Sticky

I recently bought more than $25 worth of sweets.

Here's what they look like:

Care for your lollies. Avoid
exposure to excessive heat
or moisture. Treat as fragile.
~ Sticky

Ok, I didn't take those pics. This is actually from their website www.sticky.com.sg

They are crazy addictive.

I bought a jar of Rock Mix, and packets of watermelon, Happy New Year 2009, Acid Drops and I Love Yous hahaha....

Get them at Central. It's the mall above Clark Quay MRT.

The first 2 minutes of Underneath The Stars

I can imagine listening to this in an imaginary basement venue.

It's the air. It hangs heavy with the humidity. The smell of stale beer mixed with cigarettes.
The ceiling is low and you can trace the patterns on the mineral boards. Darker spots where it was waterlogged.

The headlining band had just finished and people were milling in and out of the tiny space. A crowd gathered at the bar, quenching their thirst with an assortment of alcoholic beverages.

The next band had strange make up. Seems like the lead vocalist had eyeliner and bad hair. They start playing.

As the strums of guitar rings through the cracked up speakers, you thought to yourself that they sounded promising. You were glad that you stayed.

Then the drumming starts and another guitar joins in. You nodded your head to the beat.

Allergies

This year I went to three cities starting with "P".
Each had a character uniquely its own.

Phuket - had the Vegetarian Festival.
Paris - there was the Eiffel Tower amongst others like Jeff Koons and it being a working trip, hence free.

Just returned from Penang. Famous for the hawker fare and also being awarded as a UNESCO World Heritage site recently. More of that later.

Oh, and not forgetting the "P" Party this weekend at bryan+jados.

That's not the point of this entry.

I just want to share that I never had a allergy until I was 21 when I experienced walking past a field with flowers blooming in Spring. The breeze whipped up some pollen. Ok, "some" is an understatement. Ever since, I am very mildly allergic to dust and pollen. I sneeze. And my nose will itch. Like probably 2,312,230,234 others in the world will react the same way.

Now I have developed an allergy to oysters. My left eyelid will become swollen.

I confirmed this allergy in Penang. Because of the oyster omelette.

My left eyelid is still puffy and painful to touch.

Pictures to follow....I meant pictures of Penang. Not my eyelid.

Horroscope - Dirty Dozen

Being blunt can be liberating -- saying what you mean frees you from worrying about how people will react to it. It can be exhausting to try to craft your communication into something that you think someone wants to hear or something that you think will get you the answer you want. Give yourself a break and just speak the truth. Let the other person react however they react. And don't be wishy-washy about it, either. Decide what you are going to say, then just say it.

Oh yes sir. Sometimes, being blunt saves some heartaches.

Although it inevitably brings some.

The cruelty of an elephant's memory

From Rachael Yamagata's new album (she did keep her promise made at her concert in Singapore last year):

And how dare that you send me that card 
When I am doing 
All that I can do
You are forcing me to remember 
When all I want is 
To just forget you

Great stuff packed in this double disc.

My private moment

While waiting for auntie to finish work, I decided to treat myself to watching porn prawn.

So first was normal softcore prawn:
Then there was hardcore and raw prawn:


Seeing that there were 5 of them, I decide to watch some prawn featuring orgy:

The orgy was a little to rich for me. So I decided to watch some animated prawn. Off to some hentai prawn:

I wanna try prawning.

Ha!

I like the idea used in the recent Basic Instructions about movies you should love is really funny. It associated how Belle in Beauty & The Beast fell in love with the beast after being trapped with him for a while with Stockholm Syndrome.

Well, I suppose the step-mothers of Cinderella and Snow White were preventing Electra Complex then.

Lucky number 8

BLOC PARTY. - Intimacy
Rachel Yamagata - Elephants (Disc 1) and Teeth Sinking Into Heart (Disc 2)
The Cure - 4:13 Dream (Yippee! New album from the evergreens)
Snow Patrol - A Hundred Million Suns
Keane - Perfect Symmetry
Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
Coldplay - Viva La Vida (with Prospect's March EP, bought it cause of Brian Eno, right, and that auntie likes the lead off eponymous single)
The Killers - Day & Night

more of these later.....need to rip them for

ZoukOut 2008 Pre-party Party + Post-party Slumber Party

weakends are back

last weekend was a long one. but never got to enjoy. was duty on haji. and the day before, had to get up at 3:50am, bought the kawasaki print online, prepared to head to esplanade for the flag off. finished the marathon and went home, showered, was outta the house by 1pm to nich's place for baby David's full moon party. then went home, slept, got up, went to SK+JJ wedding.

this weekend, zoukout.

sighs.....

Contemporary is Evergreen?

I read in the AssTee yesterday about a certain home owner's comments on her choice of decor for her apartment.

My choice of decor theme is

Contemporary. Modern designs are evergreen.

My first reaction was, "How can modern designs be evergreen?" If a design was modern, shouldn't it be forward looking or at least, not previously available? It's like saying "the future is constant". Furthermore, "contemporary" generally means "occurring at the same time".

However the lady could be correct.

In art, Contemporary is considered any art piece created now or recently as well as anything produced after world war 2. And surprise surprise, Modern art is a particular movement from lat 19th century to sometime around 1970s although there are still pieces of art created now in a Modern style.

She is of the opinion that a decor theme of "contemporary and modern" is "evergreen". That is subjective. But she is not saying anything to the effect that the future will be unchanged. That would be too presumptuous.

This has been another piece of useless information from me.

War & Peace

This is not an entry about Tolstoy's epic novel set during the Napoleonic War.

Recently US DOD approved and released their new Irregular Warfare (IW) Directive (pdf here).
IW will be seen as strategically important as conventional war. Conventional war is rare these days. Most conflicts exists between what is termed "irregular" and conventional.

Defence is no longer in the straightforward business of "war".

It used to be Peace - War. Two dichotomies in military studies. You are either at war. Or you are not.

Armed forces these days are operationally equipped and expected to provide a wide spectrum of capabilities.

Enter the Peace - War continuum: Peace - Troubled Peace - War. Where "troubled peace" represents what we have post 9-11. Nobody is betting on a resumption to "peace" anytime soon.
The type of operations in the Peace-War continuum is interesting: Peace - Humanitarian Aid & Disaster Relief and any other Operations Other Than War (OOTW) which may include Peacekeeping Support Operations (PSO), any operations undertaken by the military that does except War is under this catchall term. And War remains the bread and butter of any armed force in the world.

Within War itself, there is also consideration for pre-War prep, War itself and the post-War stabilisation phase. What a mess.

Odysseus: [to Achilles] War is young men dying and old men talking. - Troy [movie, 2004]

two sisters

two sisters. got it. merry x'mas. again!

Is criminal profiling discriminatory?

Remember in some of those crime thriller movies, the chief detective will be instructing the team that they are looking for a "single white male, lives in the outskirts of this city, probably a loner and unlikely to subscribe to any religion"?

That's sorta like offender or criminal profiling.

It's not so much like generalising and stereotyping - oh, a shrewd businessman? Must be jewish!.
It's supposedly more art than science, well, that's what malcom gladwell says. and he wrote 3 great books. blink, tipping point and outliers. non of which i read.

This post was triggered by what I had observed at the mrt station near my house. Boon Keng MRT. I have been asked to submit my bag for security checks once. And the two other times I saw the security guy checking anyone else's bags were those belonging to a primary school boy and today, a middle aged auntie.

Question. I did not include their race. I'm Chinese. Whatever that means in Singapore anyway. So were the boy and the auntie. Will it bother you if all the examples I have just given were malays? Indians? People who are wearing hijabs/tudungs? Only angmohs. Only people with hairy legs. Blondes?

This may sound a little racist. But, are the checks targeted? Or random, very much so, to be politically correct.

Let's face it. Were any of the JIs elements caught in Singapore post 9-11 angmohs?

Who is more likely to have terror intent in your neighbourhood? Is your answer going to be politcally correct ie. "We cannot be complacent. While we wish to trust all your neighbours, we are unable to know them thoroughly. They may have undergone self-radicalisation by visiting websites with radical views that distort the original religious teachings. So we must assume anyone can possibly harbour terror intent in my neighbourhood."

BS.

Or are you going to be suspicious of the newly moved in neighbours who look like they are from the middle east, keep to themselves mostly and don't speak English?

But what does criminal profiling tells us? (refer to malcom gladwell's comments on profiling - make lots of predictions, not a triumph of forensic analysis - a party trick) So who should the security guy at the station check?

Mosaic Music Festival Presents Kraftwerk

I cannot remember how many Mosaic Music Festival concerts I have gone to. 5, according to this blog. But I didn't blog about The Bird And The Bee. Not much coverage on Sondre Lerche as well. So there were actually more.

But last night was like watching Peter Hook spin in Zouk.

ray summarised it as, "paying homage to the grandfathers".

It wasn't completely full. I think it was opened up to Circle 3. We were stuck to the back row of Circle 2. There were the usual "too cool for school" people who were dressed like like they were going ReadySetGlo!!!, lots of angmos, homos, hobos and lobos. ok.

And if anyone from the Esplanade staff is reading this, please tell us what is wrong with taking pictures in a Mosaic show? It's not like anybody will mind. Unless the artists specifically stated "No recording of any kind", otherwise, relax and let the people take the pictures. The usher assigned to Circle 2 rows JJ area, she's a real workaholic. But took away some of the enjoyment. I understand she is doing her job. So the change should come from the management.

The Set List - could be wrong....I tried to remember bits of the track to fill in those I didn't know previously.


Kling Klang - I think this was played before the lights came on and some vocoded voice was talking. Kling Klang Records, the label which Kraftwerk release their albums through. Not to be mistaken with Chemical Brothers' If You Kling To Me, I'll Klong To You.
Man Machine Machine Machine Machine Machine Machine Machine MACHINE
Tour de France
Vitamin
Planet of Visions
Numbers - 12345678
Computer World
Home Computer
Pocket Calculator (the animation was from the website and this track together with the previous 3 tracks formed a mini set of their own)

Autobahn - oh classick from their 1974 eponymous album and the visuals started with the totally retro looking album cover. You'd never guess that with a cover like that, it'll actually develop a cult following.

Computer Love
The Model - oh my gawd.....the visuals.....I was telling auntie this sounded very 七月歌台.
Neon Licht
Showroom Dummies
Radioactivity - I had guessed that the bleeps were Morse code but it was always too fast for me. I used to go up to 4 wpm.
Trans Europe Express
The Robots - was sharing with the rest that any one of the robots they used for this track while "we're charging our batteries" made more movements than the four of them combined throughout their show.
Elektro Kardiogramm - spectacular!
Aero Dynamik - finally! a dancefloor friendly/ready number
Boing! Boom! Tschak!
Music Non Stop - fantastic closing number!