The Marvels of Modern Communication

Sometimes modern communication can be a pain in the ass; sometimes it can be simply marvellous.

I'm planning a trip to New York City in late May, where I'll crash with two friends who are currently finishing their studies there. There's much to be said about the significance of this trip in my life but I'll leave that for a later post. For now, I just want to marvel at how the internet has facilitated the planning process.

The pop music geek that I am, I've been combing various sites trying to find which big names will be playing in NYC during the two weeks I'll be there. Last week, the only such confirmed dates were for U2 and Sarah McLachlan. U2, expectedly, was sold out yonks before I even thought of going to NYC; and I'm not too keen on McLachlan.

The good thing about planning this far ahead, of course, is that many tour dates have yet to be announced. Last night, I noticed that Snow Patrol had just announced a date at the Roseland Ballroom (which I believe is the venue of that landmark Portishead gig). No sooner had I mailed one of my friends to apprise him of this, I saw him online and we chatted about it. Minutes later, he bought two tickets via ticketmaster's website.

Voila, the marvels of modern communication and e-everything. Could such a thing have happened ten years ago? I think not.

There's more...just today comes news that New Order is planning to kick off their latest tour in the US with "some dates in Chicago and New York". They'll be playing a series of festivals in Europe from early June onwards, and have just confirmed their first American date in California on 29 April.

Oh please go to NYC between 16 and 31st May, New Order!!!

"Just Like Yours, But Sweeter!"

Natalie Portman in Closer: yes, I'd like very much for you to "man man zhuan guo lai, wan xia yao" too, thanks.

I confess--though it will surprise no-one--that I've had the hots for Natalie Portman since her paedophile-baiting debut in Léon (aka The Professional). It helps that, despite her ultimate unattainability, she's always been a more plausible proposition than most other Hollywood sex symbols since she's just a year younger than me.

What may suprise some, however, is that I also have an unnatural fondness for Jude Law, whom I think is absolutely gorgeous.

You can therefore imagine my dark delight at seeing them share screen time in Closer, especially so when this is Portman's raciest role to date (she had full-frontal nude scenes which were cut by the director, for crying out loud!). Originally, my girlfriend and I had planned to watch the local romantic comedy I Do I Do, but looked for other options after we realised we couldn't make that show's timing.

Since I haven't figured out how to create expandable posts yet, I'll just leave out the spoilers and say that Closer is a strong, complex and well-paced adult drama with clever plot devices. It was refreshing to see Jude Law in a vulnerable role after his suave, confident personas in Alfie and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. And Natalie Portman, of course, was hot beyond hotness. Oh and she acted really well too.

Shame about the cut scenes, then. I'm sure they would've been more interesting than these dull paparazzi shots.

Oddly enough, despite my extremely divided attention this evening, my girlfriend and I started talking about marriage again.

There is a God

...of sociology at NUS and he goes by the name of Lian.

Dear students

We are pleased to inform you that the deadline for the submission of your HT and ISM has been extended to 8 April 2005, 3.00 p.m. In view of the revised date, no late submission will be allowed.

For HT students, pls take note that all the 3 hard-bound copies of your thesis need to be submitted to Ms Raja on the day of submission.

If you have queries, pls contact Dr Gana at 68743826.

Thanks.

A/P Lian Kwen Fee
Honours Coordinator

This buys me much-needed time to (i) do the various assignments for my other modules; (ii) finish up a proofreading job I undertook for some extra pocket money (I'm a slut for pocket money); (iii) slog thanklessly on the music for the musical I'm helping out in and (iv) cram the massively overdue summaries I've been owing my thesis supervisor, in my other capacity as her research assistant (yes, this is for pocket money too). Hooray!

Music to Run Away To

Krafty screen capture from animero.com: escape and exhiliration.

Sometime back, I wrote about New Order's forthcoming single, "Krafty". A while later, I wrote about escapism. Uncannily, these two themes converge in the music video for the said single (watch it here; Flash 7 required). It echoes what I said about running away with a free-spirited female companion. As a representation of that personal fantasy, the video is somewhat oversexed, but as a promo for the new wave veterans, I think it may just take them into the UK Top Ten. This is the kind of music video I like: straightforward, unadorned, with one key gimmick / characteristic (here, it's the rotating POV). I thought the song was bland until I watched this, and got all goosebumpy when the couple kissed and the guitars burst into the mix.

More pop music gushery: The Tears have released a teaser of their first single, "Refugees". It's lovely, apart from Brett's irritating mispronunciation of 'leaves' as 'leafs'. This song, too, is about escaping--as was much of Suede's repertoire.

On the local front, I've just received two Wallwork releases in the mail, in what could possibly be my first ever mail order. I've known Nick for years, but never really bothered to check his current band out until a friend raved about them over dinner one day.

And myself? Having completed "To Elizabeth", I've been working on another piece called "Living History". The only thing I'll say about it for now is a word that seems endemic to music journos when describing songs of this sort: widescreen. Watch this space.

All Things Great and Small

Today, while wandering in the wilderness, I made a startling discovery.

Behold a new species of zebras, which I call zebrasses. They look just like ordinary zebras, except their heads look like asses and their asses look like heads. Here we see three of them in a rare gesture of delight, looking at the camera and waving their noses.

No, of course not.

I was on a field trip to the Singapore Zoological Gardens as part of the biodiversity module I'm taking. At first, I wasn't too enthusiastic about it, since I've always thought of zoos as nothing more than a popular excursion destination for schoolchildren. I was wrong; there's much to appreciate and ponder over at such places. All the more so when the Singapore Zoo has an open concept, with all but the deadliest animals kept in a naturalistic, cageless setting.

Where else in a city-state can you come close enough to ring-tailed lemurs to take a picture as fantastic as this?

We saw the big cats (lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards); apes (orang-utans, chimpanzees, proboscis monkeys); camels, crocodiles, rhinos, wolves, elks, gnus, mousedeer, bears, sloths, butterflies and the interestingly-named gila monster (Gila is the place in Arizona where this lizard is found, but it also means 'crazy' in Malay), among others. Some were separated from visitors by moats and electrical wiring, others were given free rein to roam around.

Seeing such animals in the flesh is humbling and inspiring enough. But this experience was made even more meaningful by our professor and a colleague of his, who took great pains to point out the features these creatures possessed to adapt to their diverse habitats, as well as the symbiotic relationships among them. They also brought us to a forested area just outside the zoo to demonstrate how biologists measure biodiversity, collect specimens and classify them according to their taxonomic features.

One remark struck me rather deeply. While taking us through an orang-utan enclosure, the professor's colleague went on a spiel about apes, mentioning that "chimps are more aggressive; they are like humans". At that innocuous utterance, he and all my classmates suddenly lost their man-like qualities and appeared to me, for a brief moment, as just another ape species. I saw their likeness with their hairier relatives in the position of their facial features; their limbs; their gaits.

And the zoo suddenly ceased to be a series of exhibits, turning instead into a United Nations of the animal world convened to observe the most highly evolved organisms on the planet--the only form of life that makes tools to augment its physical limitations; the only form of life that creates and consumes for pleasure; the only form of life that, as far as we know, is capable of mental abstractions.

Things like this remind me that there is so much more to life and existence than the human mind is capable of apprehending at any one instant. It is already hard enough for us to remember that there are human societies beyond the ones we live in; it is even harder to remember that there is a natural world beyond all that--a world of life, processes and cycles larger than any political system, organised religion or human tradition.

As Icelandic singer Björk once said, when quizzed on her religious beliefs: "I believe in nature. It's 5,000 times stronger than us".

And the Winner Is...

Read it how you will: as the triumph of swing jazz over pop/rock; as the triumph of English over Mandarin; as the triumph of spirited performance over mere singing.

It could be the novelty of old-school crooning in a time when strained, anguished vocals are fashionable. Or it could be that, for some reason I don't understand, many people think "Mack the Knife" is a notoriously difficult song to sing.

It certainly couldn't have been that I was the better vocalist, because one of my 11 competitors had a Grade 8 in classical singing. And she, as well as two others, made it quite far in last year's Singapore Idol, falling short of the top 30.

It couldn't have been that I was more popular, because whenever one of the business students took to the stage, the cheers were racuous (this competition was organised by the NUS Students' Business Club). And when it came to announcing the winner, someone else's name was screamed repeatedly.

But I don't really care. I'm just happy that I won the first prize in my category.


It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I haven't taken to the stage for a serious performance in quite a while, so it was nice being able to feel the adrenaline rush without the weeks of commitment it usually takes to get there. And as one of the oldest competitors, it was also interesting to see how nervous some of the others got backstage.

The prize? A modest $100 cash and $200 in kind from Guiding Stars, a talent management company. Depending on how much their courses actually cost, I may or may not use the vouchers.

And I just want to add, for posterity, that the emcee was a lame-joke class act. I particularly relished his crude literal translations of song titles that sound evocative in Mandarin. For the lovely duet "wu ding", sung by the couple pictured above, he said "here they are, with Roof". And for Jacky Cheung's "zuo you wei nan", he simply said, "ladies and gentlemen...Left Right Got Problem".

Bad Education

NUS believes in the value of group projects; they form a part of many of the university's modules.

Ostensibly, I suppose, the aim of this is to encourage teamwork, individual responsibility and leadership skills etc etc. But I am sure the real reason many course instructors adopt this pedagogy is because they want to reduce their marking load by two-thirds or more.

I've had many bad experiences with group work. Last semester, my worst continual assessment grade came from the only module for which I had a group assignment. Two semesters ago, I got sufficiently annoyed with the dynamics in another group that I just went and did the entire project myself (which was a manageable 2000-word research essay), changing the topic and starting from scratch.

Now why would all this be happening? It's easy to say that the common factor, i.e. myself, must be to blame. I must be this asshole who just can't get along with anyone, right?

Not necessarily. Most of the time, I've found myself having to take matters into my own hands out of necessity. I'm of the opinion that Singapore universities, especially mine, are currently over-enrolling students. I read somewhere sometime ago that the government intends for one in every four Singaporeans to have a degree. Without knowing the secret economic calculations that went behind this policy, I can only conclude it's rubbish, because when you open the floodgates, shit floats in too. And what *is* the value of a degree when every other person and his dog has one?

Once, I was in a group with this girl who appeared more interested in her made-up face than the work to be done. She assumed that colorful paintings pasted from the internet would pass for quality. When I wrested control of that project and dictated the arguments we would put forward, she accused me of not giving anyone room to speak and promptly disappeared, not even turning up for classes. She later told me that she couldn't care less if she failed the module, and that she's forfeited modules in this manner before. She added that I would never understand, since I'm an honours student bound for bigger things.

This semester, I believe I'm in a similarly unenviable situation. Earlier today, I had my first project group meeting for one of my modules. The two first-year girls I ended up with, while eager and earnest, did not contribute a single useful idea. They merely collated and reiterated everything I said, giggling with exasperation. And while they tried to think, they were too happy to break off topic at the first opportunity, latching on to anything amusing that the other guy in the group said. "Oh, you mean you did this before? Wooooow..."

And they had the cheek to ask if I could "sacrifice" myself and conduct both the required interviews since I'm apparently "the best speaker" in the group.

Maybe I'll have to. But I'm seriously not amused.

A Singing Feeling

On a whim, I stayed behind in school today (Tuesday) to audition for a small-scale singing competition organised by a student club.

It was nice to tear myself away from work for a while; to run down the empty corridors and sit in an unfamiliar auditorium, awaiting my turn.

It was nice to experience the mild excitement of performing without the usual hassle of formal rehearsals, and to leave immediately after I was done, with no further obligations. (It's like waking up one weekend morning and deciding to spend the afternoon in a foreign country, flying there and back within the same day.)

It was nice that it was a cosy, casual affair; with students running the show. And it was funny that so many of the auditionees sang Mandarin songs, reminding me once more that my anglophile world is actually a marginal one in this country. (I also think the well-established practice among Mandarin pop artistes of releasing karaoke VCDs has a profound effect on growing the number of hopefuls).

But the nicest thing, of course, was being phoned past midnight and being informed that I'd made it to the next (and in fact, final) round on Friday.

Come Together

Today, an acquaintance in my biodiversity class asked me something quite out of the blue, and then apologetically qualified it as a "random question".

I answered it and quickly added that she needn't worry, because it's good to ask random questions. If you allow social interaction to take its own course, there are many things you'll never find out about people.

See, I subscribe to the view that the human world is eminently artificial and unnatural. I could go on forever about why and in what ways this is so, but suffice it to say, this artifice often breeds a subconscious sense of alienation, which in turn manifests itself as loneliness.

And because this loneliness has unnatural origins, the best way to combat it is through equally unnatural means. Today, these means include instant messaging, networking sites (Friendster, Hi5) and blogging. As contrived forms of interaction as they are, they nonetheless gain back valuable social ground which is lost to the other things which now monopolise our time, such as work.

If not for them, I would never know that someone I know shares the same favourite few books as me, or has a similar worldview, or that he / she has this hobby and has done this and that in her lifetime. These nuggets, as pedestrian as they are, may never come up in a thousand meals eaten together, or in a decade in the same office or classroom.

They may be appreciated in and of themselves, or they may be footholds to deeper, more meaningful things.

Another way to get there, of course, is to ask random questions from time to time, and be open to random questions yourself. A question doesn't have to be truth-or-dare quality to be 'random'; it just has to be out of whatever context you're in, eliciting trivia that you wouldn't otherwise know.

So if you know me, just shoot.

It's More Fun to Compute

I really should have stayed home today to catch up on my schoolwork, but that plan went to pot when I found out today was the last day I could see this:

These two kiosks are arcade machines. But they aren't just any ordinary arcade machines. They are among the first EVER goddamn coin-operated arcade machines!! Geeks, look closely at the one on the right...it's PONG!!! For the less-informed, Pong is widely thought to be the first ever video game (though strictly, it isn't), coming out in 1972. That year, it had all the ground-breaking, earth-shattering complexity of two paddles (represented by short vertical lines) moving up and down both ends of the screen, bouncing a ball (represented by oooh, a dot) back and forth. And huge score counters at the top of the screen.

These two machines, along with over 70 other classics, were on display at the Planet Games exhibition at the Singapore Science Centre. The best bit was that all were playable, and each visitor was issued a number of tokens upon entry...now how cool is that! Depending on how old you are, some of the following names may bring a tear of nostalgia to your eye, or do nothing at all: Q-Bert, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Centipede, Galaxian, Dig Dug, Tron, Space Invaders, Defender, Breakout. These were all there, in fine working order. Pity about the Pac-Man machine though; I think its breakdown must've been caused by overuse.

This retro arcade formed the 'past' section of the exhibition, which also had 'present' and 'future' installations. But I couldn't care less for the latter two. I have a soft spot for all the games mentioned above for two reasons: (i) I remember seeing them in advertisements in my elder brother's comics when I was a very young boy; (ii) when I was a little older, I played a number of them on arcade emulators on my PC.


It's an Atari: today, one of these would probably fit in your mobile phone.

But there is a third, larger reason for my fascination here. To me, first-generation video games don't just open a window to the history of gaming. They also open a window to the history of human thought and society. The speed at which computer technology evolves--which is unparalleled in other domains of technology--accelerates and compresses time in such a way that epochal changes can be reflected in a matter of decades. Consider this extremely amusing video clip archived on eBaum's World. It's a news feature on a new development in the early 90's you might have heard of: the internet.

The unique nature of time in the gaming world can also be seen in a telling remark at the entrance of the Planet Games exhibition, which exhorts visitors to treat the machines "with care for what they are--antiques!". Now, taken out of context, the word 'antique' reasonably connotes terms like 'art', 'civilisation' and 'centuries old'. Yet, you'd be hard-pressed not to agree that a working Pac-Man arcade machine is an antique. It's rare, classic, no longer made or readily available, and a definitive cultural artefact from a different era. Which in this case happens to be just twenty years ago.

How's that for perspective?

Assuming Foxhole Position

(Techie post alert: non-geeks need not apply.)

I am typing this blog entry--my first such entry--through Mozilla Firefox.

I never thought of making the switch because my 5-year-old dinosaur of a desktop is constantly teetering on the edge of irrevocable malfunction, and every additional program I install--be it Trillian, Hello, or various digicam programs--pushes it that much closer to the end.

Ironically, it was this very characteristic of my computer that prompted me to make the switch this morning.

Over the last several months, as my Internet Explorer trawled the cold, vast depths of cyberspace, its inefficient turbines have trapped all manner of flotsam and jetsam (read: spyware). Once, it stopped working altogether, until I discovered Win98's unique and very handy msconfig program, and proceeded to block these programs during startup.

Today, one of those programs broke through.

It's some Elitebar nonsense which won't go away even when I block it with msconfig, and it freezes IE within 30 seconds of connecting to the net. With a heavy heart, I decided to once again add another program to my expanding and unwieldy list, and leapt into Mozillaland.

Before the switch, I didn't know how one browser can be that much better than another, since surfing appears to be a very basic task. But one of the first things I noticed about Firefox is its integrated Google search in the top-right corner.

I think I'm going to like it here.

****

P.S. for the lewd-minded out there, I just thought I'd say that Foxhole is NOT *that* sort of position. It's a firing position (yes, I know *that* also involves firing) that may be adopted by soldiers at a shooting range. So dispense with those thoughts!

A History of Amnesia, Indeed

I was rather amused by my 64-year-old uncle's recollection of wanting to hitchike to London with his best friend when they were teenagers, and I brought it up to my dad over lunch today.

His response, as always, painted a world so different from mine, even though this world existed merely decades before.

He told me that, at one time, it was every young male Singaporean's dream adventure to strike off to London. Many, like my uncle, wanted to go there to enlist in the army. The plan would be to get on the British military payroll--a much better deal than joining in the Volunteer Corps in Singapore--and eventually be posted back to serve in Singapore by virtue of land of origin.

This dream was nurtured by two historical factors: the lack of manufacturing industries suitable for the lesser-educated in colonial Singapore; and the promise of the only foreign country that a backward, insular people would be intimately familiar with: that of the colonisers themselves. Yes, my father claimed that his generation knew little to nothing of America at the time.

And a good number of men lived this dream. My father cited a number of family friends and neighbours I knew who were in fact non-commissioned officers in the British Army.

He then revealed that he himself was once offered a job with the Royal Air Force (RAF). Once, they held a recruitment drive at the now-defunct Kallang Airport, attracting hundreds. Secondary school leavers were seived off and the rest had to sit for an IQ test. It was the first my father had ever heard of such a test, but he did well enough to be shortlisted. After being briefed on the job requirements and being told that Asians would never be considered for officer training, he sat at a coffeeshop and talked it over with some friends, then turned down the offer.

This wasn't his only bid at a life abroad. He once asked his own father for three hundred dollars (a princely sum in those days) to join three other friends who were bent on making the trip to the English capital. Two of them planned on pursuing their education there, while the third was a soldier wannabe. His cash-strapped father gave him a flat refusal.

To me, all these accounts are both strange and familiar. Today, no young person in Singapore would think of signing on with a foreign army, not least of all due to the military obligations the men already have here. It is even stranger to imagine my old man as the bomber radio operator he could have become. Yet, the lure of greener pastures remains ever present in the hearts of young Singaporeans.

But there is one key difference, which I was quick to note in the conversation with my dad.

In his time, there was no concept of Singapore as a sovereign country. There was no formal institution of Singapore citizenship. For a people with no land to call their own, the attraction of a another promised land came easy and naturally.

For some reason, the West still holds the same attraction for young Singaporeans. This, despite the emergence of citizenship rights, home ownership and a host of reasons for national pride in the intervening years. What is it that compels this sentiment? Is it merely the ennui of life that teenagers and twenty-somethings here often refer to (and fashionably so, if I might add)? Or is it something much larger?

(To be continued)

Singapore is Our Playground

This is the interior of Cuppage Plaza, just off the beaten track of Singapore's busiest shopping district.

There to check out the exact location of a karaoke joint I'm heading to with some friends on Saturday, I was both surprised and enchanted by its old world charm. There was a time when most shopping centres in Singapore looked like this, but no longer.

I found its emptiness, due to its tenants closing shop for the Chinese New Year's eve celebrations, rather exhilirating. I often dream of a nocturnal life with a free-spirited female companion. We'd run away into every crevice of the city, colonising old buildings like this with our drunken laughter, discovering and amplifying the nuances of lives so close yet so different from our own.

We'd slump in any stairwell, squat on any kerb and chat the night away, sharing hopes and fears, visions and ambitions. We'd name-drop Kafka, Brecht, Mao, and Jesus. We'd share a mangy sandwich from 7-eleven at 3am, huddling from the cold night air. We'd climb on top of things, kiss and make vows to be broken in the morning. We would sing. And we would do all these because we know there is no time for them like today.

Alas, the hand of pragmatism that rests heavily on my shoulder holds me back from such a life. There are always things to wake up early for, people to answer to, and a future to work for.

Oh well.

My Life with Vaginas (and Kinsey)

I confess.

I was one of those extremely curious pubescent boys who spent hours looking up terms like "sexual intercourse" and "masturbation" in every available encyclopaedia set in the school library. I pored over the diagrams under "vagina", wondering if they really looked that enlarged and grotesque in real life (they aren't) and if they were really that close to the anus (they are). From these healthy, family-sanctioned tomes of knowledge, I learnt that some women can climax by merely rubbing their thighs together (Encyclopedia Americana, if I recall correctly). And that their privates discharge fluid and their breasts enlarge at some point in the sexual response cycle. Oh, the revelations of those days.

That was in the pre-internet age. I wonder how much faster I'd have grown up had I been born five years later. I might have educated myself through surprisingly tasteful sites like All About My Vagina and Vagina Verite (please don't ask why I even know about these sites).

Two years ago, I watched a production of The Vagina Monologues with my girlfriend. That night, I think she learned more about vaginas than I did. I also came across a really funny song on the internet called "The Vagina Song", which I hope to sing while pissed drunk at some house party in the future.

But I digress. This was really meant to be a post on Kinsey, which I watched earlier today, also with my girlfriend. I only meant to have a one-liner intro about vaginas to kick things off, but looks like I have more to say about vaginas than I thought I did.

***SPOILER ALERT***

Kinsey, IMHO, is a well-paced, sensitive portrayal of the world's first great sex researcher. It is neither overly sympathetic nor overly moralistic--just when it seems it's going one way, it shifts gears. Great acting all round, especially from Laura Linney who pulls off aging 30-odd years in the movie convincingly.

I liked how the shock factor of sex education the 1940s was recreated for a 21st century audience by Kinsey flashing a close-up of a penis beginning to penetrate a vagina. That's shocking even by today's cinema standards. I also liked that, for all the salaciousness of the subject matter, the actual sex act was never bluntly shown.

Most of all, I enjoyed the moral ambiguity of the film. Over the last year or two, because of various people I've met, I've come to realise that there's a lot more sex going down out there than many of us would like to believe. And I've also realised, now that I'm reasonably settled in adult social circles, that many respectable adult men are serious wankers. It shows in the things they say when they let their guard down. I don't think the (a)moral landscape of society, as painted in Kinsey, is that far from the truth.

Leeson Carefully

Tonight I went with some friends to catch Leeson at the Prince of Wales backpackers' pub in Little India.


Despite the cramped, intimate setting, they played with a full band and belted out 7 originals and 3 covers. It was, admittedly, an unspectacular gig, but there's always a feel-good factor about watching people you know perform.

They may have butchered The Smiths' "There is a Light that Never Goes Out", but they did a tight rendition of Bowie's "Heroes". The highlight for me, however, was a complete reworking of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" with nothing but its lyrics intact. I honestly can't tell if the band meant it as a joke, because it actually had a rather understated, heartfelt beauty.

As it turns out, this gig was Leeson's swan song, since their bassist and their chief songwriter will be leaving for Australia to study soon. My guitarist friend later told me that the rest of them would probably carry on doing just acoustic gigs for the time being. He also invited me to jam with them since they're currently looking for a keyboardist. I don't know if I'll take up that offer, given (i) my false starts with other bands and (ii) my intimidating backlog of schoolwork. But we'll see.

Forthcoming

Earlier today (yesterday to be sure), I completed writing a song for the student club musical I'm helping out with. The song's called "How Can I Remember Him". Sounds musical-esque already, no?

And a short while ago, in the shower, I finished a lyric-in-progress for a song for a personal project. The song's not about me at all, but its emotional pitch is a good indicator of my current mood. I'm posting the lyrics here because I want to convey my mood without giving the reasons for it. The music? I'm thinking something like Radiohead's great unreleased track, "Lift" (the '95 version). It'll be a major-key affair with bright, chiming guitar lines; rumbling bass and drums right up in the mix. I've got the chord progressions already, now all I need is a band.

You Don't Have To

I know it's hard, it's sometimes painful
They laugh it off, and then they blame you
When they're the ones who never gave you
A chance to be...

You tell yourself you don't need them
But deep inside, you wanna get even
'Cos they broke your heart; now it's a prison
And you can't get free...

But you don't have to be alone
Say you don't have to be alone
Just push through skin just push through bone
And bring it on home.

Now look at you, you're so clever
You've come so far, but it's no better
You're only here, because you never
Had a say...

Now look at her, she is the answer
But she assumes, just like the others
Your life is full, as full as hers,
She'll never know, how you'll complete her

What a shame, oh what a shame...

Still you don't have to be alone
Say you don't have to be alone
Just push through skin just push through bone
And make yourself known

Hey you don't have to be alone
So sad, so cold and so alone
Just push through skin just push through bone
And bring it on home.

Me! Me!

Thanks to Michelle, I've squandered the last two hours or so thinking about and typing this, but what the hey, I'm a whore when it comes to talking about music I like. So here goes:

1. What's the total size of music files on your computer?
It's in a state of flux because I keep re-organising my files. My present computer is a paleolithic 5 years in age, and has a measly 9 GB of hard disk space. Most of what I have goes on to CD-Rs. But if you must nitpick, as of writing, it's about 1.5 GB of commercially available music, and another 1 GB of my own works-in-progress (before you fall out of your seat, my stuff takes up that much space because it's in .wav format).

2. What is the last CD you bought?
Hero Music by Leeson. It's a local outfit and I know one of their guitarists. I could've bought it direct from him for $2 less, but I figured the band would get a much bigger kick from hearing they actually sold a copy through the stores. Sad, but that's the Singapore indie scene for you!

3. What is the last song you listened to before you read this post?
Haha, it's actually one of my own. I'm working on beefing up "To Elizabeth", which I've been mentioning in various posts, so I'm listening to it repeatedly until I start imagining new parts going over it. That's how I often compose.

4. Name four songs that you listen to a lot or that mean a lot to you.

These four songs are all the latter, and, with the exception of the third one, are likely to remain in my top four for a long, long time.

"In My Life" by The Beatles
There are love songs and there are life songs, and then there is In My Life, which is both. To the casual listener, it may sound like a generic 60's pop ballad, but its lyrics carry the most measured, considered and life-affirming message I've ever heard. Even today, when I'm in the right mood, this song brings wetness to my eyes, and I'm not afraid to say that. My favourite song of all time.

"Summer on the Westhill" by Kings of Convenience
Perfectly crafted, poignant acoustic number about a train commuter's thoughts as he watches the landscape roll past him. The last great hangup in my life is that I've hardly had the chance to travel, much as I'd like to (I've been on a plane only four times, i.e. to two countries and back) yet periodically find myself in travel conversations in which I have nothing to contribute. I dream of the day I can sit in Eirik Glambek Boe's place and sing softly to myself "Now I know there is a world beyond / The small place I was coming from".

"Crazy For You" by Let Loose
It's 1994 again! All the cool kids in ACS(I) are sporting centre-parted long hair (long by secondary school standards) and are clad in baggy checked shirts with fitting white t-shirts underneath. One presses the 'play' button and suddenly, four of them are in a row, doing coordinated stylish moves like the 'running man' and the 'scissors'!
"Crazy For You" is, shamefully, my favourite boyband song for overwhelmingly sentimental reasons, plus the fact that it is really well arranged and produced. It is the definitive aural equivalent of a first crush, adrenaline, swooning and all. No other boyband song captures the feeling quite as well.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" by The Beatles
"What", you say. "Two Beatles songs in your top four??" In a sense, this isn't really a 'Beatles' song because it's a million miles from anything else they've done. It's so far out that my first listening of it on Paul Zach's Top 10 Pieces of Music from the Last Millenium special in 1999 made me go out and discover the band. And pick up a guitar. I can't say any more; you have to hear it for yourself. It's the last track on their Revolver album, and the thing to do while it's playing is to repeat to yourself, "this was made in 19 f***ing 66. This was really made in 19 f***ing 66!!"

5. Which three people are you passing the baton to and why?

Debbie, because she is uber arty and I'm uber curious.

I'll add another two shortly.

The Last of the Politicians

Young Singaporeans like their Lee Kuan Yew in only two ways: served up on the glorious pedestal of national history, or skewered by the cynicism of his detractors. For a man so much larger than life, there can be no middle ground.

Both these versions of Singapore's first Prime Minister were on the menu as undergraduates stepped up to the microphones at the Q&A session of the 2005 Kent Ridge Ministerial Forum earlier tonight. Many opened their questions with accolades and gratitude for his instrumental role in shaping Singapore's ascent into the first world.

One, as we are now familiar, chose a very different tack. Jamie Han will be remembered for some time as the person who dared utter "despot" to Lee's face. He will be a hero to those who feel, for one reason or another, disenfranchised by Lee's no-nonsense, authoritarian legacy.

But love or hate Lee, all the students who attended the forum were there for the same reason: to get a firsthand experience of his wisdom and personality while they still can. Singaporeans have never known a Singapore without Lee Kuan Yew, though that is an eventuality that draws closer each year. For people of my generation, therefore, a public appearance by Lee has all the perverse pull of a closing down sale.

I sometimes wonder what I will tell future generations about him. Those born after he has departed will surely turn to people like myself for a fuller picture of the legend. Sadly, I cannot offer them more than what they will find in the history books. Like most Singaporeans my age, the drama of the 1950s and 1960s is alien to me. I was born into a secure and stable country with Lee's name already stamped on it; at a time when most of his work was behind him. What can I tell the inquisitive children of tomorrow?

This question weighed on my mind as I took my seat in the University Cultural Centre hall this evening. By the time I left, I had my answer.

It was not, surprisingly, confirmation of Lee as an enlightened leader or as a "despot". Too little went on in the forum for such conclusions to be made, and I now believe that anyone who left feeling convinced one way or the other must have made up their minds before even arriving.

What I gained from the evening, and can give to future Singaporeans, is a picture of Lee the Orator.

From his grilling of the student who doubted Singaporeans' sense of belonging, to his cool handling of Han's audacity, he wowed his audience at every turn. At times, he came across like his 30-year-old self once did, confidently cross-examining and issuing challenges. At others, he demonstrated how to recover from an awkward situation admirably.

Take, for instance, how after one student stunned the audience by declaring he had recovered from a stroke early in life, Lee encouraged him with a reminder that his own wife had suffered a stroke, and that they too were moving on, to wild applause.

Or how after Han discredited press freedom in Singapore by referring to his rejected letters to the Straits Times, Lee hit back in a reply to another question by saying "politics is not about writing letters", eliciting hoots of laughter.

The night was full of such gems; there are too many to list here.

While most will want to take issue with the substance and sincerity of Lee's replies, I prefer to read his performance as a masterclass in how to work an audience and win their support. His feisty delivery, disarmingly quick wit and willingness to argue head-to-head are qualities rarely found in our government leaders...qualities of a true politician.

To be sure, the Vivians and Tharmans of today are brilliant men in their own right, but they are ultimately polite technocrats who fall somewhat short of Lee's street-level charisma and intimidating presence. This is not a problem as they did not have to rely on such attributes to fight tooth and nail for every inch of their credibility as Lee did in his day.

The upshot of this, however, is that when Lee goes, so will all the sparkle and historical gravitas of the ruling party. More men like Lee, who marry their convictions with an ability to sell them to the hardest customer, would a shot in the arm of Singapore politics. I do not know when or if such individuals will emerge again. Until then, I will be happy to tell the next generation about the flair and fire of the best of them.