98% of the teenage population does/has tried pot. If you’re part of the 2% who hasn’t, copy this in your journal.
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All That Jazz
Anyway, after work I headed down to KL. I didn’t get to hitch a ride with Hanna, so I walked from Bangsar LRT to Midvalley, to meet Davina and share a cab to Mont Kiara for the Sunrise Carlsberg Jazz Fest. I met up Syefri at the World Cyber Games (and bumped into Nael and Justine). There, I got a subscription for GameAxis for 12 issues at RM66 (RM5.50 X 12) and hauled back a free Sonic Gear SP221x 2.1 speaker set. Or, as Syefri says, a subwoofer set with free magazine subscription. This was more than the previous RM52 bundle though. 🙁
Davina and I failed to get a cab, so we got on the Triton which was now RM1. (Twice its old price! Buggers.) At that exact moment Hanna called and asked how to get there, as she was lost in KL after picking Carolyn up. I told her to head over to Bangsar LRT, as the bus was headed there anyway. Neat.
After much twisting and turning, we got parking in Desa Sri Hartamas, where we met up Vignesh for dinner at Devi’s Corner. Today’s cheese naan was a different affair! It was excellently cheese-laden. (Cheesy would not sound right, yes?) Syefri messaged me saying that Julian Mokhtar was ending his set with Jimi Hendrix’s Voodoo Child. Argh! Missed the blues shredder. We then walked over to Sunrise Mont Kiara, and the picture-taking began.
You know what? I’m gonna screw my tradition of putting small fonts on centered image captions.
Ayunami does not look like Linda Onn when she’s looking spastic. I must say she pulls it off better than Rocket.
If Az was here, he’d say Hanna was in the hood.
Zal and uh, Cosmic Funk Express
Soft Touch, from afar (so you can see the stage)
Shelley and Alda
That’s right – Az on an electric hollowbody guitar!
When Davina met Vignesh – a tale of two photographers
Jose Thomas rips it out on a nylon-string electric Godin. Sweeet. Rozhan plays bass in the background, for Grooveunction.
He is then featured with a brand-less Stratocaster; very interesting indeed as the humbucker is on the neck position (not bridge!), with the other positions filled by two hotrails.
A very sweet looking Yamaha (though the headstock reminds me of Samick/Greg Benett instead.)
Mia Palencia of Double Take joins to add vocals to all that jazz.
I noticed that the grain of the wood was different here; it looked like it once hosted a Floyd Rose, but now used a Wilkinson floating bridge.
Rozhan does wah-ed metal effects ala Metalasia.
The party hipped and hopped with Phlowtron on stage.
Priya and I agree that Phil looks like Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers (plus Flea played saxophone too!)
The ending was a funky one, with funky drunks on stage. (Geddit? Er, you know funky monks? RHCP?) I took a cab home, midnight charge and all and it was only RM7! Neato!
Left: My 2.1’s in the box; right: I tried to use it as a guitar amp but failed.
My Sonic Gear 2.1 speakers in action.
Addendum: I also bumped into Sarah and friends there, without the distraught friend though. Where art thou?
Picks Of The Days
Monday
I went to work, then to Bintang Walk, to Bentley. I saw the Ibanez GSA 370-QM I so longed for since before I first failed subjects in college. I extolled the priceworthy features of the yummilicious butterscotch guitar to MW, going “lookatit! It’s got double-locking floating bridge, H/S/H pickup configuration, super fast action, jumbo frets and 24 frets… eh waitaminute. (Counts dot inlays) 15, 17, 19, 21… 22… 22! 22? 22 frets?”
Disappointed that my dream (affordable) guitar had 22 and not 24 frets, I shook MW hard. At the shoulders. In a way, her reverbrating scream said all I wanted to say.
Tuesday
I surprisingly still remembered how to drive around the driving school circuit. I bummed around with the Uptown Girl at, you guessed it, Uptown. Disappointed that SLC the big corner guitar store was emptied out, I bought picks from Harmony Music.
The 0.96 pick was not only thick, it was huge! (As you can see it’s wider than the nut.) The finger pick was too soft for my liking.
I got on the bus, and it took me to One Utama, where I saw something that old buddy Patrick Soo had been telling me was a rarity:
This would be the first Transformer I’d ever bought with my own money. I later hopped to Davina’s office, while I toyed with Arcee. (What’s wrong with toying with a toy huh?) It felt like I was half my age, she was twice her age, and I was waiting for my mommy (who just bought me a new toy) to finish work.
Wednesday
I hauled my 19″ monitor to a computer shop a few blocks away from home, gaining stretch marks on my right arm, hence my MSN nickname “nineteen inches and my right arm hurts“.
And now, for more food updates:
In a little quaint residential area of Taman Sri Sinar, Segambut, lies a recent discovery. Along the row that had the only KFC, was a 7 Eleven that was not open… and a mamak next to it, to my pleasant surprise, serving cheese naan!
What is with my fixation with cheese naan? Perhaps I have been slow to catch the trend, but I only knew of it last year. It would quickly gain commercial appeal among even hardened fast food junkies like me, as it wasn’t oily like the roti canai variants, instead having a crusty, plain texture, with cheese melted upon it. Much like pizza.
This one was nice; it came with fish curry, dhall curry and some unidentifiable, funky-tasting sauce. I asked for condensed milk, and asked my brother (who ordered cheese naan after me) to dip his cheese naan in condensed milk, and then in the fish curry. (I thought condensed milk and fish curry made a heavenly marriage.) He said it tasted like santan.
Santan! Ah, it all made sense now. Santan would be curry with milk, and this was a cool accidental discovery. Plus, you could control your curry-to-milk ratio.
Other good news:
The STAR LRT now is fully Touch N Go compliant. One less stored-value ticket to carry. 🙂
The Midvalley KTM Komuter station is now open, but KL Sentral’s ticket booths have stickers with the old map, without Midvalley on it. It does however cost RM1. Taking the Triton bus from there would cost 50 sen.
Post-exam Update
Wednesday
I FFKed William for his pre-birthday cheese naan.
My colleague restrung a friend’s beautiful Ibanez GIO RG (as it had rusty strings) but didn’t take into account the complications of a Floyd Rose-style floating bridge. My colleague’s friend apparently stopped going nuts over it after getting an anime-loving girlfriend. They sent the guitar to One Utama and I followed. I did try to call William, but realized that he lost his mobile phone, and was not in the office.
We walked into The Guitar Collection and I described the problem to them. A friendly dude popped a 9 volt battery under the bridge (the bridge now was in a position where the pitch would go down, instead of up as before, when it was not balanced.) Another dude who was jamming on an electric guitar helped him tune it, and when it was done, the dude played squealing harmonic solos ala Pantera. After all that, my colleague thanked the guy and took out his wallet. The dude said it was free. I guess having the oppurtunity to wing the whammy was good enough a reward. (I suppose he didn’t dare try it on the ESP LTD’s lying around.)
Thursday
There was a sense of elated “I’m FREEE!!!” and a sense of impending doom after my final Networking And The Internet exam.
I won a double-pass to the Alien Versus Predator screening in TGV KLCC; although it said 21st August, I tried to claim it right after the exam. As I lined up by myself in the queue, two hot urbanite chicks came up to me:
Chick 1: Hey we have an extra pass for The Sisters. Would you like to buy it?
Me: Er… I haven’t heard of the movie.
Chick 2: We’ll sell it to you cheaper of course.
Me: (looks over a pillar and sees a poster of the movie, thinking “oh it’s a horror movie”) Nah, I have a free tickets to collect.
They then moved on to the next person in queue. At that exact moment I felt immense regret! Dumb idiot!
I should’ve said, “So… which one of you lovely ladies wouldn’t be able to watch the movie?” Argh argh argh. While me going would not guarantee that they’d stay around after to chat, it should still be interesting, since it was a horror movie with a female stranger. Or two female strangers. Ah hell, if one couldn’t make it, the other one was still hot. Dammit. Dammit.
I called my friend that I was supposed to meet for lunch and told her the story. “You see? I sacrificed a movie with strangers for you!” She said she would’ve understood. Grrr.
I then headed over to Do Re Mi in Chow Kit via Monorail, to drool over guitars.
This is the place; it’s as wide as Bentley Music!
Two of the inner rows of guitars, of which loads are Samicks.
B.C.Rich is rare, what more 7-string versions. Sadly neither have floating bridges.
Three VAX 7-string guitars! Shiny and lickable.
The cheapest VAX there.
Yes, I did meet my friend and her taufufa-smashing bunch for lunch after all. Taufufa should not be smashed; it defeats the purpose of these sugar-water-drenched large white clumps!
Oh and I finally uploaded this article:
Hoobastank Live In Malaysia
Starbucks. Sunway College. Hoobastank.
Friday was with William and I headed to Fathima’s Bangsar for cheese naan. Of course, due credit is to Ledwina for telling me about it. With the right salty bits sprinkled on a creatively-cut naan, this would be another place to sing praises of.
We then walked over to Starbucks, Telawi area, Bangsar for the second-last KLue Chillout Series.
Kevin Teh or Broken Scar, singer/songwriter/newest-addition-to-John’s-Mistress, doing some interesting instrumental jazz stuff in between hearty acoustic songs.
Jerome Kugan sings soul so damn well, it’s scary… and this, over electronica.
Hardesh and Az make up the Dalcha Duo. I finally got to see Az with a worthy match; they took turns to do acoustic maestro fills, climaxing at an Arabic/neoclassical song which had all the WHOAOHMYGIDDYGUITARPPLAYINGNESS of The Eagles, when they both played the same solo to perfect rhythm.
Er, Nabila reads.
Peter Hassan Brown and Markiza Brown end the gig on a happy note.
On Saturday, I walked from Sunway Pyramid to Sunway College for Isabella‘s gig. I met some KLue people there, and on the drink-getting detour, I bumped into huggable Britney Fan #1 Zahra and partner-in-crime Priya. Aiyeee nonstop hugs. 🙂
Back there, Flatline was on. Look at their pretty, shiny glossy guitars! (I missed Sgt. Weener’s Arms when I went for lunch.)
This Body Broken came on, but their set was broken by:
Rain. We all ran to the tents. I wonder what that says about their singing. And I was just thinking, “dammit it’s a hot day and I’m thirsty.”
Hey… this dude looks familiar. Implications galore.
You may be able to make out his face. More implications galore!
Furniture, the post-rock band formerly known as RUSH.
That, my friend, is a post-rock setup.
That, my friend, is how you play in a post-rock band.
Zoltan!
Note the bandage on the left-handed Fender Mustang.
I won prizes! The mousepad leaves a funky smell on your wrist though.
I finally got to see Duan with his band after hearing his intimate session with the guitar. There was one particular song I liked more on the acoustic, because of the interesting guitar chords… though I can’t say whether he is better solo.
Ham fiddles with effects.
Syarul of Love Me Butch looks like he just swam off an island.
KLPHQ, or Kuala Lumpur Post-Harmonic Quartet; we anticipated a very post sound and were not disappointed. I pronounced them as kelepak.
This is what made his vocals sound haunting – I don’t know what it is, but it sounded like reverb/delay drawn out till everything was one long howl. For all you know post-rock bands probably have a stompbox simply called Post.
It could not get any cooler than this.
Oh, and I shook hands with the inverted-right-mouse-hand of the Quake God, and the picture-taking Just.
Sunday was just about Hoobastank. I bumped into Jamie, Caryna (who’s got some nice shots on her blog) and Mystery Wolf. The crowd was dare I say comfortably less. Less elitist rockers and all round sweaty shirtless rockers. More nubile international school chicks for me!
I’ll link the review when it’s up. Yeah, that’s the end of the pictures… I didn’t bring the digicam, as it was too much hassle. That explains why I gave the media pass to Sara so she could take pictures with her camera with optical zoom. Oh, and despite the complimentary tickets that Syefri and I got (we love you Shaz and Universal Music) that had the complimentary drinks cancelled out, we got 2 cans of Coca Cola anyway. 🙂
Heck, we tried to enter the VIP area without any fancy tags, and security let us in without any fuss (one said to the other “ini dah cukup umur niii…”)
It ended prematurely, at 9:50pm. Bummer. Sara‘s parents were so kind as to give me a lift to Hartamas, where I found out what a small world it could be on one table. The cab home costed less than RM5. Joy! Oh, and the About Me! page has been updated with more links.
Kill Azira Aziz
This entry was posted in Music, Pictures, Toys on .
Too tired to write creatively
On Friday, I headed down for more cheese naan. Dipping it in condensed milk, and then fusing it with fish curry, was heavenly. On the way there, I saw this:
The Central Market Folk Quintet
Coolness! A pickup for a twelve-string that didn’t need surgery!
On Saturday I went down to Times Square for the Hoobastank Battle Of The Bands Final Auditions. The winners?
Edge Of Fire (3rd place)
Reco (2nd place, a mix of two bands)
Vespertine (1st place, will be opening alongside Disagree at Hoobastank’s concert in Malaysia)
I headed to Coffee Bean for a White Chocolate Dream but got a Dulce instead, after a dehydrating day in the sun. It was toffee-flavored. Note the name; it would be an interesting way to pick up people at coffee houses, yes? Walk over, look at the cup, and say hi.
On Monday I headed yet again to Central Market lane; this time, there was a sad-looking mime who needed a dime.
This time around, I converted Syefri into a fan; he ordered the garlic-topped cheese naan, while I tried the cheese naan without garlic.
Oh and there are new links in my About Me! page. Lovably neurotic Graceshu, Angelceres, Bloodlet (a 30-something whose blog does not revolve around politics) and Bernard.
Strayed Paths
It was after work, and I was headed to Ahameedia’s for a cheese naan dinner. I was walking down Central Market and I noticed a quite complete band of buskers; one on the shaker, one percussionist, and three guitarists, most notably, the one in purple, mop-haired, with a Morris twelve-string guitar. They played All Along The Watchtower and Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here. Coolness.
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Small World, Small World
I’ve met Sarah at quite a few KLue Chillout Sessions and not knew it. (She was my distraught friend’s friend.)
I found out why their friend was also so familiar, two days later, at the Sunday session. Turns out she was a girl we met at an excolleague’s party, where I was used as a scapegoat. (Let’s call him Fei, as his real name; he is shameless and this is a shameless plug!) He was asking her questions about this sweet-young-Mariah-Carey-lookalike, supposedly doing the getting-to-know-you’s for me.
Today was no different; a local rockstar celebrity tried to hit on her. Well for one he didn’t look too rockstar, and I fear revealing too much as these people are all online, and I know just as well as you do that we often find time to do our research.
To my relief, she said that Fei was better at er, flirting.
I found the post-flirt analysis/dissectomy amusing. The rockstar dude asked if she hung out at the mamak. She told him, “no”. This, she said, as we walked to Devi’s Corner where I had my tummy-disturbing cheese naan.
Hmm. She could’ve said, “The Mamak? Is that along Jalan Sultan Ismail (or high-class eatery lane) somewhere? Does it serve escargot? I love Italian food!”
Girls, remember this coverline! It will get you out of mamak dates. Guys, remember that escargot is French, and that the time you save after being rejected could be used by giving me the name and number of the chick who actually reads my blog and uses this coverline.
Now you must be thinking, hey why’d she give her number if she wasn’t interested? She did give the rockstar her number…
Oh, and by Nabila’s request, we have some nicely framed shots of Friday’s gig. Yeah I didn’t post them earlier because I was a 56Ker for a very long time, and I wanted to be considerate.
Azmyl Yunor
Duan of Seven Collar T-shirt
Nabila Nasir the distraught poet
Shelley featuring Az
P.S. Happy birthday to the lickable Jay! Ironically, Sarah’s birthday was the day before, and she recognized Jay from my digicam.
Shelley And Cheese
No, the title is not a reference to the loveable Az. Here are more pictures and a little commentary.
I headed down to Bintang Walk on Wednesday night to see Shelley‘s album launch. On the way there, I stopped by Lot 10 to find:
Speedy Video! Who goes to Lot 10 for this anyway?
Wha…
I didn’t believe it either. The unheard-of Tower Records in Lot 10! (KL Plaza was so near!)
So this is L’Opera.
I love taking bulb-lighted pictures and overexposing the highlights.
Ditto.
Cosmic Funk Express. Alda was on bass, and they racked major coolness with a Super Mario cover song.
On the journey to the toilet, you’d pass by a picturesque construction site window.
Oh, and let’s not forget picturesque Shelley.
Thursday: Went to an Xfresh gathering. Apologies to the people who saw me stoned there. I discovered that even uncaffeinated frappucinos gave me headaches. It didn’t help that I considered two people at the pseudo-dinner table irritating. Escaped I did, for college I had to attend. I got on the bus from Midvalley to the Universiti PUTRA LRT station, comtemplating just going home. I was saved by a friend who was my sister’s classmate (and I discovered that his older sister was my classmate before!)
I was headacheless as I rushed uncertainly to a class that may or may have not been cancelled. Thank goodness it was there, and that I passed my progress test, with double the marks I expected. Yes I am still sounding stoned.
Ahameedia
Click on the picture to enlarge. I waited for the bus, contemplating eating dinner there or eating dinner near my house. I gambled the bus for cheese naan, but I would not regret it. It was the works! (Plus it wasn’t Naan Special or Naan Pizza!) It had onions, carrots, and heck, raisins! Its foundation was mozzarella, for the stretchy gooey cheesy appeal. How do you get there? Find the shortest open-air walking path between Masjid Jamek and Pasar Seni PUTRA LRT stations. It lies somewhere along that stretch.