Khaosan Rd on a saturday night; just had a foot massage, the best thing after a whole day of walking about Chatuchak Market, that wonder of a place. While waiting for my email to load, decided I would leave a short note before I squeeze through the shopping, drinking,singing,eating, whoring crowd to get back to the Marco Polo Hostel and Jack Kerouac.

Sorry John Ondrasik!



I m always moved by his songs, but somehow i can never bring myself to purchase any of his albums.This month I seem to have been Jaime-fied musically, the 2 albums I added to my collection of cds - Maroon 5 and Jason Mraz, it all stemmed from her sending me 2 infectious tracks one from each respective album.

Back from Camp Out! with the kids from GGS and I must say the camp was a great success. The kids really enjoyed themselves and to borrow a phrase from Shah( which two months ago I thought was really crappy), "When the kids are happy, the air is fresher."That tubby fella you see in the photo above is Gurvinder otherwise known as "Sergeant", my camp buddy, who gives me back massages and is the most cheerful person I know.

Changi Airport. Gonna be back again in 4 more days! Breakfast there this morning has just got me excited about the Bangkok trip. I know it's only Bangkok but it's still going out of the country!

Woke up bright and early, (well early if you consider 8am to be early) to give my buddy simian a lift to the airport on my bike for his Phuket holiday. It was good to wipe off the cobwebs from my bike and get it down the highway again with the sunshine and wind blowing in my face.

Woke up this morning. Through the window, the sky was glowing in a way which made everything feel surreal. Grabbed my camera, shouted out to my dad, "Papa, come look at the sky!" Handphone beeped, Jaime from the airport, announcing the headlines in the Straits Times, the lighthouse just as I had predicted. SMMT in 2 hours.

Not breathtaking magic, but the showmanship makes it brilliant.

The moment.

The class of 2008 - Champions of Europe.

When Ronaldo missed the penalty, my heart sunk. I thought we had lost it. John Terry stepped up to clinch it for the Blues, but he hit the post! And then Van der Sar saved from Anelka! Joy! It would make me sad, but I think it's a good time for Ryan Giggs to bow out, in the wake of a great triumph like this. The staying up's been worth it.

One hour more to go. The excitement's building up, my heart's beating a little faster, 5000 miles away from where it's happening, it's 1:32am, its quiet. What it must feel like, to be a fan in Moscow now. The atmosphere outside the Luzniki Stadium; the noise, the colour, the tension, electric. Those lucky pigs!!

Vesak day I spent, temple hopping with Tweety Bird, (Guang Ming Shan is an amazing place btw, a sprawling, giant temple complex that has somehow manage to hide itself away, which we had trouble finding) and then we had dinner with Simian, Abel and Rachel to welcome Simian back from Cornell. It was kinda disturbing that Rachel was speaking like an MLM convert about amulets which can increase your 'energy', I better not say anymore, if you are reading this Rachel, lets just say, I hope you will reconsider. You have a good job! Don't do anything silly!

*Yawn. Time for me to make like Buddha.

Dinner on the Seawall

Somehow it seems we always end up next to the sea, all our plans thrown out. My intention was to head to walas with dinner at Ikea before that, but there were no seats and we didn't feel like waiting so I packed meatballs and chicken wings to go, and we looked for a Macdonalds to satisfy her Russell Burbank cravings which took us to Sengkang which led us to Punggol beach where we sat on the seawall in the twilight arguing over whether that was Malaysia or Jurong Island across the water. Really that was stupid since we were at the northeast, but it was fun anyway and when we were done with dinner, we plopped down on the soft sand to take in the breeze and the calming lull of the breaking waves. It was so relaxing we didn't feel like going to see Shirlyn and friends anymore.

A secret garden, behind where we have our maths classes at NIE.

"I descended a dusty gravel ridge beneath the Bixby Canyon Bridge, until I eventually arrived at the place where your soul had died. Barefoot in the shallow creek, I grabbed some stones from underneath and waited for you to speak to me......"

DCFC's long anticipated Narrow Stairs is finally out, and I have got them all on my ipod! I really like Grapevine Fires. It sounds really promising, I am looking forward to getting to know all the songs.

Here's Pitchfork's Review of the album:

Love isn't watching someone die, contrary to what Ben Gibbard memorably sang on Death Cab for Cutie's major-label debut. No, love is watching someone grow and change and still staying with them-- whether we're talking about family, friends, romantic interests, or a little college-town indie rock band from about an hour-and-a-half outside Seattle. Death is just the dénouement. In the three years since their platinum-selling, Grammy-nominated Plans, Gibbard and Death Cab producer/guitarist Chris Walla have both entered their thirties, coming off a wave of successes that included 2003's Transatlanticism going gold and the debut by Gibbard side project the Postal Service becoming Sub Pop's best-selling disc since Nirvana. That's a whole lotta love.

Narrow Stairs, Death Cab's second album for Atlantic and sixth proper LP overall, is one of the darkest and most muscular in the band's discography, but they're still aiming for the same place: your heart. It's an album about growing and changing and becoming resigned to the fact that you'll never be truly content-- not even if you quit that day job, achieve your rock'n'roll dreams, and find yourself in a loving marriage. At times, the maturation feels forced; the more adventurous moments here are experimental only for such a high-profile group, and they don't play to Gibbard's sentimental, word-weighing strengths. Still, even the disappointingly sleepy Plans had ear-catching singles, and when Death Cab go with their pop instincts on Narrow Stairs, they bang out songs focused and evocative enough to win over maybe a few of this loved-and-hated group's longtime skeptics.

There are some vast expanses to navigate first, both production-wise and lyrically. Where Transatlanticism spanned an ocean, and Plans opened astride "the East River and Hudson," Narrow Stairs starts along the California coast, where Gibbard retreated to write the album. "I descended a dusty gravel ridge," his bookish tenor begins, in clear but vivid language, on "Bixby Canyon Bridge". Gibbard has said the song is about trying to commune with Jack Kerouac, who stayed in the same cabin to write Big Sur. From an initial echoey guitar trill, the track grows to pounding, distorted bombast somewhere between OK Computer and the new Coldplay single.

Speaking of singles, Narrow Stairs' first is the eight-and-a-half minute "I Will Possess Your Heart", a decision that's likely to be more successful as brand repositioning than it is as rock music. Death Cab get uncompromising-artist points for the four-minute intro that builds up with vamping bass, sprinkles of keyboard, and atmospheric guitar, but it's hardly essential to the standard-length pop song that follows, about how a well-intentioned man can turn into a de facto creepy stalker. "You gotta spend some time, love," Gibbard sings, as if by explanation for the song's length.

On Narrow Stairs, Death Cab move from the undergraduate longing of their earlier work and the looming mortality of Plans to a more generalized existential angst. But they're most successful when they don't switch up their style to match; the sound of settling, as Transatlanticism maintained, is a peppy "ba ba," not the krautrock pulse of this album's synth-touched remainder metaphor, "Long Division". Elsewhere, the tabla on "Pity and Fear" sounds out of place, not far-out; as Indian-instrumented songs about an apparent adulterous one-night stand go, this one's no "Norwegian Wood".

"No Sunlight" cuts through the murk like a beam of, well, sunlight-- musically, at least. Bright keyboards and guitars sweeten Gibbard's pessimistic lyrics, which contrast childhood bliss with the emptiness of adulthood. The best song on the album, "Cath...", matches the knotty, Built to Spill-style riffs of Death Cab's early records with a plainspoken (and gut-wrenching) account of a bride who dooms herself to misery by marrying the wrong man. Where fools rush in, Gibbard refuses to rush to judgment: "I'd have done the same as you," he concludes.

What Death Cab have to fear most is not their urge to dabble in different genres, but the risk of sounding like a more cloying version of their younger selves. On "You Can Do Better Than Me", which waltzes its 1960s-pop organs way past the line that Ben Folds' "The Luckiest" toed like a ballerina, Gibbard's nice-guy earnestness becomes too much even for a listener who relates to nice-guy earnestness. It's easy to tell where the heavy-handed "Your New Twin Sized Bed" and "The Ice Is Getting Thinner" are headed as soon as you hear their first lines, and thin ice is a pretty thin cliché for such a lyric-focused group. "Grapevine Fires" does better, adding funereal harmonies and recalling debut LP Something About Airplanes with a line about "wine and some paper cups."

Surely Death Cab's awkward position as one of the few indie rock groups with a platinum record would be enough to drive anyone to drink. Fellow million-sellers Modest Mouse brought on Johnny Marr for their latest major-label LP; the Decemberists, who also signed to a major but didn't go platinum, have yet to release their follow-up. Narrow Stairs' musical growing pains make sense for an album that stares into the banal void of contemporary adulthood. If you love the band, you'll probably find enough reasons here to keep sticking with them.

-Marc Hogan, May 12, 2008

Hey you up there. What's up God? Within the span of one week, two major disasters. The cyclone in Myanmar and a 7.8 Earthquake in Sichuan, China. Are you anti-asian or something? Or do you have something against the 2 governments? Hmmmm, I see something there. Myanmar, the most brutal dictatorship in the world, ok maybe its a tie with that madman from North Korea. The Chinese Communist Party and its crackdown in Tibet. But these are the ordinary people here you are talking about. You are not punishing the leaders. Doesn't make sense. I'll reiterate, what's up God?

The Hidden Side of Singapore

It is 7pm, the evening is a gloomy blue hue. At a back alley, sandwiched between Geylang and Sim’s Drive, wrinkled old men and women push makeshift trolleys, which grind upon the asphalt, stacked with cardboard, empty soft drink cans into a ramshackle industrial lot. I watch as the old man strains to get his load across a protrusion on the ground. That heavy pile of newspapers and cardboard is dinner as I watch money change hands, the green of a $5 bill. And it burns my heart.

Just when I thought I had all the quaint "cool" chill out places in Singapore covered, out pops another one to my delight. I had been in the area before, but I would never have known to make a turn into what seemed liked a regular row of terrace houses. Buckaroo Grill, last night for dinner with some of the divers from the recent Aur trip. Finally received a copy of David's photos,

and they have got me wanting an underwater cam too! The Buy buy buy virus resurgent as payday approaches...... My Nirvana position underwater.

Barely 2 weeks in, I am craving for for more nitrogen!!!

It would have looked somewhat like this....
The other day at the car-park, it was as if the past came back to intersect with the present. My buddy Simian's Repsol Pizza delivery bike was parked next to mine and I wondered what it would have been like if I had got my bike the same time he got his.

Was looking through some concert pictures on the web this morning and decided to try my hand at some black and white rendering. This one's from last month's Jump! Concert at Genting, What do you think?

The mudskipper goes to great lengths to attract a mate. Each species of mudskipper has its own courtship style. The amorous Gold-spotted Mudskipper starts off by selecting a site on the mudflat not too near the other burrows, for he treasures his privacy. Then he builds a burrow by scooping out mouthfuls of mud and dumping the mud around the burrow entrance. His house completed, the mudskipper casts his roving eyes around, and when he spots an attractive female, wags his tail and jumps around with his dorsal fins erect.

The curious female edges closer for a better view, and this makes him show off even more. With his head held high, he puffs up his orange throat for her to see, then disappears head first into the burrow. The female lingers coyly outside the burrow until he reappears and starts blowing bubbles her way. Falling for his bubbles, she follows him into the tunnel of love.

After mating, the pair emerge from the burrow. There she sits smugly at the edge of the burrow, while her mate scampers about defending the territory. He is kept busy chasing away rival males trying to grab his mate, as well as mangrove crabs out to usurp him from his home. So there you have it: the intimate secrets of this most unusual creature.

Come see this versatile fish in action at Sungei Buloh now.

Best voice this year. Makes me think of sunny days and going to the beach, cycling tandem or a picnic, building sandcastles literally, or just in the air. Only one problem.

A long drive, a longer conversation from the cafe to the breakwater. Slow and steady just got a little complicated. It might be premature, nothing might happen, but for the first time I am worried about "going with the flow."