Category: My Abstract Life

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Snippet of My Life

Snippet Of My Life Episode 2 – Lost In Translation

She speaks. I listen. She finishes her question. I translate.

You speak. I listen. You finish your answer. I translate.

She smiles. You smile. While I anticipate the next string of words in either language.

She tells a story. I translate at each suitable interval. I speak while I listen. I listen while I speak. It is a long story.

You find the story interesting so you interject with a witty remark. I speak while I listen to your remark. I translate your remark while listening to her speaks. And the story continues.

I think while I translate. I translate while I listen. I listen while I think. Now, I wish to interject. Because the story got me interested. Two languages. One after another. Every time I make a comment.

She smiles. You smile. And I smile because of the oddity of speaking all the time. In both languages. Most of the time I am talking into space. Soon, I am lost in translation.

If that is not odd enough, now it is time for me to tell a story. In two languages. In near real time. Are you ready?

I saw a dog on the street, listening to music.
我在街上看見一隻狗，傾聽音樂。

A man was jogging, tripped over the dog’s tail and nearly fell onto the ground.
一個人在跑步，被狗的尾巴絆倒，幾乎跌倒了。

The dog howled in pain
狗在痛苦中嚎叫了

and started chasing after the man.
開始追逐那個人。

Ten minutes later the dog returned with something in his mouth that looked like a wallet.
十分鐘後，狗回來了，似乎咬著一個錢包。

The dog dropped the wallet onto my guitar case
狗把錢包放進我的吉他盒

as I continued to sing.
當我繼續唱歌。

I saw a dog on the street listening to my music.
我看見一隻狗在街上，傾聽我的音樂。

(1st translation by computer, 2nd translation by Lora)

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Fragments of My Dreams

Fragments Of My Dreams Episode 1 – Being A Spy

I am a spy and together with my team, we infiltrate a high-rise government building that belongs to one of our neighbours. The nature of this building is not known to me. What is our neighbour’s building doing in the land of our country? I do not know. I am new to this job and most of the time I follow my supervisor. This government building must be covered in glass panels. I rarely get to see that. In fact, most of the time, we are hiding inside one room underground that our neighbouring country does not even know it exists. There are computers inside, together with all the high tech equipment. We joke with one another inside this room and we do a lot of silly things inside to pass time. As told by my supervisor, we have paid millions to have this room added during the construction of the building without letting anybody knows about it but us.

In one of our routine spying mission, we venture out of our secret room and into a large dark room to gather information. Out of extraordinary, I have seen Andrew, one of my teammates, reappears from nowhere while talking in his wireless phone. All of a sudden, my supervisor alerts my team of a potential exposure and true enough, I see a figure appears round the corner at the far end of the long corridor.

“The Keyfinder is here!” screams my supervisor. We all run along the long corridors and into our secret room. I have a quick glance at the Keyfinder and he wears a costume of red and blue. Behind him is a troop of military with guns ready to shoot us to death. A Keyfinder, from what I remember, is someone who knows every single room of the building by heart.

We barely make it in time and my supervisor activates the button to seal off the door permanently and makes it disappear for good. A huge slab of steel falls upon the closed door making it impossible to be reopened again. My supervisor screams, “Run!” and we all run for our life.

I have a nagging feeling that Andrew is the mole. I punch in the request at my high tech watch to do a call trace on Andrew’s phone just seconds before we were spotted by the Keyfinder.

As we emerge from the tunnels and corridors of darkness, we must be high up in the building. My supervisor opens the glass panels and below, I see a line that connects this building with the next. I feel the wind from outside. We walk gingerly along the wire and I try not to look down (though I am thrilled by finally able to see outdoors after ages of living inside a basement). We must be on the 50th floor. After some acrobatic moves, we arrive safely to another high-rise building just opposite from that building we used to camp for weeks.

We are safe. At least from the Keyfinder. These foreign agents cannot hurt us out of their domain. At night, inside Chinatown, I meet my supervisor and tell him all about Andrew. He tells me that it is common to have a mole in our team. And he bets Andrew gets 23-million dollars like the rest before him and he should have by now left our country for good.

This, is not fair. We have lost that room forever. What are we going to do?

Note: This is a real dream of mine. How much can you decipher?

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Snippet of My Life

Snippet Of My Life Episode 1 – Underwater Condos

Should you blog for yourself or should you blog for the visitors who read your blog? Where does self-indulgence begin and public demand of affection end?

Dan and Young at 98.7FM asking callers to finish off the sentence “Singapore needs more …”. One lady caller replied “animal lovers”. On the same stretch of road a day ago, I jam braked my car to avoid killing a monkey that was strolling along the street. A dog from my neighbour barks incessantly. I dream of hundreds of ways to shut it up.

Met JS for lunch. We talked about building houses in Singapore. I want one with a basement. Not just one but twelve. I want a lift that gets me to B12. Carbon dioxide sinks so I want a garden at B12 with 24 hours daylight to suck up the CO2. I don’t want to faint at my basement for the lack of O2.

I want a house with twelve levels of basement underwater. Like an aquarium. JS laughed. It’s impossible he said. I said have the concept first and leave the details to the scientists! And to the scholars of Singapore! Rubberized concrete. Suspension system. Whatever it takes. I want to build a condo underwater.

Global warming. Water level is rising. Environment around us is changing. Way too slow. Incremental accommodations of the change paint us deeper into a corner. Same mechanism that wiped off the Greenland Norse civilisation (Google it). Underwater condos and houses are our future.

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Memorable Events

Cynthia’s Birthday

When it comes to other people’s birthday celebration (actually including mine), I am usually the non-creative-go-with-the-flow type. Since there is a limit as in how much I can blog about other people’s lives, let’s skip what happened this morning and afternoon and go straight to dinner.

Each year I let Cynthia choose where to dine. Some years we ended up at high end restaurants. Some years we ended up having candle light dinner at home. One year I forgot what we had for dinner but I do remember on that day, we drove back to Singapore from our Malacca trip and in the evening we had a birthday cake with candles. Got that recorded in our camcorder. This year, Cynthia wanted to dine at Hard Rock Cafe and I think it has been years since we have visited that place. The last time we were there was with our guitarist Jason during the Metallica’s launch of the St. Anger album. The Thai-Chinese MTV VJ Utt was there at the bar and Cynthia had one drink served by Utt himself! Always brings back good memories – especially for the two hard rockers in us. Talking about hard rockers, while I was inside Hard Rock Cafe, an idea came to my mind. How about a Hip-Hop Cafe that has a hip-hop theme to it instead. Could be interesting.

Took the non-highway route into the city, I filter in and out of the lanes frequently in order to blend in with the rush hours driving sentiment that is so commonly manifested on the road at those hours. Then at the Novena junction, I stopped abruptly when the turn right green arrow disappeared. The taxi next to me went through though. Tsk tsk tsk … some kind of drivers we have in Singapore. While waiting at the junction watching the vehicles shot pass my face I saw this big flash light beamed into my eyes. Oh yes, a van just went through the red light camera and the camera flashed. Poor van driver and tsk tsk tsk … some kind of drivers we have in Singapore.

Right after the right turn I saw a red light. So I slowed down and stopped. Some pedestrians must have pressed the button and crossed when there was no car. The moment I stopped at the line after a rather long slowing down distance, a taxi zoomed pass me totally oblivious that there was a red light in front. Shocking really. Tsk tsk tsk …

Law abiding citizens like myself of course took ages to reach Hard Rock Cafe. The Linkin Park album that Cynthia has chosen for the road nearly reached the end as I parked at the Forum. Whenever I dine at Hard Rock Cafe, regardless of locations be it as Chicago, Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Bali (hey, is there a Hard Rock Cafe in Hong Kong?!), or anywhere I cannot remember at this very moment, I always order the beef and chicken fajitas. Now, the menu comes with seafood fajitas and I recommended that to Cynthia. She appeared to love it. It has … let me recall … fish, squid, scallops, mussels, and prawns inside.

Cynthia will continue the celebration with her friends and colleagues in the following days (lucky girl!). That, I am sure, is beyond my blog.

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Memorable Events

Mount Kinabalu – WE DID IT !!

Hooooraaaay!

On March 28, 2007, Tong Kiat (far left), Cynthia, and I have made it to the top of Mount Kinabalu – the tallest mountain in Malaysia that is 4095.2m above sea level – admiring the magical moment of sunrise. Just before sunrise, the temperature was 2 degrees Celsius and the wind speed was about 40 km/h. The climb and subsequent descend was challenging to the three of us who have no experience nor enough training for mountains of that scale. Quite a number of steps were at our knee level, some stretch was muddy and slippery, night climbing was tough as our visions were limited, rope climbing along the danger zone in the dark was hard, the air got thinner as we gained altitude, any mistake near the top could be nasty, and the descend itself hurt our knees big time.

Amidst all the challenges we faced, we achieved our mission through teamwork and undying support to one another throughout the various tough moments each individual encountered. Not only that, we had a wonderful and experienced mountain guide and thanks to all our friends and families’ support, tips, and prayers, we reached our finishing line safe and sound. We lost count in how many muscles of ours were (and still are) sore after the climb, Tong Kiat suffered from knee injury at the beginning of the ascend and I on both knees during the descend. It was pain but it was definitely worth it.

We will post our individual journals in a few days’ time. All three of us feel that if you do wish to climb Mount Kinabalu one day, set a date today because being young is definitely an advantage.

Related Article: Our Mount Kinabalu Experience

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Reflection

How Rocky Inspires Me

Few friends of mine know that I am a huge fan of the Rocky movie series. Some whom I have talked to discount Rocky movies as bad acting or what-so-interesting-about-boxing. Rocky is written by Sylvester Stallone himself that mirrors his own struggle to stardom and is a celebration of his entire acting career (including the recent sixth installment “Rocky Balboa”). The first Rocky movie was made in 1976 with a budget of a little over $1 million and a box office result of over $100 million. Rocky was nominated for all 10 categories in the Academy Award and took home three.

I am inspired by the Rocky movies because of the invariant themes: always fight with your heart, training is the key to success, friends around you are your best support, and endorsement from your loved ones is all that matter. Whenever I feel down or wanting to give up, the scene of Rocky taking in 5 raw eggs in one go before his training has always been my inspiration.

I wanted to watch all the five movies before catching his latest “Rocky Balboa”. Initially I wanted to do it with my own Movie Review Squad. Sad to say I have made the wrong assumption that what I adore maybe what others adore and somehow they are not that keen in this marathon exercise. In the end, Tong Kiat was knocked out in round 3 (the third installment) after two visits at my home and Cynthia has painstakingly followed through the journey though in the end, she admitted that she has grown to like the series. Unfortunately, by the time we completed the movie marathon, “Rocky Balboa” is no longer showing in local cinemas. Guess I will have to watch it on DVD.

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Memorable Events

That One Song I Remember During Road Trip In Melbourne

I usually associate trips that I have been with songs that were aired in the radio at the same period. For instance, Tony Rich Project’s “Nobody Knows” is associated to my first visit to Chicago, USA. Couple of years later, during my road trip to Los Angeles, Jewel’s “You Were Meant For Me” was played all the time. Coincidentally, both road trips (company training) happened right after a major heartbreak. What those heart wrenching songs are! As if God was speaking right to my face.

During my recent road trip in around Melbourne, I remember hearing “Don’t Give Up” all the time in the radio. “Don’t Give Up” is probably one of my top 20 favourite songs of all time originally performed by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush back in 1986. Whenever I felt down during my university days, I played “Don’t Give Up” loud. The version I heard over the radio in around Melbourne is covered by some other artists. “Don’t Give Up” has been covered by Alicia Keys and Bono as well as Australian artists Shannon Noll and Natalie Bassingthwaighte and it was the later version I have heard on the radio. Just a bit of background here. Shannon is an Australian Idol runner-up and Natalie is the frontwoman of the electro rock band Rogue Traders. I do enjoy Rogue Traders’s music (reminds me of an old band Republica) and it is certainly strange to hear Natalie singing a ballad.

Anyway, hail to YouTube, we have a video to watch.

PS. I will try to organize my Melbourne pictures fast so that I can share them progressively with you all a.s.a.p. Stay tuned for koalas next.

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Experience Sharing My Hobbies Oil Painting

First Experience With Oil Painting

Consultants are as such: we try to learn something fast, repackage the information, and sound as though we know the topic in depth. As you can see, my first oil painting is still amateurish and this article is definitely not about how-to-paint-oils. But rather a sharing of the fun experience I have when I temporary converted the common bedroom into a humble painting studio.

As shown in the picture above, I have a humble setup painting from “life”. To give you a better appreciation of what are the items for, I have created two larger images with some labels on them.

An easel is a stand that holds a canvas or a board. Traditionally, easels are made of wood. I chose a modern folding one. If you pay attention, easels are commonly used in the shopping malls for advertisement.

Since I am not going to spend an insane amount of cash to paint on canvas, I use oil painting tablet and have it stuck onto a board with double-sided tape. A good light source is important because light brings out the colours of the subject. I made a simple view-finder (aspect ratio must be maintained) to help me in sketching.

I have oiled my palette with linseed oil before first use and guess what? I oiled the wrong side. Moving on, we have the paints and lots of brushes. Dippers are the small tiny containers to hold the turpentine (to make the paint thinner) and linseed oil (to thicken the paint). Paper towels are useful in cleaning the brushes between colour switching. Some paint with a palette knife while for me, as of now, I use it to scrap the paint off the palette at the end of the painting session.

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Concert Memorable Events

Muse’s 2007 Tour at Fort Canning Singapore

Both Cynthia and I are in love with their latest album “Black Holes and Revelations” so when we first heard that Muse is coming to Singapore, we bought the early bird tickets (priced at … gasp … S$85 compared to a full price ticket selling at S$110). Today Cynthia got home early and by 6pm, we arrived at Fort Canning. I have driven pass Fort Canning many times but today was the first time I stepped into this little nice garden near the CBD area.

6-ish, we found a rare parking lot right next to the entrance … 6.30pm, I was siting at one of the tables outside Dome waiting for the sandwiches (our dinner) while Cynthia was standing at the queue as a light drizzle was falling (I felt like, oddly as it sounds, a female penguin going out to hunt for food – Dome is sort of far, you know – while the male ones are left behind with the bad weather) … 6.45pm, I climbed the 135 steps from Dome to where Cynthia was. Luckily I found her as the queue was slowly disappearing into the entrance (she did not carry a phone). 7.30pm, we were standing right in front of the stage area. 8pm, the official start time and no sign of Muse. 8.05pm, a van reversed into behind the stage area and here came the crews. 8.30pm, a limo reversed into behind the stage area and the crowd went wild.

At 8.45pm, Muse was on stage. As anticipated, the entire crowd pushed to the front and everybody was jumping with hands high in air. Temperature was literally rising and the air was thickening with rising humidity. Bodies rubbing against each other and the music was deafening. I could hardly hear the vocals. The music was so loud and so was the cheering. The atmosphere I must say was very good.

Halfway through the show, Cynthia needed some fresh air and I needed some water. We made our way out of the middle crowd and gosh … how fresh was the air just at the rim of this crazy crowd. In fact, it was yet another experience standing from a distance and that distance was no further than where we were at one of Kuala Lumpur’s stadiums watching Linkin Park couple of years back. No body rubbing, mixing of sweat, no blockage of view, plenty of fresh air, and the music sounded a lot better from the back. The atmosphere was not as intense of course and that was the trade off.

We enjoyed the show as we got to see Muse’s front-man Matthew Bellamy displaying his talents in both guitar and piano. At some point, he was playing the piano with his guitar swung to his back and right after the piano piece, he stood up, swung the guitar to the front and started playing it. The bassist and backing vocalist Chris Wolstenholme looked really cool (wearing a tie) playing his signature fast melodious bass riff with heavy distortion. Second song of the set, when he stepped onto the center stage, everyone knew that the song “Hysteria” was coming up and true enough, his distorted bass solo began the song beautifully. Cynthia was most impressed with the drummer Dominic Howard. The patterns were rock steady and full of variations. The drumming was so full of energy. Occasionally they have another musician helping out with the keyboard but most of the time, they did it with 3 members.

One hour into the show, the band returned to the back stage and the crowd cheered for encore. They returned and played for another 15 minutes. The last song of the set was madness. Matthew was jumping in air, gliding across the stage, kneeling on the floor while playing his guitar. At the ending scene, he threw his guitar onto one of the amplifiers, said farewell to the crowd, and left the stage. Dramatic ending it was.

Just seconds after the band left the stage, the limo sped out of the free-standing area as that was the only chance to leave the scene before the crowd hit the same entrance.

One hour and fifteen minutes was a bit short. At home, I visited their official site and realised that Singapore is the first stop of their World Tour (practising on a smaller crowd first?). Perhaps that explains why I feel they could have given more. Will we be watching Muse again next year as they mentioned that they will be back then? Give us another “Black Holes and Revelations” and we shall consider!

Note: 6,500 people attended the concert.

Related Entry: HAARP – Muse Live Tour – Full Of Light And Sound

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Whacky Thoughts

A Discovery Journey With My VCR

Not many people I’ve talked to appreciate the technology of Videocassette Recorders (VCR). It is a matured technology – the first VCR made for home use was back in 1965 by Sony – and low cost compares to Digital Video Recorder (DVR). I clean the video heads and change my tapes regularly. Four hours long of standard recording in one videocassette is good enough for the occasional short overseas trips, evening outings, and even a World Cup match.

After 8 years of service, my Philips VCR finally broke down.

First thing on my mind was to get it repaired but as my friends pointed out, it is an old VCR and it is more worthwhile considering other options. I can either get a (1) S$300 DVR from my cable TV provider that comes with a small monthly subscription fee, (2) S$600+ DVR that allows me to archive my favorite programs into DVDs that option 1 doesn’t, (3) S$1,000 high end DVR that has HDMI output, or (4) get a new VCR.

Last year, I would have picked up option 2 or 3 in a blink of thought. Right now, I am in the money saving mood and hence thinking hard before parting my hard earned money.

As I hit the stores, I am surprised that VCRs are no longer on the shelves. Singapore is still not on High Definition (HD) broadcast and why in such a hurry to take out such a wonderful technology that still serves well with today’s broadcast signal quality? Clean the heads and change the tapes often like I do and the downgrade in quality is not that observable. In the end, I found that Mustafa still sells VCRs with prices that range from S$125 to S$285.

How odd that I didn’t even wish to part my S$125. At the back of my mind, Singapore is going to have HD broadcast this year and by then, VCR will most likely be obsolete. Still undecided, I headed home to reconsider my game plan.

This afternoon, I wanted to open up my old VCR to attempt to repair it myself. If I could get the yet-to-be-watched “So You Think You Can Dance” tape out, that would be an achievement because seriously, I don’t claim to know electronic equipment well enough to repair them.

It was quite a scene looking at what was underneath the hood. I saw my “So You Think You Can Dance” cassette secured by a metal cage with pieces of the tape running through a couple of rollers and a shinny huge cylindrical metal that called video head. The instruction on the metal cage said: to remove the cassette, push down the latches on the side and push this plate forward. With my two hands, how am I to do three things at a time? I tried and failed. I switched on my power supply thinking that it must have been some electronic voodoo mechanism that would eject the tape if I managed to do these three things at once. No luck. Instead, I got lots of mild electric shocks while doing that. I turned to look at one of my screwdrivers that has a light bulb inside and it lit up! That translated to a presence of electricity. Out of curiosity, I used my screwdrivers to poke the places that used to give me electric shocks (like TV cable) and true enough, the light bulb lit up. All along I thought it was because of my body that is prone to electric shocks.

I nearly destroyed my VCR and my “So You Think You Can Dance” cassette while yanking the cassette out using brutal force. I found a very fine and loose spring after the act. The moment I switched on my VCR, the motors were in action. My VCR must have detected the absence of a cassette and all the parts have returned to their original positions. My heart jumped when I heard the sound of the machine as though it was coming back to live. But my joy did not last long. My VCR went dead as before. I tried many other things with no luck. In the end, I googled my problem and somewhere I read: to turn off the modulator, press and hold the ON switch of the remote control for a few seconds. There are other amazing stuffs such as hold the Stop/Eject button for a few seconds to do this and that. Suffice to say, none of those Internet search nor list of problems address my current issue.

Anyway, I whipped out my VCR remote control, pointed it to my VCR, and pressed the button so hard thinking that if it does not work, so be it. I don’t know if the VCR remote control button that did it or a combination of everything with the tape out and all. I don’t even want to find out how my VCR got into such a state to start with. I don’t care and I am happy because it works.

All complex problems have simple solutions and you may travel a long journey just to discover the answer lies right where your home is. If you think that playing adventure games like Sam & Max, that requires you to try everything possible and half of the time you found the solutions by chance, reality is not that far off. Right now, I have a working VCR that I am not sure how long it would last after an “operation” from an unskilled electrician. To the least, my reward would be my missing episode of “So You Think You Can Dance”. I doubt if Cynthia will notice that our VCR is back to where it was. She is in for a surprise tonight.