It all started with the initially welcomed occupation of the apartment situated directly opposite my unit by a China couple and their daughter. Before that, the block was sparsely populated and my parents discredited it as an insecurity rather than appreciating it as a form of tranquility. Their concerns were not unfounded though, since there were reports of a molester being sighted in nearby blocks and instants whereby my father caught a pair of lover kissing at the staircase on my level and discovered cigarettes butts along the corridor. These had prompted my father to make several calls to the neighbourhood police post to request for the strengthening of patrol around my cluster of flats. Naturally, when someone actually moved into the opposite house, we felt relieved. At first, conversations bridged and the relationship could be said to be neutral, if not harmonious. Never did we foresee that the neutrality was ephemeral.
The stalemate was sparked off when the wife deliberately hung a curtain veil over their metal door frame, a brazen move to prevent people from looking into the interior and as interpreted by my cynical mother, an implicit message to my family that we were busybodies, stealing glances into their apartment if chances permit. No doubt my grandmother, being old and with nothing constructive on hand to do, might sometimes look in that disputed direction to salve her boredom but it was definitely nothing close to provocative. Anyway, my mother overheard the couple bickering over the hanging of the curtain, and it was clear that the husband possessed a higher EQ.
The repercussions presented themselves in the mild souring of the relationship, with conversations unheard of for a few months to date and intentional avoidance of each other in the narrow corridor. Despite this isolate case, the commonplace meeting up of neighbours in void decks and children playing with one another indiscriminately spells hope of the existence of neighbourliness in this increasingly callous world.
scribbled at 1:02 PM
If you have been following the Taiwanese drama serial "Green Forest, My Home" on Channel U, you might have, however vaguely, remembered what Owen blurted out in rebuttal to his supercilious financial sponsor's bitter remark in one of the earlier episodes. Yes, it was something along the line of "Music cannot be measured in the denominations of dollars and cents." As much as I embrace wholeheartedly this belief, the fact that music has been deeply commercialised in the real world cannot be demolished.
As a potential violinist in the near future, I was admiring the different makes of violins displayed behind glass panels in Yamaha when it struck me that the cheapest model for beginners was already priced heavily at 600 bucks. Even a decent second-hand one would require at least $300. With the training fees of about $70 to $80 per lesson under a private mentor, one needs to cough up an additional $200 plus per month thereafter just to start learning violin. This is exclusive of the miscellaneous amounts that come along with the paraphernalia. It's indeed no myth that learning music is for the affluent, I guess that was one of the primary reasons my parents refused to send me for music lessons at my tender age and objected violently when I suggested undertaking exorbitant private Erhu lessons during my secondary school days.
Take a look at the MandoPop industry in Singapore. A typical album of 10 songs by an artist costs an average of $18, this amount might be nominal in the eyes of the music company but it might not be all that affordable to a person with a barely manageable income. In the face of all the financial woes that is associated with just appreciating and listening to music, it's no surprise then that people turn to downloaded free music or cheaper imported albums as an alternative, not that I'm promoting piracy though. The way forward might be really what BY envisions - scrap albums and sell music online at a much lower fee, since the overhead expenses of such a service would be substantially contained.
Music today has been marred and made cacophonous by the jingles of notes and coins, can we still hold our heads high and claim that music transcends all boundaries?
scribbled at 1:35 PM
The other day when I was busy SMS-ing on a Taxi, the Taxi driver, obviously a devout Christian as could be seen from the string of slogans associated with "Jesus" at the back of the front seats, handed me a piece of brochure from a stack of paper spreaded out clumsily on top of the dashboard. He worded some comments in Chinese, "Want to join the Service? There has been a lot of things happening recently." I had absolutely no intention of converting, thus declined his offer politely. Nevertheless, I agreed with him.
One simply cannot bring himself to be happy while browsing the newspaper or listening to the newscaster these days. The world seems to be entangled in an intricate rough meshwork of what I call "mess". With the stalemate with Iran's nuclear ambitions and the stand-off with North Korean's ballistic missiles test still unresolved, the international community have to encounter further violence and bloodshed in the war between Israel and both the Hamas faction in Gaza and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. While thousands across the world have been protesting against the Israel offensive, the Bush administration appears to not pay any heed to the outcries and continue to condone what the Israelis are committing. Suspicions have risen, pointing to Iran's ploy of diverting attention away from its alleged nuclear program and also a possible collusion between Pyongyang and Tehran in the field of nuke technology. Must the lives of civilians always be sacrificed to achieve a greater good of the world in the war against terror? Perhaps it is really inevitable and someone someday has to be labeled a bad name to clamp down on terrorism and that happens unfortunately to be Bush.
As if the blood drawn from human's inhumane activities wasn't enough, Mother Nature has to protest in an equally violent nature. This month has seen a dramatic surge in the number of natural calamities, following the tsunami that lashed Java Coast last week, tropical storm Bilis that hit China badly, and the latest 5.5 magnitude earthquake that trembled Yunnan Province. The earth has been witnessing an increasing death toll from both man-made and natural disasters, it's no wonder people are turning to religions to seek sanctuary from the ugly side of the planet.
scribbled at 12:12 PM
For those of you who have read "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps" by Allan Pease, you might have been bowled over by the seemingly logical flow of ideas and arguments pointed out smartly by the author. I beg to differ, at least for the latter.
Struck by a streak of amazingly good fortune in lucky draws and contests these days, I managed to be picked as one of the winners of a pair of tickets to Tanya Chua's exclusive showcase in TP and her autographed T-time album, a second autographed album I have won after JJ's Cao Cao. As with all other typical lucky draws, I was to claim my prize from another remote place, this time being MediaCorp Publishing Pte Ltd, which was located somewhere in Ang Mo Kio St 65, in a building no one ever heard of - TechPoint. To pin-point its exact location, I capitalized on the internet and printed a simplified map from Street Directory, thinking how effortless it would be to walk to the destination from the nearest MRT station, Yio Chu Kang, with a map in hand. That I felt so exasperated and helpless after exploring the area around the MRT, trying but in vain to locate the correct direction, while cursing the hot sun under my pounding breath proved me wrong. Eventually, I fell on the ever reliable and comfortable Taxi service to drive me to the elusive place, disregarding the recent price hike in Taxi fares and the few dollars I had to fork out for my embarrassing inability to read maps.
I hate to admit that I have been neglecting such a talented local singer all this while until Tanya's live singing performance blew me away with her harmonious and compatible relationship with her guitar. She was able to play the guitar dexterously, without compromising the quality and tone of her voice in all the renditions of the hits. So cruel of the harsh reality of album sales results every singer have to face in the corporate world that it has made some waver and doubt the real meaning of making music. (P.S: Tze Shuen, if you are reading this, please don't buy her T-time album. I'm comtemplating giving her album to you as a birthday present, though not the autographed one. Haha. Too bad she didn't want to autograph for that event.)
Hoodwinked! was an animation nowhere near Pixels or Disney, but the creative tweaked version of our commonly known fable The Little Red Riding Hood was reason enough to watch it. The Red Riding Hood became a karate expert, the wolf was in fact an undercover journalist, the woodcutter dabbled in the field of acting and the Grandmother kept her liking for extreme sports a secret! Enjoy the amusements as each of the four suspects recount their individual stories to the detective Mr Flippers while they uncover a deeper ploy of a bunny, who has been stealing recipes in the wood.
Darn it! I seriously have an uncanny knack for missing important events in my life. In the past, it was the once-in-a-lifetime millennium concert, when I had diarrhoea a few days before. In BMT, it was the BAC, when I sprained my ankle, which made me fail BCCT in my records, not that I give a damn. And now, I have been hit badly by the influenza bug and will be giving the much-looked-forward Mizuno 100th Anniversary Run tomorrow a miss. It's not the $15 I'm concerned about (I still can get a Mizuno T-shirt I think), but rather the sensation of melancholia when I'm popping pills while everyone else will be pumping their lungs out for the run. No way will I let history repeat itself for the Real Run in August!
scribbled at 9:21 PM
Despite having no consequential formal ending to the Dead Man's Chest, it's still worth catching on the big screen, especially with such superb Irish music and tension that will be lost on a DVD or television.
scribbled at 8:34 PM
Rookie's Guide To Enhancing Performance in Running:
As a prelude to the Mizuno Wave Run this Sunday, I thought it opportune for me to jot down some advices accumulated over my condensed period of training.
1) Harness on the fabric technology commonly used in running vests, i.e wear dry-fit vest or employ the use of DryScience.
2) For people using knee support, take care not to strap it too tightly around the knee. I promise you won't enjoy it.
3) Hydrate regularly hours before the run and don't drink or at most take a sip of water half an hour before the commencement of run.
4) Better not to cultivate the over-reliance on knee support after the injury heals because you might tend to use more of the other leg and create an imbalanced pressure when running.
5) Eat something and clear your bowels before running in the morning. Haha :)
scribbled at 5:36 PM
These are the reasons why I have not been updating my blog for so long... (besides the long dreaded hours in camp)
03S66 Class BBQ at Jeremy's house:
Pathetic turn-out, as usual. Caught between the guys' (mostly NSF officers or Regular officers) boring army talk and the girls' uninteresting gossips, I was clamped in the middle, neither here nor there. That explained my mysterious reticence during the gathering from a usually talkative self. It's no wonder some of us shun class outing like it's a pandemic.
Party World KTV and dinner with CO juniors and Zheng Jun:
A marked improvement in the level of enjoyment and satisfaction, but was disgusted at the miniature serving size of Swensons.
Battalion Bash at Sentosa:
Forced attendance to play games like Captain's Ball and Photo Hunt, which ended up a snafu because of the bad weather and of course, the disorganised CCC lost out to the united TCC1!
scribbled at 8:25 PM
Even if you are not a caveman living under the stone during the primitive era and can be said to be an average follower of modern technology, I assure you that you will still be gawking awestruck at the voluminous list of cutting-edge technologies that are quickly becoming ubiquitous and omnipresent on the 3G island. A few days ago, I was still lamenting to myself about the lack of internet access on personal laptops in public places like McDonald's; almost immediately, my complaint was rebutted when the News that night reported about Singapore being targeted to be transformed into a internet hotspot by next year, whereby everyone would be able to tap on the rich resources online anytime, anywhere! I cannot deny that I'm amazed by the rapid advancements in technology.
Looks like my dream of upgrading my Zen MicroPhoto to a ZenVision is going to be a reality faster than I expected. Partly thanks to the World Cup, since I won almost $400 altogether, after this morning's gratifying match between France and Portugal. Coupled with the amount of money I'm expected to churn out from the online auction of my Zen MicroPhoto and Gameboy Advance, I wouldn't be paying any extra penny for the sleek, multi-functioned latest Creative product! :) But I'm determined to save more in the coming months, since I still have a Savings Plan to feed.
scribbled at 2:18 PM
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