A while ago I have posted my strange bug attack experience. This morning, when I opened the cupboard that is above my kitchen table-top, I was shocked by the sight of a bug infested flour packet. No wonder I kept on finding dead bug on my table-top!
Yuck!
But how did the first bug find this packet of flour? Why were there so many dead bugs just right underneath the packet? What exactly was killing the bugs? Old age? Thirst? I have no idea and I don’t want to know.
Back in UK while I was staying at the accomodation provided by the University, it was quite common to hear the “bed squeaking sound” from upstairs. Occasionally you would hear the sound of moaning. Those were the days.
It is Singapore. Even when I was living in a government housing block, I did not get to hear the “music” from upstairs. Last night however, in the condo of mine, the “bed squeaking sound” just appeared from no where. Do I have new neighbour moving in after months of vacancy?
When I went to bed last night, because the weather was quite cool, I didn’t turn on the air-con. And it was this quietness did I realise my newly occupied neighbours from upstairs were having fun of their own.
My mind was actually drifted back to my Oxford days. I remembered the block where I was staying. The coldness. The darkness. The foreigness. All the oh so sweet memories. What can I say? Golden age of mine.
The pattern from upstairs was interesting. Seemed to me that there were plenty of resting between the actions. Actually I was not paying attention to what was happening upstairs. My mind was flooded with memory.
Before I know it, I heard the footsteps towards the bathroom and water was flowing down the bath tub pipe.
And that was when I fell asleep.
These days, I have discovered that are quite a number of black-coloured-hard-shell-round-shaped-slow-flying inserts found dead on my kitchen table-top.
At first I found it wierd to see a number of these inserts upside down, moving, as though they are struggling for air or something. A slow tortured death. Then I see the pattern of these inserts just fall down from the sky (or the ceiling to be more correct) and land right in front of me. More so nowadays, they fly right in front of me waiting for me to squash them dead. And I have not failed in squashing each and every one that appeared right in front of my eyes. They are just slow. Evolution should have wipped them off the planet. Nature’s loop hole it is. I never had luck in squashing flies. Sometimes mosquitoes. But these black fellows. Not a problem.
Questions in my mind are: (1) where do they come from? where is the nest? (2) why do they want to die on top of my kitchen table-top? is it because of the chemical I used to clean the top that is killing them? (3) what do they want from me? (4) how to make them disappear from my home?
If anyone know the answers to the above, please let me know. There are just too many of these dead inserts around me right now.
I have always been telling my friends that my life is full of coincidence. And of course my friends’ replies are always – just ordinary coincidence.
Yesterday, during my business lunch appointment, I saw one of my ex-colleague whom I have not seen for at least a good couple of months. Then, on the same day, I bumped onto her again while I was waiting for my dinner partners to arrive.
And yesterday I had dinner with this two friends of mine from work and today, at the same place I met them the day before, I met them again buying dinner at the same stall.
Life sometimes makes me wonder a little bit.
Back to the recording of my solo album, I can’t believe that I have spent 2 hours just to re-discover the exact tempo for all my 16 songs. I have to play through most of each song with the metronome to get the exact tempo prior to the actual recording. This is getting time consuming. And of course, during which, I re-scan the keys of the songs and make sure that they are not too high or too low.
Hopefully I can get the album out before Valentine next year.
Just before end of the day, just before I was heading off to have a drink with my colleagues, my old neighbour from my old department called me if I was interested to have chilli and pepper crab with her and her girlfriend. Absolutely! Besides, my old neighbour is going to leave Singapore for good and return to Canada and I was going to have dinner alone anyway. My neighbour and her girlfriend was known as someone who is absolutely spontaneous. Joining the club, at least for one night only, I was also absolutely spontaneous.
They took me to somewhere near the Singapore Stadium. Absolutely enchanting place. The night view of Singapore could not have looked any better. The restaurant called No Signboard is built right on top of the water. How cool is that?? Eating right above the sea! We had chilli crab, white pepper crab, drunken prawn, stuffed seafood, and veggie. Just for the 3 of us!
On the way back, my old neighbour commented that today’s temperature is between 24 to 28 degree. Wow, did not realise it. It must be winter in Singapore.
I have been a huge, huge No Doubt fan. Having been to their wild, wild concert at Paris, I will just buy anything that has Gwen Stefani’s voice in it. I am so totally into Gwen and her band. And so I did, bought the album without even listenning to any tracks.
And I don’t regret a single bit.
It is a dance album. From start to end. It is the uniqueness of this album that starts out from the rest of the dance album. First it is Gwen’s voice – very pleasant and beautiful and you can just listen to every words. That is great! Really. Then, it is the collabration with many talented people in the music industry such as Dr. Dre, The Neptunes, Andre 3000, and many others. Finally it is the wierd reference to Harajuku Girl and give a twist to the whole thing.
I love the album. Each and every song. You guys should check it out too.
Hey folks, I have just designed the cover for my new album. Please email me and let me know what you think. I think it looks pretty professional. For this new demo album that will be released in the Internet, it will be nothing like the ones I played for my one and only band NoEyeCandy. It is a dedication to my friends and families that have supported me throughout this more than 10 years of my songwriting experience. A big thank you to them. And I have included some songs that they love as well as songs that I love and yet my friends and families just stood by my insanity.
I will be playing all the instruments and all the tracks will be recorded in my humble home studio.
And the back …
This morning walking from the carpark to my workplace, I had a strong urge to buy a cup of coffee from Coffee Bean. Just before I stepped into the cafe, I remembered that my wallet was very low in cash. After digging up all the coins and notes from my wallet and coin purse, all I had was $2.90. That was not enough to buy a cup of coffee! 40 cents short! I was kind of very disappointed and feeling kind of down.
Then I looked into my wallet compartment where I have not been using ever since I have a coin purse and found exactly 40 cents! I was overjoy while amused by such a coincidence.
When I looked at the price list and realised that a small cup of coffee costs $2.90 instead. Again, that was exactly what I had found in the first place! Spooky!
The morale of the story, if any, is that when you realised that you are falling short of what is required, it doesn’t mean that you cannot achieve what you are hoping for in the first place. A small miracle may come by or think out of the box and get out of the daily routine may help (my routine was to buy a regular size cup of coffee all the time that costs $3.30).
Part II of the blog is about paying $17 for a movie that my wife and I did not watch. We had dinner with one of our friends at Marche – a restaurant that was about 5 mins away from the cinema. Either we got carried away by the conversation and or there were so many people on the street. By the time we reached the cinema, we were late. After hearing the usher telling us to go straight ahead, we dashed into one of the theater and to my surprise, our seats F5-6 were taken. Strangely, G5-6 was empty. Was my memory playing a game with me? Didn’t matter, the show has started and we just sat at G5-6.
In less than 10 mins, a couple arrived at our seats and I gathered it was time to give up our seats. We got up wanted to bust the F5-6 couple off their seats when I spoted another couple seat just two rows back. Nevermind, just as good.
It was when we were 20 mins into the show when my wife told me that this was a German movie and not a French one. Oops! Shall we leave I asked her. No point leaving she replied.
Half an hour into the show, another couple showed up and time for us to give up our seats again. The audience must have wondered why we kept hopping from one seat to another. I scanned the dark theater and found another couple seat. And we got to stay all the way till the end.
We wanted to watch a light-hearted French movie ended up watching a heavy-hearted German movie that began with a Jewish funeral and filled with Nazi vs. Jews storyline. Surprisingly, I do enjoy the movie. Having lived in Paris for more than half a year, I should have known that the language was not French, right?
I flipped through the newspaper when we got home and realised that the name of the movie is called “Rosenstrasse“.
People kind of giggled a little bit when they heard that I bought the book Singing For Dummeis. I just so glad that I have bought that book (together with another more profession one that I hope will arrive at my doorstep before Christmas). I did not realised that I have committed so many vocal crimes. It is hard to describe the tranformation. I can say that there is improvement in my singing. However little it is, it is always welcome.
It must be another divine intervention that I have had such a hard time with Yamaha. Read on then you will know.
Ever since I bought the 12-String Yamaha electric acoustic guitar, the battery indicator does not seem to work. The LED light just does not light up at all. My common sense tells me that when my battery is full (by the way, in order to power the pre-amp, I need a 9V battery), the LED light should be bright red. Frustrated, couple of weeks ago, I visited the Yamaha shop that I bought the guitar from at Thomson Plaza and asked the sales person why it is so. He said my guitar is not the only one! Some of the new ones coming in also have the same problem. He suggested that I shall live with it as it does not affect the sound quality.
Live with it and I shall not! I asked where I can send my guitar for repair and the sales guy asked me to visit the main branch at Plaza Singapura.
Today, I brought the guitar all the way to Plaza Singapura only to realise that first, the shop only opens at noon, second, technicians are not in these 2 days, third, they don’t have spare parts inside the store, fourth, Yamaha technicians at the store can only do minor repair (like what??), and fifth, call the service center at the HQ for real repair.
So I did and realised that the entire HQ will not pick up phone calls during lunch hour. How big is the HQ anyway?
I called after 1pm and the not too friendly person from the other side of the phone first asked me to go back to the store where I bought the guitar … Hello? the store I bought the guitar asked to go to Plaza Singapura, Plaza Singapura asked me to call the service center, and the service center asked me to return to the store I bought the guitar. These Yamaha folks either don’t work together or they really work “together”.
Anyway, I asked them how long it takes to fix a guitar. Her reply was 2 weeks. Two weeks? I must have screamed. Then I asked her if I could make an appointment to cut short the waiting time and she told me bluntly: no! She must have sensed my tension and she suggested that I shall bring my guitar down for her technicians to estimate the time for repair. Great I said, can I come down now I asked. No she said, there is no technician around she replied.
Amazing. It is just amazing.
Feeling not so good, I visited the guitar shops at the Bras Basar Complex. In search for my electric classical, I intended to do. That is when I have discovered something interested about electric acoustic guitar.
One of the acoustic guitar I picked up has a button to check if the battery is still healthy or not. I pressed the button and the LED lights up. The brighter it is, the healthier is the battery. As I was walking out of the shop, I was both amused by the innovativeness and by the practicality of such a device. Why practical? The light cannot be lit up all the time during play time because it consumes energy.
I rushed back to my car to check if I have missed a button somewhere. Perhaps the volume dial is “pressable”? No, no such button. Too bad. I pulled out the owners manual and it read:
“… When the battery is running low, the LED will light up. Please change battery as soon as possible when that happens …”
Dah … I stupid (because there is nothing wrong with my guitar) … and I still hate Yamaha.