Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Chronophobia
時間是賊 偷走一切


I think it was Lucy the other day, at the tea garden. I was telling her, that I think this is the happiest I have ever been since age 12. I am happy in my own skin, satisfied with who I am, proud of what I believe in. I am financially independent. I have a lovely girlfriend and a great bunch of friends I would keep for life(you know who you are, you rascals, yes rascals, even the girls)My idealism is still intact, more or less. I am still hungry. There are so many things I want to do, so many places I want to visit, and I feel like I possess the ability to actually accomplish whatever it is I want to do.

Ironically it is at this very same moment, that I feel like time has caught up on me. The big three zero is but a thousand or so days away. It's scary. I know the clock won't stop, but I am hoping I will be allowed to linger here, just a little longer.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

3am this morning.
I will attribute the blame to the irregular sleeping hours. The last 4 days seem to have sped by so fast. It's back to work in 10 hours' time, and then February and Reservist next week. I need an anchor, I don't want time to drift so swiftly by!

Monday, January 26, 2009

You know how this ends.


I finally got to fly my kite today. It was a lovely windy day by the beach. Borne by air currents, my kite soared happily up into the sky!


15 mins later, much to the amusement of my ah lian girlfriend,

the Kite-Eating Tree ate Charlie Brown's kite.


Boo hoo hoo !!

Saturday, January 24, 2009

While researching for lecture slides (yes we work even on weekends!), I came upon a piece of history which left me with a feeling of distaste.

"The results of the 1980 census showed that the better-educated women were not replacing themselves while the lower educated “over-reproduced”. The better-educated women were also more likely to remain single. Then Prime Minister, (Now Minister Mentor) Mr Lee Kuan Yew, was as concerned about the quality of the population as the quantity, and the Graduate Mother Scheme was introduced in 1984. The scheme provided direct financial benefits and special school enrollment privileges for graduate mothers having more than two children. It also offered financial and other benefits for the voluntary sterilization of women with little education who had at least one child and whose total household income fell below a certain level."

Fortunately, the second generation of PAP leaders did not share this viewpoint and in mid-1995, the Graduate Mother Scheme was withdrawn.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

He's got the right attitude, the right ideals. That is why, despite the seemingly insurmountable problems he will have to tackle, I am truly hopeful that this will be the start of a new era.

Monday, January 19, 2009


With the peak accounting season underway, we get to see each other only once a week. So it's great that I found the perfect place for a picnic, with Beef burger and Caesar's Salad from Relish, and the gentle caress of a sunny day breeze.

Sunday, January 18, 2009


At the exhibition of Philip Toledano's Days with my Father, a moving photo-essay of how his father goes through life, without short-term memory, now on at the Esplanade, I made up my mind.

I saw the power of photographs accompanied by text, and I left with a determination, that instead of aiming merely for random pretty photos, I should initiate my own photo-essay projects, which would allow me to combine my penchant for photography with my curiousity and social awareness into something, that hopefully, will be meaningful.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Another form of extremism?

How can one claim to love God, when they are unable to love their fellow humans?
First it was Simon Phua with Repeal 377A, this time it's Matthew Han with the Israeli aggression in Gaza. I have come to realize that there is simply no point trying to reason with them. They have a different sets of beliefs, a world-view going opposite to mine.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

"Hell on Earth"

I have just had a rather loud and fractious debate/argument with my brother over Israeli aggression in Gaza. More than 800 palestinians have died since Israel's military offensive began on Dec 27 last year, a good fraction of them innocent children, compared to 13 on the Israeli side. My God-fearing brother considers the casualties to be collateral damage. He chooses to put the blame squarely on Hamas for the firing of rockets, completely disregarding the disproportionate use of force. I wonder how many in his church congregation share this viewpoint. I wonder if his views have been shaped somewhat by his religious convictions.

Photography Tips from National Geographic. 
Focus on People - National Geographic photographer Maggie Steber is your expert mentor in the People category.
Photograph by Maggie Steber

Photographing people has fascinated Maggie Steber ever since she decided that becoming a French teacher in Texas just wouldn't be as exciting. "As photographers, we ask people to be vulnerable before us, and before the world," she says, "so we should approach with humility and be prepared to be open and vulnerable too.

"Spending time with people establishes a trust and shows that your interest is genuine," says Steber. "It will also give you a much richer experience." Reading up on culture and history is another way to bring depth to your work. "Knowing a people's art and literature gives you clues to what makes them unique," she explains. "Travel with an open mind, without preconceptions, and let people teach you. I went to Haiti to photograph a country in civil strife, but because I'd read about its culture and history, I also discovered people of great beauty, mystery, and imagination. Haitians live by their wits—they see straight to your heart. And when I listened, so many facets were revealed—they were playful, dangerous, sweet, cruel, and excited to tell their story."

Steber has observed the rich, the poor, the powerful, the unknown: "Photographing people has opened my eyes to the world in wonderful ways. It's given me a life so rich, because people have shared their lives with me."

Maggie's Tips.

Talk to people with respect and curiosity, and you’ll never have to "steal" a photo.

Using a digital camera to show people portraits makes for a closer, more collaborative process—and richer rewards.

Be aware of backlighting —unless you're deliberately silhouetting subjects.

Be playful: Put people at the edge of the frame, shoot from different angles, and explore creative possibilities.

Make yourself invisible: Teach yourself to walk like a cat, tread softy and gracefully, dress appropriately, equip yourself lightly.

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Saturday, January 10, 2009

About the album. Everything I wanted to say, and more.

後。青春期的詩


MayDay: Poetry of the Day After

Longtime fans of Taiwanese pop-rock band Mayday (五月天) approached the band’s seventh studio album with something akin to trepidation. The band’s last release, 2006’s Born to Love (為愛而生), proved to be something of a disappointment, with repetitive, uninspired lyrics and an overly commercial sound that made no reference to the band’s roots as a freedom-loving, uncorrupted campus act. Reaching back further still, 2005’s Falling Angels with a Flying Soul (神的孩子都在跳舞) had been uneven and almost campy compared to the relative masterpiece of the year before (the album Time Machine (時光機)). In the meantime, the difficult economic environment for putting out records in an age of internet piracy and fierce competition has led the band down a familiarly commercial route, bringing them and their music into ads for tea, beer, computers, clothing, sporting events, and convenience stores, and creating a surge of karaoke-friendly tracks. When lead-singer and band lyricist Ashin reworked the band’s Taiwanese language ode to friendship into a Mandarin song advertising instant noodles, it felt for many of us like a sign that the old Mayday was gone for good.

Fortunately, this indefatigable fivesome has proven us wrong.

With Poetry of the Day After (後。青春期的詩), Mayday revisits the themes of love, heartache and the exuberance of youth that turned them from an underground band into a continent-wide phenomenon, but at the same time introduces new themes of maturity, uncertainty, and nostalgia that reflect their current lives. No longer college kids, the thirty-something band has two married members and a growing second generation of sons and daughters vying for their attention. Their fans span an impressive age range, from new preteens making their first forays into popular music to grandparents who have developed their appreciation over the last decade the band has been active, and impressively, this time the band manages to speak to them all.

Perhaps as a nod to the past, the album contains twelve unique songs – something that used to come standard on Mayday albums, but which has fallen off as the rest of the industry switched to a ten-track standard. Another past practice that sees a comeback is the inclusion of a song in Taiwanese (admittedly only one, but still a welcome throwback to the days when Mayday broke in with Taiwanese rock ballads). “Breakthrough Day (出頭天)” takes its place alongside past songs “Fool (憨人)” and “Stubborn (倔強)” with its themes of believing in yourself and never giving up; for these credentials alone, fans will embrace it, but underneath all that it’s actually a pretty catchy song.

Mayday also recaptures some of its youthful energy with the upbeat “OMG (噢買尬)” and “Spring’s Scream (春天的吶喊).” The latter was not only named after a music festival Mayday used to play but also contains several risqué puns of the sort you’d expect young guys to chuckle over; the former will be a new favorite for live shows, at least. Another fast number, “Liver-busting (爆肝)” (the title is a reference to the health effects of staying up all night) is perhaps night-owl Ashin’s most autobiographical song to date; it combines a little bit of blues and a bit of 80s rock to become one of my favorite tracks on the album.

But the album – like life itself – is not all parties and wild times, and when the band moves into the more mid-tempo and slow songs, the lyrics reflect the difference. “Suddenly Missing You (突然好想你),” “More than Surviving, Less than Living (生存以上 生活以下),” and “You’re Not Truly Happy (你不是真正的快樂),” – coincidentally the first three tracks on the album – all demonstrate a sort of post-adolescent, pre-mid-life sort of discontent. The swelling melody of “Suddenly Missing You” remembers love lost, and opens the album with a strong, and dare I say karaoke-friendly, power ballad. “More than Surviving, Less than Living” is more upbeat musically, but even more depressed lyrically; it uses a great array of sound effects to replicate a day in the life, beginning and ending with the sound of teeth being brushed, and driven forward by a ticking clock in the background, which together covers a somewhat forgettable melody. Under that light, amusing exterior, however, it offers a caution against being too afraid to take chances, to fearful to risk being hurt. From there, the track fades into “You’re Not Truly Happy,” which drives this point home in a pop-charts-friendly melody.

The two most outstanding tracks on the album break with these themes in new and creative ways. “The Yet Unbroken Part of My Heart (我心中尚未崩壞的地方)” is a rare venture into waltz time for the band, and it combines many of the elements that makes Mayday fans so love the band: music that represents something new and experimental for them, but still maintains their sound, well-written lyrics that say something both particular (in this case, commentary on the craziness of the music industry) and general (a determination to stay the course, with or without outside support). No less intriguing is the jazzy “Interview with the Vampire (夜訪吸血鬼).” Only the second Mayday song to be composed by drummer Guanyou, the song also features harmonies from Taipei-based band 831, whose music Ashin has been enthusiastically promoting this year. As for the unusual theme, well, almost every Mayday album has a song named after a movie or book (or both), and Ashin as lyricist has long enjoyed experimenting with putting himself in the place of an individual whose experience was far outside his own (see “Superman (超人),” or “Masquerade (雌雄同體)”). In this case, the loneliness of an immortal vampire is recounted against an upbeat track that makes you want to get up and swing dance. That kind of contrast has been a hallmark of a Mayday song from the very beginning (i.e. “Crazy World (瘋狂世界)”), and the band stretches it further with each new project.

Continuing on the exploration of a life and an album, two songs on Poetry speak from the perspective of someone looking back on a lifetime and taking stock of his experiences. “Like Smoke (如煙),” has no chorus, just marches forward from youth, through mistakes and regrets and a desire to live all over again, before returning to it’s starting point of a man on his deathbed. The story is accompanied by a relatively simple arrangement and nice harmonies (provided by longtime Mayday roadie Shijie and label-mates Champion Band) which swell in volume and complexity as the song continues. Even simpler yet is the album’s title track, “Poetry of the Day After (後青春期的詩),” which sounds like a slow and sweet lullaby and shows off just how much Ashin’s singing technique has improved over the years.

The final track on the album and in this review is “The Song of Laughter and Forgetting (笑忘歌),” which lyrically tries to offer a remedy for some of the pain and regret explored in the previous tracks and musically serves as a reminder that no matter who experimental or arty Mayday gets in the interim, they know their roots.

In the end, Poetry of the Day After is not perfect – some songs fall back into the generic style of the commercial pop version of Mayday, and some of the arrangements are overdone – but it marks a resurgence of everything that fans have always loved about Mayday and still offers plenty to move and inspire new listeners. I recommend this album as much for the lyrics as for the music, though separately or together they will capture your imagination.

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First week of school. I am excited about the future. We have a good captain at the helm ; Mr Tan Teck Hock, who turned around Yishun Town Secondary School. However, things are getting busier by the day. It's gonna be a hectic year ahead, I am sure.
I find myself so tired at the end of each day. My Gf is disappointed because we had to cut short our date tonight at 11, because I found myself yawning uncontrollably.

Monday, January 05, 2009



My girlfriend is jealous of my devotion to my favourite band. Yikes!

Sunday, January 04, 2009

One more night.

I have got my shirt and pants ironed and hung up for the first day of work tomorrow. "Yeouch." The end of my holidays. "Yeouch"again. Reality comes home to roost. Real life = Work= 12 hour days, fall-into-bed at 10pm cycles. Nope. Not yet. Not before tonight. 2009 really only begins, after Tonight.


後。青春期的詩

Saturday, January 03, 2009

"Could you sit down and chat with us for awhile?"

A few things I learnt tonight:
1.) Gwen is brave.
2.) Gwen is very brave.
3.) Zsofi Tapas is named after a girl the owner met in Spain - Zsofi.
4.) You need alot of money ($200,000) to start a pub.

Couch Potato.


Eclipse/Claire Bear/Arthur Petrelli ;
On the last Saturday of my long holiday, I think I am just gonna stay in, and finish up Season 3 of Heroes.

Friday, January 02, 2009

So this is the New Year, but I have no resolutions.


With wide big smiles, we bid goodbye to 2008, all 366 days of it, and look forward to another good year.