Final hours, final showers

It's the day before my very last exam, and I'm planning to unwind with an evening jog. Not that I have much to unwind--I've been taking it really easy the last few days, knowing full well that my class of honours will be unaffected no matter how poorly I fare for this semester's examinations. I've been enjoying this luxury, flipping through notes in an ad hoc manner, rather than pushing myself to the very end.

As I type, however, storm clouds and low rumbles are congregating outside the window, as if to say: forget your run. You don't have to go out in a blaze of glory, but at least finish what you started four years ago with the same amount of pride.

It may not rain, but suddenly I've a few more hours than I thought I had. And I know what I'm going to do with them.

Music Bulletin #3

Some updates on what's currently rocking my musical world:

NYC Gigs
As mentioned many times on this blog, I'm heading over to the Big Apple in May where I'll stay with a friend for two weeks. It started out as a purely touristy thing but has since transformed into a gigslutfest with the following dates:

1. Kasabian (with Mad Action and Rock n' Roll Soldiers) at the Bowery Ballroom, 17th May
2. Doves (with Mercury Rev) at Webster Hall, 18th May
3. Fischerspooner at the Canal Room, 19th May
4. Snow Patrol (with Athlete) at the Roseland Ballroom, 20th May
5. Bright Eyes and The Faint (with Mars Black) at Webster Hall, (either 23, 24 or 25 May)
6. The Decemberists at Warsaw @ the Polish National Home, 26th May
7. Kraftwerk (!!!) at the Hammerstein Ballroom, 1 June

I've bought tickets for all of them except the Bright Eyes / Faint gig, since I can't decide which night I should go. And of course I'm thrilled as f*** to be watching living legends Kraftwerk. I will show the full extent of my love for them in a extended blog entry before I fly off.

NYC is truly a pop/rock Mecca: I'm amazed as to the number of artists who take their act to the city every year. Just by way of illustration, on the same night that Snow Patrol are playing, New Yorkers will also get to watch the likes of Hoobastank, Velvet Revolver, Thievery Corporation and Porcupine Tree. Woot!

Kylie Comes to Singapore
While New Yorkers are spoiled for choice with five or six major names each night, us poor Singaporeans have to contend with that amount of celebrity in a year. It's hardly suprising then that club-pop princess Kylie Minogue's June 17 show at the nation's biggest concert venue is generating quite a buzz. While I'm not a fan per se, to me, it's (i) an event promising good fun and great atmosphere; (ii) as a full-blown stadium gig, it's a fitting finale to a gigging campaign that sees me earning earning several badges and stripes in NYC; and (iii) a nice way to say goodbye to the Kallang Stadium, a national icon that will be demolished in 2 years' time so it can be rebuilt with a fancy-pants retractable roof.

New Radiohead Songs
Hurrah! New Radiohead material has surfaced. Thom Yorke has a way with melodies, playing them against chords in such a way that they open up cadences of deep passion and grace. "House of Cards" sounds, in its current embryonic form, like something that could have come from Bends-era Radiohead.

A Rush of Blood

Last night I went to Rushed's EP launch at the Prince of Wales.



A few days ago I had no idea who they were, but someone I met on The Tears' official forum mentioned them and I thought I'd check them out. Their 3-track EP of breezy pop, which you can listen to in its entirety here, is not bad at all. Its execution, unfortunately, was disappointing. So disappointing, in fact, that I didn't feel I was missing much when my girlfriend and I left after the fourth song to catch the last trains home.

For one, Rushed's singer doesn't have a terrific voice. Even though that's never stopped people from making it big in rock, his airy vocals only make sense with far more reverb than the venue could afford. Also, the band's playing, while technically competent, was uninspired. I don't know what they were doing with four guitars; I've heard more layered and nuanced outputs from three and two-guitar setups.


Omigosh! It's Pete Doherty! Oh no wait...it's just the guy from Rushed...

Having said that, I should reiterate that their EP is not bad and worth a listen. What saved the evening for me, however, was meeting my Tears-forum friend in the flesh. Not only did we hit it off fairly well; he also had to walk in and notice me at the moment of moments: during the pre-gig DJ session, smack in the middle of She's in Fashion.

En Bloc Party

The rumours had been going round, but my father refused to believe them. Even when our MP dropped by during a house-to-house visit, my father felt it was nothing more than an exercise in public relations.

Now, he can't believe his luck.

I came home from a long day of job admission tests and exam revision today to find him beaming like a 12-year old with a new toy. It's true; our precinct has been selected for en bloc redevelopment. Come 2010, we will vacate our decades-old 5-room HDB flat for a spanking new 3, 4 or 5-room residence in a 40-storey HDB block just across the street from where we live.

We are getting a very good deal: normally, people affected by en bloc developments are arbitrarily relocated in a different housing estate. Here, we'll not only get to stay put as our new castles rise just outside our windows; our lease will be renewed as well. We'll also receive handsome monetary compensation for our pains, and by the time the project is completed, the neighbourhood will have a new mall and a circle line MRT station to boot.

Such redevelopments aren't a big deal in the scheme of things, but this one is especially meaningful to my parents, who are getting on in their years. Suffice it to say they are simple, long-suffering folk who have no bigger goal in their twilight of their lives than to remain healthy and support their children and prospective grandchildren in whatever little ways they can.

I've long wished I could do something significant for my parents: perhaps that New Zealand holiday they've ill-afforded for the last twenty years; maybe a renovation of our crumbling, leaky, ant-and-centipede-infested apartment...a realisation of dreams they left behind a long, long time ago for a life of quiet regret and resignation.

With our belts tightening and I forgoing my postgraduate aspirations to work and put something back my parents' nest egg, this redevelopment package is a godsend. Not only will it give my father the CPF savings he never had, it will also give him the brand new retirement home he always wanted. More importantly, it will give my parents what I feel is the ultimate gift: the chance to spend the last years of their lives with grace and dignity.

I can picture my father six years from now, all of 70 years of age, closer to heaven both literally and figuratively, looking serenely out his room window and down on the world far below. I see him smiling as he imagines, for a brief moment, that everything around him was planned for; that all he sees is the natural conclusion of a rich, accomplished life.

So That's What They Call it These Days

..."Integrated Resorts".

Strange that, after debating for a year on whether or not to have a casino in Singapore, the Government announced yesterday that they were indeed going to build...not casinos, but "integrated resorts". These resorts (or IRs for short) would be vibrant shopping, entertainment and business hubs with "casino options" that occupy only 3% to 5% of the total land area allocated for development.

Funny, I don't recall the debate being about IRs. The bone of contention all this while was clearly casinos and casinos per se--if it was IRs with gambling facilities, there wouldn't have been half the public backlash that occurred.

Let's be clear about this. I am neither actively for nor against having casinos or IRs in Singapore, and I have faith in the Government's ability to deal with whatever social issues that arise from such establishments. I am just uncomfortable with the use of rhetoric to disguise the nature of things. Yes, it's politics, but that doesn't make me feel any better about it.

Language is a powerful tool. First there was talk of including other entertainment facilities in a proposed casino complex to make it family-friendly. As of yesterday, it suddenly became talk of building everything-hubs which happen to have, by dint of their sheer everthing-ness, casinos in them.

Real difference, or crowd-appeasing semantic twist? Time will tell.

Last Night My Classmates Saved My Life

It was just one of those days.

I woke up feeling absolutely wasted, even though I'd done nothing the night before and gotten a good eight hours of sleep. Some doors away, my parents were bickering--not a big deal in itself but a major irritation given the state I was in. Later in the afternoon, something else stole my thunder and made me feel inconsolably disprized. The rest of the day was spent in a haze of self-doubt; mouth ulcers slowly gnawing away at my sanity.

Thank goodness for my sociology honours classmates, then. The poolside potluck party was excellent, as all our gatherings are--a good showing of twenty, with nary a hint of artifice or discomfort. There was an abundance of dessert and booze. We made like our former 18-year-old selves and played dumb drinking games like "big fish-small fish", which through a slip of the tongue became "big shit-small shit", and eventually the rather improbable but extra-challenging "big shit-small fish".

When things wound down we broke into cliques and started talking about our respective job searches and postgraduate endeavours. It wasn't long, however, before one group's discussion veered to sex and everyone else joined in. A revival of a months-old debate about how society is actually predicated upon sex (and not the economy as Marxians claim) somehow led to the very teenage epiphany that, in love, "we very often don't know what we want" (cue ponderous nods and pauses).

It was a perfect JC outing, except we were soon-to-be university graduates. I miss these guys. I shouldn't have allowed the fact that I wasn't taking any sociology modules this semester to distance myself from them. And I shouldn't have allowed the vague promise of running into the night with a free-spirited girl take me away from what I already had. Not especially when the bunch of us almost--upon threats from the condominium security--packed up and headed for a night beneath the stars on a rooftop in NUS; not when we almost left for karaoke on a post-midnight whim, only to be kept where we were because we started talking about sex.

I love my classmates. I hope we'll still be doing this when we're forty.

This is the Last Time

As a sentimentalist, I tend to be particularly mindful of the significance of everyday events. I find a great deal of meaning in the most trivial meetings and departures; the most banal beginnings and endings. A few days ago, I completed and submitted my very last piece of schoolwork. As I dropped it in my lecturer's mailbox, my mind raced back to that afternoon in 2001 I submitted my first term paper, worrying if it was truly of "university standard".

Despite my attachment to these things, I failed to realise that yesterday was the last day of the last semester of my academic life. It took an email from the director of the campus facility at which I work part-time to remind me of this. And as I sit here during my last official shift at the said facility, I notice that the student who booked an appointment for this slot is not turning up. The last class, the last assignment, the last schoolday and the last shift are behind me. The only thing remaining is the last exam on the 29th. Will it end without ceremony as well?

(An aside: yes, this entry's title is a reference to the Keane song. And yes, I love Keane; unashamedly so).

Suck My Constituency

There's a quaint volume of articles on Singapore written around 1920 which I like to refer to for the odd history-based term paper. So there I was, browsing through it for a group project on government-level conservation measures since the colonial era. And I found this jolly extract:



I don't know if this is a typographical error, Freudian slip, or the accepted transliteration of the name at that time. Whatever the case, this historical nugget is glossed over in official documents. But it sure has Talkingcock potential: I can already picture a story titled "Tampines Residents Demand Reversion to Original Name"...

View the full page here.

If anyone's interested, the full citation for the book is

Makepeace, Walter E. and Braddell, Roland St. John and Brooke, G. S., eds. One Hundred years of Singapore. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991. 2 vols. Reprint. Originally published in London, 1921.

Thesis the End

And this is what I've learnt...

1. You can never start too early.
2. Writing helps the thought process, so start writing early.
3. You actually have to read the books you borrow from the library to be able to start writing early.
4. When you start writing early, you will realise how many more books you have to borrow to substantiate and beef up your arguments.
   
5. Yes, you can write the remaining 4,000 words in 3 days. But can you write the remaining 4,000 words and annotate, format, paginate, proofread, edit, double-check citations, photocopy documents for the appendix and print everything within 3 days??
6. ...By the way, did I say you can never start too early??
   
7. There is no greater cause of insomnia than sheer desperation.
8. It is possible to keep going, at full energy, for 60 hours with 3 and a half hours of sleep and 3 meals, if you're desperate enough.
9. The hangover from going for 60 hours with 3 and a half hours of sleep and 3 meals is unbelievable.
10. It is rather embarrassing, if you have been placed on the Dean's List seven times and won two book prizes, to be the last person in the department to submit a thesis.
11. It is even more embarrassing, if you've been avoiding your honours classmates for weeks to focus on your thesis, to be the last to submit and find out that everyone else finished days ahead of you...with 2,000 more words and thrice the number of endnotes and references to boot.
    
12. And it will be unbearably awkward to answer to your classmates, your parents, your brother, your girlfriend, your supervisor, and all other faculty members if your tardiness eventually costs you the class of honours they are all expecting you to get.
    

Having said that, there is a perverse excitement in turning in a sub-standard thesis, because I can't be sure of my class of honours till I actually find out. It's not a shit thesis, no. The argument is fresh and valid, but it's just not well-developed or sufficiently substantiated in some parts.

I guess the best way to sum up my current feelings is like this. When my girlfriend finished her thesis last year (and a good couple of weeks before her deadline at that!!), she said it felt like "giving birth". When a friend heard I'd finished mine, he too commented, "does it feel like giving birth"?

My answer: no, a much more fitting analogy in my case is that I was RAPED, couldn't decide whether or not to ABORT the baby, eventually decided to KEEP it but fell down a flight of stairs and MISCARRIED. That bloody mess I extricated from myself with a pair of forceps? Yep, that's my thesis. I hope you like it, dear markers.

Help, the Man-Machines are Coming

It's 11pm. I'm in a student area in my university. I'm into the final third of my thesis which is due on Friday. I'm cutting it very close and every hour counts; I should have spent the last one typing.

I'm going to New York for 2 weeks in May. I shouldn't change my flight dates, because that can only be a hassle. I shouldn't stay beyond the 31st, because the friend I'm staying with while I'm there will be leaving on that day. I'll have to find extra accommodation and pay for it.

I'm just a starving final-year student. I haven't landed that dream job yet. I don't have much money.

But it's just been announced:

KRAFTWERK PLAY AT THE HAMMERSTEIN BALLROOM ON 1st JUNE.



And suddenly, all the rules in my world have changed.

(more in a later post.
meanwhile, a review of Kraftwerk's last Hammerstein show. More here.)

Re-introducing The Band

I was meaning to post on a bunch of other things. And also to work on the remaining 8,000 words of my thesis. But this is too nice not to share...presenting The Tears, coming on like the Suede Mk III that never was (oh, please pardon my fanboyishness). Don't expect them to launch into the "Beautiful Ones" video from here, though...


In unrelated news: as of yesterday I've fallen foul to a highly addictive online game which allows you to inflict massive violence on members of The Faint. It's pure dumb-ass fun.