3a.m. in a living room on Foch Road

I'm on the last leg of my Singapore trip. The guys are already asleep--William felt sick after walking in the drizzle with me and Cheok didn't have a weekend. He's been working non-stop on a pitch, and tomorrow it's yet another day at work, except that he has a shoot tomorrow, which sounds slightly more relaxed. I would say I'm so glad to be out of advertising, but I just checked my new office email and there are some pretty out-of-this-world deadlines there. They are rather impossible IMHO, taking into account I'm just one person, and I am technically on leave/holiday till Monday. But anyway. Might be forced to do it tomorrow before taking the bus home.

William has just walked past me looking quite green. He's now in the toilet, but I haven't heard major puking yet. Okay, he seems alright. Maybe he's just tired. I did, after all, wake him up at 8.30 this morning to lead the way to the MRT station so that I could meet Felix at Buena Vista and go to church. Church was... rather standard.

There's been a cool breeze blowing since I got back. We're on the 12th floor, with a rather good view of what used to be a red light district haunted by transvestites. There are some dodgey pubs around. Coincidentally, I read an article earlier that said that transsexuals are recognised in Singapore, except that they need to undergo a full sex-change operation. The gender on their birth certs don't get changed too. Some male-to-female transsexuals turn to prostitution because they're out of money and can't find anyone who'd be willing to employ them.

But the streets below us are now empty and quiet--it's friggin Monday tomorrow after all. Somewhere, some construction is going on as I can hear a machine drilling and smell the black oil carried by the night air. The occasional car passes by every minute or so. At this moment, life is slow and I don't want my holiday to end.

The air is brilliant and blowing, and this moment belongs to me, here.

Singapore Pt. II

Singapore is a fine city. In both senses of the word. It's my second visit to Singapore in a year, which makes that a personal record. One day I imagine I might work here, since I know more than five people and therefore shouldn't feel completely lonely, and also because it's a fine city. If you earned the same amount as you did in that country up its border (where I currently reside), all you'd need to do is multiply that by 2.3 and wahlau, you'd be rich! Your parents would be happier with the extra pocket money and so would you. Yes, I might work here one day. (I'd just have to deal with not being able to understand Mandarin-speaking cabbies and waitresses.)

What I have been doing since getting here on Friday night.
Eating fine food (had Jap and one of those real-meat-with-juices-flowing burgers today), tossing between getting a Macbook or a normal laptop or the office's Dell one, hanging out with my ex-colleagues Cheok and William who have been really angelic, walking in and out of shops, spending a bomb on stationery, shopping, getting fat, learning to surf the web on an iBook and discovering the joys of two-finger page scrolling, oversleeping (woke up at 1.35pm today; how absolutely piggish), and attending the TOMMY EMMANUEL concert at Esplanade.

I'd been wanting to see Tommy in action for some time now, but when I was in Australia for a month last year, he was shuttling in between some weird-named Scandinavian country and another planet. Then this year, while reading Mia Palencia's blog, she happened to mention that she'd been to a Tommy E gig last year. Lo and behold, a whim like a dim sum came ker-plonk into my brain, and so I googled "Tommy Emmanuel" and "tour", and excitedly found out that he was going to be playing in a few months in Singapore!

So who's this Tommy guy actually? Well, he's an oldish chap from Melbourne, Australia with two daughters and a few more kids via World Vision, who also happens to be among one of two(?) Certified Guitar Players in the world. He's most known as a fine fingerstyle player, which is a playing style that combines a moving bassline, rhythm and melody/lead section played at the same time by the same guitar player. He also does rather crazy stuff on the guitar. I mean, he doesn't pick strings with his teeth or salivate all over the strings, but what he does is beat it up real bad till it sounds pretty good. Like today, he used a drum brush to beat the guitar body below the saddle to create a purely rhythm jamming session. The pickup on the first guitar used today is also VERY sensitive, and each time he thumped over the soundhole, a heavy 'boom' akin to a kicked bass drum was produced.

But what THE highlight of the night was for me, by far, a song called 'Initiation', which he wrote after spending time with the Aboriginals in Alice Springs as a lad. I'm not sure of the time span between the inspiration and actualisation of the song, perhaps 30 years as he joked, but what he had wanted to do was to capture the sounds of the Aborigines and produce that on a guitar. Today, he did just that, immaculately, splendidly, magically. Using heavy delay effects and certain other effects (I'm guessing a Phase Shifter though I've never used that effect myself), he created a populated oasis in the middle of an arid bushland, where the calls of the original inhabitants of Australia melded with their droning beats, clucks, atmospherics and waaah-waaaaah didgeridoo sounds. It was the most amazing thing I've seen produced on a guitar, ever. (The Esplanade has wonderful acoustics too, which did wonders to the listening experience.)

With that, I'll end my adventures for today. Tomorrow, if I wake up on time, I'll visit Felix's church with him. Then on to more shopping! :D

Sounds like SG$48,000 (or not)

Three guys. One girl. Three days. One car.

Saturday
Late! Jon forgot his passport and so we left late.
Jam! Stupid roadworks on the North-South highway delayed us further.
Rain! The conspiracy was beginning. Obviously the Government paid money to some skilled cloud seeders to stop us from crossing the border.
Storm! We couldn't see beyond a few metres. Good thing Terk (the most experienced driver) was driving.
"No white card?!" A sarky Singapore Immigration Officer surled. Jon blamed the Malaysian Immigration, which was true... they said to go ahead to Singapore even without the card.
Delays! EVPs, cash cards, yadda yadda yadda which made us late, late, late.
Lost! FELIX!!!!!!!!!!!!! ("Let me drive! I know the way! Err... hmm. Hang on....")
Lost again! No coin-operated public phones. Where does Jon's uncle (who's not really his uncle) stay?
Arghhhhh! Near-accident number one.
Arrgggghhh! Near-accident number two.
Arrrggghhhh! Near-accident number three.
Uncountable! The number of traffic rules we broke that night.
Finally! Rest. Almost midnight.

Sunday
Skipped church. I was totally okay with that but Jon's spiritual conscience was pricked. Around noon, we picked up Fel and headed to Vivocity, Singapore's newest mall. It's got a pretty spiffy design. Had a lousy lunch at The Fish Shop--the fish batter was so rough it scraped the top of my mouth till it felt sore. Then I met up with Cheok and William, my ex-art directors, who forced me to insisted I have lunch a second time at Superdog with them, a new Singaporean hotdog/burger place.

After some misunderstanding with the group (the cable car ride was too expensive so they decided to wait for me though I'd wanted more time to chill and shop and meet them there later), we went to Sentosa Island. It was raining heat waves. The place was packed with tourists, even though I didn't see anything special about the place. The huge trees were... fake. There was nothing much that interested me there. Jon and Terk tried the luge while I had a drink at Coffee Bean and Felix had a Subway sandwich. (I was to learn how perpetually hungry Terk and Felix are.) Spent my time looking at the small birds hopping around for tidbits and the numerous lovebirds shopping around for tidbits.

Terk wanted to check out the miniature gold course after that but it seemed pretty abandoned. (I guess golf games of a different nature are more popular on the island.) Next, we went to the Underwater World. While it was expensive (SG$19.50), I did enjoy the touch pools where visitors can gently stroke a select population of stingrays, starfish and other slimy/scaly creatures.

After having heard good stuff from different people about Sentosa's 'Song of the Sea' i.e. musical lights display, Jon and I persuaded the rest to go for it. Unfortunately, it was one of the lamest shows I've watched. DO NOT go there unless you want to feel annoyed. The lighting effects were great, but the script and human acting were corny beyond corny. Huge disappointment considering the technical potential.

Sunday also saw a huge chunk of skin grated away by my left slipper from all that walking. And later on, in the wee hours of the morning, I woke up, realised I'd fallen asleep without bathing, then proceeded to make a royally disgusting/embarrassing mistake. I shall not tell you what it was.

Monday
Final day. Shopping day. Walked, walked, walked. Walked, walked, walked. Gah, gah, gah. The guitar shops I wanted open were closed or didn't have the right electric gig bag at the right price. After visiting about 10 music shops, I settled for the bag I wanted at SG$70. The shop I bought it from also carried the most expensive guitar in Singapore: a one-and-only-in-the-world SG$48,000 Santa Cruz with an ancient woolly mammoth bridge that was specially procured from a museum in the US, extensive mother-of-pearl inlay on the neck and naturally aged wood which had a musky scent (all this according to the shop owner lah). After asking the boss to play a tune and demo it (of all things, he started strumming 'Your Cheating Heart and singing along... argh!), I asked in my sweetest most innocent voice if I could have a go at the guitar. Hee hee hee. And so I will remember this trip for those few seconds playing on a $48,000 guitar. It was much lighter than expected (the top even feeling like plywood) and certainly had a very resonant sound, but IMHO it's not worth SG$48,000 at all.

We left Felix on the island as he started sem again today. During the drive home, Terk and Jon started singing together to keep awake--first oldies (after which they realised they didn't know any lyrics), then church songs, followed by Disney songs. It was absolutely funny/troubling. Wish I had a video of it.

Blessed Christmas

Blessed Christmas, everyone. How was your Christmas? I woke up at 3.30pm. Wahaha.

Chronicles of Oz (Part 1)

To begin our journey, we need a map.
Ta-da! We're ready to go.

So I flew from KL to Singapore to Melbourne in the middle of June. I landed smack into winter.

Melbourne
In Melbourne, I shopped, ate a lot of Subway, and shopped some more. We visited parks, malls, the Melbourne Zoo, Monash Clayton campus, Smith St factory outlets, St Kilda, a couple of other things and as I mentioned before, a cemetery. After a week, we journeyed to the Great Ocean Road with some OCF-ers. I saw a waterfall, a sunset, a couple of famous Apostles, then headed back.

The (not quite) 12 Apostles

Sydney
From Melbourne, we flew to Sydney. It cost us AUD$69 (+$2 credit card surcharge) each.

Sydney was heaven for my tastebuds and hell for my liver. My uncle (our host), also turned water into wine. I love miracle-workers.

Uncle and Wern, Middlehead

Canberra
From Sydney, we headed to Canberra by Murrays coach, which took 3.5 hours. There, we met up with my ex-housemate Jane and were introduced to her RAF (Royal Airforce) boyfriend Scott. We visited my old uni, the University of Canberra, which looked more rundown than before, then took a walk to Lake Ginninderra, which looked so peaceful in winter. Next, we visited my other ex-housemate Jess. After some dreadfully missed jamming with Jess, who's now got a totally cool DIY studio set up at her place, we headed to the Australian War Memorial. It was almost closing time. Wern almost cried. But after 30 minutes of speed-reading whatever exhibit she could cover, Wern said it was the best touristy place she'd been to in Australia, and that she could have spent the whole day there. At least we managed to catch 'the lone pied piper'. Then we went up to the Mt Ainslie lookout, which almost froze our ears, noses and butts off. For dinner, we stuffed ourselves at Zeffirelli's, then forced a 'concrete' (frozen custard) down. I am such a pig.

Red poppies beside the dead, Australian War Memorial

A Road Trip!
We have another map! How efficient!

Road trip around Southern Highlands

After dinner, Jane drove us back to her place in Mittagong, a small town in the Southern Highlands, somewhere in New South Wales. We spent the night in this lovely, lovely Australian countryhouse; absolutely gorgeous. It belongs to an ex-teacher whose husband has passed on, and whose children are all grown-up now, living someplace else. The lady, Virginia, decided to build a place 'for herself', with the first floor reserved for guests. Everything was colour-coordinated. We were more than impressed; we felt like royalty.

Ducks at home, Mittagong

Janey in her element, Mittagong

The next morning, we visited Berrima, a quaint town where we spent a small fortune on honey, tea and jams, and Bowral, famous for Sir Bradman's Oval (named after an Australian cricketeer legend). Then Jane drove us to the Liverpool station in NSW. We took a train back to Sydney.

Spotted pig spotted in Berrima

( |o }===:::

I am tired now. My Brisbane adventures will have to wait.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...

Today, I was attacked by a kookaburra.

There I was, enjoying a wonderfully tender sausage at the Noosa Heads National Park in Queensland when suddenly, whoosh! a flash of white and grey swooped down, flapped for a microsecond in my face, then was gone. A second later, I realised that the kookaburra hanging about our picnic area had stolen the sausage from right out of my fingers! Crafty little bugger. Luckily, he was very accurate and I was not injured.

It also gave me an excuse to have another sausage, which I gulped down in a hurry.

Art & Beer

Riding the day train in Melbourne reveals a segment of restless people even more reckless with the spray can. Looking out the window, graffiti covers almost every piece of concrete that borders the train tracks from suburbia into the city. Most of it is just plain ugly, though some decorations do look decent enough at 60mph.

Here are some snapshots of cheap, public art I like. The first is part of a mural at Monash University Clayton, dedicated to two Asian chaps who were shot dead in class (how sucky is that?). The next two are an appreciation of a wooden chair outside one of the Monash libraries, with a very retro-cool VB (Victoria Bitter) bottle sprayed on it. The last two were taken at some back alley and are dedicated to Rachel. Now stop asking me to walk around SS15 with a camera, aimed at every random spray-on, okay?

Is peace only a concept that looks good on paper and walls?

Victoria is Bitter over her brew

Headless chick

Unarmed chick

Freeloaders

I am watching a company of black ants exploring a white wall. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. There are seven black ants wandering aimlessly on a white wall. I wonder why they don't just form a bloody trail. Are they lost? Low on pheromones? Two meet, then disperse again. More stragglers examine the table's terrain.

Even though the days are short, I haven't been doing much. Winter doesn't embrace strangers like a friend. It's too selective. I am of tropical blood, raised on a bed of sunshine and created to flourish in warm weather. I want to go out, to make use of the limited warmth that winter allows in, but I have been indoors all day. I am not in Australia to be indoors all day.

I don't feel like a tourist, yet I don't feel like a native either. I just feel like a returning overseas student, and I'm not sure if I like the feeling very much. Tourist spots don't really excite me because I've seen them before (those I've seen anyway). Staying at home seems a waste of money. I didn't come all the way here to stay at home all day. Going out feels like a better option, because I'm here for a limited time only, but I don't know where to go.

Then again, I can't go out every single day. I sometimes wish I were born richer; that I could buy anything I wanted to under the sun, but no. Reality says one Aussie dollar is RM2.745, and that I am relatively poor. Already, I am/will be freeloading off my pal and her housemates, my uncle and her aunt. Some days you go out, some days you stay in. Accept that.

I am watching a black ant carry some food off to its home. Darn you, freeloader! Get your own room and food!

I think I almost understand what it's like to be an ant now.

Dead Spaces

Today, Wern wanted to visit the graveyard. According to her, graveyards in Malaysia are full of lalang and mosquitoes, whereas those in Australia are well-kept and... beautiful? So we (rather, she) planned it into our journey, which eventually included Monash University, (a wrong park), (some wrong roads), Carlton Gardens, (only the foyer of) the Melbourne Museum, Melbourne Central, Don Don - a Japanese diner, numerous tram, train and bus rides (a few of which were 'wrong' or at least miscalculated), lots of walking, and finally, Melbourne General Cemetery.

By the time we reached the cemetery, which is huge probably because it is so general, the clock showed half past four. The overcast sky and cold weather hung like sackcloth worn in mourning, as we surveyed acres and acres of graves before us. Crosses, statues, flowers, names, dates, tombstones repeated en masse. No living person was in sight. This was a rather scary thought, as a sign informed us that the gates would close at 5pm.

No one knew we were in there.

We could be accidentally (or purposely; we shan't assume) locked up inside.

We'd be spending the night with dead bodies.

Zombies.

Spirits.

Ghosts.

Hantu.

In freaking 5 degrees Celcius.

Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' video was already looping in my head.

Wanting to leave no stone unturned, we said a quick prayer and made a dash for it. A dash inside, I mean.

We didn't stray too far from the tarred path or venture beyond a two-minute sprint to the exit. I took pictures like a nosy tourist while Wern turned sober like a proper human being with a good measure of respect for the dead. There were graves dating back to the 19th century. Most graves were nondescript; some were elaborate and gaudy; a few graves looked broken into. Wives joined husbands; children joined parents in their mortality. Jewish graves were sectioned together, much like how they remain an exclusive nation and people still.

Six feet beneath us lay thousands of bodies at various levels of decomposition. These people once led very different lives and meant different things to different people. Yet no one escaped death. Difference became neutralised by a common destiny.

We could have gone on the black narrow road for longer. But after 15 minutes, Wern began to hurry me home. Haha! Coward! I said. But I packed my camera, and we left.

Living Spaces

This is where I'm currently staying in Melbourne. It's a townhouse near the Monash Clayton campus; quiet and pretty cold. The people are nice though. If you're bored enough, you could try to guess the architecture of the house. All-correct answer gets a Tim Tam.

I. Have. Arrived

I have arrived. The journey was boring but I learnt:

i) How to pull out the TV screen when there's no seat in front of you - this, not without some embarrassment
ii) How to pull out the food tray on a Qantas plane when there is no seat in front of you

There were so many movies I wanted to watch but I only managed to catch two (Joyeux Noel and Transamerica). After that my ears hurt from the pariah earbuds and mild nausea was beginning to set in. It also wasn't very fun squinting into a five-inch screen amid failing light.

Here are some pictures from the KL-Singapore leg. Boy, they're so interesting!

A window seat

Wing, not drumstick

Scott free... almost

Thirteen hours more, and I'll be off on my month-long vacation! I've calculated that I'll be on eight different planes within that duration. I hope I don't get airsick with all the hours up there. I don't have a good stomach for travel. If you believe in prayer, you can pray for me. Otherwise I might just try to consume as much alcohol as I can up there - it's free and for a good purpose, I'm sure. (Though they say it's bad cos it dehydrates you; I bet they're lying just to save costs.)

And I'm bringing my work along! Yes, nothing like good 'ol work to keep your blood pressure up and heart beating while on a holiday. Thanks to that spell where I was so excited I kept procrastinating, I have now on my plate: one music review, one movie review, one book review, one feature article.

I should be paid in Aussie dollars.