Have you ever felt extreme guilt for sitting next to a train passenger playing Text Twist on her PDA and not telling her that JEWELS has SLEW and ELSE?
Oh, and you’re cooler if your MP3 player is not an iPod.
Shuffle And Twist
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Monthly Archives: June 2005
Ewww The Perfume
I think crossdressing/transvestite/transsexual perfume salespeople rock.
If I had a department store, I would hire them for the night shift. Simply because:
- They are passionate about the job! They know their stuff! Salesgirls are generally uninformed about their product, around Malaysia at least.
- They can shout! “Paging for Ms. Lee!“
- They’re less likely to be hit on by men with perfect vision.
- They don’t have a curfew. “Sial budak aku baik dia tak payah balik rumah.“
- They won’t get bored and run away to work in KFC or something. A girl would probably just work for the money.
- They can reach for top shelves.
- They’re less prudish than those salesgirls.
So next time you see one of those, please understand that they are simply the better labor solution.
Edit: They also don’t have an excuse to be cranky every month. 🙂
Initial-E
So I did a few things the first time this year by watching Initial D.
- I paid for a movie. (Madagascar doesn’t count because I forgot to pay you back Azira! Ah well, have fun in Australia haha.)
- I watched a movie in Cantonese.
- I watched a movie based on an anime.
Believe it or not, my father and mother are Chinese, and so were their fathers and mothers. And so, it is merely prophetic fulfilment that I must watch this. It also buys me a chance to understand what people are talking about when they talk about Initial D the movie. I already felt left out with Star Wars 3. (I’ve watched the other 5 dammit.)
Despite being unable to speak Chinese, I assure you I am an Ah Beng. I like transparent red-lighted handphones. I had one. I speak loudly on the phone. I have danced in Warp before. I play Need For Speed Underground 2. I don’t play Initial D though, because well aiyah I play Daytona medium difficulty on automatic transmission.
So anyway, I was trying to spot Jay Chou, famous superstar. Was he the tofu delivery boy? No way. He looked like he delivered jellied cocaine instead. Damn stoned. It seems like every movie nowadays has an expressionless character (Keanu Reeves, Hayden Christensen…) Of course it can be attributed to his broody character, being abused by his father etc.
Here’s a spoiler for you: Nobody dies! That just reeks of sequel. If nobody dies, how are we stupid kids going to learn a lesson?
Hmmm, imagine what the sequel will be. Initial D2? Will the prequel (with the cool-as-tau-cheong-suay father) be Initial P or Initial R?
You: Uh, don’t they drive manual cars?
Me: Well there is this one scene where the girl puts her hand in his, and they hold hands the whole trip…
Pardon me dudes, I’m itching to play Need For Speed: Underground 2.
June Gigs
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.
Decoy Radio
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!
Drawing Straws
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!
Hitchin’ A Ride
Yeah I know this yet again supersedes anything I was supposed to write, including the loads of pictures of the Fete De La Musique 2005, but anyway.
Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, or H2G2 for short, was good.
If you like me, or think I am even remotely funny, you will enjoy this movie, because it eerily reminds me of things I’d say.
Sure, some of it was over-the-top inaneness, but some were really superbly witty. A geek will get the most kicks out of this. Like Resistance Is Useless. 8)
Smart and parodying. More out of this world than Men In Black will ever be. Futurama amplified. British humour (oh my gosh, Albert spells the Queen’s English!) around every nook and cranny. If the Americans have coffee, the British have tea. I drink tea.
Scaling The Flats
I have a neckache from the Fete De La Musique 2005. Pictures will come!
Anyway, here’s a musical theory puzzler for you theoretically-inclined. I came up with a scale while looking at the guitar one day, and it goes something like this:
A# B# C## D# E# F# G#
Or, intervally, A# whole B# whole C## half D# whole E# half F# whole G# whole.
Yeah yeah C## is technically D but writing it this way might read easier for some theory people.
It could be expressed as an A# mixolydian with a flattened 6th, or an A# major with flat 6ths and 7ths. I love how the A# B# C## D# E# part is major, but the B# C## D# E# F# G# is whole-half scale, a very neat scale indeed.
I’ve transposed it down from A# to the key of E to make a simple ditty. It might be easier to spot if you play the scale from E#. How did I come up with this scale? As usual, the winner will get linked in the next blog post, and you know how many hits that will get you. Oh and people who already know are disqualified. 😛
Ronery
Akon – Lonely is an irritating song.
Bobby Vinton‘s original, Mr. Lonely, is nowhere as irritating, as it seems as they sped it up. Even the high pitched wail goes up differently; imagine the feel of songs like Blue Moon. Everybody likens the voice to Alvin And The Chipmunks, but why doesn’t anybody remember Disney’s Chip ‘N Dale’s Rescue Rangers? That was a classic. I know. I watched it regularly and even loved the platform game. I even had a mini-crush on Gadget, the girl mouse.
Compare that to Alvin and the chipmunks, which you could get irritated with.
But then again, back then as kids, even if you were profusely irritated with a cartoon, you’d still watch it. We were stupid in that way. Like Dennis The Menace. Like Mighty Mouse. He was perfect. Female mouse cries. Mighty Mouse comes. No effort. Whap boom bang. With such cartoons I say, ban testing of chemicals on animals!
Feet Delay Music
I did not bother counting how many performances of different kinds are on, but the Fete De La Musique 2005 (French for Festival of Music) is sure to be a blast. Loads of unheard-of bands and drum circles and didgeridoo horn squads and percussion and dance and dikir barat and rastas. And then some bands. Uh yeah. For free. Plus a certain Japanese girl and everybody’s favorite Indian are emceeing.
Of course, with such massive plans, many things will go wrong, but hey I liked 2003’s and 2004’s because of the sheer number of people I could bump into and the T-shirts I could get for free. Plus, for those with short attention spans, they could just walk on to the next performance spot.
Saturday 18th June is the day to be at One Utama’s Rainforest, while Sunday 19th June is the day to be at Bintang Walk. (Of course it also runs on Sunday at One Utama but Bintang Walk is much more fun!)
It goes without saying that I’m going on both days. Hope to bump into you there!