Categories
Snippet of My Life

Snippet Of My Life Episode 8 – A Story

At night, I drive. Clueless about direction. Clueless about my destination. A listless body. Heavy in breathing. Clueless about where I am heading. Clueless about what I am doing. I drive, at night.

Porcelain, unblemished whiteness. Below which a story less common. And to life, we toast. And this moment, we live. Above which a being least ordinary. Fragile darkness, pain.

The spirit is high. In red and white. Under the starry night. We smile and weep. We stumble and humbled. Until the darkness falls. In black and grey. The road is wide.

I hardly know you. At night, I drive. Familiar places. Unfamiliar road signs. Sometimes, I wish. An angel comes by.

Categories
Other People's Lives

These Are The Moments I Am Not Too Proud To Be A Singaporean

Avid readers of my site know that I love my new home here. But, there are moments like tonight that I am not too proud of who I am. My friend shares the same birth town as me and she lived in Australia for a few good years. Just recently she has decided to try out Singapore and as a proud Singaporean, I did not hesitate to show her around. I even got my friend’s wife to try to find her an accommodation (that unfortunately was beyond her budget). And since we work at the same workplace (different building though), I got to hear about how she adapts to the environment here. I have been there, done that, and I know exactly what she is going through.

She found a new place (an entire 2-room HDB flat) to rent on her own a few months back. The rent was reasonable and the location is pretty centralized. After she moved in, her nightmare began. Her landlady kept visiting the apartment with and without her presence. My friend didn’t have a sense of privacy and one day, her landlady suddenly demanded a raise in rental – hardly a month after my friend settled in. Not wanting to bear the extra cost, she has decided to move out.

And then the hassle started to sink in. Her landlady kept calling her in the middle of the night to demand compensation, countless excuses such as the poor condition of the place after my friend settled in. Oh please, I visited her home back then and my friend is definitely not that kind who vandalizes. Her landlady even called our HR, faxed to her office in large font with the claim that my friend owes her money and so on.

My friend couldn’t take it and she filed a report to the police. Guess what? The police couldn’t help either because it is not a domestic violence. There is no blood involved (read: physical harm). So, my friend went to the court (you must understand that she is pretty Westernized and prefers to settle things through the law) and the judge told her: get a lawyer, there is nothing we can do here in Singapore. She was hoping for a refrain order but of course, there are none here.

Then I told her: you should have told me earlier. I would have a face-to-face with her landlady and settle it the Singapore way. Well, coupled with some other unpleasant experience she has here in Singapore (pure bad luck, sigh), my friend has decided to move out of Singapore for good. She is my friend so I support all her decisions. But from now till then, I promise to introduce her to my female network of friends so that she can have someone to do nails with, do facial with … something very fundamental to the female species but yet not everyone has that privilege.

I knew one day the feminine side of me will pay off. Saving one friend one day at a time.

Related blog entry: A Ridiculous S$1,000 Claim Against My Friend By Her Ex-Landlady.

Categories
Music Reviews Pop Rock & Alternative

PJ Harvey’s White Chalk – Courageously Ethereal Effort That Triumphed

At times we see artists who dare to deviate from their forte but fail to deliver. Most of the time, we see countless of artists producing the same stuff again and again and because some of them are so good at it, we fans keep buying into that. The queen of indie’s new production “White Chalk” moves away from the electric guitar sound and the signature guitar riffs into an album of piano ballads. In her words, “great thing about learning a new instrument from scratch is that it…liberates your imagination”. Not only that, she has also done away with the intense and at times screaming singing that sometimes coupled with the characteristic vocal effect. In “White Chalk”, She sings with a higher register. No wonder “White Chalk” sounds light and ethereal. The mood and sound of the piano and the singing gel well together. Many times when artists make such a switch, I have this haunting feeling of the good old sound when listening to the new album. To the extend that I could almost hear the missing guitar riffs that should have been there, the kind of screaming that should have been there. I have none for “Walk Chalk”. It sounds great on its own. This is not just my view. “White Chalk” has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from the reputed sources.

From the theme perspective, it is still dark and abstract. First, let me take you back to the year 1995. The song “To Bring You My Love” from the album with the same title is perhaps my favorite track out of all her songs. The lyrics is simple, but dark.

Climbed over mountains – Travelled the sea – Cast down off heaven – Cast down on my knees – I’ve laid with the devil – Cursed god above – Forsaken heaven – To bring you my love

Compare that to the excerpt of “The Devil”, the opening track of “White Chalk”.

As soon as I’m left alone – The devil wanders into my soul – – And I pretend to myself – And I pretend to myself – I go out – To the old milestone – Insanely expecting – You to come there – Knowing that I wait for you there – That I wait for you there

And the album closes off with with “The Mountain” that musically resembles the opening track “The Devil”. It is just genius.

By the mountain – I feel nothing – For in my own heart – Every tree is broken – The first tree will not blossom – The second will not grow – The third is almost fallen – Since you betrayed me so

Below is a video of three of her songs from the new album – “When Under Ether”, “The Piano”, and “The Mountain” – together with a short interview thereafter. Don’t miss it.

Categories
Diary

So I Finally Opened A Trading Account

If there are two things I think we all should start doing from young, that would be skin care and to invest wisely. Ironically, I suck at both departments. It is until recently that something suddenly hits me (I am slow, I know). I don’t have the economy background and I often have this negative impression on the financial market (again, ironic that I have been in the financial services industry for years). Stock market used to be a gigantic gambling ground to me. Then one day I realize that buying shares is very much like taking your hard earned money and invest into the future of mankind. And as mankind progress, those who invest their money rather than leaving their resources rotting inside a current deposit account get rewarded. So, stock market is not necessarily evil. And I am not necessarily evil if I participate in this frantic world that so freely and readily embraces capitalism.

Over lunch, my buddy RC – the one who always unfailingly thrilled me with all his wonderful war stories with the stock market – needed to visit the Singapore Exchange for something that was too complex for me to comprehend (something to do with buying a discounted share offset by dividend … huh?!). None the matter. I followed. And impulsively, I have decided to open an account.

Fortunately for me, I have RC with me to explain the necessity. I am sure most of you are aware of how to trade in Singapore. For those who are interested in the process, this is for you. First, you need to open a CDP account. You can do so at SGX or at a security house. Minimum age is 21 (RC asked me to inquire if his 6 years old son can open a CDP account) and all you need is your IC and a bank account. Next, you need to open a trading account – either with a broker or trading via Internet. I chose DBS Vickers Securities Singapore out of convenience. Then you need to link your trading account to your CDP account (another form to fill up). And finally, choose your payment method (I opt for GIRO).

Viola! It is that simple. Stay tuned in what I will do with those accounts (still haven’t decided if I am going to actually trade). Meanwhile, remember … skin care and invest wisely – the two things you should do from young.

Categories
Foreign Movie Reviews Romance

Sugar And Spice – My Heart Bled A Hundred Times

Life is fragile. One moment you are up in the sky, hopping from cloud to cloud. Everything looks bright. You love the caress of the wind on your face. Another moment, everything you stand onto crumble into pieces. What you believe in, what you live for … and you ask yourself: Who am I? What am I? Are we the projection of what the people see and think about us? Are we the shadow of our past and who we are not? Or we are what we identify with? The curse of empathy. We humankind promotes love but yet we have conflicts everywhere, every single moment. At this very moment, millions are displaced in the war-torn eastern African nation of Somalia, the Saudi rape victim is sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison (what does human right means as a female in an Arab country?!), whales are being brutally killed as the source of protein … but no, how I feel now is nothing to do with civilizations that I have yet to encounter or yet another species we are driving to extinction. How I feel, what I feel is the very conflicts or hostility I experience somewhere not thousands of miles away. Then I ponder, is the ability of being able to empathize a curse? What if no one cares about how I feel, who I am, or what I am? Why do I care so much to people around me? I remember those FHM girls lined up in front of a car so that photographers could take a good picture with them, and the car. Someone shouted: which number, which number, how much? That was disrespectful, totally disgusting. We don’t spend time dressing up to work just to be emotionally abused. I don’t spend time dressing up to …

So, our identity can falter. Our will power can falter. And our body follows, feeling weak and all.

I am coughing today. My nose has been running mildly. It’s been one of those days when I don’t feel as though I am hopping from cloud to cloud. And through this process of crumble, through the serendipity of you are not alone, my good buddy – the name cannot be exposed for reason you will find later – met me up for lunch, and then dinner, and then a movie that I was dying to watch but no one seems interested.

I have no idea why The Straits Times rated the movie “Sugar and Spice” so bad. Then again, I have been consistently disagreeing with them. The acting is solid, especially hands down to Yuya Yagira, the award winner of Cannes in 2004. The scenery shots are beautiful. The presentation with the actors narrate throughout the movie is poetic. “Sugar and Spice” is about the passion of first love, and the passion of love. Being the king of “dumpee”, I can so totally relate to every single moment of the intensity of falling in love and to face the eventuality of … love is a journey, an experience, and feeling the pain at times make us feel alive. “Sugar and Spice” bears it all and it reminded me of what I have been through. Then I thought, perhaps the reviewers at The Straits Times just not having the opportunity to experience love at all. I asked my good buddy who has yet to experience love if the show is enjoyable. The answer is yes. I was surprised. And my good buddy was surprised at The Straits Times’s review too. Too bad, today is the last day “Sugar and Spice” being shown in Singapore.

I wish this blog entry is just another movie review but it is not. All this world needs or what we need is empathy, the ability to love someone or something (such as whales), and the ability to love oneself. And for God’s sake, stop hurting each other with the words we say, the things we do, the words we didn’t say, and the things we didn’t do.

Categories
Action & Thriller Movie Reviews

The Kingdom – More A Thriller Than Politics

The Movie Review Squad met unexpectedly at Orchard over the weekend and while Cynthia and TK were having coffee and cake at The Centrepoint, I was assigned to walk over to Cineleisure and pick a movie in the name of spontaneity. If it was up to me, I would have picked a Japanese movie for a change. For lack of a better choice, we settled on “The Kingdom”.

I knew what “The Kingdom” is about and I also knew that this movie is written by Matthew Michael Carnahan – the same screenwriter who wrote “Lions for Lambs”. While “Lions for Lambs” focuses on the politics with the special US operation at Afghanistan as the background, “The Kingdom” centers at the US counter-terrorism investigators inside Saudi Arabia having politics as the background instead. Majority of the movie was filmed on locations in America while part of it was filmed on UAE. Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner played the characters of the investigators (a team of 4 in total) and part of the movie reminded me of CSI and Alias. What I really enjoy watching was the acting performance of the two Israeli Arab actors Ashraf Barhom and Ali Suliman. Although “The Kingdom” is lacking in character development – which is understandable as it is a thriller, the bonding development between the US investigators and the Arab guards is perhaps the highlight of the movie. Some of the lighter moments arise due to the cultural differences between American and the Arab are nice to watch, amid such an intense thriller type of plot.

When I reflect upon the storyline, I wonder if the result of the investigation was linked to luck or good preparation or a bit of both. Then again, if the plot manages to entertain, who cares (I actually do unfortunately)? Perhaps not a must-watch type of movie but something to entertain when you run out of ideas.

Categories
Snippet of My Life

Snippet Of My Life Episode 7 – Numbers

Sometimes I wonder, how many pairs of non-work related user id and password we have to memorize these days? I actually have to keep a record on paper and there are close to 45 pairs. In the order of importance, they are: [1] Essential accounts (14%) like the SingPass, [2] Web mail accounts (7%), [3] Gaming accounts (7%) – oh yes, online gaming ranks high in my life, [4] Shopping accounts (12%) like Amazon.com, [5] Utility accounts (17%) like the anti-virus site that asks for my account info oh so often, [6] Social accounts (38%) like YouTube, my favorite forums etc etc, [7] Misc accounts (5%) like those require you to create an account in order to submit a job application.

Seriously, Microsoft may be the evil one. But imagine the world with just one user id and password … the Microsoft Passport. (And no, my passwords are not all the same.)

For days, I have been wondering why the sign at the car park entrance says: season or hourly parking only. What else can that be? One day I turned to Cynthia as the car entered the car park for an answer. Within seconds, she answered: loading unloading? D’oh! At times I think my brain is hardwired in a certain way.

Talking about hard-wiring, since young I was taught how to subtract numbers in a certain way. For instance, to subtract 300 from 128, I would start from the right and work myself to the left. When I top up my cash card, I always round it up. An obsessive behavior of mine. I would stand in front of the ATM trying to work out what to key in for, say, S$78.53 left in my card. I would work from right to left (7, 4, 1, 2, 2) and then have a hard time reversing the order of the answer (S$221.47).

Then one day, I have decided to work from left to right. It works wonder and it is really not that hard. Now I can even work out how to top up 1,395,296,105.49 to 3 trillion without thinking (answer: 1,604,703,894.51). I wonder why I was not taught that way at school.

And one day, I turned to Cynthia and shared with her my “great discovery”. Her response was: all along that was the way I subtract!

Stupid I felt and in British English, the word “ass” means either a stupid person (informal) or a donkey (old use). I wonder if the words “dumb ass” was inspired by a donkey at all.

Categories
Party

7pm – 5am: Of Dinner And Dance, Butter Factory, And Zouk

Till today, I still think that the best thing I can take away from my nine-to-five is the friendship I make. Some feel that the friends they meet as they get older are not as real or as close to those they met when they were young. The way I see it, as time goes by, we bound to lose touch with some good friends of ours. Actively making new friends and putting time and effort in nurturing friendship – old and new – is likely to be the only way to counter that. Some told me that they prefer to live their lives as hermits. My take is, we all want to be alone at times but none of us want to be lonely.

This year’s Dinner and Dance was different. It was a whole set of new colleagues and amongst them, two were my ex-colleagues. We were like having a mini-reunion during the Dinner and Dance. When the clock struck twelve, we headed to Butter Factory to have a real reunion with friends I met from the previous company. The party was smashing and Butter Factory ranks pretty high in my list of favorite clubbing scenes. After Butter Factory was closed at three, some of us moved to Zouk. Believe it or not, it was my first time stepping into Butter Factory … and into Zouk as well.

Categories
Fantasy & Sci-fi Movie Reviews

“Beowulf” – Now, What Have They Done To The Epic Poem?

Why do I watch that many movies lately, I do not know. It may be the sign of work starting to get into me and watching movies seems like an easy way out for lack of a more creative way to spend my spare time. Perhaps what Michael Watkins wrote in his book “The First 90 Days” is true: we spend the first 3 months learning and not adding much value to the organization, only thereafter do we start to contribute. No wonder the past one month has been rather busy, even when we officially cut our working hours by 10% (it was more than some of you guys to start with so don’t envy me!).

Actually, I wanted to title this review as “This Year Warrior Has A New Name, NOT!”. Inside the shower, I was pondering who are the great warriors on a movie screen. Perhaps King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans in “300: March To Glory” are good candidates. Somehow, the image of Brad Pitt from “Troy” got stuck in my mind. The character Achilles certainly has my number one vote as the greatest warrior on screen.

Some may praise “Beowulf” because the hero is portrayed as a flawed human being. Some may appreciate the filming technique of motion capture much like the director’s previous work “Polar Express”. I personally am puzzled with characters fading in and out of the animation. One moment I swear I see the real face of Angelina Jolie and another moment, her face looks like a piece of computer generated graphic that doesn’t look like Angelina Jolie at all. I have been thinking hard if there is some kind of significance to all these scenes of fading in and out of reality and I can think of none. (Perhaps the further it is, the more unreal it becomes?)

From what I read in the Internet, the movie deviates from the epic poem written in year 700 for quite a bit. My humble opinion is that after reading the summary, the original story makes more sense while the movie adaptation leaves many question marks in my head.

Having said all that I dislike, some scenes are really worth mentioning. I in particularly like the battle with the dragon. It was intense and thrillingly heroic. There are some emotional moments before Beowulf heading to an epic battle. And there are some rather hilarious moments too. But other than that, I think it is for the fans of English animated films by and large.

Categories
For the Geeks Game Reviews

Hellgate London

“London is in ruins and now Asia must respond”, so it says on the pamphlet. I do not hesitate (especially when Cynthia is out-of-town) and am ready for the challenges ahead. I arrive at Russel Square and the garden square is no longer what it used to be – now a piece of wasteland. From afar, I can vaguely see the British Museum in ruin. Or is it my imagination? The year is 2038 and it has been 18 years since The Invasion. Once again, the survivors of mankind are united and determined to stop the demons from altering and assimilating our world into theirs. We have to close the Hellgate fast.

How I love role playing games. It comes with such a compelling storyline that makes people feel as though they are doing something virtually significant. Before you dismiss computing gaming as a total waste of time, you may wish to know that gaming moderately can enhance one’s analytic skill, problem solving skill, reflects, and etc. It is scientifically proven. Military develops games to train the soldiers. I even read that in one hospital, a group of surgeons are asked to play at least a certain number of hours of a I-forgot-which-one-but-certainly-not-a-medically-related-game a week in order to improve their performance.

Though I have the bad reputation of not being able to finish any game (except Sam & Max!), I think I may actually like “Hellgate London” and have a high chance in completing the game (think moderation!). It has the element of a traditional role playing game whereby you can personalise the ability of your characters. You are rewarded by the demons you vanquish in terms of experience points, currency, and items. But it doesn’t have the tedious battle controls like many role playing games do, which is good. And it also has the element of first person shooter but with a slower pace, lesser surprises, and you can actually dodge a fireball coming your way because it is kind of … slow. That is good as well because you can access the situation and take position accordingly to minimise damage upon you. You can virtually blow up anything lying around you – be it as boxes or gas cylinders. The explosion scenes are modeled well. Oh, did I mention that you will never run out of bullets? The graphic is fascinating even with my rather dated machine (AMD X2 4200+ and 6800GTS in SLi). The game play hardly lags in enclosed areas though in open areas (awesome graphics by the way as I can see buildings in smoke, the red phone booth, and abandoned police cars everywhere), my machine struggles to provide me with a smooth game play. Time to consider a new graphic cards I am sure.

And “Hellgate London” plays like some of the Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Games as well. Kind of reminds me of the World of Warcraft with regards to the quest system. There are also fraction points to gain (each tube station is like a mini-community and you have to gain their trust). The pace of “Hellgate London” is in between tradition role playing games and first person shooter. Most monsters I have seen so far can be easily killed with one shot or two. Except bosses of course. The boss fight can be entertaining especially when you see it charging after you and you have to keep firing at it while retreating (i.e. clear the area before the boss fight). The game is played in real time. Hence no saving and reloading it like many others. I love that because it feels so much more real.

Okay. I shall stop writing such a long blog and go back and save London … sleep. Think moderation!