Category Archives: Travelling

Maybe Blank

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So I can’t register an account without a company letter. How did I get my own ATM card when I was 16, then?

So I’ve gotta register nearest to my company. I don’t have a car or the time to go to Putrajaya. And Putrajaya isn’t that near Bukit Jalil is it?

So I couldn’t hear the guy mumbling behind the glass. Does that warrant a “aiii budak ni” as I took a seat? (Funny how I could hear him then.)

They screw up the bank cheque by misspelling the receiver’s name. (I realized this later.) I wanted to transfer funds into an account (I provided the account number) but she made me a cheque to mail to them. Obviously both of us were confused, and so I asked if they had any service to send it to them. Does that warrant a “isssh budak ni kurang ajar” as I walked away, still within earshot?

The one day I decide to do business with this bank, you have lousy service. Some people don’t go to the bank often. Remember that we aren’t familiar with your procedures.

So I got in a taxi. The guy was filling up a form. He asked where I came from. I told him my story.

And now, the narration is from the old Chinese taxi driver:

FACK THEM LAH! Back in the days before ticket numbers, I was queueing up for over half an hour. The counters were busy chatting away and taking their own sweet time to count their money. So I shouted

Can Chill?

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My friend is a racecar driver! Telltale signs are:

1) Red paint job, because red is a racy color
2) Removed rear seats to keep the weight down
3) An affixation for speeding down empty Kepong roads

Yes people, when you do 2) to your Kancil, you can really feel more horsepower. Serious.

June Gigs

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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.

Like Real Train Seat

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I was getting on the STAR LRT at Masjid Jamek when I heard a voice:

“Excuse me, er… ini tren ke Ampang ke?” (Translation: Is this train going to Ampang?)

I turned to the electronic signboard, saw that it was indeed going Ampang, so I turned around and said yes.

It was a Chinese chick!

Even weirder was that she then went to sit on the benches of the station instead of getting on the train.

Now I was not insulted despite my fairness that she thought I was Malay, or that I looked like a Chinese who could not speak Chinese. I’d prefer that Chinese people assume I can’t. (I can’t anyway.)

Dammit, why couldn’t it be like this case?

Four Score

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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?

Filler for the waiter

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So I was walking with my friend in Midvalley, spotting the abundance of chicks.

“11 o’clock wei…” I mumbled to my friend, with a slight smile. She had this sweet and pretty face, and she smiled back at me, too. ZING! Flippyfloppyheartedness.

“Huh it’s 9 o’clock only what?”

I twirled in frustration, hands strangling imaginary oranges.

I don’t think the cute chick turned around or heard me, thankfully.

Queue-key Cutter

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I was queueing at a 7-11 when a lady came in, walked past me, grabbed a mineral water bottle, and stood beside me as if she was cutting my queue.

I asked, “do you want to go first?” while looking at her (not out of courtesy but to see who that queue-cutter was.)

She didn’t reply and continued standing there. The person in front of me paid and left, so I put my things on the table and paid. EAT THAT, queue-cutting lady!

Trouble! Shoot!

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This is a post in optimism. Really. This was also meant to be posted before my last entry as the Thursday entry. The (Minus One Bummer) bits are where I am annoyingly optimistic.

So I was to fix Leech‘s computer. I took the KTM Komuter to Subang, and that was delayed by 15 minutes. (Bummer Number 1) No matter, as she lagged too. I called her, and I ended the call upon spotting her in Carrefour, but she proceeded to walk blurly. “I was looking for a place to have breakfast.” (Remember this, this is part of this online contest.) Breakfast, on her. (Minus One Bummer)

My sense of direction around Subang wasn’t great, and we got out on the New Pantai Expressway, a dashing RM3.20. (Bummer Number 2) Even better was how I forgot that I didn’t get to reload the Touch N Go the day before! (Bummer Number 3) Fortunately there weren’t any cars behind. 🙂 (Minus One Bummer)

So we finally reached my quaint little residential area, where the operation was to take place. Her Windows XP installation was unable to start, and there was data inside yet to be backed up. And so, I transplanted her hard drive in my computer and copied out the files. Meanwhile, I ripped CDs that I didn’t want on my other computer before passing them to my free-CD-loving friend.

She was done copying, and I looked over (my computers are side by side). “Heyyy are you lowering my Spider Solitaire average score? Lemme show you how it’s done.” And so, I did…

And after about two suites, the power went out. Yo. (Bummer Number 4) At least we were only playing Spider Solitaire and not doing anything important. (Minus One Bummer)

So we took a stroll down to the KFC nearby for lunch which she paid for (Minus One Bummer), where the rest of Taman Sri Sinar seemed to wait for the electricity to come back on! Later, my sister called, notifying me that the electricity was back on. (Minus One Bummer)

Technical part follows:

And so began the reinstallation of Windows… which failed at 50%. Tried again. 20%. Again. 3%. Tried two different CDs; neither went all the way. The CD writer was wonky, I thought, so I swapped my secondary computer’s CD writer. No help either, and much worse, the BIOS would not detect the CD writer and hard disk… until I swapped around the IDE cables, master/slave positions and drive jumpers. Many times. When it did work, I tried installing again, and failing that I rebooted and again the BIOS didn’t detect the drives till I shuffled everything around randomly again. (Big Bummer Number 5)

I managed to catch a glimpse of the blue screen, so I instinctively removed one stick of RAM to see if either was faulty.

5 different combinations of two sticks in two slots and we got an entrancing ASCII pattern. We could not even get into the BIOS. If we were lucky, we’d get the good ol’ DOS screen blinking cursor.

I tried installing Windows with the hard disk being in my computer, and it worked! (Minus One Bummer) Therefore something was up with the IDE controller or BIOS. The motherboard was struck by lightning before, so it would be odd that only the built-in Ethernet controller was busted (a previous technician installed a new network card).

Google said there was a chance in Response Number 7, but by then it was getting late, so we headed to Midvalley for dinner (plus she knew how to get home from there).

As what the great Lionel would say to me:
“You have failed me again.”

Yes, I failed. 🙁 And now, her blog readers will continue missing her because I didn’t manage to fix her computer. 🙁

We missed the turning to Bangsar and U-turned at Bukit Kiara. (Bummer Number 6) Contrary to what Leech has said in her blog, she is not a bad driver. She just should not honk in anger at vans who overtake her as men with knives may jump out. (Nevermind that my mom drives a van.)

Oh and ironically Friendster‘s Joint Horoscopes said we’d have a good day.

Now for the little online contest; winners will get a free mention in my blog and get a link. Yes, if you are linked from my main page you will get loadsa hits. If you walk into a club you will get loadsa hot-people-of-your-preferred-sex because I mentioned you. So anyway, I am happy because I:

1) B_ A C_ H_. She inadvertently met my whole family.
2) I had B_, L_ A_ D_ with the same chick.

Too Far Gone

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I will omit Thursday‘s long blog entry to make this following chunkalunk of a blog entry easier to read and remember.

Friday


I got on a Metrobus, and they had this LCD screen that was supposed to play ads and music videos. Instead, it showed the Active Desktop error ala Microsoft Windows. Maybe they should invest in a DVD player instead; it’s cheaper and they don’t have to pay Bill Gates.


This party was definitely not for the aquaphobic… or chocolate-cake-on-face-phobic. Corinne, this is what you’re missing! (The crowd was mostly her ex-collegemates from IACT.)

I met Izal, bassist of One Buck Short there, where he just returned from a gig at the International College Of Music (ICOM). I hitched a ride with Corinne’s friend’s car who dropped me off at Hartamas. Thankful I am that I did not take a taxi straight back from Ikea, because I bumped into a Sunday-school-mate at Hartamas Square.

For Friday, I had:

Plan A: Check out Ben’s B***hes at ICOM.
Plan B: Instead of drunken rockers, I’d go see the CLEO Bachelor party at Zouk, where I could meet Davina and pass her a CD.
Plan C: Instead, I forsook being bachelor #51, and went for a pool party instead.

So it would be ironic then, that the not-so-pious-now-haha! friend of mine, and her hot friend, were at the CLEO bachelor thing! (Plan B) Apparently it started at midnight (instead of 9pm) and the bachelors made 2-second appearances. Even cooler, was that her friend was from IACT as well, and when I name-dropped the names of people at the party (Plan C), she knew them all well! (And was surprised to know that the person I hitched a ride on had a boyfriend.) Oh, and Izal was at aforementioned ICOM gig (Plan A) and told me that Ben and gang were asked to get off stage.

Am I eye-flutteringly complex now?


I then bumped into Zack (dude in the middle), super-mega-rock-star-guitar-player from Cosmic Funk Express! He was also super-mega-drunk. Funny indeed, Zack is part of One Buck Short when they need a second guitarist, but not this time; he was busy amassing groupies at Mont Kiara International School, where he strutted his guitar virtuoso-ness.

The last time Zack and I were here, he was struggling to finish his glass of beer (it didn’t help that strong drinkers were pressuring him). So uh, I liberated him of the alcohol.

Now, he was a strong Korean drinker. Cheers mate. You can now hold your own, and you can even do math and pour beer evenly while dancing along to Benny Benassi’s Satisfaction! Alda, have you seen him drunk?

Saturday


No, not keyboard; digital piano! Miss Kanako Kumanomido shows off Roland Digital Pianos, with voices much better-sounding than MIDI realizations. Ask me for the video! Interesting modulation effects on trumpet and backing ‘vocals’. I saw this at Pearl Point when rushing to grab a bite before the Soft Touch EP launch at Paul’s New Place.


Mr. Harooon from Rock The World fame! Well I’ll be. He’s still as clueless a commentator. Maybe he should work as a sports commentator. Oh wait, he works for AMP Radio’s Infozone. Oops.


Saerze sings Nirvana – Rape Me and Jamiroquai – Love Foolosophy. The bass was too punchy for the latter song (and maybe the other niggling factor was that it was a bit off tune…) I wonder how she got her name cards in the ASTRO office waiting lounge though.


Lied and their angry alternative rock. Angry indeed. The way rock was meant to be, anyway. Here, Adlin does the emo-chicken-pecking-at-microphone stance.


Cats In Love rocked. From classic rock to bluesy wanderings, the Malaysian Mark Knopfler wowed the crowd.


It wasn’t until they introduced the band members that I realized why the guitarist’s guitar (what, were you expecting the guitarist’s bass drum?) was so familiar. It was the Fender Telecaster that N. Rama Lohan reviewed in The Star. It was N. Rama Lohan! Turns out the bandmates are from The Star, too. No wonder they’ve got an excellent synthy-keyboard(s)-player (who also did a mouth organ bit.) And hey! Didn’t they review that SX bass too? Cheap bas…

(Edited 6th June 2014: This was Cats In Love’s first ever gig!)


This picture does not do justice to prove exactly how cute and charismatic D-Va’s lead vocalist is. (…oh yeah she also sings, plays guitar and keyboards well.) She dances and prances like it was her bathroom, except she’s got clothes on and she’s not soaking wet. Dammit.


Double-sized picture for Soft Touch, because it’s their EP’s launch event. And because Peter Hassan Brown (the old-looking dude) finally rocks out or “fools around” (in his own words) to the hard rocking riff of Listen 2 What U C. Yes he was actually headbanging to this one, and he even walked over to his guitarist and made like a guitar duel.


Jamie Woon from the UK! With his DADGAD-tuned guitar, he crooned and melted hearts. He also played with soft-loud dynamics and tapped harmonics ala acoustic guitar heroes like Az. Except that Az doesn’t sing.


Lunarin from Singapore with some pretty progressive rock. The biting bass tone of the female vocalist complimented the hard-hitting drummer. Add a guitarist, and you have Singapore’s answer to Tempered Mental, just not as diverse and tempo-manic.

A funny scene was Saiful, the first gig otai (slang for old-timer, usually commands great respect) I met, paying cover charge to Ahmad, the first gig-regular-who-wasn’t-in-a-band buddy I met. Ironically, the situation would have been reverse every other time. I hitched a ride with Saiful, and he dropped me off at KLCC, where I took a cab, and it was ironic too that I’d meet a former mat rock taxi driver. He asked what college I was, and for some instinctive reason he asked where he could do sound engineering! I told him about SAE and ICOM. He told me how he was going to be signed to a label in 1987, but his parents disapproved. Heck, if he did, he would have been famous for a good decade. “Bila XPDC baru nak belajar double-pedal, aku lama dah buat lah…” I then told him where to pick up gig-goers and meet Md. Nor Hendrix. Rock on, mat-rock taxi driver!

Blistering Blues

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The past mornings have been extra bright. This shot was taken at 8 am, when it wasn’t too hot yet, but everybody in the bus stop was facing away from it.


White and silver cars literally glow.


This shot was taken at night. Screw my camera’s night mode; ISO 400 and +2 exposure values, pointed out the highway got this shot. No, my Canon Powershot A400 does not support manual shutter speeds, so it’s a wonder I got this shot.


I took a walk to Midvalley from the Bangsar PUTRA LRT station.


Looking over the highway, I saw this; do Malaysians have an equivalent of Smokey Bear? What would Sang Kancil say?


Along the same stretch I took this picture. Now that’s what I call a passionate fisherman! He’s not doing it for the fish.


The Guitar Collection opens at Midvalley, near the cinemaplex.


While waiting for Frus to join me at The Loft, Zouk for our fix of Twilight Action Girl, I went to Berjaya Times Square Hotel’s lounge on the 14th floor and saw this man tuning his guitar. Could it be…


Hendrix lives!!! I saw Md. Nor Hendrix in an issue of ROTTW which said he played in Berjaya Hotel. Sadly, he played Eric Clapton and Gary Moore’s Still Got The Blues, songs you would hear on the radio. I summoned the courage to go up to him and ask, “hey Joe, could you play some Hendrix?”

He fiddled around with his laptop (I suspect the drum machine was there or at the keyboards). Frus and I cheered as he said, “and now, for a blues number, on special request…”

“There’s a red house over yonder, that’s where my baby stays.”

He was feeling it, all much much more than when he was playing Eric Clapton’s licks or the famous, searing Gary Moore A-minor solo. Before this, he was a weathered lounge performer. Now, his face scrunched up, the same way Jimi did.

“Now if my baby don’t love me no more, I know her sister will.”

He then played Hey Joe, sadly interrupted by annoying waiter. I missed the solo and the chance to take a picture of him playing with his teeth at the end of the song! He also made like a double-locking bridge and abused his whammy bar to no end.


He came over and shook our hands. We went into guitar geek mode and he let us touch his Fender Stratocaster 1969! It was very, very different from a modern day Strat. For one, he put 5 springs in the back, and his frets were low and action looked high but it felt smooth and easy!


Heck, even the nut looked tiny. The back plate on the neck joint was V-shield-shaped instead of the regular rectangles we see. The pickups had cracks on them, but they were not changed.


The coolest thing about the neck was how thin it was. This picture does not show the scale; its super narrow neck looked like an Angus Young Gibson SG! And yet, it felt different at different points of the neck; it wasn’t flat, and it was chunky and yet felt small. No wonder Jimi loved thumbing basslines. It felt more like a C shape than a D shape to me.


Someday, I shall bring Syefri and Alda here. Sure they’re both bassists but hey Syefri has an afro (plus he’s the guy who lent me a Hendrix CD…) Yes, Md. Nor even looks like Jimi. If you can’t squint, the text says it’s every night except Monday, 8:30 pm to 12:45 am (ending at 1:45 am on Public Holidays.) No wonder he was bored. Imagine playing the same tunes day in day out! (He doesn’t play Hendrix unless requested.) I figured I did both of us a favor; for me, I could relive rock moments when I wasn’t born yet, and for him, he could go wild on the guitar!

Frus and I left for Zouk, using the monorail. While queueing up there was this group of lost ticket-buyers. The cashier was flustered, and I tried to explain that they can buy and enter on any side, and then use the bridge to cross over to the other side.

Frus and I then crossed over, thinking that was the way to Bukit Nanas monorail; alas, it was not! So we came over and told the lost ticket-buyers that we’ll be joining them on the train. They were from Bangladesh and were heading back to Corus Hotel (which was opposite Ampang Park.) They looked formal, like they were here for a business trip. They also looked very naive. Frus said one of them looked very n00bish, LOL.

We got off and I pointed leftwards in the direction of Dang Wangi PUTRA LRT, where they could take the LRT to Ampang Park. They could also take a cab rightwards to KLCC. Thank you and goodbyes were exchanged. They decided to walk. Eeep. This, at 11 pm. Of course, we were heading in the same direction, so it was awkward. On the way to Zouk, we passed a construction site, when a disturbing thought came:

What if they were here to find a desk job, only to be set up and eventually coerced into becoming construction workers?

They looked built enough for menial labor. Imagine, the evil employers could set them up to go between a hotel and a public place like Bintang Walk, knowing that on the way there would be construction sites. Imagine if they were lost, and they saw a Evil Recruiting Agent who was a fellow Bangladeshi:

Lost Bangladeshis: Hey how do we get to Hotel Corus?
Evil Recruiting Agent: Oh now it is not safe and the train will be out of service. I’m going there tomorrow, you can come in my van. In the meantime you can come chill with us and stay the night.
(Fast forward to morning…)
Evil Recruiting Agent: Hey my van is busted. Could you help me roll this trolley of bricks over there? And see that cement over there? Could you help me build this wall? I gotta send my van for repairs.
Lost Bangladeshis: Ah no problem mate, we’re strong. Besides, you let us stay the night.

I felt bad for letting them walk, instead of taking them to Corus Hotel. Their families would never hear of them again!

On the way to Zouk we saw this Chinese-indie-scene dude carrying two guitars both smashed at the neck joint! He was carrying two Strat-shape guitar bodies and two guitar necks. What the heck had just happened?

We reached Zouk to see loads of people standing outside. The Loft was very empty, strangely. Even the friends we were supposed to meet weren’t there. And so, we walked the wrong way down Jalan Sultan Ismail! Must’ve gotten the blurness from the lost Bangladeshis.


We finally met up with the friends who were stuck in Bar Savanh, Asian Heritage Row. At least I saw my dream white Mazda RX-8; same color as my Transformer Alternator, Meister. I also saw dark blue and black RX-8s. For once my attention was drawn away from the hot chicks. :O


Guess what this is.


The next day Fazri and I were in Avenue K, and we took interesting shots with our cameras, like the picture above. Here, Fazri was sitting. You’d sit too, if you were on an escalator that spanned 3 floors.