There's life outside of this blog

The good thing about not having your own computer is that it forces you to go do things other than 'computing'. I'm very happy that I've been loaned a notebook to use for work, which there seems to be more of, until I get back on my feet, get some cash, and buy myself an iBook. Or a Powerbook. Because they are nice. Them Apples are nice computers

Surf stop: Madame Chiang

iTunes party shuffle is playing a copy of: How Deep Is the Ocean - Ella Fitzgerald - Quiet Now: Ella's Moods, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music

Push button commentary

Straits Times Interactive finally spells my URL right. If you've just come over from STi, welcome. All two of you. This is an 'online diary', this blog. Keepers of such online diaries 'can wax lyrical about anything they want'. So hor, you suck! All of youse! Quite lyrical hor?

'Few policies and political happenings escape the sharp eye, keen debate - and acidic criticism - of blogs'.

Blogger.com don't have such buttons leh. Press here click there, still haven't caught these policies and political happenings. Maybe I've to 'migrate' this blog to Wordpress or Movable Type. mrbrown tells me that Wordpress has a 'Politics' button and a 'Policies' button. Movable Type even has a 'What blogs are saying about me' button. I've tried out these other blog engines before and tried pressing these buttons, but the chio bu pictures disappeared. Now, I don't want that to happen to this blog. You don't want that to happen either.

Surf stop: Still spoyr lah, cheebye! iTunes Party Shuffle has no music because notebook spoyr, ungderstang?

Must. Get. Away.

"Come, my friends,

Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die

It may well be the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles"

- Tennyson, Ulysses

My Happy Isle

Trrd

There were so many bloggers at Hideout tonight that when I was looking worse for wear from an increasingly annoying stomach ailment and tiredness, one of the Sarongpartyfrens asked if I was ill, and that if I were, and if it were contagious, he'd have to kick me out of the place. Because he was afraid the whole Singapore blogosphere could be struck down with illness. In other news, I am very, very, very tired, and quite ill. So it wasn't 'quiet confidence' or 'aloofness'. It was 'my stomach is in the third washing machine cycle'. The notebook's totalled, so I'm typing this directly into blogger instead of using an offline client. No surf stops, no iTunes info. This post is brought to you courtesy of a five year old Celeron with a dodgy keyboard. Break coming up, and this is where I want to be

My world's come a-crashing down

OK, my notebook computer spoyr. I cannot function normally. All my files. Photos. Can't think! Can't write! Faaaaaaark!

Quite contrary

When your opinion is contrary to a newspaper reporter's angle on a story she's doing, there's a high chance your opinion won't be seen in print:

Hi Mr Lee, I'm doing an article on the influence of local bloggers and I just have a few questions. Local bloggers like yourself, mrbrown and Wendy Cheng are treated like mini celebrities, in that your readers are loyal to you and are influenced by your opinions. - do you think this is a purely local situation, because of Singapore's size? - could you tell me one or two instances in which you realised that you were able to influence people? - do you ever get special treatment at events, eg VIP passes? I hope you can get back to me really quickly! Thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it :) -jennani Regards, Jennani Durai The Straits Times (Digital Life) Hi Jennani, Thanks for emailing. Let me qualify your statement and question: No, I am not treated like a celebrity, mini or otherwise. But there are other bloggers who can be seen to be. Xiaxue, for instance. - do you think this is a purely local situation, because of Singapore's size? No, there are bloggers in the US who are celebrities. Singapore's size helps make it seem as if it is easy to bump into a familiar face. - could you tell me one or two instances in which you realised that you were able to influence people? Yes, a few other bloggers started misspeowling words like I did. Other than that, my (very few) opinions count for naught. - do you ever get special treatment at events, eg VIP passes? I once told a bouncer that I had 2000 visitors a day at my website, and he told me, 'so do we, get back in line'. So, no. Let me know if you have other questions. Xiaxue and mrbrown are on the cc list. So, consider them asked as well. Cheers,

Kwai Lan some more lah! Press cut you out totally den you know!

Surf stop: being jennifer garrett

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Jericho - k.d. lang - Hymns Of The 49th Parallel, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Song to the moon

When I used to get all bogged down with dunnowhat, I'd drive to listen to the waves crash on the rocks, accompanied by Dvorak's Song to the Moon, from the opera Rusalka. But it's a long way from Clovelly, and East Coast Park just doesn't do quite the same thing, so what's a feller to do but to go down Dunlop Street and spend a whole afternoon at Blu Jazz, where one finds that someone else also thinks the Song to the Moon rocks. Well, not quite, 'cos Rusalka's like, y'know, opera? So, anyway, Blu Jazz rocks. Well, not quite, 'cos Blu Jazz plays like, y'know, jazz? But the food's not bad, and so's the coffee, and I'm thinking it's a great place for to hang out at even if you don't have grand company like I did today. 71 Dunlop Street. Good food, good music. BYO Chio babe.

Surf stop: Let there be light, blue skies and wind

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Song to the Moon {from Rusalka} {from Driving Miss Daisy} - Lesley Garrett - Diva, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

We own this language and it owns us back

Aunty Lilly got all excited on Sunday and yelled up and down the terrace house, waking Uncle Albert and my cousins with:

Ben's face come out newspaper! Ben's face come out newspaper! Ben's face come out newspaper!

My grumpy cousins grunted their replies, hoping she'd leave them alone so they could go back to sleep. But Aunty Lilly, all essited and more repetitive than the karang-guni man, persisted:

Ben's face come out newspaper, you know?

Aunty Lilly won't know what it's all about if you told her this pidgin called Singlish is to be strongly discouraged. Or that schools will have to buck up and teach proper English, they say. Or that simply passing English exams at Cambridge GCE O and A levels isn't good enough now. Just when (linguists and linguistic hobbyists please correct me - yes, Daryl, you) this pidgin was on the cusp of turning into a creole, a veritable language of its own. And they're kewwing it! The fuckers! Just when we've almost acquired a real mother tongue and a national language that's congruent with our migrant heritage. Nabeh, our forefathers (limpeh) came here, appropriated everything and made it their own, ok? Ban Singlish and you might as well ban chicken rice, kaya toast, hainanese coffee, satay, mee siam, laksa, rojak and ice-kachang. While you're at it, this purist binge, you might as well tell everyone the real reason for the crescent moon on the national flag. Not the 'young nation' and the Jackson Five spiel. Aiyah, dunno lah. All's I care about is that there are etymological gems like the following floating around: During 'live-firing' range training in the Army in National Service (another national institution, hey, why not ban this too?), soldiers who are really, really bad shots are called 'Bobo shooters', by their instructors and comrades. Now, I used to think that the word 'Bobo' came from the Hokkien rude root word, 'Boh', meaning 'don't have', 'don't got', or 'nothing', but an old Army hand recently left a comment in my Army team blog and explained otherwise:

BOBO is an adulterated version of WOWO. WO stands for 'Washed Out', i.e., hopeless in shooting (like our national soccer team), can't get a single hit. During those days, there were the english educated and the chinese educated. There were even the Hokkien platoons (where they can't even converse in Mandarin). There were malay, tamil and other language speaking soldiers.Those days ===> 60s and 70s. We wore name tags with different coloured backgrounds from 1975. Green for English, orange for Mandarin, red for Hokkien, yellow for Tamil, blue for Malay and purple for others (like Teochew speaking). The background colour is for your main language. It would be green if you are english educated. Then, if you could also speak mandarin proficiently, a little orange colour is added to the right end of the tag. You could add several colours if you speak several languages proficiently. Back to BOBO. As the chinese helicoptered (derogatory term to describe the chinese educated by the english educated) usually mispronounced english terms, they pronounced WOWO as BOBO. We used to joke about it but somehow the term appar to stick since. Trust me. I enlisted in 1973.

Orange for Mandarin. How cool is that?

Surf stop: wurh.com (because easy to remember URL)

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Lookin' Through the Windows - The Jackson 5 - Number One Motown, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Makin' the Sunday Times

Blogs are come alive everywhere, crawling off the primordial cybersoup and onto dry paper: Story about Tomorrow.sg and the Blogger Conference, Sunday Times p38. The Email Interview, Sunday Times p40.

And not forgetting this week's Hot Blog: my name is faith

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl - Nina Simone - The Essential Nina Simone, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Mr Miyagi makes the sports pages

It's not every day you get featured in the sports pages of the newspaper. Unless of course you're a sportsperson. Or someone who's just lost a lot of money betting on soccer. Heck, I don't even blog about sports. So that's really a first. Stevie Wonder talks about Singapore politicians

Surf stop: wuyuetian

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: What a Difference a Day Makes - Dinah Washington - Compact Jazz Sampler, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Never been Sithed

I have not watched Episode III, Revenge of the Sith yet, and I'm not sure if it's all that good, as a movie. But I am taken in by the hype of it all, as I was when I first watched Episode IV, which was just known as Star Wars then. Way back then. Long time ago... far, far away and all that. My older sister, my younger brother and myself were deemed old enough by our parents to go watch a movie all by ourselves for the first time. So, one fine Saturday afternoon, my parents dropped us off at Bras Basah Road, and we walked to The Odeon, which is now some funky arty building selling arty funky stuff, right opposite the Raffles Hotel. Being able to watch a movie without parental supervision was a thrill in itself, though we weren't the only unaccompanied kids in the theatre. The area around Bras Basah Road contained many mission schools at the time, and the students from the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus, Catholic High, St Nicholas (not Santa Claus) Girls', St Joseph's, St Anthony's Convent and the Methodist Girls' School used to congregate around what's now the Museum and University district of town. Schoolkids dashing across roads and sometimes getting into the nastiest accidents was quite the norm then. I had this classmate who had a habit of falling into construction pits while waiting for his parents to pick him up. I don't remember watching many movies when I was a kid, which means I mustn't have watched many movies at all, because, as you can imagine, this was the age before the DVD, or the VCD, or the LD. We did have electricity though, and a very expensive Betamax VCR, but video pirates weren't so easy to find then. So, yes. I don't think I watched that many movies except really old ones they screened on the television. We did have television. Colour one too. But back to the cinema, or the theatre, as they were more popularly known then. Apart from being the analog age, this was also the time before cineplexes and multiplexes. Each 'theatre', had just the one screen, and usually a huge one. I think the largest one must've been at The Lido. The one at Capitol Theatre used to be stained with shit from the pigeons which roosted in ledges near the ceiling, so that the likes of James Bond and Rambo would often appear speckled with birdshit. Most of the cinemas were owned by Shaw Brothers, (except for The Cathay, which was not), and they'd decide which of their establishments would host which movie franchise. I remember The Lido hosted the early James Bond and Bruce Lee films, while The Odeon did Star Wars and The Capitol did Jaws. So, at The Odeon, my sister peered into the box office and picked our seats from the grumpy auntie with the horn-rimmed glasses who marked the seating sheet with her red crayon, or was it her lipstick? Looked the same. Sis bought me and my brother a cone of kacang-puteh each, which even in those days, would've been considered cheap, at 10c, as compared to today's popcorn fare. You need to strike lottery before you can afford both a movie ticket and a tub of popcorn. My brother lost his cone of kacang puteh just when the lights were dimmed, and then the movie started. The opening sequence, the prologue and the music blew our socks off. Then, if I remember correctly, this must have been the first movie with one of those surround sound Dolby things, and the first movie to employ such stunning special sound effects. So special, and so loud, that when the first Star Destroyer loomed across the screen, my brother wet his pants. There were many more movies we watched together after that, but Star Wars was remarkable because it lent itself to a million possibilities in the games we played with each other, the cartoon drawings we did, and the number of new foreign toys which were beginning to find their way to Singapore, and for which we wheedled and needled our parents to buy. I've a friend who watched Star Wars at the theatre with her brother too, and she used to use Star Wars as a weapon of blackmail every time her brother wanted to 'play Star Wars' after that. Once, she even convinced him to put on her swimsuit (one with a frilly skirt) before she'd play 'Rebel Alliance' with him. Me and my friends still hanker after Star Wars toys. And I'm sure some of them fight with their own kids for Star Wars toys too. And it started a long time ago, on a fine Saturday afternoon in Singapore in 1977. The Odeon, North Bridge Road The Capitol, cnr Stamford & North Bridge Roads The Cathay, Dhoby Ghaut The Lido, cnr Orchard & Scotts Roads

Surf stop: Jade*

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Cigarettes Will Kill You - Ben Lee - Breathing Tornados, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Musical Baton

Wah lao. The Cowboy has very kindly passed me the baton because I haven't anything to blog about today. (Actually have lah, but editing). Total volume of music files on my computer:

10.50Gb - 3057 songs, 8 days 6 hours 55 minutes and 14 seconds of music

The last CD I bought was:

20:30:40 - Various (Soundtrack) For Xiaxue's birthday present

Song playing right now:

Prettiest Star - David Bowie - Aladdin Sane

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me (actually the top 5 most played songs on my iTunes):

Little Wing - Hendrix, Jimi - The Ultimate Experience Love Is Everything - k.d. lang - Hymns Of The 49th Parallel It Feels Like Rain - Aaron Neville - Warm Your Heart Killing Floor - Jimi Hendrix - RADIO ONE Clémentine - Pink Martini - Hang On Little Tomato

The baton is now passed to:

mrbrown done. littlemissdrinkalot done. sarongpartyfrens daryl sng cour marly done.

"The other day, I meta babe like this one..."

Siao ah? So many hyperlinks already still want to surf stop?! And iTunes party shuffle your head lah!

The day's wider than it is long

It's only a work day. But it's been tiring nonetheless. I'm not a loser if I come home, log on, and see this in my email inbox. Definitely not.

Surf stop: SomethingStickyThisWayComes

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Man of Constant Sorrow - Dan Tyminski, Soggy Bottom Boys - O Brother, Where Art Thou?, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Camillus Parker Bowles? Dowan!

I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains, I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways, I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests, I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans, I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard...

OK lah, not half so dramatic. But today I met a real estate agent named Camillus, and he and his colleague, with a name so normal I forget what it is, showed me and my business partners a few locations around Singapore for our business. They were a great help. So if you're thinking there's a funny somewhere in this, go back to the second sentence of this paragraph. Then there was the conversation between the coffee stall auntie and a customer at the coffee stall downstairs of my office building:

Uncle, want to eat what? Got what? Got Chee Cheong Fun Chee Cheong Fun dowan! Got Nasi Lemak Nasi Lemak dowan! Got Chai Tow Kuay Chai Tow Kuay dowan! Got Char Png Char Png dowan! Got Orh Kuay Orh Kuay dowan! Got curry puff Curry puff dowan! ... Got what other thing? No more already.

It's rough. Spare a thought for the coffee shop auntie. And spare a thought for the Prime Minister when he asks the populace what type of Singapore we want. No more already. Dowan this type of Singapore? Siao!

Surf stop: Getting all the Slack she can before the Real World intrudes...

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: New York State Of Mind - Billy Joel - Greatest Hits - Volume 1 (1973 - 1980), of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Starry Night

I don't remember many other names now, but I was numb from fatigue. So were Foong, Selvam and Ho Yeo as we lay on the top of our Armoured Personnel Carrier. Foong asked why. I said I didn't know. Ask the stars. A lot of them tonight. I must have been numb from fatigue, because I didn't feel much else while lying on the top of the APC. Foong asked again, what happened? Not sure. APC overturned. Bravo Company. Someone died. Why must people die like that? Foong asked the stars again. I thought of many things then. How the accident happened. How unlucky it was for Bravo Company to be switched to point (leading) company instead of Alpha. How dark it was at 8pm when the command for Order of Movement was given. How it had rained the two days before, making the dirt tracks all but muddy slosh pits. How we had always made fun of Bravo's incompetence. How I had spent the previous two days riding my recce bike behind and between the tanks and armoured carriers. How I had been tasked to mark out directions at track junctions. How I had seen the false track leading up a steep embankment. How I had judged that that false track would be obvious to all. How I realised I had made the assumption that it would be Alpha Company on point. How I realised that if another company had been on point, they might not have deemed the false track so obvious. How I realised what might happen when the Order of Movement was given. How I did not actually see the accident. How I realised exactly what had happened when the radio call came in to inform Battalion HQ personnel to collect the deceased's personal effects from Bravo Company. I thought of it all, but I couldn't tell Foong or the rest why and how. Maybe I was just numb from fatigue. And it was late, and kind of peaceful under the Kanchanaburi sky. It had stopped raining and there sure were a lot of stars that night. Then we fell asleep, and it must have been a good uninterrupted sleep, because we woke up only when the morning sun shone on our faces and threatened to bake us on the metal deck. PTE Teo Ho Yeo, CFC Tan, myself, CPL Koh, PTE Sng, SSG Ang, Kanchanaburi, Thailand, 20th Oct 1989

Surf stop: Fluffy Stuff

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Night and Day - Ella Fitzgerald - Lady sings the Blues, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

A dunno go where dunno do what weekend

Once a while, you get one of these particularly bleah weekends where work has occupied your mind so much you don't know what to do when you finally get a break. So, online, on MSN IM, as you would when you finally get a break, I was asked, 'So how? Go out? Where?', which started a half hour brainstorming session about where to go when one is tired from work and where one has already breached his weekly quota of alcoholic beverages. I even Googled for clues. Music too loud.

Surf stop: zeenie's bean bag

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Cuban Overture for orchestra - George Gershwin - Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue/Cuban Overture/Progy and Bess Suite/An American in Paris, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

I'm not the one appealing to your conscience

When the trap springs the prisoner dangles at the end of the rope. There are times when the neck has not been broken and the prisoner strangles to death. His eyes pop almost out of his head, his tongue swells and protrudes from his mouth, his neck may be broken, and the rope many times takes large portions of skin and flesh from the side of the face that the noose is on. He urinates, he defecates, and droppings fall to the floor while witnesses look on... A prison guard stands at the feet of the hanged person and holds the body steady, because during the last few minutes there is usually considerable struggling in an effort to breathe.* ~p.87, The Justice Game, Geoffrey Robertson QC

from material previously posted 28 October 2004

Steppin' out with Pig's Pettitoes

I was hungry last night after not having dinner. So around midnight, I drove around in search of food, and there was this place on Balestier Road that looked crowded. Had to be good. Only thing was, they served 'Pig's Pettitoes'. Now that's a word you don't see very often. Didn't eat that though. Tirh Kah, right?

Surf stop: Stripped Bare

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: I Shall Be Released - Nina Simone - The Best of Nina Simone [RCA], of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Another lesson about making your words public: Traditional Media 1, Mr Miyagi 0

I was really angry this morning when I heard how I was quoted by Today:

"I am aware that the laws of defamation apply whether online or offline, and A*Star has a legal right to sue for defamation"

Other than that, my captors have treated me well since I was shot down while flying a combat sortie over Iraq. While I don't know if the journo was really at fault for chopping the quote to that size and slant, it is nonetheless an obvious lesson which you'd think I'd have learnt ages ago. Everyone has a motive and an agenda. You will be used. Question their motives first before talking. The spiel on my side of the phone had gone like this (in response to the question put to me about what the ramifications for bloggers were), and I paraphrase myself (because nair record down):

The lesson to be learnt here is that the laws of defamation apply to all publications, online and off. Bloggers would hopefully have learnt that once you've blogged, you have published, and a publication is public. A*Star or anyone has the right to sue for defamation if they have been defamed by a blogger. As for the AcidFlask-A*Star matter, he [AcidFlask] may well have defamed A*Star, we don't know, but I think the agency's response smacks of bullying. I mean, come on, the fella is just one student, you are an [govt] agency, and I think you can't possibly have protected the 'reputation of your agency' and your country by threatening to sue the one student who mouths off'.

Us 'veteran' bloggers have egg on our faces now. The fuckers. Like that how to be cool anymore? I couldn't possibly stay angry all day with this around

technorati tag: singapore blog

Surf stop: SarongPartyFrens

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Never Make Your Move Too Soon - Ry Cooder - Borderline, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Deejay Slapdash is da bomb

Or however we're supposed to say it in this day and age of Music Television. There's this extremely nice place on Circular Road (which we're told, is like the new Mohammed Sultan Road, only for older people, so we have to go there now) called The Hideout, which we managed to find after discovering that Circular Road did not live up to its name. DJ Slapdash (Daryl Sng by day) spun a darn good set, or however we're supposed to say it, comprising many nice songs, most of which I didn't know, except for one David Bowie track, a Velvet Underground track, and a track by The Strokes, who I have one CD of. I am so hip. Just as good was the fact we were greeted at the door by one of the SarongPartyFrens, who happens to be a good friend of one of the owners. Further conversations over a girly cocktail revealed that I am friends with friends of their friends. You know how it is. I am going to go back there to chew out, or however we're supposed to say it. Y'all should too. Just make sure you don't nurse one drink for three hours. Belinda (who happens to be quite the babe, and who bellydances as well) will be mighty pissed if you do. DJ Slapdash chills out after his set

Surf stop: The Adventures of Princess Dominique

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Soma - The Strokes - Is This It?, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Life really has to move on

LMD was on MSN IM earlier and she asked me, 'i shouldn't get into trouble for writing things like "fuck you yellow pages" on my blog, right?' I said no, because to say 'fuck you yellow pages' isn't that bad, unless LMD accompanies that statement with an appropriate gesture and Yellow Pages and its employees truly believe that she is truly about to fuck them. So she had better keep her hands to herself. Moving away from this sorry (and quite boring) chapter in blogdom, we're gonna go watch Daryl Sng spin tonight at this place called the Hideout. Hope we can find it. So we can learn a thing or two about DJing. 'Cos we wanna be hip too. We used to be, y'know? "Lately I’ve not slept a wink Since this half-pint imitation Put me on the blink"

Surf stop: Let that be enough

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Bewitched - Ella Fitzgerald - Quiet Now: Ella's Moods, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Hurrah, the world is a safer place now

So, the fella apologizes unreservedly and A*Star decides not to sue and puts word out that they have decided not to sue. And boy, has word been put out. The Rest of the Free World will now know that we're all happy once more:

...This is an invitation Across the nation A chance for the folks to meet There'll be laughin' and singin' and music swingin' And dancin' in the streets Philadelphia, P.A. (Philadelphia, P.A.) Baltimore and DC now (Baltimore and DC now) Yeah don't forget the Motor City (can't forget the Motor City) All we need is music, sweet music There'll be music everywhere There'll be swingin', swayin' and records playin' And dancin' in the street, yeah Oh, it doesn't matter what you wear Just as long as you are there So come on, every guy grasp a girl Everywhere around the world There'll be dancin' They're dancin' in the streets Philadelphia, P.A. (Philadelphia, P.A.) Baltimore and DC now (Baltimore and DC now) Yeah don't forget the Motor City (can't forget the Motor City) All the way down in L.A. California Not to mention Halifax Nova Scotia Manchester Alexandria, Virginia, Virginia ~Dancing in the Streets - Martha & the Vandellas

All the world's talking 'bout us. We're so hip it hurts! This is what it's about, folks, Grober Buzz. Hallo? It's all happening here. Faster come.

Surf stop: Hand of Gory

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Dancing in the Street - Martha & the Vandellas - Number One Motown, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

A bit late, like Channel NewsAsia, but Happy 21st, Wendy Cheng!

We wuz honoured to be invited to Xiaxue's 21st birthday party at Changi last last week, and I even got to wear her tiara. Queen for the night. Doesn't get any better than this, this blogging life. By the time we got there, the birthday girl had turned 21, washed her makeup off with tears and champagne, and was ready to turn in early because of early morning media engagements, but she still managed to be the consummate hostess. What a gal! Royal wave more like royal flush

Surf stop: What's wrong with worshipping the ground she blogs on?

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Argwydd Dyma Fi - Cerys Matthews - Cockahoop, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Your grandfather tattoo

The ST article on Tomorrow calls this an online diary. So hor, yeah, I woke up with a blinding headache today because it was way too hot. It is a really slow blog day, what with all the media attention on Tomorrow. So hor, here's a funny I've been saving: I have a friend who saw my tattoo and decided he wanted one also. So I said, go get one lor. And he said, 'but I want one that's meaningful'. 'Nabeh, mine not meaningful lah?' 'Yours is a dragon'. 'Then what do you want yours to be? Dragon with a thought bubble saying something meaningful? Painful leh!' 'I want something that reminds me of my grandfather'. 'Can! Got!' 'Got meh? Like what?' 'You ask the tattoo artist to tattoo your backside: "Ah" on left buttcheek, "Kong" on right buttcheek'. If that's what's underneath the Wookie suit... whoa. Brain cramp.

Surf stop: The Lovers and the Dreamers.....

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Don't think twice, it's all right - Bob Dylan - The Best Of Bob Dylan, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

My mother is meaner than yours

My mother was expecting us to take her out to a good meal. And though she didn't articulate that expectation, her children had to meet it. Nothing less. Nothing less is what my mother expects. And it has been that way all her life. From jostling for the littlest bit of attention in her childhood, among 13 siblings, in a small shophouse in Seremban, right to where she is now: A successful businesswoman with three grown children who struggle to know anything about poverty. And though she doesn't talk much about her childhood and how she suffered, I've had the benefit of my other relatives telling me horror stories of Lembok and Cameron Street, Seremban. And that's where she honed that strength and grit of hers. One morning last year, my mother fell and broke her leg in two places. Hip and knee. She lasted the afternoon on two panadols, after one GP visit, and before a trip to the hospital, where she stayed for six weeks. My mother can kick all of your asses. With her bad leg. And that's why my brother and I thought it was ok to buy her dinner at the cafe at the Four Seasons. Mother wouldn't approve of this one? That must mean she's hot!

Surf stop: f*! ass+ablishmen+

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Handle With Care - Traveling Wilburys - Vol. 1, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Satellite of love

One of the reasons why people have been saying that the Singapore blogosphere has a 'sense of community' is that we all work and play very close to each other. We're only inches apart, most days. Here's a satellite image of part of the Singapore Central Business District (like those Google Maps), and I've marked out where some of the bloggers work (Cowboy Caleb won't be too happy I'm revealing his workplace, so, don't tell anyone ok?): Doesn't mean we'll all say the same things about the same things

Surf stop: The Re-Education of a Certain Miss A^TM

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Satellite Of Love - U2 - One (CDMIX), of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

They really mean it when they say 'this is the late news'

For bloggers who kenah asked to take down more than 10 posts Over at our regional (and some say almost global) news network, a story broke yesterday about A-asterix-STAR sending a warning letter to a student.

On Wednesday, Channel NewsAsia broke a story about how the Singapore student, who is pursuing his Masters degree in the United States, shut down his blog after he was threatened with legal action...

Broke a story indeed. Channel NewsLATER! Many people covered it already! Including Reporters sans Clue. One week is a very, very long time in cyberspace. (If CNL had waited a little more they might miss RSC wanting to give the closed down blog an award - the Freedom Flask.) The other thing of note is, if a coupla emails and a letter gets a blogger to close down his blog, what if you got a writ of summons? Habis lah? Close blog, close shop, close house? This award also can

Surf stop: Cokecat's Basket

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Girl Crazy, musical: Overture - George Gershwin - Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

I am a weenner!

I'm a poster boy for Reservist duty! Whaddya know? They ran my dulce et decorum est pro patria mori story on the National Servicemen's website (MIW - Mindef Internet World). Last month, I submitted one of my old posts from here as an entry in a contest organized by them. I was hoping for a big prize, like two years off reservist training or something. Instead I now have an MIW water bottle, a CD of Army songs by Jack Neo, Dick Lee and Sheikh Haikel and a two week pass to California Fitness. As Cowboy Caleb said to me, 'what you think? They give you Toyota Camry ah?' Must tell them to buck up. Else every month, like this month, mine will be the only entry they'll receive. Wow, I won! Who'dve thunk it?

Surf stop: Catch a falling star

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Helpless - k.d. lang - Hymns Of The 49th Parallel, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Straits Times does Tomorrow.sg

A flurry of emails and phone calls and the press room at Tomorrow.sg has been buzzing. Yes. Two weeks after launch and Tomorrow's scored it's first press engagement. A very funny photoshoot took place at Boat Quay earlier this evening, where the ST photographer made mr brown, myself (representing the Editors at Large) and Adrian Loo and Agagooga (representing the contributors) pose with a laptop while standing in a pedestrian underpass. The laptop's browser was open to show Tomorrow.sg running a story on the Straits Times running a story on Tomorrow.sg. ST photographer sets up shoot in the tunnel, because bloggers hang out there. ST photographer asks tomorrow.sg contributor Agagooga to pose with a laptop. In a pedestrian underpass at Boat Quay. With a licenced busker in the background, singing for his licence fees.

the mr brown show 4th May 2005. Or via subscription here.

Surf stop: The Drunken Taxicab

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: S'Wonderful - Yehudi Menuhin & Stephane Grappelli - Menuhin & Grappelli Play Gershwin, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

More MSM (Main Stream Media)

Some CNA producer thought it'd be a good idea to use a self-confessed (no need lah) technophobe to host a show about technology, presumably so that it'd be easy on tech-illiterate viewers. But then they got to see this on Monday night's show about blogs and podcasting, so I don't know how easy it was. Diana Ser did a Get Rea! show last October about blogging on CNA already, and besides podcasting, there wasn't anything new revealed in this That's IT show, except the fact that Timothy Go's just discovered Gizmodo and the like, and doesn't know how to pronounce Hanyu Pinyin names. There are a coupla slow news days coming up, so Main Stream Mejia's gonna wanna talk about blogs and the people behind them a fair bit. Stay tuned. Advice to bloggers: Get out there and get some sun. Writing about your navel can only take you so far.

the mr brown show 3rd May 2005. Or via subscription here.

Surf stop: the trouble with life is

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Real Fine Love - John Hiatt - Stolen Moments, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Ab Origine

The whole debacle was over a racist comment, wasn't it? Because E@L is Ang Moh, and I had used the word Ang Moh to describe, well, Ang Mohs, he's taken offence but also kindly pointed out that Ang Moh is also a racist tag. Any nickname derived from the physical attributes of the members of a race or an ethnic group is a racist tag. And racist tags are bad. It is going to be a difficult change to eradicate this racist tag from my vocabulary because my Hokkien grandmother is going to have to make do with my explaining that my business partners are from overseas, from America. She's going to ask in Hokkien, 'So, they are Ang Moh, lah?' And I will have to say, 'No, actually, their Moh is not that Ang, but they are from America'. But she will probably say something like, 'American people are Ang Mohs, what!' And it will go on. Then the cows will come home. Then a new advertising company will be formed amidst pledges that the rights of workers remain paramount throughout decades of change and advancement. (Actually, E@L is not so much an Ang Moh as he is a Boh Moh. With my fragile patch slowly but surely growing, I'm a-gonna be one too. So, we're gonna be brothers, he and I! It's gonna take some time, but it'll happen. I'm already made of 10% beer, and closing in on his composition too.) Her Moh also quite Ang, what!

Surf stop: Val

Vale, Wee Kim Wee; Vale, Krishen Jit

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Caught in the Middle - Cerys Matthews - Cockahoop, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Hot blog for a hot day

Thank you Rory Daniel and the Sunday Times for featuring this blog on this week's Hot Blog, which is like, the new Blog of The Week section of Tuesday's IT Life, which, like, died out after four weeks, like. So, like, welcome all new readers who had to type in the URL manually, and to the 11 ST Interactive subscribers who clicked on what I assume is a hyperlink there. I've nair seen it since they made us pay. Given the situation, I'd rather be Boinged, so I can give y'all a Smashed Chicken treat. But here can read for free hor. Until they hantam me big big and ask me to take it down cos I've infringed their copyright. But this is what it's all about isn't it? Getting traffic? Getting attention? So, while on the topic of hot blogs, I've sorta kinda found a solution for bloggers who've been under the microscope recently and who may have had to close down their blogs because of the heat they've attracted. This blog service is slightly harder to tweak and edit, but I tell you, your anonymity is so much more easily protected. Thing is, laws of defamation still apply, as they do with every type of publication, online and off, and there's the added burden of attracting penalties for damaging public and private (not yours) property, if you're still not careful about protecting your anonymity. (Y'know, like, give you all sorts of firewall and anti-virus shit, and you still go and click on that porn link, your pasal, man). But anyway, I give you Graffiti^TM (different colours and sizes available): Remember to leave some space for comments and trackback

Surf stop: Black High Heels of Euphoria

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: Pocket Of A Clown - Dwight Yoakam - Last Chance For A Thousands Years - Dwight Yoakam's Greatest Hits From The 90's, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.

Kinda hot?

On a really hot day like Saturday was, you'd expect things to go wrong, and you'd get cranky as a result. Many things went wrong, and I got cranky. I even wanted to smack some people around good. Then I came home and my father waved an envelope at me, and waved and waved and waved before he placed it and his hand behind his back so I wouldn't see him waving the envelope. He then said he wanted to go to the post office to post something. I drove us out to the village and we bought some bread, a jar of peanut butter, a packet of M&Ms and a box of biscuits. Then we found a post box to put his envelope into. Then I found an AXS machine to pay my parking fines through. Then I drove us home again. And in that half hour, I contemplated talking about his having Parkinsons again, but didn't get round to talking. I don't think he wanted to either. Blazing saddles Thankfully, it got cooler. But it was stew very hot at sunset.

Surf stop: kissui.net

iTunes' party shuffle is playing a copy of: I've Got You Under My Skin - Diana Krall - When I Look In Your Eyes, of which I have the original CD and therefore didn't steal music.