed it to slowly flow down his parched throat like cold water over a dry river bed.

Atop the summit, he could see the mountains he had conquered and left behind, all of which seemed like mounds of dirt in comparison. Turning around, he saw in the distance yet another peak, looming much taller than the one on which he stood.

*cue music : Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters*

And he whispered under his breath,

“I’m coming to get you.”

None of your...

2006-05-31T22:47:00.000+08:00

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.

A simple dish

2006-05-23T15:22:00.000+08:00

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.

Ladies and gentleman, this is your captain speaking...

2006-05-09T20:55:00.000+08:00

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.

For those about to rock

2006-05-08T23:23:00.000+08:00

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.

The Write Stuff

2006-05-02T20:38:00.000+08:00

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.

Soul of a Man

2006-05-02T20:19:00.000+08:00

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.

Imagine

2006-04-19T02:04:00.000+08:00

It’s amazing what the human mind can create out of technology.

I was searching on the Internet for some technical specifics about motors, so I tried numerous search terms and went through an infinite stream of pages. Page after page of technical specifications, graphs and tables later, I stumbled upon something very curiously intriguing, and the first thing that went through my mind was “Damnit, why couldn’t I have done something like THIS for my Final Year Project?”

I’ll leave you to read up on the details. When I went through the development process of this…product, I found many similarities in how I went about my FYP. There was the initial skepticism, working with a problem that few understood, and of course the many rounds of prototyping, testing and redesign. Even the waking up at 3AM with an idea part also struck a bell.

Now that I’ve printed out my thesis for binding and final submission after consulting my supervisor, it’s fun to speculate on what I could have done if I really had complete freedom in choosing a project.

Well, I’m not entirely sure the testing process would have been that enjoyable in the long run, but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be as messy as mine.

I think.

Surprise surprise

2006-04-10T22:18:00.000+08:00

You Are Guinness

You know beer well, and you'll only drink the best beers in the world.
Watered down beers disgust you, as do the people who drink them.
When you drink, you tend to become a bit of a know it all - especially about subjects you don't know well.
But your friends tolerate your drunken ways, because you introduce them to the best beers around.

What's Your Beer Personality?

That song in my head...

2006-04-10T20:08:00.000+08:00

Back in the time before I discovered my musical inclinations, there was always 90.5FM as played by my dad in the car and in the house, and there was this one filler song that they always played, the kind of instrumental that gets thrown in between when there’s nothing else to play. I first heard it when I was still in primary school, probably late 80’s early 90s.

The thing about this song is, it had such a jazzy and catchy riff that it simply stuck in my head, and even in those days when I didn’t know much about jazz I could already hum it from memory. That was probably my first exposure to the rhythm of the blues and the sounds of jazz. As I became a big time fan of the blues, my curiosity about that song just grew stronger and stronger.

The problem was, I never knew what it was called. Due to its rather anonymous nature, the radio DJ never bothered to mention who it was or even the title of the song. Much as I liked the song, I couldn’t find it anywhere and I had to be content with being reminded of its existence only when it played on the radio. Searching through the discographies and sound clips of composers like Ennio Morricone and Henry Mancini, whom I thought would have composed something along that line, were futile.

They played yet again the other day, and this time I somehow had the presence of mind to ask my dad what it was called. He didn’t quite know either, except that the song name had the word “Tijuana” in it.

So off to the Internet I went, going in circles all around this huge mess of what Mick Jagger had unknowingly prophesised in Satisfaction as “useless information”. Without going into the gory details, my intensive detective work paid off at long last.

“A Taste of Honey” by Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass.

It was bold and brassy, with a groovy walking bass line and a driving shuffle. The melody was by no means flashy, just a simple line played by a lead trumpet backed by a brass section and interspersed with the kind of tremolo-drenched electric guitar found mostly in surf tunes or spaghetti westerns. In fact, after listening more intently it had a distinct mariachi brass feel (the clue is in the Tijuana part) rather than a jazz big band sound.

The whole combination oozed 60’s vibe, but then again that’s because it WAS in the 60s. The sound of that era was also firmly etched in my mind by The Shadows (especially this song) and The Ventures. It seems to me that was truly the age of instrumentals, a time when an instrument could carry the whole song without vocals simply by playing a memorable melody that could paint a picture in the listeners mind. It could have been a trenchcoat-wearing sleuth walking the sleazy streets, a spy threading through the corridors of his nemesis’s large castle, a slicked-up bachelor cruising the highway in a Cadillac or a surfer-dude (before they were called dudes) riding the waves on the beach to win the adoring gaze of bikini-clad and immaculately-coiffed girls.

And perhaps, that’s influenced the way I approach music. Less fancy notes (I couldn’t play them even if I wanted to anyway) and more meaningful lines, the kind that I can hum in my head.

I’m not sure many of today’s songs would have lasted that long in my memory if they were playing back then.

Let's see...

2006-04-03T00:08:00.000+08:00

This blog is coming close to it's first year anniversary. It started life as a chronicle of my 10 week internship at the suggestion of an enthusiastic friend (I wonder if she still reads it now though) and it has since become a creative outlet of sorts, a pseudo-pedestal-cum-podium from which I dispense opinions I deem suitable for public consumption and espouse my somewhat lopsided musical tastes.

To commemorate this occasion let's have a look at some of the more recent interesting searches that led here, see if you can figure out which entries contained these terms:

1) brewerkz

2) people who captures stray dogs (I don't know either)

3) hound dog taylor video (perhaps related to the above)

4) chet atkins

5) fabrication galvanised sheet

6) roomful of blues singapore

7) vjc guitar ensemble

8) stone polish sandpaper (no idea)

9) blues virus singapore

10) NUS Chancellor Shield

Among some of the other more "colourful" search terms that aren't stored in my Sitemeter log anymore but which I distinctly remember are:

1) nude singapore girls (or some permutation/combination)

2) geylang girl xxx (ditto)

3) trashy lingerie

Again, see if you can spot those. Don't expect anything too exciting though.

And to reflect the marvels of how the Internet has shrunk our neighbourhood, here are two other bloggers with whom I've made contact through this blog:

1) Angels and Vagabonds by Tim McGarry

2) Bamboo and Motorbikes : Soundscapes of Japan by Ayme Frye

Both are excellent blogs well worth reading, you'd do well to check them out.

To end it off, I would like to extend a warm welcome to a certain Singnet user who seems to keep entering my blog via a yahoo search for "boogie-chillun.blogspot juke joint". Regardless of whether you happen to be an attractive female or not, do drop a line and say hi.

Back to our regular programme.

Rolling Stones - Satisfaction

2006-03-30T22:09:00.000+08:00

“Do you seriously think that will work?”

Those were one of the first few words I heard from a certain person about my Final Year Project when I had just started on it and was experimenting with concepts. Now, this person had graduated from NUS with a degree in Engineering perhaps 2 or 3 years ago and was an employee of NUS, working in the same laboratory where I was based. He was, arguably, slightly more experienced even if he hadn’t yet worked in the engineering field, and had seen the work of previous teams before me. I had just taken over a project that, frankly speaking, wasn’t in very good shape. The basic idea was there, but the prototypes created so far weren’t useable at all. I had my work cut out for me, and then some.

That was about 1 year ago. Today, as I sit here typing this with the 1st draft of my thesis sitting beside my laptop (after several days and sleepless nights of last minute machining, testing and typing) , it’s time to take stock.

It wasn’t always smooth sailing. There were precious few precedents to go by and information on such things was scarce and patchy. Material disappeared into an eternal limbo in the United States Postal Service, and the workshop undertaking our machining was bogged down by a huge backlog and staff reshuffle, adding delay after delay. Many design iterations, educated (albeit sometimes lucky) guesses and lots of elbow grease went into creating the various prototypes that I tested and found somewhat unsatisfactory. Hours were spent at my cluttered drawing desk with pen and paper, scouring the libraries and Internet for inspiration or sitting in front of my computer screen doing 3D models, and also in the workshop undertaking some of the machining myself (with a steep learning curve) when I just couldn’t wait for things to get done.

Mine was probably one of the messier FYPs, which suited me just fine. After machining my hands would be covered with black grime that stubbornly resisted most forms of soap, and after testing my prototypes I’d end up with plenty of dust on my clothes and myself, looking more like a construction worker than an undergraduate student. Still, I was like a pig in the mud, perhaps in more than the figurative sense. Stuffy laboratory experiments and complex theoretical discourses aren’t my kind of thing, and this was right up my alley.

Finally, everything fell into place, and not a moment too soon. Days before the submission deadline for the first draft, the last iteration of my design was finally coming to life as finished products and machined components came pouring in. After putting it all together and doing some last minute testing, I finally had a prototype that could get the job done.

Which is why when I recalled the words of that certain person, who has since left for work elsewhere, I couldn’t help but smile to myself. The war may not be over, but winning each battle brings with it a certain sense of satisfaction, even if there’s more to come.

Making stuff work gets me going. And yes, I think it works.

For King and Country

2006-03-25T00:28:00.000+08:00

Yet more forays on Youtube.

While I was searching for some videos of ZZ Top, this one came up. Of course, the 2 bearded fellows did their usual blues-rock thing with panache, but the other 2 fellows got me curious. Cowboy hats, flame-motif shirts and of course, a Telecaster to complete the whole psycho-billy guitar-slinger look. Naturally, I had to check out these guys who went by the stage name of Brooks and Dunn.

I’m not familiar with today’s country music apart from a disdain for Shania Twain. The impression I got from reading forums (mostly guitar-based) and reviews was that the sounds coming out of Nashville today are a sudden departure from the traditional country sound, to the dismay of many a traditionalist. Criticisms such as inane song-writing, soulless instrumentation and over-production akin to mainstream pop were all leveled at the current country scene. Not very promising.

Which was why I was quite surprised to hear some of the Brooks and Dunn songs and videos. While it’s true that some of them are slickly packaged MTV friendly tunes designed to go down well with a mainstream crowd (one or two of them do remind me of the awful shmuck that I abhor on the radio waves), the rest do have some musical credibility to them. They don’t really stick to the traditional country sound though they do have a pedal-steel player and a fiddler, but if you look at it for what it is it’s actually quite listenable. Some blues boogie-woogie piano sounds and raunchy slide guitar work find their way into Boot Scootin’ Boogie, while Play Something Country brings on the rock side of it, on top of being the soundtrack to a testosterone-laden dream. Even though Ain't Nothing 'Bout You sounds suspiciously like some LeAnn Rimes song, the lyrics make a lot more sense even if they're simple. As long as you leave your expectations of an old-school country band at the door (if you have one), you’ll find something to like. If for nothing else at all, at least for the fact that they're a band actually playing their own instruments in this age of scratchy turntables and electronic noise.

Apart from the abovementioned expedition into the current scene, I also jumped into a time machine back to the 1930s to check out Django Reinhardt, one of the most recognizable names in gypsy jazz. A virtuoso guitar player who did a lot more with his 2 intact left fingers than most people can with 4, he was probably the defining force in the genre. While it’s not exactly a very popular one, it’s nevertheless being carried on by many talented practitioners today such as John Jorgenson, whom I managed to catch in Singapore. It was a mightily impressive performance, being my first time watching such music being played live, though perhaps a better venue could have been chosen. Anywhere other than a loud rock bar with its usual crowd.

I guess sometimes a little bit of exploration is good for the musical self, and by extension the human self. Stepping out of the comfort zone once in a while can be a source of comfort in itself.

Dire Straits - Money for Nothing

2006-03-10T23:53:00.000+08:00

I finally managed to get out of school for my Friday afternoon happy hour at Brewerkz after many weeks of involuntary abstinence. As I made my way, a particular advertisement poster caught my eye, with a huge print of a SGD$50 bill and the words:

“Why work for cash?”

An instinctive voice at the back of my head immediately shouted back “If not for cash then what else?” There didn’t seem to be anything else elaborating what it was, so I left it at that and trooped on down to the watering hole.

As usual, I sat at the bar and pored over the Straits Times at a leisurely pace, over a few pints. Once again the same advertisement graced the front page of one of the sections, this time with the tagline:

“When you can shop for cash?”

Now this had me curious. Upon reading the fine print I realized that it was some advertisement for yet another credit card, this time launched by a local property company. I don’t quite remember the perks that they offered, but the general idea was to get people to spend more money with the help of yet another bonus points/benefits scheme. One that I distinctly remember though, was:

“Free massage and coffee*

*Terms and conditions apply”

Absolutely ridiculous. Is this what it’s come to?

This may sound absurd but credit cards are being touted everywhere like fake watches. Just take a walk down Orchard Road on a weekend and chances are you’ll be approached by several persistent credit card pushers trying to flog their wares. These cards are being issued by banks and credit card companies, all competing to give the most “benefits” and “perks” and claiming their cards to be a must-have “lifestyle” item. It gets even more incredible. I distinctly remember one card being marketed on the basis of its…small physical size. Really.

The film advertisements invariably show well-groomed, well-heeled people living it up in style, strutting across the screen in glamorous outfits, frolicking on picture-perfect beaches in bikinis (I don’t mind that part) or lounging on a flashy yacht on a sea that strangely seems as calm as a swimming pool.

Several groups are being singled out for aggressive marketing, most notably working women, highly-paid yuppies and those new to the workforce looking to spend their first few paychecks. It didn’t take long for them to realize that to get to the freshest apples you skip the barrel and go straight to the tree, so now they come to university campuses as well.

I don’t have anything against credit cards per se, but the way they market it makes me sick. They shamelessly trumpet all the good stuff and swag and appeal to a very basic human impulse, the desire to get more for less, or something for nothing, with scant mention of the financial responsibility needed. It's almost like selling someone a gun without telling them which way to point it (then again, I might be underestimating the capacity of human stupidity). I guess that’s the logic behind the abovementioned advertising catchphrase.

Add to this whole mess the up-and-coming casino to be built and you’ve got a recipe for something I wouldn’t eat.

That’s why I’ve decided to hold off on getting a credit card for as long as I can. All this unabashed crass materialism manifesting itself in every possible form has somehow had the reverse effect on me. Call me cynical, but I honestly believe that the only money you can call yours is the cash you have in your pocket, not the money somebody’s willing to lend you or the money you’ve already spent.

To top off the irony quotient for the day, the same section in the newspaper bearing that advertisement had a large article about the alarming non-decline in the number of teen and youth suicides per year.

Maybe I was a beatnik / hippie in a previous life. Well, at least I’ve got the goatee.

Strange Brew

2006-02-18T02:37:00.000+08:00

It was a strange feeling indeed.

For the past 3 years I was involved in Kent Ridge Halls annual musical production as an instrumentalist, playing guitar most of the time. It was always a tiring yet rewarding experience, of figuring out and arranging all the songs, of practicing and running through scene after scene till late at night, of all the hassle and preparation in the run up to the show, and of course performance day itself.

We went through the whole musical so many times that we could almost recite the whole thing line for line, sometimes I heard the songs in my head in the morning when I brushed my teeth. Yet somehow, on performance day we’d still laugh at the same jokes that we’d heard a million times, and then some others which we didn’t find funny before but which the audience did. Every time the curtain fell at the end of the night there was the relief and satisfaction of a job well done, of many months of effort come to fruition.

I’d seen 3 different batches of production crew come and go, amongst them were a few recalcitrant, repeat offenders like myself but otherwise every year always proved a different challenge and musical experience. Working with new faces always brought a fresh perspective and variety to the musical stew, and it was gratifying to hear that the music was usually one of the more memorable points of each years production. Being involved as an instrumentalist was usually so absorbing and time-demanding that after each one was done, I found myself suddenly a little lost, not knowing what to do with the free time with which I had become unaccustomed.

Which was why it felt a little strange sitting in the crowd, watching the production as a paying audience. Everything was oddly familiar, the whole setup, venue, even the smell of the place. I could nearly imagine what was going on behind the scenes, from the stage manager sitting at the Star Trek-like TV console, the mad rush for the cast to get their make-up and hair done while having dinner, the last minute adjustments to the microphone levels, right down to the freezing air-conditioner in the dressing rooms. Deep down there was a part of me that wished I were back in the thick of action, wielding a guitar.

There was barely time to reminisce before the curtains opened. The show that they put up was fantastic, and the music was woven into the play much more smoothly than before, flowing with the ebb and tide of the plot. The 2 guitarists did a great job, doing their part to bring the music to life as I had done before. The bass player for the 2 previous years served as the music director, conducting the rest of the instrumentalists with aplomb, while another guitar player from the previous year held the bass lines firm this time round.

I was glad to see this kind of continuity in the group of instrumentalists flourish, each one becoming more adept and experienced with every passing performance. Those who were new certainly didn’t appear to be so, no doubt aided by the combined pool of experience within the group.

At the end of the night, I knew I had made the right decision to step aside, for others to undergo that same learning experience. My greatest satisfaction came from knowing that I wasn’t missed.

It still felt weird to pay for a ticket though.

Many Splendoured Thing

2006-02-15T02:55:00.000+08:00

I know it’s the time of the year to trot out the anti-capitalism rhetoric, denounce the commercialization of love, recite love-lorn non-sequitar, curse flower-sellers and the like but instead, something else touched my heart on this day (Ok, technically it’s not Valentine’s anymore but just humour me here).

And it wasn’t even a personal or physical experience. It was just something that I read on an online blues forum, an innocent thread started with a question along the line of “What made you first feel the blues?”

I wasn’t quite anticipating the enormity of it. The first few responses talked about romances gone wrong, but soon the thread delved into topics of death, illnesses, loss of loved ones, substance abuse, physically and sexually abusive childhoods, things which I couldn’t imagine being shared with anyone beyond very close personal circles, much less on an online forum. The courage that they mustered to share those events was incredible, and I could not even begin to imagine some of the things they went through happening to me.

Yet there was something enlightening in this otherwise somber discussion. With every story of sadness came a tale of musical healing and recovery, every love and life lost was a love and life gained elsewhere. The remarkable resilience of the human nature shone through for all, and knowing what the blues has done for people who share my taste in music around the world made me realize how lucky I really am.

Though I’m not a religious person, I believe I live a much blessed life. Definitely there are things that I wish did or did not happen, but I do not bear in my heart any heavy sorrows or deep hatreds. At this point, on the brink of becoming a working adult, my life has been relatively positive. There were things I could have continued to feel bitter about, but in retrospect they were all comparatively trivial or inconsequential. There is much to look forward to, though of course the abovementioned thread did remind me about the frailties of human life.

Romantic love is something of which I have precious little personal knowledge, but I’ve seen how it falls from grace at all stages in a relationship from dating right through to marriage, sometimes a little too up-close for my liking. I may or may not be the wiser for all that I’ve seen. That, time will tell.

On this day of extravagant shows of love, I witnessed a deeper, more profound one from a most unlikely source, an online blues forum. Then again, perhaps it's not that unlikely.

Understanding

2006-02-13T00:35:00.000+08:00

This weekend has been a musically-energising one.

The past few weeks have really been chock-full of performances, and while they were enjoyable (for the most part) they still left a part of me yearning for something more. So, I made my way down to Roomful of Blues for a Saturday night blues jam. I usually take it as a good time to recharge, to play some music while not really stretching out most of the time. For a bunch of guys who only get together on Saturday nights as and when to play whatever, it has its moments of brilliance but otherwise we coast along in a relaxed, laissez-faire manner. Following which we’d knock back a pint, maybe play some cards and consider it a Saturday night well spent.

It started off as it usually did, going through the various blues rhythms. On that night we didn’t have anyone to sing though, so we just took turns soloing. There was the rhythm section, 2 of us on guitar and one harmonica player. Of that bunch, 3 of us are/were bandmates in Blues Virus, namely the bassist and harmonica guy.

To digress a bit, I’ve been with Blues Virus for quite a while, thumping out the blues at venues of varying sizes and conditions. We’ve played dingy little bars, street sidewalks, big outdoor stages and almost everything else in between. Good and bad gigs all came our way, that was the way we paid our dues to play the blues. It’s been almost 4 yrs since our first gig, but recently we’ve been on a hiatus of sorts. Not that it was an agreed break, but it just happened that way. If anyone’s looking for a blues band that sounds deliberately crude and unpolished, that loves to have an irreverent good time on stage and runs on plenty of cold beer, drop me a line.

Anyway, back at Roomful, in walks our drummer whom we haven’t seen for almost a year. He was walking along with the Thaipusam procession and happened to pass by, so he decided to drop in (barefoot, no less) and see what was happening. Now, our drummer is a colourful character of sorts, adding to the band’s collective weirdo quotient. A cab-driver by day, he’s been through all the ups and downs that make up a stereotypical bluesman’s life, and his tempo always seems to teeter dangerously on the edge of disarray, not quite over the edge but just enough to keep things exciting. The beauty of his understated drumming is matched only by his unpredictability, his brilliance and erratic nature both equally spectacular. He’s not into fancy rolls and crashes and all that shmuck, but he keeps the groove going and knows all the ins and outs of the old-school blues. He’s been there, done that since long time ago and he’s still at it, hitting the skins and driving the band along.

It started off shakily enough, a mid-tempo swing to dust off the cobwebs and scrape off the rust. We took a few bars to literally get up to speed, though after exchanging some curious looks we eased into a comfortable groove. The audience didn’t seem all too interested in what we were doing, since it wasn’t really a blues-loving crowd, but that didn’t matter. Once that was done, we went into a slow blues to take things down and see what would happen.

And the magic returned, with a sort of telepathy brought us through a whole dynamic range. When he took it way down and barely tickled the skins, I responded with gentle, plaintitive bends at similarly low volumes, just loud enough so I could hear. The other guys went quiet too, at times hardly playing. When I signaled a build-up with one stinging note after another at gradually increasing volume and intensity, he went right along and brought it back up, culminating in a mad flurry of chords and cymbal crashes and probably leaving the audience quite confused, but again that didn’t matter. We were all just delighted to be speaking the same language again, one which we hadn’t spoken for a long while.

This was a totally different ball-game from what I’d been doing the past few weeks. This was unadulterated musical chaos that no amount of arrangement and practice could achieve. The kind where you play one thing and everyone else just knows what comes next. We’re not sure why and how, but it just happens.

Maybe it’s the same kind of understanding that winning sports teams, military special forces and long-time lovers share, something common to all human activity that involves more than one person. It’s the kind of understanding where one knows where the other is going without the need for verbal or written agreement, safe in the trust that the other party will make good on his part of it. For me, music is where I find this understanding with kindred souls, the understanding that binds one human to another, or perhaps a few others as well.

We started the song not knowing how it would end or exactly what was going to happen, but knowing how to follow on each other’s leads and make the most of it. That’s where the fun starts.

I hope we get a gig soon and start making the same noise again.

And the band played on

2006-02-09T12:28:00.000+08:00

The previously mentioned band competition came to a close recently and it’s time to take stock of what happened over that 3 month period.

Every year, the Kent Ridge Hall band sends a team to take part in JamX. They had a line-up already but were still looking for a guitarist. When I was approached to participate at first, I had my reservations. There was always the Final Year Project looming large in my mind, and countless other things that threatened to clash and obliterate my free time. Plus, competitions didn’t exactly fit in with my concept of musical enrichment. I personally never felt very strongly about musical competitions, being of the opinion that casting music as a competitive event detracts from its true purpose.

Somehow or rather, I still felt a certain calling to join them, but it went beyond music, beyond the potential prizes (which were, in my opinion, negligible) and beyond the recognition or glory. Well, it wasn’t really a very high-profile competition so that was negligible too.

Rather, when I thought about the line-up they already had, I saw dreams that needed to be fulfilled. Most of them were new to this, for some this would be their first public performance. Even though all of them had played for a crowd of hall residents before, taking it outside for the first time would be a whole new thing altogether. I saw in the line-up a certain hunger, a desire to prove themselves and to push their musical talents to be the best they could.

So into the fray I went.

It wasn’t easy, to say the least. This was perhaps the first time I’d ever played in such a musically diverse group, and reconciling all the different viewpoints to come to a consensus was the most challenging part of it all. This was complicated by their tentative nature, perhaps a little unsure of themselves, wanting to put up a fantastic show but not very certain how to go about it. In fact, it took me right to the very limits of my patience, which, admittedly, is rather limited. Still, recognizing a common goal helped us to sort out the path to take, and a consensus was obtained to everyone’s satisfaction.

In terms of technique and arrangement, it wasn’t plain-sailing either. The musical ideals that I heard in my head were a struggle for me to express in words, not being very good at teaching or explaining. Besides, this wasn’t the kind of thing that could easily be learnt overnight or coached individually. It took a while to get it across to them, but I was gratified to see the improvement all of them made towards the end.

To stack the odds even higher, the band ran on 4 parts estrogen and 3 parts testosterone. On top of overcoming musical boundaries, I had to overcome gender differences as well. If you’ve known me long enough you’ll probably know that my understanding of the female psyche tends towards total confusion. Well, I guess that spiced things up a little.

So practices came and went, songs were played and re-played and re-worked and many nights were spent in the band room. The preliminary rounds and finals went by in a flash as we went through a whole roller-coaster of emotions.

After the finals were over, I sensed a palpable air of disappointment amongst them as the crowd dispersed. Hearty congratulations from friends were accepted with forced smiles, even as I saw their emotions written in their eyes. Though we obtained a credible result, they weren’t too happy about being displaced by a band that arguably wasn’t fantastic, though I wouldn’t really know. At the time they were playing, yours truly was nursing a can of beer away from the venue with some good friends who came down to support our cause and not really paying attention to the din.

At the end of it all, I’m still not entirely sure I achieved what I set out to do. I was hoping to be a catalyst to help them reach their goals, to be a stepping stone so they could reach out for their dreams and find their musical selves, just as others had done for me before. Though they may have felt a little shortchanged, I still hope that they will in turn pass on what they’ve learnt and work on what they didn’t learn. I also hope that at the very least, it will be a lasting memory for them.

Perhaps, that little last bit of the dream unfulfilled will fuel them to strive towards their own musical betterment long after I’ve graduated, hopefully beyond their own graduation.

Perhaps, that was my true purpose.

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Listen to the music again

2006-02-02T23:07:00.000+08:00

This recent YouTube phenomenon has had me hooked. Being able to upload movies and stream them to everyone else leaves no excuse for the rest of us to be musically-deprived. I’ve spent many an hour watching old footage of my musical heroes, and one of them in particular brought back memories of a time past. This one too.

Chet Atkins was one of the pioneers of the finger-picking style, establishing the sound of country fingerstyle and also lending his talents to jazz and pop. His tasteful arrangements of both obscure and well-known tunes were adapted to his style of solo performance, often combining the bass, chords and melodies into a masterful display of finger wizardry. His influence on music extends beyond country and lives on today through his huge catalog of albums, recorded over his long and illustrious career.

Watching this video of him reminded me of the time when I’d just started trying to master the guitar (still trying) at the age of about 16-17, when I was in my first year of junior college (11th grade equivalent). At that time I was eagerly scouring guitar magazines for names to check out and Chet Atkins was one of them, alongside the old bluesmen like Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker. I bought his CDs, a couple of magazines with transcriptions and with the determination to practice that I had back then, picked out whatever precious little I could out of his vast range of techniques.

Now I’m pretty sure anyone under the age of 40 today would agree with me that trying to play like an old country picker wasn’t the way to be the coolest guitar hotshot in town. Neither was it the way to charm the many willing female hearts who’d fall at the feet of anyone who could play More Than Words or Now And Forever or whatever sappy love song was on the radio.

It was either that or the likes of Satriani, Steve Vai or Malmsteen. Seemingly endless solos played at 1000-beats/min at stomach-churning volume were a good way to let the ego rip and have the rest gaping in wide-eyed amazement, “Wow, you can play the intro to *insert song name* here!” I’ll have to admit though, it had me fascinated for all but the shortest while before I decided that I couldn’t do all that fancy schmuck.

At that time I was in the Guitar Ensemble, which focused mainly on ensemble arrangements but during the annual performance we always snuck in a couple of numbers for our own enjoyment and of course, a combo band to get the blood (mainly ours) pumping. I distinctly remember playing Chet Atkin’s arrangement of “Vincent” for an audience that had no idea who that was. The usual polite applause ensued, though predictably there wasn’t any prominent display of positive female reaction. Not that I was aware of anyway.

However, playing that song over and over again imbued in me a certain discipline, to keep my technique clean and avoid the sloppy habits that self-taught guitar players fall into. I tried my best to perfect it, and doing so laid the foundation for what was to be my future musical self-education. That was perhaps the most important reward I ever got for following the musical road less traveled.

In a way, my music life paralleled that of my student life in VJC. Apart from a tall, lanky Indian chap called Angshu (if you’re out there, drop me a line), I was the only one playing the old stuff. Somehow, in all other aspects I also fell into the minority. I was an English speaker amongst a whole horde of Chinese speakers, perhaps because I was from ACS(I) while nearly everyone else was from VS, Dunman High, Chinese High etc. That didn’t stop me from making some good friends and having a great time though.

Fast forward to today, I’m hardly anywhere closer to reaching Chet Atkin’s technique than I was back then, having gone on to play the blues instead of fingerstyle. But the stuff I learnt from him, his musical approach of doing everything tastefully and the wonders of his playing remain crystal clear in my mind, though that didn’t keep my jaw from hitting the floor when I caught the videos on YouTube.

Any guitar player who uses his fingers owes a huge debt to him, and you can count me as one of them. Thanks, Chet.

Listen to the music

2006-01-26T23:55:00.000+08:00

The past 2 weeks have been quite musically-involved for me.

Participating in a band competition and watching the competitors, going for other performances and having our own practices took up most of my non-academic life (apart from the brief interlude in camouflage uniform), and I had the opportunity to observe first hand many musical viewpoints.

For someone who entered music through the blues first and then went on to other music forms, I found some of these viewpoints distinctly different from my own, though not necessarily right or wrong. Things such as the expression and arrangement of musical ideas, the interpretation of genres, the dynamics of the whole sound and even the fundamental “why” for wanting to play music in the first place were called into question in my mind.

It’s tempting for me to go into a long analysis here, but since a picture speaks a thousand words, and one second of film contains 24 pictures, a little video here would suffice in expressing my musical philosophy. I’d caution that it’s probably not for everyone though.

The band shown in the video is “Hound Dog” Taylor and the Houserockers. A motley crew of 3 guys, playing pawn-shop guitars through beat-up amps and banging out the beat on a skeletal drum set. For 2 guitars and one drummer, they make an awful lot of noise and kick up a huge racket.

It’s not pretty by any stretch of the imagination, probably doesn’t sound remotely like todays (or even yesterdays) rock. The guitars are in tune “close enough for rock and roll”, the amps sound like a transistor radio being thrown about in a washing machine and the playing is primitive by most standards. From the way they look, I doubt they got the groupies banging (ok, knocking) their doors down either.

What really gets me though is the way they really come together as a cohesive unit and feed off each other’s energy, taking the lead from Hound Dog. Taking the song from sparse and barely-played into a rip-roaring tide of micro-tonally out of tune chords, they’re there right along with each other. Even with their Neolithic equipment and simplistic technicality, they capture a fantastic vibe that most bands couldn’t with a whole rack of equipment and a busload of gear. They are driven only by booze and a simple desire : Just play the damned thing.

This is dynamics at its rawest, tastefully restrained at times yet possessing a reckless abandon that wants to have fun with music minus the spit-and-polish. Maybe just the spit.

And here’s what he said about himself.

“When I die, they'll say 'he couldn't play shit, but he sure made it sound good!”

Green Day

2006-01-19T22:50:00.000+08:00

It was such an odd feeling.

Putting on my No. 4 (camouflage uniform) again felt surreal, like I was being transported back in time to my days as an active serviceman. I had to attend to some administrative matters pertaining to my reservist duties in an army camp, which necessitated military dress. Out of necessity, I fought against my body’s overwhelming reluctance to wake up before sunrise and successfully dragged myself out of bed. It would have been de rigeur a few years back, but four years of undergraduate study and hostel living have reconditioned my biological clock to sound the waking alarm only after several hours of exposure to sunlight.

The uniform fabric had the texture of worn-out sandpaper and the indelible smell that every Singaporean male associates with a faded No. 4. It took a while for me to fumble through the procedure for folding up the sleeves, an action not practiced in a long time. Ditto putting on the boots and lacing them up.

As I looked into the mirror, it was as though I were looking at a ghost from years past. The image of myself in No.4 was ingrained so deeply in my psyche, yet remained a very distant memory right at the back of my mind. Now that it was brought to the forefront, it would take a bit of getting used to all over again.

I threaded softly through the corridor, not wanting to wake my neighbours with the clunk and thud of boots.

I made my way to Seletar Camp with another buddy from those days. The guard waved us in, saying, “Just follow those guys in front.” Evidently, a lot of people were being called back for the same thing. We trudged along on a tar road under the dawn sky, pointing out buildings that were somewhat familiar and recalling vague details about what we did involving them. Slowly but surely, our military life was resurfacing from the depths of our memory banks. When we finally found the block we were looking for, we saw a queue of other similarly attired servicemen, all wearing the same uniform but some sporting distinctly “civilian” looks, yours truly included.

To our great surprise, we met 2 other buddies who were there for the same reason. We greeted each other with the mixture of shock and delight that comes from finding a familiar face from long ago. We briefly exchanged notes about how indignant we were but resigned to having to come here early in the morning, before moving on to compare our (slightly) expanding waistlines and happenings in our academic lives.

We spent just a little less than 2 years of our lives together in the same unit, a small battalion where everyone else knew each other, for better or for worse. We watched each other change from bumbling greenhorns during our training phase into jaded lao jiao (old birds) awaiting release, and everything else in between. Even our weekends were inevitably spent together due to operational duties, such was the nature of our lives as full-time servicemen.

When they said Full-Time National Service, I guess they really meant full time.

As is usually the case in the armed forces, the administrative matters turned out to be an incredible waste of time, but that was alright. It turned out to be a perfect excuse for an impromptu reunion of sorts, wearing the same uniform that we saw each other in for the longest time. After being dismissed, we made our way to Jalan Kayu for some late-morning breakfast.

Over prata, roti john and cups of milo, coffee and tea, we rekindled the memories of a time when we were transitioning from students to soldiers. All the thigh-slapping, side-splittingly funny moments, nail-biting close escapes, agonizing frustration and seemingly endless nights were recounted in varying levels of detail, along with reminiscence of the people we worked with/under. Not all of them were fantastic people, but regardless of good or bad it was all a learning and growing experience. Of learning to work under mental/physical/emotional pressure, learning to be resourceful, learning to handle responsibility and deadlines and most of all, learning to take care of yourself.

As we parted, we went our separate ways knowing that 10 years from now, we’d probably still be talking about the same incidents, laughing at the same anecdotes and cursing the same people.

This is the kind of stuff you can’t get even if you paid $3000.

The Man In Black

2005-12-26T23:23:00.000+08:00

On Christmas evening, I had a musical revelation of sorts.

I was in between appointments at City Hall, so I stepped into Gramophone music store, where I’ve scored some sweet deals on blues CDs previously. Of course, that was even before they were called Gramophone, I think it was Music Warehouse or something like that. As a sign of the times though, these days its teenyboppers, new age shtick, bastardized variants of jazz and whatever sells these days that occupies most of the shelf space.

After casting a disdainful eye at the increasingly anorexic blues section, I strolled down the same aisle just idly looking around, not hoping to find much in particular. As chance would have it, I found myself in the country section, these days known more for the buxom blondes and pseudo-outlaw crooners in fancy hats. Somehow country seems to have acquired a bad rep over here in my age group, no thanks to the increasing popularity of line dancing among retirees.

It may have been a long time ago, but my first exposure to music was actually through country. Back when I would ride in my dad’s car, the radio was always tuned to 90.5 FM, which broadcasted a heavy diet of Kenny Rogers and John Denver. To this day, I can still remember a few of Kenny Roger’s choruses, like “Lucille” and “The Gambler”. The images of the stories being told remain fresh in my mind years later, much like the pictures you form in your head when you read an engaging book.

If I ever do get to meet him in person though, I’d want to tell him that his overpriced chicken sucks.

Back to Gramophone. In my state of idle browsing, I somehow stumbled upon a small cluster of Johnny Cash CDs nestled away in a corner, all at nicely lowered prices (Hmm, I wonder why). I’d previously heard of Walk The Line, and as of now I’m eagerly awaiting its opening in Singapore. As a primer of sorts, I decided to pick up one of his albums, having only heard bits and pieces here and there before. Always being partial to live albums, I picked up “Johnny Cash at San Quentin”.

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Later that evening (the next morning, rather), I popped it into my CD player for a listen before hitting the sack, intending to browse through a magazine as it played.

I didn’t sleep till the whole CD was through, and the magazine lay on my table untouched.

This album was recorded in 1969 at San Quentin Prison, the 4th time that Cash played there. On this occasion, he had just recovered from a drug addiction, gotten married and found renewed faith in his religion. However, his guitar player of 13 years, Luther Perkins, had passed away a few months earlier. With this mixed bag of emotions slung over his shoulder, you’d expect it to show in the music, and it did. His usually thundering voice was strained and his pitching was hardly on form. The arrangements and the rest of the band weren’t as tight as usual, sometimes even his guitar wasn’t in tune.

But something shone through and rose above the technicalities. Here he was, playing for a whole prison-full of what society would consider as scum, with barely enough armed guards patrolling the aisles. Earlier on, the warden had already advised him “Mr Cash, don’t you dare look these men in the eyes. I’d suggest you and your family (he had his new wife and sisters on stage with him) look just over their heads at the wall in the back of the room.”

He threw that advice to the wind, and gave a performance that might have incited a prison riot. His banter in between songs, his choice of material, his whole stage persona indicated his personal empathy for the inmates and a genuine desire to reach out to them, and they responded in kind with loud cheers, hoots and unbridled applause that no tuxedo-wearing upper-crust types could have mustered at Carnegie Hall.

His impassioned songs told profound stories in simple words, of the life of freedom that the inmates dreamt of, of the anger against injustice. Some songs were just plain silly, bringing much needed humour into the grey stone walls, while the gospel numbers preached the word to those whom few would consider preaching to.

The brash spirit of his performance resonated with the incarcerated souls, emanating more anti-establishment credibility than any punk band can claim, boldly going where no smack-talking, swaggering rock stars would, with his wife and sisters in tow no less.

When the cameras kept blocking him from the audience and refused to move, here's what he had to say.

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Perhaps the definitive song of this album is San Quentin, a sure hit with the inmates so much so that they demanded a replay right away. You can definitely guess which lines garnered the most cheers.

San Quentin, you've been livin' hell to me
You've hosted me since nineteen sixty three
I've seen 'em come and go and I've seen them die
And long ago I stopped askin' why

San Quentin, I hate every inch of you.
You've cut me and have scarred me thru an' thru.
And I'll walk out a wiser weaker man;
Mister Congressman why can't you understand.

San Quentin, what good do you think you do?
Do you think I'll be different when you're through?
You bent my heart and mind and you may my soul,
And your stone walls turn my blood a little cold.

San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell.
May your walls fall and may I live to tell.
May all the world forget you ever stood.
And may all the world regret you did no good.

San Quentin, you've been livin' hell to me.

This whole album got me thinking about what music means to different people. For most, music is something playing in the background, secondary to the task at hand like driving, studying, dancing or whatever. For some of us, music is a way of life in itself, not an accessory to it.

But when you strip a person of everything he has, his freedom, dignity and identity, music still remains a beacon of hope and offers a semblance of normalness to what is otherwise an instituted life. Much like that scene from Shawshank Redemption where Dufrene sneaked into the prison broadcasting station to play a classical record, which Morgan Freeman’s character says “made them feel human again.”

I wouldn’t say I’ve ever lived anything remotely resembling that kind of life, not even National Service, but I can definitely vouch for how music has gotten me out of the low points.

“Johnny Cash at San Quentin” captures such a moment of release and reprieve for the inmates brought about by a charismatic performer who transcends genres, boundaries and social divides, who spoke to the condemned as he would any audience.

You see that tree over there?

2005-12-15T01:53:00.000+08:00

The season is upon us again, with all it’s attendant exhortations and clichés.

I won’t be talking about those today though, there’ll be others who can beat it to death much better than I can. Instead, I’ll talk about last Sunday, where I experienced a real Christmas tradition for the first time.

Nope, not drinking eggnog. Don’t think I’d mind though.

Not caroling around the neighbourhood. I’d drive away the stray dogs and cats.

Not gathering around the fireplace to warm up in the winter season. There isn’t one to speak of, though there is a weird penchant for freezing cold air-conditioning around here.

And definitely not getting kissed under mistletoe.

I saw a real Christmas tree.

Yeap, in all my 24 years I've only known plastic Christmas trees. Some went the full distance, with dark green thistles and faux-snow painted on. Others were unashamed of their polymeric nature, going the full distance in the other direction and coloured brightly in various shades and hues. These days, the line of decency gets crossed by those which repeatedly churn out some digital rendition of a common carol, with as much musical aplomb as can be achieved with electronic beeps.

It was a Sunday afternoon when my parents decided to stop over at the nursery to pick up gardening supplies. These plant nurseries bring back both bad and fun childhood memories. The bad ones consist of me being bored out of my head surrounded by row after row of plants while my parents didn’t show any sign of wanting to leave anytime soon, while the fun ones are about kicking and squashing those little oranges that drop from the kumquats when they’re in season for Chinese New Year. These days, I have a more refined appreciation for nature and less destructive means of self-entertainment.

Back on topic, the nursery had a few rows of Christmas trees, made up of Noble firs and Nordmann firs. The thistles looked intimidating but were soft to the touch, and running my fingers up and down the length of a branch felt more like stroking the tail of some furry animal. It wasn’t nearly as tall and green as I imagined, but an interesting sight nonetheless. The fresh pine-like scent was a welcome change from the usual urban smells, no doubt brought forth in part by the thistles brushing against my arm as I strolled in between rows of trees.

Walking amongst these trees brought back yet another set of memories. The boring ones were about setting up the white plastic tree we used to have, pinning all the fiddly branches onto the fake trunk, or at least those that would fit. Hanging up the decorations was also another pain, especially since I’d invariably break one of those ridiculously fragile glass ball thingys. Hopefully not while my parents were around. Adding to the hassle was the fact that everything would have to be taken down and stowed away for more of the same next year.

The fun ones need no guessing. Christmas for me was always about presents. The religious significance of it wasn’t totally lost on me, even though I’m a free-thinker. It’s just that the excitement of getting presents and unwrapping them on Christmas day seemed to override everything else. Eventually, as my cousins and I grew older the rest of my extended family eased off on the gifts. By then I’d come to think that Christmas was really a religious occasion, and the gift exchange was more of a material, commercially-driven thing.

Which is why my folks, myself and the rest of my family don’t do anything about Christmas these days. Most of us aren’t Christians, and it just feels odd going through the motions of a festival which doesn’t really mean much to you apart from the public holiday. I’d respect it as a festival for those of the faith, and I’d wish my Christian friends “Merry Christmas” just as I would “Happy Deepavali” to my Hindu friends and “Selamat Hari Raya” to my Muslim friends.

That doesn’t stop most people though. Singaporeans, ever keen to assimiliate (some would say ape) aspects of other cultures, have picked up on the Christmas tree tradition, and thus the ka-ching sound you hear at nurseries around this time. Shopping centres continue to boom and Orchard Road becomes a commuter’s worst nightmare, even for pedestrians. There’s always the Christmas light-up along that whole street of malls, each one gaily decorated (remember when gay meant happy?) in their best effort to win the honour of being the best decorated shopping centre.

To end-off, here’s a quote from Steve White, a great musician who recently passed through our part of the world and gave 2 performances and a workshop.

“I’m not sure if you all celebrate Christmas here in Singapore, but back in America we not only celebrate it, we sell it.”

I can say definitely say we celebrate Christmas over here, just that everyone does it their way.

Further on up the road

2005-11-29T16:36:00.000+08:00

Another round of exams just came and went, and to commemorate its end I went to Brewerkz straight away after my last paper.

It was a time for reflection. To consider what I’d done and didn’t do, what could have been, to think about the people around me, to think about the life ahead of me.

Hah. Ah well (insert active verb here) that. Actually I just went to drink beer after going dry for a long while, read newspapers and watch the sports channel.

Which is precisely the point. This semester has seen me adopt a new ritual of heading down to the micro-brewery for lunchtime happy hour every Friday after lessons end at 11 to imbibe some liquid sustenance to round up the week. Usually accompanied by The Straits Times, New Paper, occasional Herald Tribune and of course ESPN.

Over the weeks it’s sort of become my sacred hours, away from school, projects, hall and all other miscellaneous things that tend to demand attention like a spoilt heiress. Observing this kind of quiet time in a highly conducive setting like sitting right at the bar helps me clear my mind of all the clutter accumulated in the past weekdays. You could liken it to defragmenting your computer hard disk and putting everything back where it belongs.

On occasion, when inspiration strikes I’ll whip out pen and paper to sketch down some ideas for my Final Year Project (more on that in a while) or scribble lines running through my head which might possibly work out into a song. Most of the time though, I’ll usually just make do with a couple of pints for good measure.

It’s a spacious restaurant cum microbrewery with ample outdoor seating by the Singapore river, and inside it’s deliberately dark for a cosy atmosphere. I’m usually at the bar where it’s brighter though, makes it a lot easier to read. Structural steel I-beams holding up the place are simply painted over and the walls are lined with corrugated sheets of zinc-galvanised steel to give a minimalist, Spartan feel. No fancy memorabilia, paraphernalia or assorted shmuck at all. Of course there’s the obligatory pool table, big screen TV and dart board which no self-respecting watering hole should be caught dead without.

The line-up of beer is a good variety, not too many as to be overwhelming but just enough to be interesting. Brews run the range from light lagers to hearty stouts, and there’s probably a beer for everyone there. Once in a while they’ll mix it up with some new brews to keep things fresh and to liven it up for regulars like myself. Overall, the beer is definitely comparable to the craft beer I had back in California. Perhaps a bit more of a generalized taste for the masses, but still a good treat for the thirsty throat.

Everyone needs some form of quiet time like that. Not that I’m usually very stressed or frazzled come Friday afternoon, but I figure why take the chance?

The upcoming one month vacation will be rather hectic for me, with the main highlight being my Final Year Project which I’ve been working on the past semester. I can’t furnish too much details online (ask me if you must know), but suffice to say it’s a challenging project with no textbook precedents and on paper seems to defy the laws of physics. So far it’s going alright, though the prototype needs further refining the major conceptual issues have been cleared up. Some other factors involved in this project are beyond me, but I’ll focus on the task at hand. At the end of the day, getting a good grade (hopefully) and learning what I can from the whole process are what I’ll take home from this project.

Seeing some of the first years get all uptight about their first exams made me look back at how my approach to exams has changed over the semesters. Sure, there was always the initial burst of fire in first year but that soon died out, perhaps precipitated by the gradual change in the nature of my modules from more content-based to more understanding and design-based ones. I’ve never been one for the memorise-and-regurgitate approach, which has been both my doing and undoing, perhaps one more than the other. Also, the increasing amount of freedom in choosing subjects which were more interesting (to me at least) helped a great deal. There’s no longer the flutter of butterflies in the stomach just before stepping into the exam hall, but in comparison the relief after the last paper is also more muted. I guess reaching 4th year is when you start acquiring a certain non-chalance about the whole thing, especially if your CAP (our equivalent of GPA) is more or less decided.

Mine still hangs in the balance, but I’m not getting too worked up about it, not when there’s beer to drink, sports to watch and a whole world out there to read up on.

Been a long time since I rock and rolled...

2005-11-23T20:28:00.000+08:00

Seems like I’ve been getting a lot of hits since my last post, which was a long time ago. Lack of blog-worthy inspiration lately has been to blame, which in turn is due to the current exam season.

To make up for the lack of content, here’s something from the Telecaster discussion forum that simply had me in awe.

“So I just remarried in September.

The other day in the local music store I saw a lefty Simon and Patrick (made by Godin) dreadnaught gtr. that's been there for 2 years! I have lusted after it all this time. At its original retail price ($900.00) it was a bargain; solid spruce top, solid rosewood back/sides, and tone? Oh, my Lord... And now - NOW - it's been marked down to about $550.00!!!

Since I'm really not playing electric at all these days I was trying to decide which of my electrics I should trade off. I told Susanna what I was thinking about. She said, "Don't do that! What if you want to play electric again? And besides, you love those guitars!" I said, "Yeah, but, honey, I don't have the cash for this guitar, and it's a better investment than Strats and Teles, of which there are a million around, even lefties." She replies, "Why don't you take some of the money we got for a wedding present and pick it up?" "That's supposed to be for special stuff for the house, etc." "Well, this will be special. I love to hear you play. It'll be the gift that keeps on giving! I want you to get this guitar."

So I'm going to. And the first thing I'm going to do with it is write a song for her on it...”

Damn, I’ve got to get me one of those.

The Man in the Hat

2005-11-07T01:44:00.000+08:00

A warm and humid Saturday evening saw me at the hawker centre opposite Harbourfront for a quick dinner before heading back to hostel for a night of (hopefully) productive studying. Yes, you read that right, Saturday night. Saturday night exam fever that is.

Anyway, the Muslim stall where I ordered my nasi goreng was next to a drinks stall, in front of which there were 2 tables. I sat at one of those, looking idly without paying attention to anything in particular as I ate. Occasionally, some prospective looking females would appear from the corner of my eye and the common male instinct to ensure the propagation of mankind would jolt me out of my state of inattention. This was, afterall, the ferrying point for people going to Sentosa Island, a touristy little island with dated yet overpriced attractions, but having perhaps the only beaches worth going to in Singapore, explaining the presence of these females.

It was in between these fluctuating levels of attention that someone else caught my eye. He stood out among the crowd for his scruffiness. A grey fisherman’s hat with patches of black covered his head, the brim just above his eye brows. His ethnicity could not be discerned, such was the extent to which his face was browned and worn out. Week-old stubble in varying shades of grey covered his sagging jowls, and his eyes drooped downwards without showing much signs of energy. The printed polo T-shirt he wore was once dashing violet but had now become an indistinct shade of brown. A pair of grey trousers rolled up at the feet and barely-intact Bata slippers made up the rest of his attire.

Even the torn jeans I had on, which I wear in the workshop and wipe grease stains on, was in better shape.

On one shoulder he slung a travel bag, on the other a black, plastic rubbish bag containing some unknown items, and in his left hand he carried an umbrella which had seen much better times, the quaint floral print long since faded. He walked with a painfully slow shuffle, labouring with each step as everyone else passed him by with nary a glance.

He trudged towards a table opposite mine, and started gathering some plastic cups left by previous customers. There were 4 of them, and he attempted to pick them up by bunching them and putting a finger in each one, clasping them together with his right hand. At his first try, he tumbled one of them and spilled its contents on the table. Undeterred, he repeated this clumsy attempt a few times before successfully getting a hold on all four cups.

As he carried this out, several thoughts went through my mind. Is he a homeless vagabond? What would he want with these cups? Even if he did want them, why take so many? Surely he isn’t going to keep the melting ice for his own consumption? Out of curiosity, I watched him discreetly as he ambled along, carrying his possessions and the 4 cups. Slowly but surely, he made his way to the other table in front of the drink stall, where another middle-aged man was sitting.

When he finally got there, he put the cups down on the table, being careful not to tumble them again. The man, presumably the owner of the drinks stall, thanked him, though he was a little surprised.

An awkward, toothless grin and a shaky wave of the hand was all he gave, before shuffling off to wherever it was he was headed.

***

At hawker centres and food courts, people tend to shun the cleaners who clear the empty dishes and wipe the tables. Instead, they prefer to turn to one side and avoid eye contact, turning around only when the mess has been cleared and the cleaner gone without offering a word of thanks.

Perhaps, it’s the typical Singaporean thing to not bother with such niceties, especially when the other person is doing his job.

“What for? That’s what he’s paid to do anyway.”

It’s an indicator of how far we’ve come towards being a more gracious society. People generally disregard the mess before them and the mess they leave behind, thanks to those hired to clean up before and after. The fact that we even hire people for these jobs, instead of implementing a return system, says something already.

I may have been the only one to witness this show of dignity and thoughtfulness, but it didn’t matter. It’s been a while since I last saw one.

The answer, my friend...

2005-10-19T01:47:00.000+08:00

Today evening I was at Clementi interchange to meet a friend for some beer and food, as is usually the case. However, my friend was delayed and I suddenly found myself with some spare time to kill. As I stood at the bus stop, the distant sounds of a harmonica rose above the din of a busy town centre and like a bee to honey, my feet instinctively took me to where the music was coming from.

It was an octagonal shelter with one escalator going up to the train station, a pedestrian walkway to the interchange on one side and on the other side was the bus stop. In the middle stood a marker indicating the name of the train station and all around, people were coming and going. A normal working and student crowd for the 1900+hrs peak period.

In between the escalator and walkway, a blind elderly couple were seated. Their busking paraphernalia was laid out neatly, consisting of a rectangular steel tin seated on top of an amplifier, which was covered with an oddly bright shade of yellow tolex. The 2 bulky items were strapped to a small foldable trolley with bungee cords. The elderly gentleman was dressed simply (perhaps better than myself) in a grey shirt, black trousers and brown rubber slippers. He sat on a foldable lawn chair and played the harmonica through a microphone, which then went through the amplifier. Incongruously though, a shiny plastic statue of Ronald Macdonald stood beside them, fixed in a perpetual greeting wave and cheesy (pun alert) grin as if to remind everyone that Macdonald’s is everywhere.

Interestingly, he had an electronic drumpad for percussion sounds, so he was holding the harmonica and microphone in one hand and playing percussion with the other. The lady sat on the kerb and tapped along on a tambourine, though not very expertly.

I stood there for half an hour, observing and listening. He wasn’t too picky about his playing technique, perhaps to conserve energy for playing a long evening, but the harmonica is by nature a forgiving instrument. The holes for different notes are located next to each other and if more than one note is blown, the musical intervals are still listenable, harmonious even. As he blew the harmonica held in his right hand, his left hand danced on the drum pad to produce the percussion sounds. Most of the time he stuck to the basic kick drum and snare sounds, but occasionally deigned to throw in a few variations, a little roll on the snare or toms and perhaps some cymbals. It wasn’t complex at all, but he made sure it complemented whatever he was playing on the harmonica. The lady tapping the tambourine was a little tentative and hesitant, but managed to stay within the rhythmic framework for the most part.

Together, they busked for the busy crowd milling about, going through some old Chinese songs which I didn’t recognise and a couple of English oldies. Whenever someone dropped a coin in their tin, the gentleman would nod in appreciation as he carried on playing. It was a relatively generous crowd they were playing for, perhaps a reflection of the public sentiment of disgust for our (dis)organized charities which have recently come under the limelight for less than noble reasons , and a preference to donate straight to the people who need some help.

Among some of the English songs I recognised were some rather poignant numbers, given their circumstance, like “It’s A Small World After All” and “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands”. The defining song of that half hour for me though, was this Bob Dylan classic:

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea?
Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

(Taken from http://bobdylan.com/songs/blowin.html)

As I mouthed the chorus under my breath and tapped my feet, I couldn’t help thinking about the way some halls of residence and faculties in NUS approach Flag Day. This day is when some students of NUS are mobilized islandwide to wield donation tins en-masse in the name of charity, and the collection takings are totaled and contribute towards the winning of the Chancellor’s Shield, which seems to hold some prestige for the winning hall/faculty.

All the logistics are meticulously planned down to the last detail, with people being assigned and transported early in the morning to various locations to compete with students from other halls/faculties for donations. The way it is organized is almost military-like in its administrative efficiency (assuming comparison with a credible military organization), and credit has to go to the committees responsible.

However, somewhere along the way people just lost sight of the whole idea. Exhortations and encouragements are dished out liberally every year, along the lines of striving for the trophy and besting the other halls/faculties, instead of the charitable purpose of this exercise. Pep talks which are more appropriate for competitive business organizations and sporting teams are the norm, and the bottom-line has become the relative takings rather than the absolute takings.

There has to be a way to restore the spirit of charity to this once good but now perverted cause, sullied by the ugly competitive nature that rears its head when enthusiasm lacks focus.

Perhaps the wind blowing by would have whispered the answer, if only I knew how to ask.

If a picture paints a thousand words...

2005-10-13T00:49:00.000+08:00

I just spent the better part of 2 hours hunched over a tiny clear space on my desk, squinting at a metal ruler , drawing countless lines and circles and generally ruining my eyesight doing a scale drawing for one of my module term papers. Much erasing was done (with a miniscule piece of eraser no less), swear words were uttered and the resounding voice of Muddy Waters echoed in the background as I got reacquainted with my steel rule, compass and protractor.

As I finally filled in the last line and put down my pencil, I took a few minutes to marvel at my (ahem) masterpieces. It then occurred to me that I’d been doing almost the same thing since primary school. In between homework, computer games, Lego and TV, I often occupied my idle afternoons with drawing, even when those afternoons weren’t supposed to be that idle. This was before I had discovered guitar, so paper and pencil were my main muse.

It was on that piece of paper that my imagination was let loose. Fanciful armoured vehicles, Star-Wars inspired spaceships and weapons, robots ala Transformers and cars that probably wouldn’t be allowed on Singapore roads were all sketched out in varying levels of details, alternating with my forgettable attempts at comics and humour. I could spend the hours between lunch time and dinner time just filling sheet after sheet with the 2D interpretations of my fantasies, occasionally earning a reprimand from my grandmother (who I stayed with then) about the copious amounts of eraser dirt being generated. Needless to say, Art was one of my favourite subjects in primary school and the highlight of my week would be to have my piece selected for pinning on the class noticeboard at the back of the classroom.

My drawing tendencies carried on into secondary school and junior college, where empty spaces in my textbooks and notes became my canvas. I got caught more than once doodling when I should have been listening, but that never stopped me. I do remember doing a (flattering) caricature of my form tutor in JC for our class noticeboard, but that was probably the most publicity my drawings ever got at that time. The ones that could be publicized, that is.

When I enrolled in Mechanical Engineering after my 2.5 year stint in the armed forces, one of my 2nd year modules involved hand drawing and Solidworks modeling. Again, this was one of my favourite modules, especially since it didn’t involve much memorizing or studying.

Fast-forward to today. The carefully measured distances and angles, numerous drawing projection views, painfully straight lines and meticulous attention to detail (most of the time) are perhaps a far cry from my crude childhood drawings, but the idea behind them remains the same. The desire to put pencil to paper and create a snapshot of the object of my imagination prevents me from crushing up the paper and going insane when the going gets tough. One difference though is that these days, I have a bit of Glenfiddich to help steady my hands.

For most of my engineering projects I’d usually generate a 3D model in Solidworks and from there, generating a 2D drawing is a simple matter of choosing viewing angles, layouts and dimensioning. Hand drafting is pretty much antiquated by today’s industry standards. Even the same module I took earlier on where I learnt drawing by hand doesn’t teach that anymore, focusing instead on 3D modeling. Geez, even before my education is complete I’m already out-of-date, a product of the “old school”. Of course it used to be even more old school, with modules that taught basic machining like milling, drilling and turning in the first year, but that was way before my time, until some wise-ass engineering undergraduates felt that they shouldn’t be learning such lowly manual labour. Anyway, I made up for it by taking on most of the fabrication for my portion of this 3rd year project and learning by sheer trial and error.

Old school or not, the process of seeing your ideas come to life line by line on a piece of blank paper is still something I find rather enjoyable. Perhaps one day, I’ll come round full circle and go back to drawing the same vehicles, weapons and robots that I used to dream of, this time for a living. Que sera, sera.

Say what?

2005-10-08T02:38:00.000+08:00

I just finished watching Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. Funny and mindless entertainment loosely based on the issue of racial diversity in America. It’s not exactly an intellectual movie (Not in any sense that I can imagine at least), but it got me thinking about something that happened to me along that line a while back.

This was even before my internship, when I tagged along with my dad on a business trip to America. It was a small town in Oregon and we were only there for a few days. No point renting a car for that short period, so we walked around one evening hunting for food.

It wasn’t particularly cold, but the chilly breeze blowing by was just enough to make me tuck my hands into my jacket pockets. It was rather late, probably 7-8 pm but the sky was still bright. The street, however, was rather deserted, with only occasional pedestrians and vehicles. Most of the stores were closed at that time in a small industrial town. Random litter flitted in the wind, while a homeless guy pushed a trolley with all his worldly possessions across a traffic interchange, the wheels rattling against the asphalt being the loudest audible noise on the street.

We were both quite hungry and absorbed in trying to recall where we saw the eating places along the way back to our hotel earlier on. As we crossed a traffic light, a graying, bearded man in a greasy jacket and baseball cap walked in the opposite direction. I hardly noticed him, but as he passed he muttered just loudly enough for us to hear, something that sounded like,

“Wide America.”

My father is quite hard of hearing so he didn’t even notice it. I wasn’t entirely sure he was talking to us, but he WAS looking towards our direction and there wasn’t anyone else except the two of us. As a result, we both didn’t pay much heed to that weird comment.

As we continued pounding the pavement, the sheer oddity of that remark stuck in my head. My dad kept muttering about finding this Chinese eatery that we passed just now, but I continued to ponder. What on earth did it mean? A cursory glance at a map would confirm that America is indeed wider than it is long, but why would someone feel such an urge to give two passing strangers an impromptu geography lesson?

Could it have been :

“Why America?”

“Wry America?”

“Ride America?”

“Right America?”

I tried all the possible rhymes, temporarily diverting my attention from my stomach to my linguistic memory banks, and it took me all of 10 minutes to figure out what it actually was.

And when I did, I chuckled to myself and brushed it off as the silly bigoted jibe* that it was and decided to concentrate on something more worthwhile.

Like finding food. Just as Harold and Kumar did.

*Can't figure it out? Hint: Read out the first sentence of this post.

Goodness gracious...

2005-09-24T01:49:00.000+08:00

In keeping with my current tendency towards posts about food, here’s one about today’s lunch.

I went to eat wanton mee at Stirling Road with the same foodie friend as mentioned before. The stall is located in a small, non-descript coffeeshop tucked away in a little corner round a downhill bend. Most of the customers are there for the wanton mee, and the 2 of us were another pair of faces in that crowd.

It wasn’t exactly very crowded, but the husband and wife team running the stall had their hands full churning out bowl after bowl of noodles. He did the noodles and wanton, tossing them into the boiling water to soften and then transferring then to boiling soup, a simple process but timed to perfection for the right taste and texture. She handled the rest, adding the char siew, vegetables, chilli and then serving and collecting the money.

The man wore a stern expression throughout, a firm indicator that nothing should come between him and his noodles. Occasionally he would bark some orders, but generally kept his attention to his boiling pot. There was a sense of purpose in the way the duo operated, but everything went smoothly like a well-oiled machine. Still, the noodles took a while to come due to the overwhelming demand, but if you know you’re going to get good stuff, the wait adds pleasure to the eating process.

While we were waiting for our noodles, we noticed a few tables munching on curry puffs. The typical Singaporean in me immediately hypothesized that they must be pretty good, or else there won’t be so many people eating them. I went to investigate and found another small stall tucked away in the corner of the coffeeshop, manned by 3 elderly ladies who made the curry puffs. They were still in the process of making a new batch, so I decided to come back after eating the noodles.

When I did go back, they were still at it, so my friend and I waited around the stall. The stall counter humbly indicated “Muslim Food Stall”, and it was located just next to a partition, behind which was the public toilet. Perhaps that’s somehow related to the “C” hygiene rating which was displayed in the counter, but that never puts off dedicated delicacy-hunters like me.

The running joke, of course, is that “D” stands for Delicious, “C” for Can Eat, “B” for Better Not and “A” for Avoid.

Anyway, the stalls white-tiled interior looked rather worn but it was comparatively spacious and everything was neatly arranged. The 3 ladies split the work among themselves. One sat on a stool in front of the stall, peeling off wads of kneaded dough, patting them into a disc and putting them through a small, hand-operated roller. Another one took these flattened pieces of dough and spooned the filling into them, then folding the skin and deftly pressing the edges with her fingers to produce the characteristic ridges which serve dual functions as a seal and for aesthetic value. The final step was to lightly fry them in oil till golden brown, and this was handled by the 3rd lady. Once in a while, one of them would switch to preparing other ingredients like dough or boiled eggs.

All of them worked at an oddly relaxed pace, given the rate at which orders were coming in. The peaceful nonchalance with which they went about their manually-intensive work was a huge contrast from the wanton mee stall. Throughout the whole process they engaged in light banter, sometimes stopping whatever they were doing to make a point. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about, but it was probably quite humorous, judging from their smiles and occasional giggles.

One customer walked up to the stall and made her order, adding, “Must wait how long ah?”

To which one of them replied, “Long long”, drawing chortles all round, myself included.

**********

Watching them brought to mind the way some of us live our lives. Fresh graduates are expected to be young and dynamic, devoting all our energy to our careers so that we can earn lots of money, buy nice things and live the good life. But how good is good? When is good, good enough? Plunging all your energy into work, combined with the Asian concept of putting in face-time at the office, can be a deadly combination that’s lethal to the soul and mental health. It’s no surprise that the idea of “quarter-life” crisis has evolved. Even now in university, I see some of my peers getting so stressed-up and burnt-out, sometimes stuck in a course at odds with their passions. As a consequence, it’s easy to forget about slowing down, taking time out to indulge your hobbies and finding pleasure in your work and life.

Not that I advocate slacking off when you shouldn’t, but I always believe that a clear, relaxed mind does a better job. The extra time that you put in at the office or library could have been used for something relaxing, putting you in a better state of mind for doing higher-quality work later. I’ve never been one to be overly-stressed out (perhaps to a fault), case in point would be writing this entry when I should be working on my term papers. Maybe, if I’d been more hard-working and studious I would have made more of myself, but I’m not too sure I’d be the same person I am now.

There’s always something to be learnt from those around you, and these 3 ladies making curry puffs reminded me of how life should be lived.

We walked off with 2 curry puffs each, fresh out of the frying pan. As I bit into the curry puff, the crispy crust crumbled gently in my mouth and the filling of piping hot curried potatoes flowed out. The light spiciness added some oomph to the savoury spuds with just a hint of sweetness and onions. After the first bite, wisps of steam emanated from the exposed filling, a tantalizing come-hither invitation for a second bite.

Ahhh….that’s what I call, good.

It's My Life

2005-09-17T00:12:00.000+08:00

Psychological discomfort is something I haven’t experienced to a large extent. Most of us have different means of triggering off such discomfort, and I recently had the unfortunate opportunity to recall what mine was.

The event was Kent Ridge Hall Bash, a clubbing event organized by my university hall of residence. In all my stay in this hall so far I had never been to one of these, knowing full well my intense dislike for such venues. However, this year, the hall band was requested to play some songs for this event and yours truly, being a guitarist for the hall band, was roped in.

It started innocently enough. We moved our equipment to the club in the afternoon, set it up, went through a thorough sound check and all. Standard procedure for most gigs we play outside of hall. After that came the wait for the event to begin.

People streamed in slowly at first, some early birds arriving to check out the scene. The lights were dimmed, candles were lit and non-descript background music was played to set the atmosphere of the club. The program was put through its paces with a quick run-through to make sure most people knew what was going on. Some of the organizing committee ran around, checking that everything was in place and basically sorting out the nitty-gritty to ensure the smooth flow of the event. A few cigarettes were lit, sending streams of smoke spiraling up against the beams from the stage lights and priming the air for more to come.

After a while, the crowd started to come in droves. The background noise level increased slowly but steadily, egged on by the growing number of excited conversations and general crowd noise. The place was just starting to get livelier, no doubt fueled by the air of excitement and hype built up prior to this event. Digital cameras were whipped out and passed around as groups of hall residents eagerly took photographs of each other in their clubbing attire.

My downward spiral started when they tried to get the sound system running. Awful rap blared out from the house speakers at volumes that could be felt more than they could be heard. The crowd, as expected, raised their own volume to be heard above the din. Even more shrieks of excitement rang through the room, and the camera flashes had become almost stroboscopic.

This had a mind-numbing effect on me. The sound of a million conversations, the flash of a million xenon bulbs and exactly one distressingly loud rapper all conspired to overload my senses and hammer away at my mental consciousness. I tried freshening up at the toilet, but every time I sat back down I was subjected to the same assault and reduced to a conscious daze. I tried starting my own conversation to keep myself alert, but the circumstances were absolutely unconducive. The only alternative was dazed inactivity, a valiant struggle within my mind against sensory overload.

By now, the voices and noises had merged into a loud drone which threatened to drown out my thoughts. The array of disco lights and camera flashes turned the whole visual landscape into a maelstrom of chaos and disorientation. What initially started as mild irritation had now boiled over into intense, full-blown disgust.

I was right on the edge, fidgeting and shaking my legs vigorously in a vain attempt to work off the frustration. I was about to shout out at the top of my lungs for some silence (which, on hindsight, probably wouldn’t have been heard) but thankfully, I had the presence of mind to make a last ditch attempt to salvage whatever remained of my sanity.

I turned to my band mate and said (or shouted), “I’ll step outside for a while, otherwise I’m gonna go crazy in here.” I left without waiting for a reply.

Standing at the claustrophobic lift lobby just outside the entrance, the incessant beat of techno was still audible and threatened to burst out every time the door was opened, but it was still a much welcomed respite. Some of my fellow hall residents were curious as to why I was sitting out when the party was about to begin, to which I replied,

“It’s too damned loud.”

I got some curious looks. I didn’t want to go into the details of how my state of mind was being compromised, not that they would have understood any of it anyway. As I tried to recover my senses, I remembered why I never went into these places voluntarily before. I’ve been in worst circumstances which involved live gunfire, thunderflashes, tracer bullets (which exit the gun muzzle with an illuminated trajectory), late night fatigue, crazy shouting and verbal abuse (both giving and taking), but I still came out with my mental faculties intact. 5.56mm caliber rounds would have sounded better than the disco beats.

The rest of the night went very well, thanks in no small part to the energy of the band and the crowd when we did play at the start and end of the program. In between the 2 sets, the 2 singers who shared my distaste for the place and I made a quick exit and headed to the coffeeshop for a quick beer.

Perhaps I’m way ahead of or behind the times relative to my peers with regards to my reaction towards such clubbing venues, but there’s no question about it. My ears are better utilized on the bandstand than on the dance floor.

After all, it’s my life.

It's only words...

2005-09-05T08:32:00.000+08:00

I don’t claim to have much credentials on this, but from the short period I’ve been playing blues, one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learnt is to play the right note at the right time. Listening to what’s happening and phrasing your musical ideas carefully will give much better results than throwing out all you have plus the kitchen sink at the first chance. Feeling the music and playing with the passion of the moment are important, but putting it across with finesse requires some amount of self-control.

This lesson applies to my personal life as well, in regards to my speech. I used to shoot wildly from my hips, my mouth often firing off without any thought for the circumstance or consequence. It was pretty much like leaving a loaded machine gun in a cage with monkeys. One incident, however, left a deep impression and serves as a constant reminder to always put my words through my brain before letting them out of my mouth.

It was back in junior college (probably the equivalent of 11th and 12th grade of high school), and all of us were required to perform a certain minimum number of hours of community service (The validity of that policy is not the subject of this discussion, and will remain as such). Back then I was a budding guitarist, playing too much and not studying enough. Along came the opportunity to clock enough hours to fulfil what I needed for the rest of the year, and that was to strum along to a couple of songs at a performance for mentally and physically handicapped children at a home for the disabled.

The perfect confluence of my needs and wants was not lost on me, so I eagerly jumped at that chance. There was this really cute girl too, though I don’t quite remember right now what her name was or even what she looked like.

Anyway, there we were sitting on some rows of chairs in the hall while waiting for the audience to trickle in slowly. Some of them were wheeled in, while among those who could walk, some limped laboriously on crutches. Others needed guidance and chaperoning. As would be expected of a whole bunch of bored students, we started chattering about trivialities. The subject was lame radio advertisements, and one of us eagerly pointed out this advertisement for a charity campaign called Adopt-A-Duck, which featured a really cheesy, high-pitched voice going “Adopt a duck!” at regular intervals while someone else was talking about the campaign. It was amusing at first, but through intensive repetition it soon became annoying, then irritating, and now it was the subject of our ridicule.

Upon mention of said advertisement, everyone started groaning and going on about how silly it was. Being prone to casting pearls of dubious wisdom at high volumes, I was quick to exclaim loudly, “Yeah, that one was so SPASTIC!”

A deathly silence ensued.

It took me a few seconds to register what I had just said in the presence of mentally handicapped children. When I finally realized it, a sickening, terrible sinking feeling in my chest took my breath away, like a hand was reaching out from inside my stomach and pulling my heart down. The horrified look on the others’ faces did nothing to ease that, and at that point of time I was beyond humiliation or shame. The feeling of a million eyes staring at me was worse than actually seeing the stares. I buried my face in my hands, not daring to look around.

The details of subsequent events are hazy, and I was to learn that there wasn’t much impact outside of the little circle we were huddled in. Still, it made for an extremely humbling experience, and I vowed from that day onwards that I would never use such terms in that context. It’s a vow I have kept till today.

That lesson taught me the value of choosing my words carefully, just as I choose my notes when I’m playing guitar. I’m still far from being perfectly tactful, and will probably never represent my country in UN as a negotiator, but at least I now know the impact of my words. Gentle reminders in the past from well-meaning people didn’t go down well with me, but this time I learnt it the hard way, through a bad mistake of my own doing.

This is a lesson I hope to share, both in terms of personal speech and music.

Bread and butter issues

2005-09-01T20:05:00.000+08:00

Early morning lessons always require a cup of coffee for sustenance. Not so much for the caffeine, which I’ve become immune to, but for the act of sipping it, which somehow keeps me awake. Also, a warm drink helps ward off hypothermia from the ridiculously cold lecture theatres.

I was at LT3, so during the mid-lecture break I made my way down to Yusof Ishak House to get myself the cuppa. YIH had been recently renovated with spanking new chairs and tables, tiles, layout, stalls and given a facelift for a brighter, cheerful look, not unlike the clichéd looking food courts in town. I won’t even go into the quality of the food from those food courts.

But what really caught my eye was people enjoying a traditional breakfast of 2 half-boiled eggs, broken and mixed with soya sauce in a plastic saucer. The result is a curious-looking lumpy brown mixture with splotches of yellow and white. Doesn’t sound very appetizing, but it’s a heavy dose of protein most of us have grown to love. The accompanying kaya toast is another legend in itself. The thin slice of sinful butter, slathered in sweet kaya and plastered between 2 slices of nicely browned toast, are sure to brighten up your morning even if you woke up underneath your bed. All of this is washed down with a hot beverage of your choice. Tea, coffee, Milo, Horlicks and Ovaltine are the usual suspects.

This hearty breakfast was made famous by a little coffeeshop in a cluster of old shophouses, oddly nestled right on the outskirts of the downtown shopping area we all love and hate, also known as Orchard Road. This small road is known as Killiney Road, and thus the coffeeshop was aptly called Killiney Kopitiam. My very first memory of that place was in primary school, about 12-15 years ago. It was sparsely decorated, the once-white-plastered walls long since given way to a multitude of stains and the non-descript concrete floor worn smooth by many soles. The tables were solid, no-nonsense affairs, with white and black-streaked marble (or what seemed like marble) tops sitting on massive, carved wooden frames with an elephant skin layer of varnish. The tops invariably had cracks, into which many years of drink spillage would seep in and discolour permanently. The wooden chairs are memorable too, especially in this age of plastic-everything. They’re rather hard to describe without the aid of a drawing (perhaps the engineering education is getting the better of me), but those who were around then should know what I’m talking about.

The elderly folks running the coffeeshop weren’t particularly friendly, but their efficiency and incredible memory for orders was amazing, putting most of the service staff in Singapore today to shame. No one ever needed a menu to order. If you went there you probably knew what you wanted even before you set off, and when you did get there you’d be greeted by a familiar aroma, alternating between that of bread being toasted over charcoal and coffee being brewed. The din of orders being shouted and Chinese oldies blasting from a transistor radio did little to faze the customers, most of whom would be spreading out the daily newspapers on the huge marble tables to read, alongside their favourite breakfast.

Fast forward to today. The Killiney Kopitiam name has since been franchised and turned into a chain of profitable outlets spread all over town. Most of them are decorated in a pseudo-authentic coffeeshop manner which runs the gamut from tacky to tasteless, plastered with black and white pictures in an attempt to gain some historical credibility. Even the original venue has been completely sanitized in food-court fashion, and the haughty middle-aged lady who sits at the counter to take orders speaks only English, even if you address her in Mandarin or some dialect. Countless other places have also started selling this traditional breakfast (such as the abovementioned stall in YIH), so it is no longer just the domain of Kiliney Kopitiam.

Taste doesn’t vary that much, though perhaps the most abysmal will stand out. The sad thing though, is that while the Killiney name is being milked of its association with the traditional breakfast, few of those from my generation would know or remember the actual Killiney Kopitiam, before the forces of commercialization swept it up and tradition was hijacked in the name of marketing. The main venue (I wouldn’t say source, I don’t know for sure) for this breakfast that has fed many a Singaporean has become a part of history, and hopefully our memories.

Perhaps, this is the answer to the question raised in the previous post.

If food be the music of life...

2005-08-28T21:23:00.000+08:00

Friday afternoon saw me hanging out at Pek Kio hawker centre (near Farrer Park and Little India) with a friend who, like me, appreciates good food and happens to be a walking encyclopedia of eating places. On this occasion, we were there for a good cup of coffee before meeting some other friends for lunch at Little India.

My friend waxed lyrical about this particular stalls’ coffee, but also mentioned the eccentric nature of the man who made the coffee. An old-timer with perfectionistic tendencies, he was known to evaluate cups of coffee by using a metal teaspoon to scoop up some coffee and let it drip back into the cup, presumably to check on its consistency or colour. If it did not meet his exacting standards, he would pour it away and start over. He would also insist on keeping his cups hot, in the belief that making the perfect cuppa requires everything to be maintained at a high temperature.

When I went to order the coffee, I got to observe him making a new batch of brew. He was a quiet man, speaking only to clarify orders, otherwise they would be acknowledged with the slightest of nods. His face had an intense expression, framed by his grayish fringe which would have been neatly combed up but dropped down the side of his face. Faded polo T-shirt, bermudas held up by a leather belt and rubber slippers are the de rigueur attire for most hawkers, and he did not stray from that. His female helper, perhaps his wife, did most of the talking to customers and helped to spoon in the milk and sugar after he put down the cups of black coffee.

The stall itself is like most other hawker stalls, a small squarish cubicle slightly less than 2m x 2m, decked out with stainless steel cabinets, sinks, stoves, counters, cabinets etc and having just enough space for two people to stand in. In his little corner he had an assortment of coffee making paraphernalia, like the long spouted conical pot, coffee filter, assorted stainless steel mugs and spoons, all arranged neatly and hung within easy reach, as would the tools at a good workbench.

To start off, he poured away the bottom portion of coffee in his conical pot. With a large metal mug and deft motions, he scooped up hot water from a heated reservoir to flush the pot. He then scooped out some ground coffee powder from a biscuit tin, mixed it with hot water and proceeded to pour it into the conical pot through the filter, repeating the filtering process a few times. Amazingly, at the speed at which he did all this, he never splashed any hot water around or got burnt. He then produced 2 small ceramic cups on plastic saucers, the traditional coffee-serving utensils. Pouring the freshly brewed coffee from the spout of the conical pot, he mixed in just the right amount of hot water from his metal mug to taste. The final step was for his helper to add the sugar or milk according to the customer’s order. The entire process was carried out with the kind of practised precision which comes only from years of repetition.

The final cuppa was a marvel. I had mine with sugar, without milk (ie. Kopi-O in local terms). The familiar coffee aroma had a bold character with a lingering aftertaste, without being overpowering. The sugar blended with the coffee flavour in a subtle manner to complement, rather than to tone down the bitterness. It had a delightfully light texture with a slight hint of roast to top it off at each mouthful. There was no hint of the burnt, smoky pungence that characterizes the local Starbucks brews, nor was it overly acidic or astringent to leave the tongue feeling dry or raw.

My friend and I sipped our coffee at a leisurely pace, seated at the outer edge of the hawker centre, which was windier. Hawker centres are usually located in the middle of public housing estates, managed by the Housing Development Board (HDB). Comprising mostly high-rise flats of varying room capacity, this is the kind of housing that most Singaporeans live in, and these estates are probably the best place to observe a typical day in the average Singaporean's life.

It was filled with the usual hawker centre denizens. There’s the ubiquitous office worker, long sleeved-shirt rolled up and tie tucked in between the buttons for a quick and cheap bite before heading back to the grind. The middle-aged, immaculately-coiffed towkays (bosses) decked out in gaudy shirts and tasteless displays of wealth like huge gold chains, Rolex watches etc. The average HDB apartment resident in all their singlet-and-slippers glory. The frail, elderly woman who ekes out a living collecting used drink cans or peddling tissues. And of course, who can forget the old retiree idling away to an afternoon beer? Don't forget the leg propped up on the neighbouring seat.

It was in the midst of this low-cost relaxation therapy that we stumbled upon a frightening thought. These old fellows making the good coffee and good food don’t seem to be passing on their skills to anyone, like some reclusive gong-fu master with no disciples.

When these guys die off, what are we going to eat?

We didn’t have an answer to that. We just ordered another cup of coffee.

Memoirs of a busker - Final Episode

2005-08-18T18:07:00.000+08:00

The 3rd Day – Part 2

A voice interrupted me; “ Hello brother, can you play Let It Be?” When I looked up I saw a slightly balding guy who was probably in his 50s, his coarse, leathery skin tanned by many hours in the sun and the lines on his face looked as though each one had a story to tell. He was dressed simply in a T-shirt with some brand of petrol on it, trousers and a well-worn pair of shoes. Thinking that he was probably a retiree hoping to hear a familiar song and not wanting to turn him down too directly, I offered an excuse; “Sorry ah uncle I can play lah but I cannot sing.” (which is more of a fact than an excuse really.)

“Nevermind lah I sing!” and without waiting for my reply he put down his traveling bag and sat down right beside me. A little surprised, I thought it would be rather rude to refuse now so I duly obliged and tuned my guitar back to standard tuning. I strummed a chord to indicate the starting key and off we went.

The song itself started rather shakily, thanks to the fact that I don’t play these songs all that often and was desperately trying to figure out the chords for the song as I went along. His erratic sense of timing didn’t help much. Still, he gamely went along with the song and closed his eyes as he belted out the words in a strained, gravelly baritone.

And when the broken-hearted people
Living in this world agree
There will be an answer
Let it be

As I got into the groove of the song somehow my shyness and reservations disappeared and ignoring all notions about my singing ability, I started singing along at the chorus.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be,
There will be an answer
Let it be

It all happened so fast I could barely comprehend it. The moment I started singing I felt as though my already-high spirits were being lifted up even higher and as I sang, every word got louder and louder. The resulting cacophony was almost like two mad dogs howling in an elevator but I really didn’t care if anyone stared at us like we were crazy. All my worries about my love life, studies, hall crap suddenly disappeared as I felt as though I were being elevated to a higher level. Level of what I don’t know, but all of a sudden these things just appeared to be so trivial. It was as though they were really that way all along and I never realised it until it suddenly dawned upon me. It felt really good.

At that moment nothing short of a battalion-level full-frontal assault could stop the two of us and by the time the song was over, I felt as though I’d just undergone a sort of initiation into the life of busking. Of singing and playing like there was no yesterday and no tomorrow, just living for today. Before I could fully comprehend what had just happened, the old guy turned to me and muttered “Country Roads, the John Denver one.”

Without hesitation I started playing that song and we did the same thing, he singing the verse and I joining in at the chorus. Now that I think about it, it must have been a very comical sight. One old-timer and one young guy sitting on the floor, both shabbily dressed, crooning like horny bullfrogs and one of them pounding out chords on a beat-up, slightly out of tune guitar.

In between verses, he nudged me with his elbow and gestured somewhere, flashing a happy toothless grin. I glanced towards where he was motioning and saw a well-dressed, middle-aged tai-tai looking at us with a mixture of amusement and pity. She must have thought it was comical too. She dug around in her purse and produced a $10 note, which she then handed to the old guy. He received it with both hands and a very grateful “Thank you”, after which he turned to me with that same but more delighted toothless grin.

After we were done with the song we introduced ourselves. His name was Costello and he played harmonica around the Orchard Road area too. He used to sell tissue but found it unprofitable so he switched to busking. I didn’t tell him too much about myself other than that I was doing this for fun.

He held up the note and said “This one, you 5 dollar, I 5 dollar ok?”

I gestured towards my guitar case and replied “It’s ok I have quite a bit here already. You keep lah.”

He didn’t argue with me on that. After putting the note in his pocket he said; “Eh you can play quite ok one…next time you come here you bring your guitar we busk together lah. Like that can earn more money!”

I took him up on his offer and agreed to do so if we met the next time I go busking, which hopefully won’t be too far away. I bade him farewell, packed up my stuff and made my way home with a renewed determination not to let the silly little things in life (such as pesky flute blowers) bother me too much ever again. Afterall, all I have to do is howl like a mad dog to get rid of my woes, right?

Memoirs of a busker - Episode 3

2005-08-16T00:57:00.000+08:00

The 2nd day

I occupied the same spot at the tunnel and played my usual blues stuff (what else?). The day seemed rather uneventful except for the high volume of chicks per unit human traffic flow. The only interesting thing to happen was that while I was playing I was approached by this portly middle-aged guy who worked for an events company. He asked if I did this for a living (!) and of course I let on that I was a student at NUS. Turned out that his company was going to organize some event involving buskers and he was wondering if I’d like to be a part of it. Not wanting to miss out on such an opportunity (and source of income) I agreed and we exchanged phone numbers and a few more pleasantries before he went his way.

At that time I figured this could more than make up for my lack of income that day ($10) in terms of the potential to earn more from a decent gig. Turned out later that I never heard from him since then. Wonder who else he got to play that function, if it happened at all.

After playing for 45 mins and getting only $10 I decided to break for lunch and return to try my luck again. However, when I came back I found my spot occupied by some nerdy looking dweeb who played classical flute while reading the score on his lap. In the empty ice cream tub he used to collect money he displayed something that caught my eye:

NATIONAL ARTS COUNCIL LICENSE

Guess he could be bothered with all that bureaucratic red tape. Good for him. At this time I noticed that his ice cream tub already had a substantial number of $2 notes which probably added up to more than my takings for the day. And I’d only been gone for half an hour. I waited for another half an hour at Borders before returning and I still saw him there, except that his tub by now was overflowing with notes of up to $10.

Shucks. I guess playing a classical instrument, classical repertoire and having a license gave him much more earning power. I slung my guitar over my shoulder and headed back home.

The 3rd Day

This time when I got to the tunnel that danged flute player was there again. One thing which caught me by surprise was that he played the same song that he played the last time I saw him! Perhaps it’s coincidence, I told myself. Content to wait for my turn, I went into Wheelock Place, sat down on the bench next to the escalator and took out a book to read. Incidentally this book is called The Mastery Of Music by Barry Green, which describes the personality traits observed in players of certain instruments within an orchestral context. For example, he describes trumpet players and percussionists as being people with confidence, viola players as tolerant people who serve best as mediators and so on and so forth (Wonder what he’d have to say about flute players). A very interesting read even for the non-classical amateur musician like myself, perhaps even for the non-musician. Do have a look at it if you see it at the bookstore.

Within 2 minutes of sitting there and hearing that flute player, I realised that he was playing the introduction of some classical song (you know, the kind that everyone knows the tune to but no one remembers the title) every time someone walked past and when they were out of earshot he simply stopped playing! He carried on doing this for a good 50 minutes and by then I’d probably heard the first few bars of that song about a thousand times. “What an ABSOLUTE FRAUD!” I thought to myself. My way was that I’d just play on even if there wasn’t anyone because chances are someone could be coming down the escalator from where I can’t see and besides, it’s about the music and the song. On top of that, my personal belief (which applies outside of music as well) is that if you start something you should finish it too.

Along comes this slacker who pulls a top class money-wrangling act with his totally deplorable methods, playing the same notes to death only for the sake of playing when people are around without sparing a thought for musicality. While of course it may seem as though I’m adopting a “holier-than-thou” attitude, I can at least safely say that when I play, I do it mainly for the music and the enjoyment of it, not just for the opportunity to profit. Not that I would mind getting any cash, mind you, but I’d prefer to stay true to my personal convictions while I’m doing it.

Enough ranting. Once that flute blower (note the change of term) buggered off I occupied the spot and did my usual thing. This time round I was getting noticeably increased audience interest. A pair of Indian girls dropped off a $2 note each and stood around to listen till I ended the song with a bemused smile on their faces, probably wondering who on earth would make such weird, curious noises on a guitar. As I finished off the song I looked up and returned the smile, and they carried on towards Wheelock.

A while later I noticed a group of teenage girls of varying racial mix crowding around at the escalator end of the tunnel, consisting of a few blondes and brunettes. They were there for a about 1 minute or so and after that, they sent one representative over to drop a $2 note. Fortunately for me it seems they picked the best-looking of the lot, a fair Eurasian brunette. Things were really looking good for the day, but there was more to come.

To be continued...

Memoirs of a Busker - Episode 2

2005-08-14T01:13:00.000+08:00

The First Day – Part 2

I headed down towards Orchard Rd with zero income but increased resolve, knowing that surely no one would hassle me at the Wheelock Place underpass. Afterall there were a few buskers there from time to time. I’d just wait till there’s no one then I’ll start doing my thing.

As I walked towards my location I passed by several buskers. There was the usual blind fellow near the MRT station playing the keyboards this time, an old fellow playing er-hu near Wisma and some weird mime artist whose act consisted of staying stationary in some white feather outfit next to a plastic skeleton cradling a baby. Didn’t read his sign too closely but it seemed to be something about world peace. Oh well, to each his own.

Seeing these guys a thought entered my mind; “Am I depriving these guys of a living? Me, a lucky chap from a middle-income family studying in NUS competing with these guys for loose change?” Apart from that weirdo with the skeleton I suddenly felt a tinge of guilt. I then decided that I would share some of whatever fortune I amassed that day with the rest of the buskers. After all, I was in this just for the kicks. Yeah man, just for the kicks.

As luck would have it my intended spot was vacant. Not wasting any time I sat down on the floor and started playing my usual slide stuff. Upon playing my first few notes the acoustic quality of the place struck me. All of a sudden my guitar sounded so much livelier in this relatively large but enclosed area. Human traffic was minimal so it didn’t affect the sound much. Inspired by the circumstances, I dived into my first tune with gusto.

Response was non-existent at first. A whole lot of Orchard Roadies passed me by without so much as a glance to see where the noise was coming from. Some of them were jabbering on their handphones so I lowered my volume when they passed by to avoid being a nuisance. The first 10 minutes or so saw my guitar case being as empty as it was at the beginning till a nice old lady probably took pity on this guy playing an old beat-up guitar as though his life depended on it. She dropped a 50 cent coin and in between licks I looked up and thanked her. Apparently she didn’t think much of it and thus didn’t respond. Well she’d been gracious enough to spare that coin anyway and I was grateful enough, thrilled at my first income for the day.

The next few minutes that followed just happened in a flurry. All of a sudden a $2 note appeared courtesy of an angmor mother with her kids, and a few more of those followed, with some coins in between. I didn’t really do a demographic survey but most of them seemed to be expats, tourists or nice old ladies. And exactly one Jap-looking chick. I thought to myself “Man, this is starting to look real good!” Plus, lots and lots of eye candy were walking through the tunnel and while my hands were busy making the music, my eyes were busy making merry. “Yeah this is the life man…I’m having fun playing guitar, spreading my music, get to see lots of chicks, and getting money for it. Why didn’t I think of this earlier?” No one stopped to listen or anything like that but I still enjoyed myself.

It was in this process that I discovered the use of the hat. I felt obliged to look back at everyone who looked at me and somehow the hat afforded me some degree of comfort in that respect. While of course I would have liked to establish eye contact with everyone who took an interest in what I was doing, it still felt awkward just sitting there and looking at people. It is only now after I sat down to write this that I realised I shouldn’t have worn the hat because I feel it somehow reduces the audience connection with the performer. Or something like that. Plus, I could be missing out on some real fine chicks. Sure, taking away the hat reduces the cool factor somewhat but weighed against the abovementioned reasons, it’s not a big deal really. Ok next time round (next holiday when I decide to go busking again I mean) I’ll leave the hat at home.

By the time I’d finally decided I was done for the day I’d accumulated $17 in my case, in all denominations lower than $2. Not much by usual busking standards but not bad still for 45-50 mins work. Much better money than working as some crummy sales promoter and it’s a lot more fun. In fact, I wasn’t really expecting to get much more than $4 in loose coins. Then once more I reminded myself why I was doing this. Yeap you guessed it. Just for the kicks.

Not wanting to break my promise to myself I gave some to the buskers I saw on my way back to the station. I then decided to come back next week on the same day.

To be continued.....

Memoirs of a Busker - Episode 1

2005-08-12T02:11:00.000+08:00

In view of the recent drought in blog-worthy experiences, I've decided to put up this piece of writing I did way back in my first year of undergraduate studies. Re-reading it a few years later, some parts really made me cringe ("Did I really write that?") while some brought back great memories. It's not the best of narrative writing (remember, this was just slightly after 2.5 years in the military) but in order to preserve the original spirit, it will be left untouched and may contain some sentences in Singlish (our colloquial version of English), but should otherwise be comprehendible for the most part. I'll be putting it up in parts, so watch this page.

Alright, here goes.

Memoirs of a busker

Time: Vacation period between 1st and 2nd year of undergrad studies at NUS

It all started innocently enough. My vacation period was 1 week old and I was racking my brains trying to decide how to while away my 3 months of free time. Job openings were dismal apart from telemarketing (urgh) and some dodgy looking ads which went “Earn easy money! No experience required! Work from home! Call 6******* for enquiries.” In my mind I pictured the guy picking up the phone on the other end somewhere in a dark, dank, cluttered “office” in the middle of a seedy district saying “HAH? You looking for who? Orrrhhhh job ah? You come my office I tell you more…aiyah don’t ask so much lah you come down you will know one!”

If I wanted to get ripped off and serve as slave labour I’d go right back into the army, thank you very much.

Overseas trips were out of the question ($$$ - what else?). So what was a hot-blooded young man full of boundless creative energy (Hah! Got you there didn’t I?) to do for 3 months?

A Wednesday night found me at my grandmother’s place having dinner with some relatives who asked about my holiday. Upon replying politely that I was still looking for a job, one of my more jovial and outspoken uncles interjected in half-jest; “Eh since you can play guitar why not you go out and be busker?”

The rational, law-abiding NUS undergraduate in me, having been taught to toe the line and stay out of trouble since Day 1 in this huge indoctrination machine we know as The Singapore Education System, responded almost instantaneously, not unlike a reflex action; “Aiyah like that sure kena caught by police one! Want to apply license damn troublesome one…”

This time my uncle responded in full-jest; “Eh young man, like that do things then more exciting mah! Do things don’t let police catch got more kick what!”

My uncle had no idea what seeds he had just planted.

That night after dinner I mulled over what my uncle said. I started asking myself “Why should I?” and after a while I strayed towards “Why not?” I’d always wondered what life would be like as a vagabond traveler with nothing more than his guitar, a well-worn hat smelling of loose change and the shirt on his back (for those of you who know your blues just think Lightning Hopkins). And don’t forget the tacky shades. After all, I’ve slept in the streets before (I’ll tell you about it if you ask me) and I’ve done my time with a donation tin in my hands. Busking just seemed like a natural progression. Illegally at that.

“Like that do things then more exciting mah!”

Those words rang through my head and it was decided that very night. Illegal busking it shall be then. I had no intention of going through all the hassle of applying for a license and going for audition and all that crap. I steeled my resolve and decided to just grab my old Rossini guitar and head down to the first suitable location.

The First Day – Part 1

As I prepared to leave home, I picked the most grubby looking T-shirt I had paired with a worn-out pair of jeans along with my $2 Bata slippers (Those of you who’ve seen me in school won’t need much imagination). I also dusted off a black jungle hat which I’d bought a long time ago for some expedition. In the process this question crossed my mind; “Am I so ashamed to be seen playing for loose change in public that I have to wear a hat to cover my face?”

After pondering this silly question I realised that most of the people I know would recognise me with the hat anyway. Just part of the image I suppose. Later on I was to find out a better use for the hat (No it’s not for collecting the coins).

I boarded the train to City Hall and took the underground link to my intended destination: Esplanade underpass. The one that connects Citilink Mall to the Esplanade carpark and has ridiculous artsy pictures of people’s faces covered with food and what-not. It was a right-angled underpass so I situated myself right at the corner, where I could be heard and seen by people coming from both sides.

I left my guitar case open and started playing some slide blues in G. Just started off with a shuffle and added in licks as and when I felt like it. Kind of like what I’d do when I’m just noodling around at home, except that home isn’t an underpass.

Almost immediately something interesting occurred. A tall, fair plump guy who looked like a China tourist was admiring the weird pictures hanging on the wall and when I started playing, he sat down cross-legged towards my right. I noticed him from the corner of my eye under the brim of my hat but did not make full eye contact with him then, thinking that he was just waiting for someone. I just kept on playing and when I finally ended the tune, he stood up and clapped, saying “Bravo!” and walked off. I looked up at him, pinched the front brim of my hat in a sort of acknowledging manner and replied “Thank you.”

Gee that felt…weird. In a good way I suppose. Clearly he liked what I was doing and I was grateful for that. This marked a good beginning to my busking endeavors. Strangely however, he didn’t drop any coins. Oh well maybe next time. Maybe I was expecting too much for a first time busking session.

Anyway I continued playing and the rest of the crowd that followed was non-descript. The typical Shenton Way “I drive a BMW what are you driving?” yuppie types came and went, so did the lovey-dovey couples (I was to see a lot more of those in the remaining sessions) as well as the loud and exuberant secondary school students yakking and yakking away. A few old-timers passed me by too without letting my presence bother them. The only ones who showed any interest or curiosity in me were the bright-eyed little toddlers who were walking hand in hand with their mums, who seemingly quickened their pace upon noticing that their little one’s eyes had fallen on me. There weren’t too many people, maybe 1 of the above every 2 minutes or so. None of them dropped any cash.

I chuckled to myself at the irony of it all. In just a matter of minutes I’d seen the kind of life cycle that just about everyone else would be going through: Curious toddler who’s easily fascinated grows up into a student who then puts the innocence aside and learns how to score in exams, eventually getting a good job in an office and earning big bucks to fulfil his materialistic yearnings. Before he knows it he’s a retiree and soon enough he’s got to put on his best suit for the last time before they close the lid. (Depending on your religious beliefs he may come back again as a toddler or some other form of life.)

I was in the middle of my third song and had played for barely 15 minutes when a disarmingly friendly voice interrupted me; “Excuse me?”

I looked up and saw a security guard smiling at me like the guy on the Darlie toothpaste tube. Standing close by was a uniformed police officer staring me down with his best impersonation of good-ol’ Arnie. Seems like Mr Darlie decided to bring the Terminator along “just in case”. At that moment a chill shot down my spine (again for those of you who know your blues it’s kinda like that “lowdown shakin’ chill”).

I thought to myself, hoping that he’d somehow receive my thoughts telepathically; “Please don’t ask for my license.”

“Sorry ah you’re not allowed to play here. Don’t mind play somewhere further up can?” he continued, motioning towards Citilink Mall with his Maglite. Not forgetting the Mr Darlie Smile.

Understandably I was happy to oblige him. After shooting a glance at The Terminator, I packed up all my stuff with the 2 of them staying around to make sure that I didn’t linger. In fact, as I walked down the passageway they followed rather closely behind. Probably to make sure too I guess. They finally left me alone when I reached the escalator down to Citilink Mall. At this point of time I asked myself; “Why in the world am I doing this? I could have been jeopardizing my university education or *gasp* my FUTURE!!! How would a criminal record for illegal busking look on my resume? “ On hindsight of course all this proved to be absolutely ridiculous.

It didn’t take long for the irrational side of me to reply “Like that do things then more exciting mah!” Yeah man. It’s just for the kicks. Just for the kicks. I walked on towards the MRT to go to the next destination I had in mind (I do plan for contingencies sometimes yah?)

To be continued.....

Gettin' high

2005-08-09T16:00:00.000+08:00

I just got to hear a recording of one of my songs done a while back at a semi-professional studio. I'd forgotten about it for a long time until I was recently reminded of it's existence, and upon hearing it several things came to my mind.

It was recorded before this blog came into being, and song-writing was my avenue for social commentary. This one in particular expressed my disgust at a drug-bust involving several high-lifers living in huge houses and driving fancy cars. Two local celebrities were also implicated somehow but no charges were pressed against them. The revelations of their lifestyles and drug abuse made headlines and for a while people started questioning the prevalence of drugs in certain social venues. Eventually after everyone got charged and thrown in prison, the issue died down and life went on.

Hearing it again though, brought back a rather humourous memory from the US internship involving weed. Of course, it didn't involve me smoking any of it, but one of the people who did, made sure that I'd never ever be tempted to try it anytime. I may have shared this head-slapping anecdote with some of you, but if you'd like to hear it just give me a shout out. I might just decide to publicise it here (adequately censored) if response is good.

This song is perhaps the most scathing piece of musical social commentary I've ever written and was brought to life by 2 very talented singers from Kent Ridge Hall whom I've had the honour of performing and recording with, namely Lin and Surath. The CD will be coming soon for all Kent Ridge Hall residents, and if you're not living in Kent Ridge Hall or Singapore, let me know. I'll tell you where to get the song.

Alright, end of shameless plug.

Back to that same old place

2005-07-22T16:55:00.000+08:00

It's good to be home.

I've been busy catching up on all the foods that I missed, and here they are in chronological order:

1) Prata
2) Laksa
3) Teochew Porridge
4) Nasi Bryani

To make the homecoming complete, I made a trip down to Geylang to fulfil a desperate craving that anyone who's been away for too long would have. A drive down the main street of Singapores red-light district that branches off into seedier lanes would be a wonderful sight to behold for a Singaporean who's been unable to partake of the local pleasures for the past ten weeks.

Row after row of durians lined the street, with the accompanying crudely hand-painted signs proclaiming their price and pedigree. The fruit sellers competed against each other and the din of traffic to make as much noise as they could to draw attention to their wares, almost like the garishly made-up and gaudily dressed women who competed for a different crowd. People strolled across the street in typical non-chalant fashion with little regard for traffic. TV sets from the kopitiams blasted out some drama serial or sports broadcast to add to the aural soundscape for the old, grizzled customers lounging on the once-bright-red plastic chairs to a cheap bottle of lager or stout, complete with a small bucket of ice. Though blasphemous to any true beer-lover, it helps to keep the beer cold on a humid Singapore evening.

This is probably one of the last few bastions of Singapore life that refuses to yield to the sanitizing forces of tourism, a celebration of sleaze with neon-lit KTV lounges, ambiguously named "sports clubs" with heavily-tinted windows and cheap hotels clearly displaying their 2 hour booking rates. Though there’s nothing along the line of "Totally Nude!" or "Live Girls XXX" neon signs that I saw in some parts of Los Angeles, the women walking the streets in their cheaply-colourful get-ups made up for that lack of publicity. After the old Chinatown became the touristy monstrosity that it is now, Geylang remains as one of the sides of Singapore that you don't see in the tourism brochures that often. It’s greasy, dirty and grimy, just like me.

Ok, never mind about that.

In the midst of all this, there is some of the best food to be found in Singapore.
After going through the parking nightmare that is Geylang, my father and I walked to a fruit store, where after some gentlemanly discussions on the merits and pricing of Malaysian durians and some sampling, we ordered a number of out thorny friends and went to the back of the store, where a folding table and faded plastic stools afforded a makeshift eating venue. The fruit seller, a Chinese guy probably around my age from Malaysia, pried open the thick, green husk with the knife he held in his hand, a sign of the (non-violent) trade carried with pride. With his other hand, protected by a dirty, patchy cotton glove, he brought it to his nose, taking a whiff as would a sommelier evaluating a 1952 Cabernet Savignon. He offered his expert opinion as well, except that instead of French-tinged English it was in heavily-accented Malaysian Mandarin.

"Ah, this one very fragrant."

If this is your first time seeing/smelling/tasting a durian, you might have thought he was mocking you. The pungent (some might say malodorous) aroma hits your nostrils with all the subtlety of a sweaty armpit on a crowded subway. The more exaggerated descriptions might include fermented milk, rotting flesh or dead rat, but it you're savvy to the wonders of the King of Fruit, the fragrance is a treat to the senses, even after the durian has long been disposed of and the smell is all that remains.

The flesh varies in hues from deep reddish orange to pale yellow, while the texture and mouthfeel can range from chewy to creamy to almost watery. The flavours are even more varied, mostly a mixture of bitter and sweet. The more fancy street names given to some breeds are "XO", "prawn", "ice-cream" etc. Of course, there's always the D24 designation which apparently is a scientific designation of some sort, but no one really knows or cares as long as it tastes like it's supposed to. It remains a strong selling point, however, and the fruit sellers are ever eager to point it out. They’re not all crude thugs or gangsters as popularized in the mass media, but dealing with these guys is almost a subtle game of psychology. If you show them that you know your thorny fruits and won’t settle for the cheap stuff, they’ll know how to satisfy your taste buds with the quality goods. They almost always take pride in pleasing a demanding customer.

Of course, this pre-supposes that your experience with durians goes beyond the shrink-wrapped seeds bought in supermarkets, which I personally stay away from. I don't really remember a time when I didn't like durians, so for the benefit of those who've never even heard of it, here's an expatriate account.

After demolishing 5 durians between the 2 of us, my cravings were finally satisfied. While I can definitely appreciate and savour the wonderful tastes of charcoal-grilled ribs or freshly-barbequed hamburger beef patties, there’s a certain pungent aroma that will always be lodged at the back of my nose, a pre-cursor to periodic cravings that can only be satisfied by a gastronomic pilgrimage to the heartland of Singapore sleaze.

This is home.

Leaving on a jet plane

2005-07-17T01:31:00.000+08:00

It’s been 10 eventful weeks and this internship is finally coming to an end. I’ve met some fantastic people, played with great musicians and been to really nice places (and the not so nice). Somewhere in between that I managed to learn some stuff about mechanical engineering as well. I’m heading back home with a whole bag of new experiences and memories in my head, and it’s going to be one more year of school before embarking on yet another phase of life. This internship has been a good introduction to life as a working bachelor, and living alone in a foreign land isn’t that hard to get used to as long as you’re willing to step out of the comfort zone and explore. Of course, it helps that almost everyone here is pretty friendly and speaks English.

Some of the locals did ask me if I was considering moving here. Well, it’s a really great place and I can probably live and work here for a while, but I think deep down inside there’s still a part of me that’s not detachable from Singapore. It isn’t so much of a mushy or nostalgic reason, but more the rationale that at least in Singapore I’m known as a Singaporean. Make sense?

Maybe this will clear it up. Occasionally, I find that some people will assume I fit the Asian immigrant/student stereotype, but spending time with colleagues from China and Vietnam has convinced me that there’s no way I can really fit into that mold. In a sense, coming from an English-speaking background, having an English education and exposure to American culture (music, TV shows, movies, literature etc) makes me more “Americanised” than the average Asian in America (we’ll leave American-born Chinese out of this), but my external appearance gives rise to certain assumptions about me. It doesn’t help that most of the places I went to didn’t seem to have many Asians.

Confusing? Basically, I don’t feel any closer to either the American or Asian way of life here. Both sides are familiar yet foreign. Somehow the concept of a Chinese guy who speaks better English than Chinese and prefers American music is not a common phenomenon here.

Of course, the Americans I met have been wonderful, did their best to make me feel at home and never gave me any feelings of exclusion. There was never an issue of racism or hate, just some minor social perceptions that needed to be clarified along the way. I’m sure with time I could probably fit in pretty well, but in all probability it would never be a perfect fit.

Since we’re on that, here are some aspects of American life that I’ve picked up on and would like to bring up.

1) Redneck humour

Watching lots of Comedy Central on cable (I don’t usually watch much TV back home), I observed that every racial/minority group has someone making fun of them, usually one of their own. Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Caucasian are all fair game, even in these times of zealous political-correctness witch-hunts. If you maintain an open mind and appreciate most kinds of humour, it can be pretty damned funny and in a way, exaggerating these stereotypes brings them out in the open where people can recognize them for what they are : laughable.

One particular show I liked was Blue Collar TV, devoted entirely to low-brow redneck humour. All the time-tested stereotypes of Southern white Americans are milked dry for tons of laughs by these 3 white guys who claim great redneck pedigree (the closest Singapore equivalent I can think of is Ah-Beng). It’s a fine example of how everyone can benefit from lightening up and not taking yourself so seriously.

2) Social interactions

Many times, strangers from all walks of life started conversations with me in all circumstances; waiting in line, sitting at the bar, browsing guitar stores etc and this is a refreshing change from the typical Singaporean thing, where people can live next to each other for years without knowing one another. Starting conversations with people you don’t know is likely to be met with suspicion, even though we live on such a tiny island. Oftentimes, these conversations with Americans were enjoyable and offered great insight into how they live their lives.

3) Opinions

The individual right to opinion is highly valued here, and it is entirely possible for 2 directly contradicting opinions to be debated without getting personal. This is also something I admire and wish were more commonplace back home, where disagreeing with someone’s opinion is sometimes construed as being against him or her as a person, or even worse, against a whole interest group. Petulant and subjective arguments are things that I see more often in Singapore than I’d like to, even at the highest rungs of society. The underlying mutual respect in most discussions here in America is something to learn from. Of course there’s always a minority of bigots, but the general trend here is to value the freedom of opinion and speech.

To end off this final post before I disconnect my Internet connection, here’s some of the stuff that I’ll miss:

1) Being able to go catch big names in blues within a 45 min driving distance
2) Having the choice of going to blues jams almost every night of the week
3) Big blues festivals
4) Trying out the less common American cuisines
5) Long, scenic drives through the desert, countryside or along the coast
6) Sunshine with cool breeze and not sweating at all
7) Beautiful beaches that make Sentosa look like a playground sand pit
8) Huge selection of great craft beers
9) Less expensive Scotch whisky (compared to Singapore)
10) The freedom to do anything and go anywhere on a whim
11) Not having my cell phone ring and beep all the time for various silly reasons
12) Appreciating the female form of various ethnicities

All right, now for the stuff I won’t miss:

1) Freezing cold mornings
2) Lousy Chinese food
3) Trying to find yet another way to cook the same stuff in my fridge
4) LA traffic – LA residents will know what I mean
5) LA driving – for the most part, fellow drivers were alright but I’ve had too many close shaves with maniacs trying to penetrate the space-time continuum on a crowded highway
6) Having people ask me if Singapore is part of China
7) That damned car whose alarm always goes off in the middle of the night in my neighborhood
8) My thin-walled plywood/chipboard apartment that shakes like an earthquake every time someone jumps in the corridor

Another thing I’d like to do is mention some of the great musicians who’ve been extremely generous with their music and in letting me share the stage with them.

Robert Lucas
The Mama’s Boys
2000 lbs of Blues with Junior Watson
Joey’s Blues Band

Other musicians I’ve had the honour of meeting are:

Nathan James
James Harman
Bernie Pearl and Dwayne Smith

Special mention goes out to “Mama” Laura, owner of Babe’s and Ricky’s Inn and Eric Wagoner of Iva Lee’s.

For every band or name mentioned here there are many other regular guys I’ve had the pleasure of meeting at jams and gigs, all of them great musicians or music lovers on top of being really friendly people. If I ever hit LA again, I know there’ll be some familiar faces in the crowd.

Thus ends the Great American Odyssey.

I wonder what in-flight movies they’ll be showing on the way home.

Window to the soul

2005-07-12T08:58:00.000+08:00

On Sunday, I decided on a whim to drive to Central LA to visit Amoeba Music to pick up yet more CDs. Absent-mindedly though, I forgot to fill up my car with petrol (or gas as it’s called here) before hitting the highway. Upon realising my oversight, I made a quick exit off the highway to hunt for a petrol station.

After slaking the thirst of the gas-chugging monster, I decided to take it upon myself to use the provided squeegee to clean the horrendously dirty windshield and side windows, which were threatening to obscure my vision and cause an accident.

I’d barely started when a soft voice spoke up from behind me, “Hey man, can you help me out with 50 cents? I’ll do your windows for you.”

I turned around and saw a black guy who looked about 40,50-ish, with traces of grey running through his close-cropped hair and moustache. Though his clothes weren’t in the best shape, his once-white T-shirt was neatly tucked into his tattered jeans, which had generous patches of old motor oil or grease stains. The frayed edges on his shoes barely held them together, but they were still very much in service. From his barrel-chested, ham-bicepped build, he could have easily passed off as a boxer, though generally speaking he had a rather benign air around him.

I wasn’t in a hurry, and my windshield and windows WERE filthy, so I replied, “Yeah, why not?”

He picked up the squeegee I left on the bonnet and got down to work. Gripping it with both hands, he proceeded to wet the windshield generously with soap water and remove it with careful, measured strokes. His slow but firm movements resembled those of taichi, and from the sense of purpose reflected on his face, you would have thought that he were painting the sequel to the Sistine Chapel, except that his job was much more down-to-earth. Before the dirty water managed to drip much further, he deftly wiped it up with a paper towel to prevent it from soiling the bodywork, though in this case the bodywork wasn’t a very pretty sight to begin with.

After he went one round with the squeegee, he then took out more paper towels and repeated the soap water procedure with the same approach, meticulously wiping each inch of glass to a spotless shine and scraping off avian excrement (ok ok, birdshit). As he did this, he proceeded to wax lyrical in a slow drawl about his philosophy towards cleaning windows.

“I been doing windows a looooong time man…I may be old fashioned, but I still like using these paper towels to get a good shine to these windows, you know what I mean? My friend gave me a squeegee once, but it can’t give you the same shine like paper towels man. I know it takes a bit more time…”

In the middle of his philosophizing, he stopped to greet the gas station manager with an exchange of familiar greetings. I guess he must be a familiar face around here.

As he went another round doing the windows and carrying on about his style of window cleaning, what struck me most was how much pride he took in what he was doing. It may not be much of a career choice for most people, but he still maintained a level of dignity in his speech, dressing and actions, which is more than I can say of some people I know. His meticulous work ethic is something we don’t see much in todays’ disposable society, in an age of major financial screw-ups and engineering disasters. He may have been doing a lowly, mundane job for pittance, but he did the best job he could, with pride.

Of course there’s a lowlife in every profession, and in this case they’re known as squeegee men. Though I have no personal experience with them, it would seem to me that they’re more thugs than anything else. I’m guessing that they probably won’t do much more than splash water on your windows and demand a fee for that.

Though this might seem a rather trivial observation, if you look at it in the perspective of this whole internship being an introduction to the working world, this window washing guy was showing me a lesson too.

When I think back about some of the people I’d worked with in National Service, school projects, music etc I remembered that there were some of them who could have greatly benefited from better work ethic. Being on the receiving end of shoddy work and mopping up after half-hearted jobs is something I hate and try to avoid inflicting on anyone else. Incompetence or incapability is occasionally excusable under mitigating circumstances, but negligence and laziness don’t go down too well with me. After 3 years in NUS doing countless group projects, some stellar and some downright disgusting, a guy doing my windows demonstrated something that some more educated people are incapable of.

When he was done, I handed him 4 quarters and he flashed a crooked but grateful smile, with a simple word of thanks. Though it was more than he asked for, I drove off all the richer for 5 minutes more at a gas station and some change.

Step right out

2005-07-12T08:47:00.000+08:00

Hi folks, it’s time for another get-to-know-me session.

This internship at an engineering firm has been quite an eye-opener in terms of preparing for a future career and at the same time, it got me thinking about how I would fit in with the rest of the workforce and what kind of person I’m going to be.

Engineering is perhaps what most people would consider a white-collar job, requiring a degree or at least a diploma to undertake this profession. From an early age, kids (in Singapore at least) are taught to aspire towards being doctors, lawyers, bankers and engineers and such. These vocations are held in higher esteem, presumably because of the higher levels of education required. They are also associated with better salaries and lifestyles, which are reinforced somewhat by the media.

At the other corner of the ring are blue-collar jobs. While they constitute an honest living and in some cases pay better than white-collar jobs, the stigma in Singapore society remains. It is not uncommon to hear parents admonish their children to study harder by painting the grim scenario of sweeping roads or collecting rubbish for a living. This mindset is what fuels the paper chase, from which people graduate into the rat race.

And how does all this relate to me? Well, here I am on the path to a white-collar job (whether I take on one or not remains to be seen) with my fellow peers, and while some of them seem to be embracing some or all aspects of the stereotypical yuppie lifestyle, I happen to be heading off in another direction. Here are some examples:

Food:

Classy establishments don’t go down too well with me, not to mention the inevitable financial drain. Well, I can hold my manners well enough to not get thrown out of such places, but I’d really rather be hanging loose at a more relaxed venue. Given a choice, I always opt to eat at hawker centers or kopitiams, where the food is cheaper and usually better. While some people rave about the latest tiramisu or NYDC desert, I’ll go for a good bowl of chendol, ching-teng or ice-kachang anytime. Sometimes in social settings or with a group of friends, going to such places is inevitable, but you can be sure my stomach has a dream of a better place.

Drink:

The beer vs wine debate is already very well-documented in this blog, so I will not go into gory details. The most expensive liquor that I imbibe would be Scotch whisky, but a good bottle lasts me a long time, since my drinking tendencies are more on the side of sip-and-savour rather then fast-and-furious. Needless to say, concoctions like Bourbon Coke or Vodka Ribena don’t get much mileage in my book. Drinking to incoherence or incapacitation is also not my style, which brings me to my next point.

Nightlife:

I can count the number of times I’ve been to a club on one hand, and none of them were particularly pleasant. Poseur-ish people all dressed to the nines in expensive or pseudo-classy outfits, drinking overpriced swill in excess, dancing (or trying to dance) to mind-numbing beats and trying to pick each other up are really not my kind of crowd. The single biggest turn-off about it would have to be the monotonously irritating noise played at ridiculous volumes. My idea of a good time in the nightlife usually takes place at a pub with proper music, decent drink and good vibes. The ones I frequent are not necessarily the most hip place to be seen, but that’s not a major concern. Though perhaps it would be nice to see some more age-group appropriate female eye-candy.

Music:

When most of the people you count as musical heroes are either dead or dying, it’s not healthy for your Hip Quotient (my quotient died a quick and painless death some years ago from Bluesinitis). For the most part I’m ignorant of the heavily recycled sequence of sounds that passes for radio-friendly hits these days, and unabashedly so. A lot of it also masquerades as flimsy excuses for pretty faces. Normally I don’t have any issue with pretty faces, but I’m a firm believer of music being played by musicians. Even among the newer bands these days, few of them ever capture my attention. Most of them just fall into the same, tired old sound that guarantees radio air time.

The current high-life trend is to be “into” jazz or whatever mutilated bastard-child variants of it have been cooked up. Which is a pity really, because while I do appreciate good jazz, it has been sullied by association with people attracted only to its’ cerebral and complex technical nature, or people just trying to be in the loop. Sadly, both groups of people usually miss out on the underlying groove and spirit behind the music. It has been turned upside down on its head and either dumbed-down or souped-up so much that it’s unrecognizable and in some cases, unlistenable.

In any case, blues is still my music of choice, but even that is not immune to the influences of mass-media demands either. I just have to be a little picky about what I listen to. To me, music is life, not lifestyle.

Fashion:

Those of you who know me in person will probably know that I’m a fashion non-entity. I’ve seen several fashion trends come and go on our little island, and I’m glad to say I didn’t spend any cash on that stuff. That might account for my abysmal luck with the ladies, or maybe not. I won’t tell you how much I’ve spent on guitars, gear and CDs though.

So there we have it, my life preferences in a nutshell. My tastes might change over time, I’m always open to new experiences and if any of you would like to point out something erroneous, please do so. If you’d like to shout out your concurrence, feel free to do so too. Afterall, we do live in a country of (somewhat) free speech.

Fire in the sky

2005-07-06T11:31:00.000+08:00

I hadn’t been this excited about seeing fireworks for a long while.

To fill you in on some background information, my National Service vocation required me to be at the National Day Parade in 2001 and 2002. This event is the only time of the year that Singaporeans get to see a major fireworks display, and so for those 2 years I got to see them as well. The circumstances, however, were less than inspiring (those who’ve been through it will know what I mean) and the fireworks didn’t leave any lasting impression on me.

Fast forward to the evening of 4th July 2005. Down in Anaheim where I’m living and working, the Angels Stadium was having an Independence Day fireworks display after the end of the home game. I didn’t have anything to do that evening after dinner, so I headed down to the office, which was near to the stadium, in the hopes of catching a good view.

As luck would have it, the loading/unloading bay behind the office building afforded an unobstructed view of the stadium, and I wasn’t the only one there. 2 families had already pulled up in an SUV and a truck and were busy setting up lawn chairs to lounge in while taking in the display. They had the car radio on, blaring out the commentary of the game as it drew to a close. Kids ran around, making merry as I would have if I were them.

In the car park area stood an old RV trailer. I climbed the short ladder and sat down on the ceiling, which was covered with a thick layer of dust. Dust never deters me. A fence and some short trees separated me from the highway about 20m away, but didn’t block my view. I had my perfect vantage point.

Soon enough, the game ended and the first salvo was fired off. Bright streaks shot up simultaneously into the sky, each one bursting into a sphere of coloured streaks and combining to create a giant kaleidoscope. The intersecting circles of different hues were mesmerizing in a psychedelic way, almost as though I could reach out and grab them. Others exploded into a cloud of gold dust which sparkled against the night sky. Some of them overwhelmed with huge bursts of golden showers (no, not those kind) to fill up the whole sky at once, while some created a gentle pouring of golden streams which left lingering traces, almost like a shimmering willow tree in the sky. Throughout all this, smaller streaks continued shooting out from the rim of the stadium like drops of liquid rainbow from a boiling cauldron.

Some of them exploded with a resounding boom, while others crackled loudly like an angry sizzle. The resultant effect was like being under a zinc roof in a thunderstorm, the incessant, infinite pounding of raindrops interspersed with bursts of thunder. The familiar smell of smouldering gunpowder brought back many memories, both good and bad. Even though a cold chill was blowing strong, I sat enraptured on top of the RV wearing a T-shirt, bermudas and a silly grin on my face, occasionally muttering “Oh man…” whenever a particularly beautiful sequence occurred. It’d been a long while since a man-made visual spectacle managed to take my breath away like that, and getting to see it in such a relaxed setting made the experience even more enjoyable.

The choreography of the display was excellent, alternating between filling up the sky with colour and filling it with gold, ensuring that it never got monotonous and culminating in an explosive climax (puns intended) at the end. I lost track of time in my rapture and couldn’t remember how long it was, but what I did know was that I could have sat there and watched even longer. Even as the wind blew the smoke away, I continued to ponder the magnificent display that I had just seen and hopefully will get to see again.

I drove home with the same silly grin plastered on my face.

Current beer in my fridge : Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye, Lost Coast 8 Ball Stout, Stone Levitation Ale.

Down in the Bayou

2005-06-29T12:23:00.000+08:00

Following the explosive Tab Benoit performance that I went to, I decided to go down to the Long Beach Bayou Festival to check out the sounds of Louisiana.

It comprises 3 distinct styles, namely Cajun, Creole and Zydeco, but their history and how they are differentiated is still quite confusing to me. If you are so inclined you can try reading this, which should shed some light on its origins and the people behind it. I am far from being an expert on this culture and music but here’s my personal impression of it so far. It’s probably not the most accurate, and if anyone out there can correct me I’d be keen to hear about it, as well as anything else you can share.

It originated from the black Creole slaves and exiled Canadians of French descent who brought along their native music and folk-songs to New Orleans in Louisiana. Generally speaking, the modern band line-up consists of drums, bass, guitar, accordion and a corrugated sheet metal contraption known as a frottoir. Some variations include fiddle, which would usually be found in the more traditional groups with a folk-sy sound. Today it includes many other musical influences such as blues, RnB, soul, funk and reggae, which might reflect some of its’ African-American and Jamaican origins. It also has a strong association with Mardi Gras and I’m sure it makes a great combination, mind-numbing partying and music.

Come to think of it, Mardi Gras is something else that I should check out sometime in my life too, especially to investigate the effects of throwing plastic beads at attractive women.

The music makes for great dancing. The beats seem simple enough, but when you listen closely to it you'll find lots of embellishments that make it catchy. The bands played hard and kept the momentum and energy way up, though once in a while they threw in a waltz-sounding number to take it slow. Generally, it has a very lively and boisterous feel to it, with the off-beats giving it some bounce. The defining sounds of the accordion and frottoir give it a distinctive sound which I can’t really describe here, and in fact may sound downright weird to those of you musically weaned on a staple of radio hits. If you’d just open up your ears though, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that this stuff really grooves. Among some of the performers there were Dexter Ardoin and T-Broussard, who are the next generation of accordion players keeping the music alive. Here’s where you can hear some of it.

The food is simply fantastic as well. I got to try some Jambalaya (which is also the title of a song. I’m sure you’ve heard it before), kind of like a wetter version of nasi goreng with bits of chicken, beef and sausages thrown in and just as spicy. Crawfish is also another delicacy which would be familiar to crab-lovers. Marinated in some spice and steamed in a large pot, they come out in varying shades of red, all nice and juicy. Though they’re pretty small, like a miniature lobster, they taste great and half the fun is in shelling them. It makes for a big mess though, just like eating crab, but those of you who’ve seen my living quarters would know that it’s nothing new to me.

So there I was, sitting on the grass as the sun went down, enjoying my crawfish and the zydeco being played after a day of taking in a new cultural experience. This was just a small approximation of life in New Orleans, Louisiana, but it planted a seed of desire to go there and experience it for myself. That’s for a future adventure.

In the meantime, listen up now folks. It doesn’t get much better than this. Food and music are the essence of life, so keep on eating and keep on playing.

Man In The Mirror

2005-06-28T13:00:00.000+08:00

I've seen some peopl put this stuff on their blogs, so I thought I'd try them out.

ISTP- The Crafter
You scored 36% I to E, 52% N to S, 80% F to T, and 52% J to P!

You do not approach strangers readily, but you have no problem leading. You are so sure of yourself, others are hesitant not to listen. Your type is known as the crafter, which belongs to the larger group of experiencers. You are likely a master of tools, including vehicles, musical instruments, and weapons. Most pilots are of this personality type. You are always on the go, you live for the here and now to follow your whims, and you share your type with 10% of the population. You don't feel very parental, but you feel your fraternal bonds very deeply.
As a romantic partner, you are calm and handy to have around when something goes wrong. You are very responsive to immediate and obvious needs in your partner, but are less comfortable with emotional ones. You are fun, playful, and adventurous. However, at your heart, you are something of a loner and will resist exposing your private thoughts. You want to be appreciated for your ability to size up a problem and solve it quickly. You feel most appreciated when you are left to do your own thing spontaneously.
Your group summary: Experiencers (sp)
Your Type Summary: ISTP

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 47% on I to E

You scored higher than 65% on N to S

You scored higher than 89% on F to T

You scored higher than 52% on J to P

Link: The LONG Scientific Personality Test written by unpretentious2 on Ok Cupid

Whether you know me in person or only through my blog, I'll leave it to you to decide if it's an accurate analysis. Just one thing though. I don't quite like being referred to as "handy to have around" in that context.

Again I'll leave that to your interpretation.

Basic Instinct

2005-06-28T11:02:00.000+08:00

If you know rock and roll, you ought to know the name Bo Diddley. If you don’t know who that is, then it’s time to turn off the teenybopper MTV and get into some of that real stuff.

I got to catch him at House of Blues, a restaurant cum performance establishment that rips off the “blues” moniker in the name of profit. The place itself reeked of pretentious attempts to be bluesy, but came of as being more cheesy than anything else. It didn’t help that the ticket prices were ridiculous, about as much as a whole day of entry to a blues festival. But well, there aren’t many blues and rock and roll greats from the old days left, so I didn't have much choice.

The band that opened for him made matters even worse. They claimed to be a blues band and even had an upright bass, but listening to them for a whole hour was, to put it nicely, very tiring. The 3 of them were technically proficient musicians, but should have been in 3 different bands. Pain-inducing volumes, atrocious sound mixing and over-the-top playing from 3 people who weren’t listening to each other made it totally unbearable for me, but somehow everyone else was enjoying it.

The guitarist cum vocalist played loud and fast, making a great show of himself and forcing his amp to feedback at every opportunity, intent on pummelling listeners into submission. The drummer, lost in his own Dream Theater world (I don't have any bones with them, but this is the wrong place for that kind of stuff), crashed on every cymbal he had as though he were being paid by the crash and double-pedalled the kick drum as though it would have chewed off his legs otherwise. The bassist plodded along with cliched bass lines which didn't do justice to the upright bass, and was just simply out of place. There were moments when they started off some songs promisingly, but eventually spiralled downwards into aural chaos once the first verse was over. They ended every song as though it were the last song of a stadium rock concert, which would have been great if it WERE a stadium rock concert, but doing all that under the guise of a blues band is preposterous. I barely made it through the whole hour, all the while entertaining serious thoughts about throwing down my ticket and walking out in disgust. That would have gone against the flow of the general audience sentiment, but I know what I like and what I hate.

The best bands leave you feeling energized and ready to go, but these guys managed to do the exact opposite. I was only sitting on a stool for one hour, but I felt as though I’d been doing an intensive gym workout (something I haven’t done in a very long time). However, my desire to catch Bo Diddley was stronger than that. Each power chord and boom of the kick drum threatened to drain my energy down to the last drop, but I found it in me to hang on with that glimmer of hope, like hanging off a cliff with my pinky, that somehow, something would redeem that evenings’ suffering.

After a 15-20 minute reprieve, Bo Diddley took to the stage. An elderly gentleman, his broad frame was barely held up by his awkward gait as he lumbered towards his chair in centrestage. He was simply but neatly dressed in a short sleeved shirt, complete with the fedora hat has a popular association with the blues, thanks to the Blues Brothers. A guitar tech handed him his trademark rectangular Gretsch guitar, a sure sign that Bo Diddley was in town and ready for action.

His first few songs went by rather ambivalently, not entirely satisfying but still listenable. His fingers may have become rusty with age, but his voice had a certain gravitas to it. Echoes of Muddy Waters rang out in his gravelly baritone, though it was lost in the passable but lacklustre band arrangements. The grit was missing, like a bowl of tom yam soup short on chilli.

After about 4 songs, Bo Diddley stopped to fiddle with his amp a bit. His unsteady hands strummed a few chords here and there, as though he were trying to start a song but fumbling through it and looking quite confused. He consulted his bassist, conferring about some unknown issues and for a while, he left the audience wondering what was going on, though they remained encouraging. After a brief exchange with the soundman, he started strumming again to check out his sound, and paused briefly.

The chords started flowing again, a slow but constant trickle gathering momentum at dangerous speed. Without warning, like a sudden gush from a broken pipe, those previously unsteady hands started hammering out his trademark beat, an incessant, hypnotic pounding like a shaman administering his cure for the musical ills. The primordial stew of rock and roll came to a boil, bubbling furiously as Bo Diddley kept stirring it up. He shook off the shackles of age and dug deep into the beat that made him famous. Soon, the driving rhythm became an unstoppable freight train chugging away at full speed. This was the moment I had been waiting for.

Everything else just fell into place. The rest of the band picked up on his lead and fell into the groove that he laid down. He may have been all of 76 years old and seated in a chair, but his energy was infectious, and he showed just why he was a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-er. He may not have been very different from the earlier band to most of those in the audience, but for me it was a different dimension altogether.

After that was done, he started to preach the word of rock and roll, and took his time to remind everyone about where it came from. Hallowed names like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed were all given due mention. He then went into more personal subject matter, capturing attention with a familiar refrain.

“Listen up now, this is some serious shit here”.

Though he was light-hearted and humourous about it, the message was clear. He detailed his struggle with back problems and losing 2 toes to diabetes, earning himself much applause for his strength and conviction to carry on playing. Though his guitar playing showed signs of age, his voice and spirit were still going very strong, and didn’t look like they were going to quit anytime soon. His songs may have been symbols of teenage rebellion a while back, but now he was living out his own rebellion, defying the onset of age to keep on rocking.

He carried on with a few more numbers, even shuffling over to the drumset at one point and doing a duet on a floor tom with the drummer, playing what I’d describe as a “jungle beat” and raising a helluva racket on the last song. Thunderous applause rang out as he departed the stage, waving his hand as he took his leave, a true member of Rock and Roll Royalty.

Never before in my life did I ever get to experience both extremities of the musical spectrum in one night. It was a classic showdown of over-indulgent extravagance vs deep unadulterated groove.

There was one clear winner in my book.

Bright lights, big city

2005-06-23T11:29:00.000+08:00

It was just as I expected. Along Las Vegas Boulevard, swanky hotels and casinos vied for attention, each attempting to outdo the other in grandeur. Some others reveled in the other end of the spectrum, blatantly tawdry and proud of it, but all had a common mission to lure the would-be thrill-seekers to their tables. Most of them combined the whole package, being a hotel / casino / shopping mall under one roof. Some even had roller coasters coursing in and out of their premises, bringing periodic bursts of screaming to the already noisy street.

It was a hot day in a desert city, but still the streets were packed. Along the pedestrian sidewalks, newspaper dispensers were used to sell porn magazines while touts (interestingly, both male and female) wearing T-shirts proclaiming “Strippers To You”, “Girls Direct” or “2-for-1 Girls” handed out cards with suggestive pictures and attention grabbing headlines like “Farmer’s Daughters”, “Asian Princess” or “Fantasies Fulfilled”. Did I just lament the lack of room for imagination these days earlier on?

Amidst the sea of smut, a well-groomed elderly gentleman dressed in a preacher’s collar stood defiantly in the sweltering desert heat, holding a basket and laminated poster in an effort to raise funds for a homeless shelter. Oblivious to the din of touts and traffic, his eyes scanned every face crossing the intersection, searching for compassion in the most unlikely location. The touts around him ignored his presence (they are, afterall, focusing on a different market altogether), thrusting their wares into the paths of oncoming pedestrians while he maintained a stoic silence. His choice of location could have been ironic or entirely appropriate, depending on how you choose to look at it.

Ah well, they don't call it Sin City for nothing.

***

For the benefit of international readers, the Singapore government recently decided to allow the building of an integrated resort with a casino, and attracted bids from many of the big names in the gaming industry. The pros-vs-cons debate has been beaten to death in our newspapers, schools, kopitiams and Parliament, so I will not elaborate on it here. For the record, my stand is more on the utilitarian side. Further discussions will be entertained in private.

My companions and I had one weekend, so we only managed a cursory tour of some casinos. Here are some notes about those where we ventured:

Caesar’s Palace:

If Opulence were a person, this would have been his home. Carved marble statues, elaborately gilded columns, imposing fountains and everything associated with ancient Roman cliché all conspired to project a pseudo-mythical aura. If they were to go a step further they’d require a mandatory togas-only dress code.

The Venetian:

This is for those too lazy to go all the way to Europe. Interior and exterior décor went all out of the way to squeeze the whole European continent into one building. Simulated shopping sidewalk with al-fresco (sort of) dining, internal canal complete with gondola rides ala Venice, ceiling paintings ripping off Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and even security guards dressed up as Italian policemen. And which Euro-wannabe mall/hotel/casino in the world would be complete without a wax figure of Pavarotti?

On second thought, don’t bother answering that.

MGM Grand:

No cheesy themes here, just modern chic. In line with the MGM concept though, they had an indoor lion habitat, where 2 lionesses spent the whole day sleeping on top of a thick plastic passageway. People squeezed in to take pictures of their underside, for reasons I can only speculate about (how often do you get to see a lions anus up close?), while queuing up to have their picture taken with an irritated lion cub for an exorbitant fee.

In all the casinos, row after row of gaudily-coloured slot machines created a racket of electronic noise. In front of them sat mostly retirees, clutching a bucket of coins and a holding a bottle of beer or cigarette, glued to the screen. Other sections had tables offering blackjack, roulette or craps, from which occasional whoops of joy and applause emanated. Gamblers of all ages and nationalities thronged the tables, demonstrating the universal, timeless human desire to make a quick buck.

The atmosphere was generally one of colourful merriment, and it didn’t help that all the casinos seem to be in conspiracy to cover their floors with carpets that would have constituted an aesthetic disaster if they were anywhere at eye level. Scantily dressed women sauntered around the tables taking orders for drinks and cigarettes. The more upmarket ones had plenty of eye-candy for those not fixated on their cards or screens, while the less flashy ones went for a decidedly more….maternal….feel. Suited casino employees flaunting huge walkie-talkies made their rounds to make their presence felt, reinforcing the air of silent intimidation that came from the array of cameras mounted on the ceiling.

I tried my hand at a slot machine, and it took me a grand total of US$ 1.50 to realize that gambling isn’t for me. The thought of putting money down and leaving it to a game of chance just didn’t work out for the miser in me. Needless to say, I didn’t even bother with the blackjack tables, where the minimum bet ranged from US$5 to US$100. Anyone with a basic grounding in statistics would understand what kind of odds you have at the casino. I have no problems with wagers on the merit of skill, but putting money on a random possibility is beyond me. Your mileage may vary.

I wonder how ours is going to turn out.

Current beer in fridge : Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale, Anchor Liberty Ale, Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse

Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel...

2005-06-21T13:37:00.000+08:00

We see it all the time in travel brochures, movies and magazines, the city that represents the peak of entertainment and debauchery, where you can satisfy all the seven deadly sins in a day and still have time left for a martini. That’s Las Vegas, aka Sin City, and I went up there with the same group of companions.

For the record, they were generally more into the tourist side of things and we had only one car, so I didn’t really get to check out whatever I wanted to check out (I'll leave you to guess what those are). It was still an enjoyable trip though, and for a start I'll talk about the drive:

It was a 240 mile, 3-4 hour drive through the Mojave desert, spread between 3 drivers. For someone who lives on a small tropical island, the big open stretches of interstate freeways were immensely liberating. The sight of concrete and tar snaking across the terrain into the mountainous horizon would have probably been a grumpy indication of how long the trip would take for most, but to me it was a joy to behold.

If I were to close my eyes and imagine, I’d be driving a convertible and playing ACDC, Rolling Stones or even country (hey, it IS the desert) on the stereo, but for now I had to make do with a 4 door saloon car with the windows up, air-conditioner blasting and the sappy love songs on the radio station that my companions chose. Ah well, rock and roll isn't for everyone.

This drive was very scenic as well. The earlier part was a winding path through a mountain, affording a panoramic view of the valley on one side which was even more glorious in the sunset on the way back. Later on it went into flatter terrain which became progressively drier, with the occasional rocky outcrops and hills breaking up the monotony. A few of them had their darker coloured stratified layers lined up nicely to resemble a random stroke of a paintbrush across the canvas, against the varying hues of brown. The constant theme throughout was the backdrop formed by the distant mountains together with the clear azure sky.

The terrain transitioned from green to brown as we cruised through the desert. One of my companions bemoaned the lack of trees (understandably, since he used to study in Canada), but it didn’t matter to me. I get enough of those back home and it was refreshing to see so much empty space for a change. The dulating nature of the terrain was mighty tempting too. If I were driving a real off-road vehicle (not the plush, oversized, gas-gulping monsters called SUVs that inhabit the urban streets) and traveling alone, I would have loved to take her for a spin off the highway, give her a good rough time and get some real earth dirt on her face. Not necessarily legal, but surely a lot of fun. I’ve always been one for the road less traveled, if there is a road to begin with.

We passed by a region totally devoid of vegetation, a huge brown expanse of sand surrounding a family of mountains. The bare sand shimmered in the relentless sunshine like a lake in the middle of the desert brush, and it’s not hard to imagine how mirages could have hoodwinked past desert wanderers. That’s the allure of the desert for me; beautiful from a distance, fascinating yet mysterious and dangerous if you’re not prepared.

It then occurred to me that though they may be total opposites, the ocean and the desert are rather similar. They both visualise the prospect of freedom (especially if you’re in Alcatraz or Abu Ghraib) and represent the borders of civilisation. Their beauty lies in their vastness and just looking at them frees up the mind to wander. The apparent simplicity of the landscape belies the inner complexities that run deep, a trait which I value in many aspects of life, be it music, aesthetics, engineering design or people.

In a past life, I must have been a claustrophobic.

Vegas Road Trip Pt II coming up next, stay tuned folks.

If a picture paints a thousand words...

2005-06-18T15:35:00.000+08:00

It occurred to me that I’ve been writing a lot of narrative blog entries lately. A little rotation helps to keep things fresh (no, I’m not talking about relationships) so this entry will be more opinion-based, editorial if you like. If this blog entry offends you, you are welcome to register your complaint for a nominal fee of SGD$10.

You will notice that this blog has very little in the way of pictures, and when there are pictures they are usually of the items being described. This runs contrary to the trend of many blogs I’ve seen. Not that there’s anything wrong with plastering blogs with pictures, but I don’t do it and here’s why.

I’ve never been much of a picture person. Standing there and posing for photos has never been my forte. I remember early vacations with my family when my mother, a die-hard trigger-happy camera addict, had to cajole, convince and coerce me into standing next to something that I hardly cared about and smile for the camera. Usually the smile didn’t come out that convincing in the pictures, and not many of them made the final cut for the album. You know, back in the days when we actually waited for the film to get developed before seeing the picture?

It’s inexplicable, but somehow I just get a feeling of awkwardness standing in front of a camera and trying to pose just like that. Group photos are usually alright with me, sometimes enjoyable with the right crowd, but trying to stand alone in front of a camera and not look silly simply feels weird. It’s almost like those times when some people thought that cameras would steal a person’s soul when he was photographed. I know better than that of course, but still it doesn't work out for me.

As you can probably guess, I’m not cut out to be a model. Most of you would probably think so even without knowing my aversion for cameras.

Don’t get me wrong though, I do appreciate fine photography. I love looking at National Geographic, photography books and anywhere else where I can find beautiful photos. Many times, I've come across photos that simply took my breath away through the vivid or simple images and colours (or lack thereof). In fact, that could be the very reason behind my aversion to being photographed. When I think of all those vacation photos I’ve seen, they don’t do much justice to the monuments or scenery depicted. In fact, it’s almost narcissistic the way some people just fill up album after album with pictures of themselves posing with whatever it was. To me, a photograph serves as a way to portray either a person or scene in a manner that inspires awe or wonder, but vacation photos usually fail miserably in both aspects.

Another school of thought is that those photos help preserve the memories of the place or event. To each his own, but to me, if something is worth remembering, I won’t need photos to remember them by. I also prefer to use a vivid sense of imagination to recreate something that a 2-dimensional picture can’t. A lot of things in daily life these days leave little to the imagination, and it's a brain muscle that could become flab if not exercised.

Losing control of your imagination can be a source of trouble as well, but that’s beyond the scope of this entry.

Besides, the power of the written word is something being increasingly overlooked. This may sound weird coming from someone who studies mechanical engineering, reads mainly newspapers, infrequently reads non-fiction books and thinks that Shakespeare is a great conspiracy by Literature teachers (no hard feelings though, I did learn something from them), but in this day and age of media delivery requiring almost no thought on the part of the receiver, the written language has become antiquated, obselete even. This blog serves as an avenue for me to sustain whatever writing skill I have left before atrophy sets in. Using pictures excessively without making a point would defeat that purpose.

Speaking of blogs, here’s one by a California resident whose entries are incisive and thought-provoking. We happen to have a Leona Valley trip in common, and his account will give you much more fascinating details about the place, facts that I wish I had known before I made the trip. It also offers a vastly different perspective into life for most of us, and I believe everyone can benefit from one of those.

One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer....

2005-06-17T11:32:00.000+08:00

I’m kicking myself for discovering this almost too late, but there’s a grocery store near my place that has a great selection of craft beers. Don’t worry, I’m planning to make up for lost time.

As mentioned in an earlier post, craft beers are brewed by micro-breweries which typically specialize in a few types of beers. For those of you who didn’t know there were different types of beers, here’s something to get you educated.

My first introduction to solid beer (ie not yellow, fizzy lagers) was Kilkenny’s, an Irish ale that is mandatory in any self-respecting Irish pub, alongside Guiness. It was a revelation, a discovery that not all beer had to be gassy and empty-tasting. I was introduced to the world of creamy texture, of malty flavours, of smooth mouthfeel and satisfying bitterness. Beer would never be the same again.

Later on I discovered Brewerkz, a micro-brewery cum restaurant located at Riverside Point along Boat Quay. That really opened up my eyes (or taste buds rather) to the different types of ales. It helped a lot that they had fantastic Happy Hour prices. At $3 a pint from 12-3pm on weekdays, there’s a lot to be happy about. That was my first experience with micro-brew beers.

And California has lots of those. I went to Whole Foods Market, a supermarket chain with a branch about 15 mins drive away. They hid their beer selection right in the corner of the store, and it was just one refrigerated shelf, but that was probably the most appealing shelf of all to me. The feeling was the same as that I get in a great guitar shop, like a kid in a candy store. So many selections to choose from and only one mouth to drink them with. Dang.

My personal preference is for strong malt and hoppy tastes, which is a typical characteristic of most IPAs. Some of them may be a little on the sweet side, while others are unabashedly bitter and proud of it. Not all of you might find it appealing, but that’s the way (uh huh uh huh) I like it. These micro-breweries don’t do much slick advertising, but those who know their beers know who makes the good stuff. I’m still rather new to this, so I stood there perusing the rows of bottles, not knowing where to start since all of them had names I’d never heard of before.

Fortunately, one of the sales guys Tony, whose favourite food is Kung Pao Chicken (It was on his name tag. I almost though that was his name.), came along and offered his assistance. After describing my drinking preferences to him, he gave me a few suggestions, describing each choice in detail and sharing his tasting notes. That helped greatly, and I walked away from the supermarket carrying a 6-pack of Stone India Pale Ale and a bottle each of Anderson Valley Oatmeal Stout and Blanche de Chambly. The check-out cashier must have though I was a really smiley person, and it was the first time I actually felt excited while walking out of a supermarket.

Cheers.

*Disclaimer : The author would like to encourage you to explore the world of beers but also believes in responsible drinking, and so should you.*

Fields of gold

2005-06-15T14:59:00.000+08:00

A long drive through the countryside is something that we on that little tropical island don’t get to do much. On Saturday, I went with a colleague and his friend on a daytrip to Leona Valley, where cherry picking season was going to begin. The usual custom is to open the season with a little parade, so we set off in the morning to catch that.

Many miles through a highway surrounded by mountains and valley brought us to a long stretch of small, winding road circling the orchards and horse-riding ranches. In between those, vast fields on both sides of the road stretched to the hills in the distance, covered in sparse brush vegetation with occasional odd looking cactus-like plants. I was in the back seat, a rather unfamiliar feeling though it was great for taking in the sights. This would have been the perfect occasion for a convertible car, but I digress.

As we neared the intersection where it was to be held, traffic slowed to a crawl as people carrying lawn chairs, umbrellas and coolers lined the road. Families strolled casually in the sun, some pushing prams or holding dogs on leash, all preparing for a relaxing start to the weekend.

After getting a parking lot, we walked a while to get a shady spot along the street, alongside a small horde of tourists (from which country exactly I won’t say, such is the nature of blogs). I wasn’t quite expecting that, since this isn’t exactly a touristy place way out in the countryside. Nevertheless, we waited patiently for the parade to start.

The event itself wasn’t much by conventional standards, consisting mostly of SUVs, trucks and tractors with quaint but colourful decoration, each representing an orchard, ranch, school or interest group from the area. There were some really snazzy vintage cars in funky colours with chrome fittings, white wall tires and all. Also in the line-up were some huge horses with riders decked out in resplendent riding gear. The whole thing wasn’t all that elaborate, definitely no Chingay or Mardi Gras, but had a more genuine feel to it, devoid of the usual hype and pomp that usually accompanies the more upmarket parades. It also afforded an insight into the relaxed lifestyle in the countryside. In my mind, I visualized what I would have done if I were living there. Lounging on a chair in the shade with a sandwich in one hand and a cold drink (you know what mine would be) in the other, taking in the proceedings from the side while checking out the chicks in the crowd. That’d be my country lifestyle. Oh, and don't forget the guitar.

However, the event was terribly marred by the behaviour of the tourists. They constantly encroached upon the road, blocking the view of the locals on their chairs in their eagerness to take pictures. Repeated reminders in descending levels of patience did little to help. Neither did shifting their chairs closer to the road. These guys just didn’t stop, and constantly ambushed just about every parade participant to stop for pictures, holding up the parade in the process. They were obliging enough and smiled dutifully for the cameras, but these tourists were simply relentless, not knowing when to stop all the posing nonsense till the driver subtly inched forward.

Needless to say, the locals weren’t too terribly pleased. When the futility of their resistance was evident, they eventually shifted out of their comfortable little spot in the shade to the other side of the road, where it was hotter but less chaotic. I was disgusted by this show of inconsiderate boorishness, but powerless to stop it. There’s a place for tourist behaviour, and this isn’t it. The people living here will welcome you warmly if you give the due respect, but they don't need your tourist dollars and won't look kindly upon such actions.

Putting that aside, after the parade we went to the Windy Ridge orchards to pick cherries. For someone who counts durians as a major food group, I don’t normally care for those, but since I was surrounded by them I went around sampling cherries from every bush.

Gee that didn’t sound polite, but technically it’s correct. Cherries grow on bushes and I was sampling them. There.

But the real pleasure was to be had in enjoying the scenery. The orchard was located on a small mound, which made for a beautiful view of the surrounding fields. I made my way right up to the end of the orchard where the top of the mound was, away from the crowd. It wasn’t exactly the brightly coloured oceans of flowers you’d expect from The Sound Of Music, but it was breathtaking nonetheless. Rolling plains all round like a canvas of sandy brown, dotted by barns and farmhouses and the odd tree. The weather was perfect, not too cloudy but just enough to keep things cool. The wind that blew by sometimes carried the smell of fresh horse manure, but that’s part of the whole package. When it blew, the vegetation on the plains rustled in unison like applause in an auditorium, rising in a crescendo as the wind gathered strength, only to fade away gently as it died down.

Eventually my companions decided that they’d had enough cherries, so we paid up and left. I only carried in my hands a token amount of cherries, slightly over a pound, but the images of the orchard in my memory banks would serve as pleasant recall for as long as they still function.

Current beer in fridge : Lawson Creek Pale Ale

Good things come to those...

2005-06-14T10:55:00.000+08:00

It seems as though the internship work is an excuse to fill up the time in between weekends. I’m past the halfway mark, so it’s time to start jamming more into those days.

On Friday night I went down yet again to Café Boogaloo, where Tab Benoit was playing for a $15 cover. I knew he was quite a big name in the blues scene but I didn’t expect a queue to form outside the pub, much to my dismay, especially since I had already spent 15 minutes circling the place for a parking lot and walking another 5 minutes in the evening chill. Not wanting to grease the bouncer’s palms for an exorbitant fee, I opted instead to freeze my butt off in line while the first few songs were being played. During that period I kept questioning the sense in the long wait, but a tingling feeling (apart from the shivering) deep inside told me that I should stay.

Recalling my early experiences of trying to catch decent live blues several years ago, which were much worse, mitigated my doubts. Those days of cheap, tasteless beer kept in the mug through all 3 sets till it was flat to conserve expenses, of running to catch the last MRT, of volume abuse by blues-bands-in-name, of stale cigarette air...ah well, if you want to be a disciple of the blues, you’ve got to pay the dues.

Finally, Bob the bouncer waved me in after a hearty handshake and collecting the dough. I was pleasantly surprised that he actually remembered me from that night hanging out with Junior Watson. Perhaps it helps that not many short Asian guys hang out here.

It was jam-packed, with hardly enough room to move. Utilising my relative size advantage, I squeezed my way to the bar and got my pint, before maneuvering to a vantage point where I could catch a good glimpse of the action on stage, all the while holding my pint close to prevent the precious fluid from spilling.

The wait was well worth it. Tab played a distinctly different style of blues from the conventional Chicago / West Coast influenced players. He’s from New Orleans, and his music was a potent mixture of blues, zydeco and funk. The distinct Cajun rhythms and swampy grooves from the rhythm section blended to create an infectious groove that had the dance floor packed from beginning to end. I couldn’t sit still either, alternating between swaying ungracefully, vigorous foot-tapping and drumming my hands on the bar. If I were there with any female companion I would have grabbed her (no, not like that) and hit the dance floor, doing my best imitation of Saturday Night Dengue Fever.

2 sets and 2 encores went by too quickly and by then it was already 0130 hrs. I’d tanked up on 3 marvellous pints, namely Red Seal Ale, Anchor Liberty Aleand Hoptown Paint The Town Red. These are micro-brew or craft beers from small, independent breweries, and I will be getting acquainted with more in time to come. They’re definitely in a different class altogether, a much more tasteful and satisfying treat for the thirsty throat than the average lager. There’s so much variety in their tastes to tickle the palate, and a lot more fun than snobbish wines. Besides, a cold pint glass just feels right in my grubby mitts compared to those itsy-bitsy little wine glasses.

Fantastic music, great beer and dancing eye-candy, what's not to like?

The Weekend Chronicles will continue after these messages.

I ain't drunk, I'm just drinkin'...

2005-06-07T11:05:00.000+08:00

Another weekend at the pubs has been interesting.

Saturday night saw me at The Little Red Rooster (which, incidentally, is a blues euphemism. Not too hard to guess), to catch James Harman again. Another stellar show, but I won’t bore you with a repeat description of something which should really be experienced in person.

Instead, what made the night different from the rest was an inebriated old-timer. He started off hitting some congas at the side of the stage while there was a guy playing acoustic blues. Understandably, the guitar player wasn’t too happy and told him to buzz off. Undeterred, he proceeded to rant loudly to no one in particular, alternating between proudly proclaiming to be a veteran of 2 Vietnam tours and vehemently cursing everyone else for not recognizing a war hero.

For the most part, everyone else ignored him except his pal, who tried to get him to pipe down. Not too much success though, as he then planted himself next to a lady, who was seated at the bar next to her male companion. I was seated at the bar too, and the old-timer stood between myself and the lady.

He carried on his dubious sermon, a haphazard mix of barroom politics, drunken philosophy and misconstrued history. Though I was concentrating on the blues being played, I could see that the lady was slowly becoming visibly pissed. It didn’t help that her male companion was a huge bearded guy who would have looked right at home in the WWE. They weren’t really on the verge of a smackdown, probably in deference to his elderly age and frail frame, but he was making quite a nuisance of himself.

It all culminated in her giving him a piece of her mind, a polite but firmly worded reprimand with choice placements of F-words. Amazingly, his earlier belligerence became suddenly subdued in the face of impending female wrath and he only managed a weak “Ok”. He turned away, staring blankly into his mug of beer. One can only wonder what he saw at the bottom of that mug. With either uncanny coincidence or sarcastic humour, the guy on stage was singing at that moment:

The battle may be over
But the war has just begun

Ordinarily, I don’t care much about drunks but this one brought to mind an issue which we as Singaporeans don’t get to think much about. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t approve of getting piss drunk in a pub/club to the point of incoherence or even worse, incapacitation. Neither do I believe in blatant self-glorification to the point of disturbing the public peace. It’s just that I’d been watching lots of WWII movies lately and somehow that event served as a catalyst to organize all those thoughts.

In the wake of the Memorial Day weekend and the backdrop of the Iraq war, it’s hard to imagine when peace will prevail. All over the world, tensions seem to pop up like that arcade game where you smack beavers (or whatever they’re supposed to be) poking their heads out of holes with a rubber mallet, but don’t disappear quite as fast. They seem to keep popping up at the same places too. It’s great if you like smacking beavers (stop grinning now) but that’s not quite the point.

Boarding a few different trains of thought brought me to the station of self-reflection. Exactly what went on in that station may not interest most of you, though if you’d like to discuss it constructively I’d most certainly oblige. If you’d like to pop by that station, here are the directions:

“What would I have done?”

Current beer in fridge : Sapporo Premium Beer

Sunshine of your love

2005-05-31T11:49:00.000+08:00

Yet another day in the sun.

It’s amazing how the Internet has shrunk the world. I met up with a California resident who previously sold me stuff on Ebay and shipped them to me in Singapore, and when I saw him listing some new stuff on Ebay it suddenly occurred to me that he was just a half hour drive away, so we met up about a week back. His name is Carter, and like me he’s got a penchant for old, weird, funky guitar stuff, so today he brought me to a big yard sale where he gets great stuff sometimes.

It’s a bigger version of Sungei Road Thieves Market. For the benefit of those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s basically a place where people hock all sorts of stuff, layed out on groundsheets. Some of it ranges from outrageous (used shaver blades? For what, AIDS sample testing?) to intriguing. Well, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

This one that I went to was much bigger, with a lot more interesting artifacts. The location was an old drive-in theatre converted into a big open space, where people drove up their vans and trucks into designated lots and unloaded their stuff. Among some of the more interesting items were antique cameras, toys, obsolete electronic equipment and testers and even a slide rule, all from an era gone by. Some others were rather dubious, like the rusty shovels, broken spanners and broken plastic housings while others were downright ridiculous, like a bunch of guys flogging a mountain of trashy lingerie. Ah well, it adds to the colour and excitement of the whole place. You never know what you’ll find. Call me eccentric, but sometimes you might just find a personal treasure among the whole mountain of junk.

For today though, there wasn’t any such treasure to be found, though I did get something that I think an alcoholic friend of mine will appreciate.

After that, I made my way back to Hermosa Beach to check out what the festival was like in the afternoon. I’m glad I did.

The rows of white tents lined an intersection in an X shape, showcasing work by painters, photographers, sculptors and all sorts of eclectic clothing and costume jewelry. It was a beautiful sunny day and Californians were out to enjoy Memorial Day in all its’ glory. People of all ages strolled down the stalls, taking in the sights and perusing the displays. For the most part, the people themselves were a pretty sight too. Young ladies in bikini tops and flirty skirts, MILFs pushing baby prams, all finely packaged in summer attire.

The magnificent canines on display were a sight to behold too. Bulldogs, Labradors, Retrievers, Boxers, Mastiffs, Pugs and several other breeds all had their day in the sun, sometimes drawing coos, pets and rubs from admiring females. If this is a dog’s life, sign me up.

Minus the silly dog clothing and accessories please.

I hit the beach and again its’ beauty didn’t fail to amaze me. This time, it was bathed in sunshine and there were more beach-goers, adding colour and life to the cream-coloured shoreline. Sun-tanning babes were eye-candy icing on the cake, making it an entirely pleasurable visual experience. From the pier, the waves lapped the sand in periodic sinusoidal fashion. Surfers and surfers-in-training spread out across the coast to catch the wave, which never really did get very big though, just enough to crash into the shore and froth like the foamy head on a fresh pint of Guiness. Trust me, it’s a very nice mental image to have on a warm day.

I don’t know if I can ever step foot on Sentosa without feeling that something is missing.

Keepin' it real

2005-05-30T09:06:00.000+08:00

On I went to Café Boogaloo.

A big guy with a handlebar moustache, wearing a straw hat and Hawaii shirt sat outside the door. That’s Bob the bouncer (got a ring to it eh?). I paid my ten bucks cover, which was to be the best ten bucks I’ve ever spent in my life.

The place itself was pretty much like any other pub along the street, and it was jam packed like the others. Bottles of liquor lined the wall behind the bar alongside at least 15 beer taps. Definitely a sight for sore eyes. The small stage occupied a corner of the room, with a little clearing in front serving as a dance floor. Smoky grill wafted through the air from the kitchen, working its magic on my nostrils every now and then. The din of lively chatter and laughter completed the picture.

Holding a pint of Lost Coast IPA in my hand, I was all ready for the evening. I struck up conversation with some fellow blues enthusiasts while waiting for the band to begin. One of them is Collin Miller, an engineer by day who indulges his hobby of photography taking pictures of blues musicians, and running this website detailing most of LA’s blues scene. He’s got some great pictures, check them out.

Another one is J.R., who happens to know Enrico Crivallero. He’s an Italian guitar hotshot who blew our socks off when he hit our shores, and is also a fantastically nice guy. I had the honour of jamming with him along with Ublues and the rest of the festival performers during one of the Ublues festivals. Anyways, J.R’s a pretty cool guy who’s chummy with a couple of blues cats on the scene, and he introduced me to Junior Watson. Now, those of you who know blues will know that this guy is the real deal when it comes to West Coast blues. As luck would have it, Watson was going to play guitar for Harman that night.

As I sat at the bar, Harman came around to get a drink, and we got to talking. He's a big guy with a long beard, almost like a modern day Santa Claus, except for the flowy shirt and baseball cap. It’s a little hard to understand his drawl, but he’s always got a story or anecdote to tell. He shared some insights into his music, and talked about how he and Junior Watson go way back to the 70’s. When the bartender brought his mug of ginger ale, he went back to setting up his stuff with his usual laid-back demeanor.

Once the music began, I was spellbound. Watson’s wonderfully inventive lines, flurried chords and chugging shuffle rhythms were the perfect complement to Harman’s whooping harp, answering each others calls and pushing each other, riding on the wave of an excellent rhythm section. The dance floor filled up and people were boogie-ing down, yelling out their approval whenever. Dancing ranged from simple shakedowns to fancy footwork, and everyone was just intent on having a ball. There was a fantastic vibe all round, the way a real happening party should be. Man, this is THE original dance music. Bear that in mind when you get tired of incessant chest-pounding beats and electronically-generated noises. There’s real music to be had if you look hard enough.

They did 2 smokin’ sets, and would have brought the roof down if they played anymore. As I left, I caught Watson hanging out with Bob, puffing on what was left of a little stump of a cigar. Watson’s a real nice fellow, and doesn’t really talk much about what he’s achieved or who he’s played with. Instead, we ended up talking about cigars (not that I know much of), music, Singapore, guitars and stuff. Here’s a guy whose stuff I’ve been listening to for a long time on the recommendation of Steven from Roomful of Blues, who I read about in blues magazines and websites, whose name is among one of those always mentioned when it comes to West Coast blues guitarists, and yet he just comes across as an average Joe who loves what he does and does what he loves. It’s good to know that the blues musicians I admire also happen to be great guys. That’s what blues is about I guess, keeping the music and the people real.

And so it was, one of the most fantastic gigs I’ve ever seen. 2 of the biggest names in modern blues on the same stage, getting to talk to them and seeing them rip it up real good on stage. Ten bucks has never brought me so far before.

Latest fortune cookie caper: "Many people will be drawn to you for your wisdom and insights".

I wish those people the best of luck.