Madness! I now have 5 sizes. The new one is second from right. It was wonderful once broken in, yielding my regular-sized speeds of 50-70 seconds. It even made me feel that regular-sized ones were a bit too big!
The biggest and smallest take 2 more minutes because of their size, and so I estimate that finishing them all would take 9 minutes.
From left: over 150% of an original-sized cube; 133% sized one; the original size; the new 83% one and a 55% sized one Warmpaw got me.
Believe it or not, the newly renovated Xfresh fishtank has biometric technology. You press your face against the glass and it detects oil levels and shape, and lets you in.
Not.
We use the Cotag system where you hold your access pass against a tag reader (very much like Touch N Go) and it unlocks the door. For weeks, the door was not set up and could not lock, so anybody could just open the door. They fixed up the security recently so we now have to tag in.
Of course, a certain colleague (who shall not be named) forgot this. (Shows how often he comes in.)
This is the view from outside the office. Notice that below the Xfresh logo in the top-right corner, there is an oily face print!
I saw this colleague smash into the glass with a thud.
“I forgot we had to tag in.”
Well even in the old days before we had to, we’d use the handle (that shiny metal bar on the left), or if we were lazy we could use our hands to push. But to go headfirst?
For once, we can say, don’t use your head.
No it’s not me (my skin is so dry, the only place you can get oil using those blue oil wipes is by pressing on the blackheads on my nose.) No it’s not Shaz either.
4th June 2005
Oh come on you’ve seen enough pictures of Azmyl Yunor and Broken Scar. So it was Rafil of 360 Degree Head Rotation‘s flash gig. Yes I have not done picture-full blogs in a while.
I will blog about the pictures from left to right, top to bottom.
Alex Ang of Soft Touch, Naked Breed, Indka and zillions of other bands more famous than these; some Chinese dude whose name I forgot; Paul cemented all three of his mike stands to the stage; 360 Degree Head Rotation’s son shreds with Paul Millot improvising drums (for some reason Alex did not drum this time, but sang!); Kevin and I went to Alexis again for Shelley‘s gig day 2 and passed by the Sultan Abdul Samad building; Great Eastern Mall’s escalators.
5th June 2005
The Troubadours debut gig featured Mei Chern (the number one downloaded artiste on MusicCanteen; 100 bottles of beer on the wall ceiling; Melina of Tempered Mental; Prozac Nation doing covers of Stereophonics and Placebo; the Bomba energy drink they gave out; La Bodega, through the mirror behind the bar.
I didn’t pay attention to the gig because I came late and went for dinner, but uh Reza and Jerome Kugan and Alex Ang and Saer Ze and Izzy Mohd played.
And now, for unrelated pictures:
A sexy red Mazda RX-8; Azira does not know that you should eat a chocolate-filled donut from the side with the hole first to avoid ejecting the filling out on the other side; my attempt to make fake dreadlocks by twirling hair and then pushing it upwards; you can’t really see it, but… yeah I guess you can’t really see the little dreads dammit. 🙁 And finally, my collection of Transformers Alternators in half transformation mode, from left to right: Meister, Decepticharge (I sold him to YK so I could get Windcharger, a red Honda S2000 instead), Sideswipe, Tracks and the new superstar, Hound.
The new Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre seems to go on forever; inside, it goes on forever too; there are two phrases that effectively divert the path of a female – SALE and Last Day; KLCC buskers have resonator guitars, how cool is that; a “Mitsubishi Lancer” with sunroof that looks suspiciously like a Proton Wira; yet another attempt to mess up my hair.
Then there’s the new unreleased range of Sony Ericssons which Xfresh TV got to review (with 3 current phones tumpang glamor (trying to steal the limelight)); and a Mazda RX-8 again. Yummy blue.
17th June 2005
Now back to the Starbucks Music Series week 1:
Fergus Ong has the innocent church guitar voice (go read his blog it’s Seinfeld-like funny); Reza has some new numbers with him rapping ala Jason Mraz; Azmyl Yunor, you know; and the dashboard of a Perodua MyVi has buttons so big you just wanna press them, plus the inside is so big!
18th June 2005
And now, for the Fete De La Musique on Saturday at One Utama:
I got there and caught Jenifur taking pictures of the rainforest; the beauty of the Fete is that if you are bored, you can walk about and shop; turns out The Rebel Scum were carrying bags because they had posters inside to give throw away; Stone Free sounded promising as it was a name of a Jimi Hendrix song, and they covered BB King’s The Thrill Is Gone; Naked Breed (I like this picture’s perspective); and Zack of Cosmic Funk Express… with Tempered Mental! That was interesting indeed since his effects are different, he did not do his regular fretboard gymnastics and he swayed about with a grin in his usual manner.
I didn’t include pictures of the other bands because there was nothing memorable about them not knowing how to balance their sound. Most bands that afternoon (pardon me if I was there only half the time) were amateur un-gigged unseasoned bands, plus some hitz.tv Blast Off hip-hop/R&B washouts.
Poor Davina shouting because they stole her mike – no she does not suck; it’s been a hard day’s night; turns out they were turning the stage to face the highway instead of the rainforest; apparently the professionalism of the sound crew said that the sound monitors should be so far from the stage.
I pity the stage prop for Inside A Whale; Borange had super fuzzy, piercing guitar that soon blew the amp; Gloomhida played good funk; Nephotetix played Killswitch Engage covers and provided a good time to headbang.
I seem to have forgotten to take shots of Function Z, a young church band who seems to have gotten loads better (minus the missed cues, possibly lack of rehearsing) than the last time I saw them at the Hoobastank Battle Of The Bands. They had loads of female groupies!
19th June 2005
Fete De La Musique, Bintang Walk, where it was meant to be, so you can walk from one stage to another in indecision:
Crawford’s Ball, doing Incubus covers; Seven, a funky band; Sicksociety, jumping into Sepultura; some posing buskers (I don’t know if they were part of the show); all of Berjaya Times Square in one photo; the Berjaya Times Square stage, so small, you’d have to sit down to make the stage look big.
I reached Borders and finally got my chance to take a picture of the typo; Shelley and Az were playing at 3pm; after geeking with them (where they found out how much their old Transformers would have cost in the Time Machine, an antique toy shop) I ran back to Low Yat to catch Wwanao; they had a massive conga line; Inverted Coma’s hothothot bassist shows more rocking energy here when playing a Metallica cover than with Dragon Red; One Buck Short is the reason why I did not have dinner because there was a moshpit full of girls.
Ooh and when I was at Borders, there were a few people taking pictures, most notably one Borders staff. For some reason, my eyes were drawn to his name tag, and it said Ho Yi Jian. OMG! Oh My Goats! It was the Yi Jian! Of many many years ago! He used to comment in my blog, and he had a kickass blog on http://www.subsushi.com/sanityhills. Yeah I’m not linking it because it doesn’t exist anymore. His blog was one of my inspirations.
Cute T-shirt; Frequency Cannon, dude; lack of amps did not deter the Tugu Drum Circle from banging on drums and bonging; the Sungei Wang crowd; Juwita Suwito and Liang asking, “Where is the love?“; Jayaram is a rapper now, with Seventh Redemption!
Lurks, sounding a bit like Prodigy (so the emcees say); Crawford’s Ball play again, sans vocalist, and a dancer hops on stage!
Excuse me while I break the paragraph to go, “WAHAHAHA it’s Professor Amil of Dragon Red, playing bass!” Those of you who know him will understand why it’s so hilarious. Also in the picture is Shakir of Warve trying to steal the show back from him. Yes, Amil was posing front center, as he would when he had a shiny yellow guitar.
Finally, I retired to La Bodega for another Troubadours session, to catch Saiful of Y2K playing power chords on nylon strings.
Sadly, the Bukit Bintang, Lot 10, Piccolo Mondo, and KL Plaza stages were nonexistent. No amps, no stage… no music. The Sungei Wang stage was decent but the bands were a lot less established (and frequently gigging) than the ones at Low Yat.
The ever lickable, superduperfunny Jay. I’d lick like to lick this googly eyed “shine like stars“-eyed whack emcee Davina; her the day before. See I finally have proof that she can look very very different on different days!
24h June 2005
I was walking to KLCC when I saw these buskers, most notably the one without the Thundercats T-shirt doing some jazzy stuff, so I paused and stood there for an hour transfixed. He was skilled. The guy with the Thundercats T-shirt’s voice wasn’t that good but anyway this should disprove Fazri‘s notion that Thundercats T-shirts are hard to find. I asked the skilled dude, “korang boleh main blues tak?” and he went, “There’s a red house over yonder…” He even did a jazzy cover of Modjo – Lady!
Oh, right. How about the rest of the pictures? It was Khai‘s birthday, and he celebrated it in The Loft, Zouk when Twilight Action Girl was playing… so Eddy jumped about hugging everybody. Scary. YK and Tech came too, and I discovered that electro was a cool genre. Yes I was the only person there who did not listen to The Cure. Shelley and Az were there too!
25th June 2005
So the next day I headed to Bintang Walk and met up YK and Hannna. We then went to squander discounts from blog-inspiring Yi Jian, and after his shift we walked to Music Exchange to look for his second-hand Limp Bizkit album. On the way, we passed the Tenaga Nasional building that was on fire behind Lot 10! The sign shouldn’t say “This station has been operating without accidents for 930 days, last accident on 2-5-1998“. The bottom-right picture shows the damage.
Ah well, Music Exchange was closed, so YK left on the monorail and we headed to The Curve for the second week of the Starbucks Music Series. Top: Ariff Akhir heads The Sofa Sessions; left is Lucy In The Loo and right is Telebury.
Yeah yeah so I went for the PPS Bash on the 23rd of June, but are you sure you want more pictures? I shall procrastinate on that.
I’m supposed to get some sleep but I have some work to download. Anyway here is another segment of Albert’s Tricks And Tips (or AT&T as suggested by chez1978, thanks!) or Albert’s Methods. (Yes, I’ll keep the PPS Bash for later, and the Fete De La Musique 2005 too.)
Today I’m going to teach suggest how you could smuggle misappropriately bring in a electronic device into a cinema.
Smuggling A Gizmo Into A Cinema
I was going for an advanced screening of Batman Begins. My handphone was already sealed in a numbered bag, and I kept the matching number and my SIM card out of paranoia. However, the rules also said “no recording devices” but I was lazy to keep my digicam and lazier to wait to collect it later.
So I tried my luck, acting nonchalant as the guards used handheld metal detectors. Beep! I said it could be my keys and took them out to show. Then they pointed at my bag’s handphone pouch and asked what was inside.
I showed them this analog FM radio.
“Okay pass.”
So I managed to smuggle my digicam. I didn’t bootleg it though; my camera can only record movies of up to 3 minutes! 🙁 Besides, I am a law-abiding citizen, yo. (Okay so I’ve smuggled a bottle of water into Stadium Merdeka but that was no big deal because somebody got splashed with alcohol instead.)
What if the head of all movie piracy, as some say, is not Uncle Ho, a Chinese entrepreneur, but an Indian fella? The guy who runs lowyat.net is Indian! Colonel Sanders is Japanese! One of these statements is true!
Welcome to the first instalment of Albert’s Tricks And Tips (or something more creatively named that I’ll think of later.)
This one goes out to all the ladies.
Opening A Canned Drink With A Straw
Ever had a moment where you absolutely had to have a canned drink, but you just had a manicure, painted your nails, or just bit them off to stumpy oblivion? Fear no more! Now, you can save your nails, and if you are queasy whenever you open canned drinks, you don’t need to wince anymore.
First off you need to get a straw. Because really, would you like to taste the rat’s droppings on the surface of a canned drink stored in a dinky warehouse? (Uh gee 3 friends forwarded this, it must be true.) Nevermind that boxes of canned drinks are shrinkwrapped in packs of 24! Okay maybe you don’t want to get lipstick/lip gloss on the metal surface and want to look dainty and female by sipping through a straw. Plus it accentuates your cheekbones when you make that sipping expression.
Anyway, bend the straw at the halfway point as pictured on the left. Tuck it under the tab. At this point, you can hold the canned drink by the straw itself. This helps if the drink is too cold.
Now this is the part where you call me genius. Pull the straw and viola! Your canned drink is now open, and you can enjoy a refreshing cold drink.
Don’t worry, I do have more to come in… Albert’s Methods. Yeah. Albert’s Methods. It rhymes!
20th April 2005
The Xfresh Hotlink Sky Surfer launches in Souled Out, Hartamas. Then again, it wasn’t launched like some rocket; it uh… hovered off the ground the way helicopters do. No, this is not the helicopter, but this picture was way cooler donchathink?
21st May 2005
I went for the Rawg Dawg Music Fest Finale. ASTRO was there to film their sequel to hitz.tv’s Blast Off; the After Shock. Never have I seen Paul’s Place so brightly lit, plus the “fireflies” (lighting technicians) were a godsend.
SDC gets the green white light.
To prevent cameramen and enthusiastic rockers from falling down stairways to early deaths, Paul upgraded his place and added a proper railing.
Lurks had the drummer lurking around his rhythm machine, adding the backbeat to electronica-tinged melancholic rock.
Lurks, I swear, must’ve been lurking. I got their CD in 2003 and never got to see them.
Warve was interesting. How often do you see an albino as a guitarist? He has partial vision, according to sources. This made his funktified rock escapades with plenty of scales seem even more amazing. Of course, the guitar geek will spot the Line 6 Variax 700, a guitar that has a knob to change between 25 simulated guitars! Sadly, he did not show off its true capabilities by going from southern country twang to heavy metal and then to India with a sitar.
Moodbox. First free CD of the day, and it landed at my feet. Or rather, the band was tossing out CDs, and it slid to my feet. A puzzler was what guitar the vocalist was using; it had a PRS headstock on an ESP LTD body!
Stonebay, with the vocalist sporting such a flashy Les Paul, had me itching for Guns ‘N Roses or some hard rock. Alas, he played softer Incubus – Morning View era songs, but I had to hand it to him for the vocal capability of Brandon Boyd.
By the way, the emcee was really cute. Irene, go tell your sister that.
11th Hour had the vocalist sporting a delicious silver Epiphone SG. He also sported the best funk-blues voice. He got soul, baby.
Their guitarist was a cool, more skilled shredder. Ask me for videos!
So it was Infiltrated that brought the hot groupies. Why is it that here, nu-metal bands get the most groupies?
Inverted Coma, a band from the past (last time I saw them was at Fete De La Musique 2003).
Me: Hey where are their groupies? Didn’t they use to have loads of groupies at the KL Plaza show?
Eu Gene: Eh, we were the groupies lah. (Points at himself and friend.)
Friend standing next to Eugene: Yeah! I’ve seen you there!
Me: Oh you know Syefri.
Apparently the band’s lineup changed drastically, (plus they didn’t sound as nice as before) but I still recognized Jason, guitarist hero, complete with a Peavey EVH Wolfgang Flame Top TR guitar! That was the first time I saw a D-Tuna in real life (since I was born a decade too late to see it commonplace). However he did not jiggle the floating bridge much or use the D-Tuna. 🙁
Beat The System pumped up the agression… and spoiled the suspense of the next day’s gig. “I’d like to thank Slyde, Joon Kiat (I couldn’t remember the name), Amil, Adam, Manshaan, Naz…”
Dammit, I knew the name of the new Dragon Red bassist.
Ben’s Beeetches were on, with a different lineup; Azmyl was on guitar for once, and they got another drummer. CK the bassist told stories about bribing cops and flying tampons. The lineup meant guitar solos from Ben, and Azmyl singing Cigarette. The one I looked forward to was Hang Hero, and they did it in full ferocity.
Furion Escalada brought a proper moshpit on. Metalcore, roar.
Love In Arson from Terengganu ended the set with emo punk, retaining the moshpit.
22nd May 2005
The Huru Hara gig was also given coverage from ASTRO; for once, Melina of Tempered Mental smiled at the crowd. Or maybe there was an inside joke.
Lied was next. You gotta dig what the band calls ‘angry rock’. Cool space effects and angsty solos.
Estranged and Adam of Dragon Red! As usual (as it was in 2003) Adam would sing Velocity with them. Ironically, both bands are connected by a certain bassist who is no longer in either band.
Furniture was next. Space rock or post rock at its existing-in-Malaysia best. Ronnie had an E-bow! (I didn’t know E-bows had a Ah Beng blue light.) The other guitarist had a effect that was controlled by the distance of his hand to it.
Dragon Red finished, and the audience found out who the new bassist was. A hot chick! Natalie Tan had straight up the menacing-and-yet-hot look. (Much more aggressive than the previous bassist who underwent image change). At this point, I even forgot their former bassist’s name. 😛 She played well, but not necessarily into the groove of the song as Amil the guitarist was. Or maybe she wasn’t showing it. Ooh and it’s also a 5-string Warwick. A bit too familiar. Hmmm, maybe even the surname.
Meanwhile, Saiful of Y2K went loco in the moshpit. It was the first time we’d ever see him in one, and we thank our lucky stars we haven’t been in one with him. He swung his arms and helicopter-kicked in the air! Imagine a capoeira dancer attacking, repeatedly.
27th May 2005
I called Kevin to ask if he wanted to see Tracy perform with the Young KL Singers at The Actors Studio. “Dude! I’m at the DiGi Band Era at Berjaya Times Square!” And so I headed over there instead. Coincidentally, Syefri and Fazri were there too, so we hung out there instead and geeked at Transformers and Hot Wheels. 🙂
Rainforest Breakfast & Bed. So this is what happened to No Black Tie, where the first gig I ever went to was!
And now, fast forward to:
3rd June 2005
I went to Shelley’s Jazz Odyssey gig. No, Shelley just looks like she’s singing like a diva. Behind, Az appears to have found enlightenment in his guitar, while Kevin (Loon) plays bass unobstrusively. It was a first seeing Kevin do high-octave tapping bass solos.
Let’s not forget Zal the drummer. Alright, who threw the frog there?
Camomile tea or mosquito larvae breeding ground?
Serena C of hitz.fm and hitz.tv hops on stage, happy to proclaim her love for Shelley. I don’t know who held her beer for her when she went on.
Pete Teo and Shelley do a duet! A first.
Ean of hitz.fm and hitz.tv insists to his cousin that he will not sing. Adam (the cousin) played in a style reminiscent to John Mayer, hips swaying, crooning voice… except that he’s better looking to begin with. Awww come on admit it girls, John Mayer only looks good when he’s singing.
Oh my goodness more pictures!
Maybe I should get the Nissan Fairlady Z next.
Or the Honda NSX-R.
However, I cannot resist the Dodge Viper SRT-10. The Americans have a winner! It was nice for once, to have the wind blow my hair up and back. Don’t know why the windscreen couldn’t be taller though. Plus you might wanna wear a cap in the blistering sun, but that will be blown away!
Alright, so I am that predictable. It’s from the cheaper Transformer Alternator series, and it’s second-hand (a display unit) so I got it cheaper still. (It’s nearly impossible to find this Alternator-series Sideswipe.)
I just got my salary!
Happy mother’s day I say. I got her an SUV.
Of course, the flashy Mugen Honda S2000 is my new favorite. I’ve only seen one S2000 in Malaysia, plus Mazda RX-8s are too common.
Okay so it’s a two-seater and it’s a convertible, not exactly practical in Malaysia.
So I itched and made my RX-8 a convertible too.
Meet Decepticharge, a new release from the Transformers Alternators series. He’d jab you if only his fists weren’t swapped!
Well, nothing a positive head with a positive-head Philips screwdriver can’t fix.
He is a skinny-legged top-heavy warrior. You gotta dig how he folds the bonnet to his back, instead of him lugging his car shell with him.
Left to right: Tracks, Decepticharge, Meister (who starred in Fazri’s Guessing Game)
Now, if you don’t have a Honda S2000, which one should you get? The spanking new dirty yellow Decepticharge, or the classic Autobot red Windcharger? Windcharger, I say; Decepticharge’s color tones are uneven from painted roof to door to floor. The sporty decals are fictitious and don’t look as appealing as Smokescreen’s. The bonnet (engine cover) is painted black, a retro scheme. I should have followed my instincts (humans have them, use it!) and bought a red Windcharger instead of the spanking new Decepticharge in the shop. Immediately you can see that the door and roof seams are nowhere as nice as Windcharger’s (maybe the color hides it). I couldn’t get it to align properly.
Transformers Energon Powerlinking Ironhide however was a pleasant surprise.
His legs can be extended to match the height of a gestalt (combiner).
Powerlink Optimus (Energon Hotshot below): Hey I think you got on backwards.
Yes it’s true; big Powerlink dudes can Powerlink with small Powerlink dudes. Though big guys shouldn’t be on top or you get Optimus Primal’s big-armed syndrome.
That’s more like it. Small arms but it looks much more massive.
Added 6 hours later: Ironhide’s turret head can be removed, so he looks like a proper SUV! Rejoice, YK!
The big family: Left to right: Tracks, my hybrid combiner, Ironhide, Powerlink Downshift (with Rodimus underneath).
I am not done. 😉
7th May, a Saturday
I headed down to Plaza Mont Kiara for the Levi’s 501 party. Being one of the first 501 to line up, I found out just how generous they were:
There’s a noisemaker, Coca Cola vouchers, a Swatch catalogue, the latest issue of KLue, a KLue notepad, a Levi’s towel, a Levi’s 501 Day t-shirt and the coolest one – a Levi’s denim jacket organizer. People, be jealous!
So I was really there for the battle of the bands. Really.
Wow, what a pretty stage. So I met up Zack the funky cosmic expressionist at McDonalds, where his friend said I looked familiar.
“Yeahhh you had a sister who was my colleague right?”
“No I don’t have a sister…”
“Hmmm. Do you go to gigs then?”
“Nope…”
“Hmmm. Where have we met, then?”
“At the Fete De La Musique 2004? You bumped into me a few times and said I looked familiar.”
“Yeah but you did! You really do look like an ex-colleague of mine!”
How cool is that? I kept bumping into her thinking that she was familiar but she didn’t know me, to the point that I was familiar to her!
Passport in my books should not be let out of this country.
Three Flow featured Hunny of Admonition. But but isn’t Admonition also competing?
Sacred Highway, good old rocking hard rock. Prettier, bigger pictures are on Nadia‘s site. Yes I took all the pictures of their performance since she forgot to bring her camera.
The cherry-flavored colored Gibson SG on the left, an item of desire for many guitar geeks like myself.
For the non-rocker crowd they had hot dancers.
There’s a good reason why they arch their bodies like that;
They’d be pretty skinny otherwise.
I think they’re trying to prove that you can dance in a pair of 501’s. Sorry, I prefer to ogle at skirts.
Okay maybe they could sell this to acrobats. Yes they are all guys.
Urban Method didn’t quite stir the crowd. They lacked the energy of the two hip-hop/R&B bands before this.
Eternal Relief did pop punk but something was amiss. Tuning perhaps?
No that’s not Hunny in a cowboy hat for Admonition.
Media Puppets did their regular rock covers, with the band being happy that they had much more space to jump about.
Army Of Three featured Kevin‘s younger brother. Yeah the “your brother is so cute” one. Modern, heavy, riff-laden rock. I like.
They gave out sample Bugles (cone-shaped snacks) in cute cone-shaped holders. Yes I was bored. Of course I was also hungry before that.
Apparently, bored people in Starbucks play cards.
So yeah, Media Puppets won, Sacred Highway next, followed by Army Of Three.
11th May, a Wednesday
While waiting for the bus to Paul’s New Place, I found a wonderfully fast Ramli burger stall in KL Sentral, between the monorail station and the 7-Eleven. The flavor was close to the Universiti LRT burger stall, but prepared amazingly fast compared to normal burger stalls. I missed a bus while paying for the burger, but what the heck – I’ve got a burger. And two hours to burn. Eat burger. Enjoy burger. Buy another burger. Catch the same bus half an hour later. Sweet.
So I arrived at the Estranged – In Hating Memory EP launch to see One Buck Short doing some new pop punk songs. Too bad they didn’t play Led Zeppelin – D’yer Ma’ker; they only hinted at it during the soundcheck.
Tempered Mental pleasantly surprised me by playing their older stuff like Space In Time (with that riff everybody loved to sing), a regular song back when Estranged was hot in the scene (2002-2003).
Estranged had a new bassist, drummer and replacement lead guitarist. Despite 60% of the band being different, they managed to secure that vibe and sound they had when Alda played bass for them. Even the crowd was made of familiar faces which I had not seen since 2003. Of course, there was that short stint in Rock The World 4 that had a more dynamic (musically) and aggressive-sounding Estranged.
Guess what this is and where you can find it. The winner will get a mention in my blog and again, he/she will get the attention of loads of hot members of the opposite sex.
Those lights look like glowing soap. That said, glow-in-the-dark soap sounds cool. No electricity at night? You can still be soaped! It could prove to be erotic too.
Friday The 13th
I went for the Guinness Black Party, to further my study into the modern yuppie lifestyle. I bumped into Khai (who, oddly, I’d usually meet at The Loft, Zouk at that very same time every week.)
Get a steady shot on your digital camera by turning down your EV to say -2 and your ISO up to 400.
Fight fire with fire! (This is with default settings.)
Looking at this makes me want to drink stout. No wait. Looking at this makes me want to be a Duff Man myself.
I had 5 free tickets for bottles but I only needed one bottle to know that stout was like bitter chocolate, except not chocolatey. It wasn’t until the horrible aftertaste went away that the 8% alcohol kicked in, telling my brain:
*DUK* Dance to *DUK* Jungle *DUK* Jerry *DUK*
Fortunately, his mix of house music was easy to dance to; it was heavy and repetitive. (Az moment: What do you listen to when you’re at home, then?)
I met this Japanese chick on the dance floor and I asked her if she could speak English. She saw my camera and asked me if I was from Japan. No matter, we took a picture. 🙂
The crowd soon disappeared, and I walked to The Loft, Zouk, for Twilight Action Girl, those rock deejays, you know, where I bumped into Jess.
“You just came?”
“Yeah… I came from this, where I found out that stout sucks!” (I hold up my hand to show a wristband as proof I was at the event.)
“Oh.” (Jess sheepishly raises her wristbanded hand.)
I still think I prefer my good old beer lager. It still tastes bad, but not as bad as stout.
14th May, a Saturday
I woke up in the morning with Jungle Jerry in da house head. DUK DUK DUK.
I then met up with Syefri and Aznin at Bentley for Tempered Mental’s drum clinic. Okay so they performed Space In Time again, and there was an sponsor break. Then more songs. Then an explanation of the new Tama drumset. Was this a clinic? People asked. The emcee said, “oh this one is more of an introduction to the product… however, when Marty Friedman and Omar Hakim come down, they will definitely have time to teach you their tricks.”
Syefri and I shared Jimmy-the-drummer’s shocked expression.
So, in the interests of public, they had a drum geekout session after that.
I took a cab to Plaza Damas and found this shop, Carismen Dolce, selling guitars, basses and all sorts of string instruments, including a silent electric bass guitar and silent electric double bass!
So I was there to support Maximillan Lim for his “This is Acoustic! Part 1” gig. From left: Maximillan, Emmanuel (his guitar solo work is amazing and he’s Maximillan’s brother!) and Ian Chow (a guy with such an amazing booming voice he didn’t really need a microphone). Not so noticeable is that the guitars are, from left to right, red yellow and green.
Ian also plays mean harmonica.
Tracy does her thing, a bleak melancholic epic melody. Do not be fooled by her seemingly demure entries; she was describing Jackass stunts in vivid detail later at dinner.
Annette, Patrick‘s sister sings and shakes a shaker thing.
The performers that evening, from left to right: Alia, Maximillan, Emmanuel, Joachim, Annette, Ian, Tracy
Again, as usual, you could always ask me for videos, and I could tell you if I recorded one and if so how to pass it to you if you are a nice person.
And now, for the random picture unrelated to everything, to finish this blog entry:
Those damn termites have been stealing our parquet tiles. Those are expensive! What, do they think that wood grows on trees?
My dad bought loads of grapes. Old but fermenting ones. *hic*
The seed spittoon was left overnight on the table, and we found an intoxicated lizard in it. Mmm sour grape seed.
Anyway, Warmpaw got the answers correct here! She is now a First Class Honorary Teddy (sorry, I prefer American English). The answers are:
1) Bring A Chick Home
2) Breakfast, Lunch And Dinner