Categories
J Pop Music Reviews

Ayumi Hamasaki’s Secret

Ayumi Hamasaki‘s new album “Secret” is out and need not to say, being a huge fan of hers short of having her name written all over my T-shirts, my forehead, my jeans, and God-knows-where, I bought the album without knowing what was inside. “Secret” comes with a CD of 14 songs that is just under one hour of music (very rare of hers and I read that initially “Secret” was meant to be yet another mini-CD like “Memorial address”) as well as a DVD of 7 video clips and the making clips for all 7 videos. I have given some days for the album to sink in – as I have a tendency to get over excited on stuffs of this scale – and here is my review.

Why “Secret”?

Asking me to rank Ayumi’s studio albums is like asking a woman if she can give you her favourite list out of a box of mixed chocolate. Chances are, she likes them all and so do I. But if you were to tempt me with an all expense paid visit to Ayumi’s upcoming tour in Japan, I would say “Secret” would rank quite high.

“Secret” has Ayumi’s trademark all over it from the music arrangement and melody point of view (can’t comment much on lyrics but I read that she, as the lyricist for her songs, is mature and poetic when it comes writing her own lyrics). It still has some minor surprises here and there but overall, if you like her previous works, you will love this album. Do try out track 3 (“Startin’”) and the last track (“Secret”). These two are my favourite tracks.

The DVD that comes with the album is a real gem. I enjoyed the making clips a lot because it shows how much effort has been poured into making those great videos.

Why “Ayumi”?

Ayumi Hamasaki is a phenomenon in the Japanese music industry. She is a great performer, a singer and songwriter who churns out hits after hits. Take a look at her yearly Arena Tour video recording and I doubt if you have seen anything of that sophistication and commercial scale. Go and read about her at Wikipedia when you have time.

So why wait? Get her new album today!

Categories
Diary

Tasty Fish Soup and Wonderful Cables

I have this sudden urge to get some new cables for my home studio and so I text one of Cynthia’s colleague Alex for help. He recommended one of the shops at Sim Lim Tower. And what better way to spend my lunch time at a fish soup store nearby that is so famous that you can easily find 20 to 30 people queuing wanting the S$5 or S$7 fish soup? When my taxi drive told me that that store charges extra for chili sauce, I didn’t believe. And yes, they do charge for extra chili sauce, extra vegetable and what not. Of course, no takeaway is allowed.

And by the way, it took me a while to direct my taxi driver to reach this hawker center. It is right next to the New World Centre.

I ordered a S$7 white fish soup instead of S$5 and gosh, I wish I have order the S$5 one instead. It was a lot! The fish meat tasted very fresh and the chili source is very spicy. So please be mindful if you are not a big fan of chili source.

While I am still puzzled over if the fish soup is really better than the one at Amoy Street (very debatable), I managed to get those cables as recommended by Alex. And gosh, those cables are good. My guitar sounds with greater clarity and much lesser noise. My two cables cost me S$54 and I am sure they worth every cent!

Categories
Jamming Session

Jamming for our Drummer Lester’s Wedding Song

Last weekend, my band has gathered together to jam out a wedding song for our drummer Lester. He has written the lyric for his wife-to-be Therecia to sing. Melody crafted by our guitarist Jason and I played the role of fine-tuning the song to suit Therecia’s vocal style. My vision was clear – I wanted the song to be recorded on the same day because face it, there are lots of higher priority wedding preparations to be done. Somehow, the rest of the band members have their expectations exceeded when we managed to record the song in one day. I am pleased with the result and we threw in our best recording track by track (drum first and then my guitar, Cynthia’s bass, Jason’s guitar, and the vocal track). Since the song will be used when displaying the childhood photos of the couple, I will wait till January next year to link the recording from where Lester is going to post the video to – YouTube – as we are keeping this as a surprise for now.

Captions from left to right, top to bottom: (1) Therecia recording vocal track with the condenser microphone, (2) Drummer Lester and Therecia’s self-taken photo, (3) Lester enhancing his drumming track after the recording was done, (4) Cynthia and her bass, (5) Jason and his smile, and (6) me and my guitar.

Categories
Movie Reviews Romance

The Last Kiss – A Portrait of Different Facets of Relationships

If you are a big fan of the OC girl Rachel Bilson and if you are a guy, I have good and bad news for you. Good news is, after the movie you will probably go to bed dreaming about that tastefully filmed sex scene of hers. Bad news is that she doesn’t have a lot of air time in this movie.

Jokes aside, “The Last Kiss” was written by Paul Haggis (“Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash”) that aimed to bring out the different facets of relationships through five couples – one who just couldn’t get over his last relationship, one who felt instantly in love with someone in a wedding party and realized that perhaps great sex by itself did not give him enough incentive to move onto the meet-the-parents phase, one who got stuck with a crying baby and a stressed up wife, and of course not to forget to mention Michael (played by Zach Braff from the TV series “Scrub”) who should be happy with his relationship with his girlfriend Jenna – recently pregnant with his baby – but yet he felt that being close to 30 meant that there would be no more surprises in his well-planned life and call it mistiming, he found this young college student Kim (played by none other than Rachel) simply irresistible. Did I mention five couples? Jenna’s parents – 30 years into a dull but not unblemished marriage – played a major role in the plot development as well.

What I really like about “The Last Kiss” is its seamless transition of what different couples have been going through in their relationships that portraits love, temptation, infidelity, forgiveness, marriage, and friendship. In another word, it is highly likely that you may identify yourself with the movie. If you choose to watch this movie, you will see lots of happy moments, sad moments, and heartwarming moments. “The Last Kiss” is not one of those typical Hollywood feel good movie so I suppose it may not be a movie for everyone. Overall, I enjoyed watching it.

What impacted me the most in the movie? If you are willing to give whatever it takes for the relationship to work, that means you should never give up. Because you can’t fail if you don’t give up.

Categories
I See I Write

My First Day with Wireless@SG

You probably wish to ask what does the above picture got to do with Wireless@SG, yes? You will see the connection later on.

As an early adopter of this free seamless wireless broadband access initiated by IDA code name Wireless@SG, I have decided to test drive this wonderful service today. Picked up the phone and called up SingTel mainly to inquire how to activate the service that I have signed up a month ago. In retrospect, the customer service representative was not that helpful. The only thing I learned was how to retrieve my GPRS password for logging on purpose. I doubt if anyone can surf the net via a 3G Wi-fi mobile phone if you are not technologically inclined.

Just before lunch, I looked through a list of coverage areas and my first destination was of course the OUB Hello! Shop (owned by SingTel) right next door. I stood there for 5 minutes trying to figure out how to configure the connection using my Nokia N80. And then I stood there for another 5 minutes getting the “no reply from gateway” error time and time again. That was strange. Was it me or was the service down?
Next on my coverage list was Starbucks so I headed straight to Raffle City. Standing within the perimeter of Starbucks feeling like a spy, I made my second attempt to connect to Wireless@SG. After 5 minutes (yes, I have a stop watch), the log on form appeared. There was some log on options and intuitively I chose STM/Data3 (don’t ask me how I arrived at the decision or what that STM means), punched in my user ID and password, and voila!, my mobile phone started to load the SingTel Wireless@SG homepage. By the time I managed to open Google.com, 12 minutes has passed. I looked behind me and one of the customers who seated near to where I was when I started to surf has already finished his cup of coffee.

Happy with my little achievement, I headed into City Link Mall and according to the coverage list, I should be able to connect to Wireless@SG at all levels. So I turned on the hot spot searcher feeling like a scientist searching for the source of radioactivity or a solder with a land mine detector, I saw Wireless@SG appearing and disappearing and finding it hard to surf the net seamlessly at all.

All of a sudden, my phone has detected a strong signal. Feeling delighted I looked up and saw a Hello! Shop. That must be it, I said to myself, and I matched directly into this shop owned by SingTel. To my disappointment, the signal disappeared. Perplexed as I was, I retraced my steps and as I walked pass O’Briens, it suddenly struck me that all the O’Briens outlets are inside the coverage list. Ordered a meal at O’Briens and I started to surf the net.

According to SingTel, Wireless@SG has a (blazing) speed of 512kpbs. This is exactly the same speed I have at home. My personal website – content rich by the way – can be loaded by my phone within one minute at home. At O’Briens, even the signal was pretty strong (way better any other spots), it took forever to load any page with graphics. In the end, in between my sandwich time, I have managed to read a story about NASA building a moon base at one of the poles from Yahoo! News (very mobile phone friendly with no graphics, but wait, I do want the graphics!). And I have also managed to download a comic strip off CNN.com – a symbolic achievement of the day.

Now, that is the only connection between the picture and the subject of this article. It’s lame, I know.

Click here for the corresponding blog entry.

Categories
I See I Write

Wireless@SG – Love the Potential but Disappointed at the Delivery

Wireless@SG, an island-wide free wireless broadband service, was officially launched on December 1st. Excited as I was, I took out my Wi-fi enabled mobile phone and decided to give this baby a test drive. After all, able to surf the net free even in some designated areas at this initial phase is a dream comes true.

After an hour or two trying out the various locations, I must say I am disappointed by the quality of the network. It is still far from the vision of seamless wireless broadband that is supposed to have a speed of 512kpbs. Hence, application is limited. However, I am still excited by the potential of Wireless@SG.

Categories
I See I Write

Battle of Sennheiser e845 Versus Shure SM58

When I first embarked on the music recording journey, Jason recommend the industry standard none other than the self-proclaimed-legendary Shure SM58 that is tuned to accentuate the warmth and clarity of vocals. For years, SM58 has served me well. I did many hours of recording using SM58 during our jamming sessions and songwriting.

Today, Jason told me that Sennheiser e845 is on sales in one of the shops at Sim Lim Square so during lunch I checked out this Sennhesier microphone priced at S$169. To be fair, e845 is supposed to be one notch above SM58. A high performance super-cardioid lead vocal microphone with a frequency response of 40Hz to 16kHz versus SM58’s unidirectional (cardioid) pattern with a frequency response of 50Hz to 15kHz. The difference is clear. While SM58 makes my voice sounded warm, e845 gives forth the details that potentially rivals condenser microphones (both SM58 and e845 are dynamic microphones for stage use). I have to be careful when pronouncing the P’s and B’s and any emphases when using e845. It is that sensitive.

Coupled my new microphone cable Whirlwind (priced at S$55, supposed to be one of the best and I have left it in my store room for months) with my new Sennhesier e845, the result is simply stunning. The clarity, the truer representation of my voice, the details, and right now, the e845 and Whirlwind combo has my vote. Time to put this to test with my band in the next jamming session.

Categories
Animation Movie Reviews

Happy Feet – An Entertaining Movie Short Of A Great One

Happy Feet has all the right ingredients: lovely dancing penguins, great music scores, beautiful sceneries, and a unique concept that attracting a soul mate in this land of penguins is through a heart song. Mumble, a penguin that cannot sing but loves to tap dance, is the hero of the movie. Being an outcast, it is a story of how Mumble sets out a journey in proving his worth to his society.

Happy Feet has some really great dance sequence and from the animation perspective, it is top notch. Totally realistic. From the script and storyline perspective, there are still rooms for improvement. I draw parallelism with the movie E.T. and I accept the story development as it is. My movie buddies find the ending a bit far fetch and unrealistic. Regardlessly, since I am a penguin lover myself, I find the movie entertaining to watch – especially the dancing baby penguin.

Categories
Diary

Motor Show Singapore 2006

Every time when there is a motor show in Singapore, you know for sure that Robert and I will be there. Armed with our cameras (this time round I have my own), we took pictures of the cars that were worth photographing and models who are stunning. I have to admit that initially it was a bit uncomfortable to point my camera at the models (upon which the models would strike a pose). Towards the end, it was like a second nature. I don’t know how these models can sustain that sort of posture and photogenic smile throughout the show. It is a talent I suppose.

Categories
I See I Write

Channel [V] Rocks!

When I first heard that Channel [V] was going to be available in Singapore, I was ecstatic. I miss the old MTV that played music videos and not those teen programs like today. When I first heard that Channel [V] is only available with a digital cable box, I headed straight to StarHub and swapped my old analogue box with the digital one. Face it, the digital box was out for many months but I just did not bother (though it is free).

At the customer servicing center, I was staring at the not-too-customer-centric product offering menu. Ended up have to pay S$12 for Channel [V] and a bunch of others that I most probably will not watch. I looked at the sales person and asked, “You mean I have to pay for Channel [V]? I swap the box because of Channel [V] only!”. Eyes watery and all … then the sales person looked at me sympathetically and said, “Look, I can offer you a half price trial plan for 3 months” and I replied, “Deal!”.

Took me hours to get the new box to work with my arcane system (turned out that my VCR interferes with the RF output of the new box) but it was all worth it. The image is much clearer and now I have Channel [V]! And of course, Cynthia is very delighted by the new TV experience. She just loves TV.