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Signs that you are too old for a Nine Inch Nails concert:

1. You get 2 pre-sale tickets, but when you ask around, no one in your social circle wants to go because Nine Inch Nails is too hardcore.

2. You go to the concert, take your place in the moshpit and observe that everybody is at least 5 years younger than you (I actually took a census).

3. When Trent Reznor jumps off the stage and into WHERE YOU ARE STANDING, your first thought upon reaching out to him is to push him back out so he can finish his concert and you can still get your money’s worth.

4. You do not jump around after the concert boasting that you touched Trent Reznor’s armpit.

5. 3 songs into the concert, you come to the realization that your place in the moshpit is not worth risking your life over.

6. You naively think that in a moshpit at a rock concert where the frontman routinely sings such things as “God is dead and no one cares” or “I’d rather die than give you control”, people will be considerate enough to not push you. (I must interject that I was on the receiving end of an angry “Oi, don’t push!” while I was making my way out of the pit, so I I think my integrity as a rock fan can still be salvaged.)

7. You go to a concert without any bags to hold your belongings in, buy $80 worth of tour merchandise and tie your purchases around your body while you’re in the moshpit, in the vain hope that your purchases will follow you out when you leave.

8. (Bonus sign, thanks to Joe Augustin) You go to a Nine Inch Nails concert and tweet about how “the band’s use of minor chords, suspended 4ths and atonal instrumentation applied to a strong backbeat is hypnotically nice.”

I was, and still am, a huge fan of Nine Inch Nails. I have all their albums, singles, and more recently, downloads. I have kept track of Trent Reznor’s career as a musician and producer and have heard all his work, side projects and guest production work included. I know the band is running their final tour, and their Singapore gig is a once-in-a-lifetime event and wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And of course, I didn’t.

But I think I’m at a physical age now where the moshpit should be avoided, and the intensity of the crowd at a very heavy metal band can be hazardous to your physical an mental wellbeing. It doesn’t help when you’re mostly surrounded by people who feel the same way, and even less when you come home to a family that indirectly implies that you have no business acting like a 20-year-old.

Nine Inch Nails has Waved Goodbye tonight after 20 years of touring. Maybe I should too.

Right after the Mr Big concert. (This time, I’m sitting in Terence’s van).

Exciting weekend, wasn’t it?

With bated breath I waited for the AWARE EGM to happen, what with all the controversies and venue-changes and my dollhouse-punting feminist eldest sister circulating emails about what injustices had transpired. Then Saturday came and went. I sent Liza to Suntec in the evening for a drinking session with one of her old friends, conveniently forgetting THAT was where a couple thousand angry women were gathered (though I suspect some were there to try out some new red t-shirts they were given at church the weekend before, or they were aunties that saw a long queue and thought, “eh, got free gift?”).

The day after that, I woke up to the voice of a newscaster on the radio saying the new guard had been ousted and a new exco consisting of old guard members had been instated. While buying lunch, I decided to purchase a couple of newspapers detailing the events that unfolded. Can you imagine, The Sunday Times was already almost all sold out in the Jalan Kayu area? I only managed to get a copy because its headline page was torn and the provision shop owner, in a valiant yet half-hearted attempt to salvage the remains of that copy’s dignity, slapped on a large crumpled clear tape on the tear hoping no one would notice (and he still charged me full price for it, the bastard).

I won’t go further into it, since the entire island has talked the event to shreds over the last 48 hours. What I do wonder is, where will the news punters go from here? I am definitely curious about the fates and futures of certain individuals and organisations that were behind/involved in/indiscriminately pulled into the fracas.

Josie Lau: What’s gonna happen to her? The new now-ex President of AWARE should have known that first step into the AWARE ex-co was going to be fraught with problems when her full-time employers started publicly complaining about her unannounced extra-curricular activities. For those of you still wondering why DBS was being so harsh on this woman when other DBS board members were happily frolicking around with their side projects outside of the Bank, I beseech you to please wake up, put on your glasses and read between the lines behind DBS’s statement. Very likely DBS, knowing the full extent of Ms Lau’s character, took the first step in denouncing her actions so appropriate action could be taken should she fail in her endeavour at AWARE. We shall see (cue snide evil laughter here).

Dr Thio Su Mien: Boy, is she going to lose business. Here we have a legal practitioner unable to talk her way out of a situation she created herself (and she did admit to creating this whole thing herself, didn’t she?). “I am a … very charmed… feminist mentor… on page 73.” Aiyoh, auntie (sorry, should be Lokler Auntie). People give you accolade, you dun rub in people’s face mah. Very chao kuan you know. That aside, it would be very interesting to know what becomes of her, seeing as this little debacle may permanently discredit her standing as a high-standing member of society. “Lokler ah? So?”

The Thio family: To a large extent, the local blogdom, and the media both contributed in bringing in an entire family into the fray of this saga. It was weird enough that Josie Lau got to where she was in the AWARE ex-co, then bad enough that her auntie-in-law came forward admitting to having orchestrated the new ex-co’s coming together. Then happy happy the husband also kena as an “I’m so angry, I’m going to write a letter” homo-basher, then Dr Thio’s daughter NMP Thio Li-Ann also got involved, and there are not-so-discrete whispers in the background of how the family’s now-blown-wide-open agenda is linked to the that previous rainbow-love saga involving Section 377A of the Penal Code. This whole thing has just made their entire family look like fish bait for queer sharks (and I use the term “sharks” in the nicest possible way).

Section 377A: Might the family’s involvement in the AWARE saga bring about a relook at the treatment of our rather dormant section of that age-old Penal Code? Many parallels can be drawn from AWARE’s EGM no-confidence voting, compared and contrasted to the much larger, yet somewhat quieter fight for and against the keeping of the Section in our law books back in 2007. I’m not trying to stir up AWARE’s involvement in the gay rights issue again, but the Dr Thio’s introducing her anti-homosexuality into the agenda of the new ex-exco does bring back some fond memories, doesn’t it?

The Church of Our Saviour: Oooh, this one’s a very unfortunate victim, and another fine example of what getting religion tied up in secular activities, whether on purpose or by accident, will get you. I won’t go so far as to say they might get dissolved, though. I believe the faith of the Church’s members will very likely keep that from happening. But in the eyes of the public, the unforeseen errors of its members’ actions have reflected the underlying agendas that build the foundations of its pulpit. As much as this is a case of its people doing injustice to its cause, we ALL know the line between church-goers and the church itself is a very very fine blurry line indeed.

DBS: Oh yes, the people’s bank. A few weeks ago, a column on Today sought to question the motives of DBS as it openly rebuked Ms Lau for her seeking office as President of AWARE. While initially both my wife and I didn’t particularly appreciate the tone in which the article was written, editor-at-large Conrad Raj seems to have hit the nail right on the head when he ended his piece with the question, “Unless there are other factors at play here?” I have also mentioned earlier how they might have had the foresight to voice their opinion about this whole Josie Lau debacle before the whole debacle even began. The recent turn of events against Ms Lau’s favour may have created a ripple effect involving the fate of her career, but as of right now, even I haven’t a clue how her company is going to handle this. Ooh, a cliffhanger! Who’da thunk it?

The war against alternative lifestyles on an inadequate platform has now turned into a fight of survival in maintaining reputations after a flurry of mistakes by seemingly respectable individuals. I have to admit, though I understand the nobility of this fight of making AWARE aware, now that the old guard is back home, I am a lot more interested in the high entertainment value of what’s about to happen to the ones that have been caught and kicked outside with their skirts down and are now walking around outside, forgetting their skirts are still inside.

We begin our journey into Bangkok thinking ourselves as prepared as we would ever be as seasoned travleres through this route. Because my wife was pregnant, I checked in via web through the airline website to get bulkhead seats so she would have enough legroom to stretch out and Xander wouldn’t complain too much on the flight (via excessive movement which tends to make my wife feel queasy).

What I didn’t take into account was the fact that though we had enough room in front of us, we didn’t have enough room at the sides. Bad enough economy class seats ensure only the most economical use of space (our seats fit our butts with no room to spare to even remove the in-flight entertainment remote from our seats while sitting down); we also got two bonus XX-large passengers as our seat partners (we were sandwiched in between on a four-seat row). My wife had the better end of our seat selection; the man next to her couldn’t have been more than 100 kilograms. I, however, managed to score Jabba the Hutt on my side, a middle-aged European juggernaut the size of a 2-seater Smartcar, but not nearly half as stylish.

My wife suspected Jabba had popped a sleeping pill, as he had conked out almost immediately after sitting down, which caused a few problems for me. For one, he was overflowing onto my seat arm, where my meal tray was stored. I managed to dig it out after a while, but then while putting it back, i had to push hard against my very large friend’s kidney to lift the flap up, then push even harder to fold the try back into the arm, which would have been embarrassing or even offensive had the guy woken up.

Yep. He didn’t wake up. Not a stir.

The other issue, was, of course, elbow space. Our quietly-snoring-away human mini-planet had managed to defy the physics of human anatomy by fitting into an economy seat, but by doing so, had forced all his flubber up above the confined space between his armrests, thus encroaching his newly created super-sized lovehandles beyond the confines of the economy-class seat that he paid for. So I had nowhere else to go but into the arms of my pregnant beloved, which isn’t wholly a bad thing if you can live with a perpetual day-long cramp on your left side from leaning away from someone’s overtly massive, saturated butter rosti-induced love handles for 2 hours.

***

Our flight back was slightly more bearable. This time round, I managed to get bulkhead seats on the right side, which meant no neighbours to our left and right. Just a mostly empty aisle on my side (other than the food and drink trolley traipsing up and down a couple of times), and my wife’s window seat (sitting next to the sky; how much more space can one ask for?)

Again, what we didn’t account for this time round, was the neighbours behind us. Two Singaporean ladies (I suspect mother and daughter, though both looked like they were in the throes of menopause) were seated behind us, and halfway through the flight, my wife pointed out to me a naked foot resting quite comfortably on her armrest. She says, “Every trip, without fail, I have to get my elbow smeared into a naked foot during a flight. Without fail!”

I offered to chide the woman on her behalf, but being the nice person she is (hmm), she decided not to pursue the matter, and cleverly shoved her pillow in between the offending foot and her elbow so ne’er the twain shall meet.

On the upside, the foot did look quite well pedicured.

Sure it’s economy class. you probably don’t expect service fit for a king in economy class (the wonderfully shit service in our particular airline is worthy of a post of its own), but to experience bad passengers is a whole new can of worms.

His student left 2 hours ago.

Question 23: When your driving instructor falls asleep while you’re on the wheel during your 4th practical driving lesson, it means:

a) he’s not a good instructor.

b) you’re quite a good driver.

c) all the motorists on Singapore roads are good drivers.

d) no motorists on Singapore roads that are good drivers.

It is, of course a trick question, meant to analyse a student driver’s state of mind more than his ability to recognise road regulations.

If you pick answer A, you’re a typical Singaporean who likes to complain and no doubt will call up the driving school to tell on the poor guy.

If you pick answer B, you’re too damn full of yourself.

If you pick answer C, you’re dangerously optimistic about life and should never be granted a driving license.

If you pick answer D, you may have deduced that given the quality of instruction as has prompted the creation of this question, one can safely assume there can be no such thing as a good driver.

FYI, this happened to me just this morning. I reserve my right to withhold the details of the lesson, only because it turned out to be quite a peaceful drive which I wouldn’t mind having more often.

The other day, my wife and I went to Chinatown for dinner and a little walk. She had wanted to get some more inspiration for our wedding and I just wanted to get some dinner. So we went down to the good old hawker centre just off Pagoda Street, and we realised a little trend in Chinese small business trading.

We chose a table right in front of a dessert stall, presumably run by a rotund little middle-aged lady dressed like a silverfish with a weight problem. She had thinning, light brown hair tied into a ponytail, silver spectacles encrusted on the sides with glimmering plastic diamonds, silver tights (oh my god), a similarly glimmering plastic diamond bracelet, and yet another glimmering plastic diamond encrusted clam-shell phone hanging around her neck.

As we sat down, Tinkerbell Upsized came up to us and asked if we wanted to have any dessert. Looking at her stall signboard, and getting vaguely interested in the peanut paste they had, I told her we would order later, to which she replied, “All right, but order from us, here OK?”, all territorial-like.

Later, when I came back from buying my food, my wife, who had ordered a Coke form this woman’s stall through a stall worker, told me Big Fat Silver Bullet came up to her and questioned her over her drink, saying, “We have Coke here too!” When my wife annoyingly clarified this Coke was actually from this woman’s stall, the woman then tried to make amends by making small talk with her, something I have learned (and am still learning) over the years never to do with my wife.

Come on, gimme a break, Madam Swarovski with the big silver thighs. I actually wanted that peanut paste until I heard your story. You’re wearing so much glittering plastic diamonds, one would wonder how anyone could see the signboard with all that light in their eyes. For that matter, you really shouldn’t dress like your Silver Jubilee White Christmas in June; one would think you earn more than enough to warrant anyone’s patronage.

But such is life in Chinatown. I reflected to my wife this may well be the business culture here, because Blingbutt isn’t the only person we came across that was so greedy for customers to the point of making ridiculous requirements such as “you sit here, you must buy from me”. All along Pagoda Street, tailors, Chinese fan-sellers, tourist shop salespeople, and dare I say even the customers in many instances, are all less-than-subtle when it comes to attracting customers, offering deals, forcing sales and showing their displeasure when things do not go their way. It’s a small business, for crying out loud! Passer-by traffic is so high in Chinatown on a Sunday afternoon, just get over it and head on to the next sale already!

In any aspect of life, even when distracted with the smaller details, one should never forget the bigger picture. And whilst keeping sight of the bigger picture, don’t ever forget to manage the details well either. Oh yeah, and don’t lay crap on the people you serve too.

Anyone catch that episode of Incredible Tales last night that ripped off the Exorcist script, Singaporean style? My wife and I particularly liked the part where the possessed woman look sat this man accusingly and snaps at him in her most tryingly menacing tone, “Don’ch touch me!” Never fails to make my wife roll her eyes, and never fails to make me wonder how come this woman (whom I have noticed on many bit-part TV appearances) still cannot shake off her Lian-ness after all this time?

Well, even after that spine-tingling, goosebump-inducing, oh-my-god-get-some-decent-acting-advice 3-second performance, I still managed to catch a bit of last night’s episode… enough to realise what it’s all about, and really wonder what the scriptwriter was thinking. The exorcism scene is a perfectly flawed rendition of the actual Exorcist scene. How does anyone of sound mind and body take the phrase “I am Legion, we are many” and translate it to “We are legion, there are many of us, too many to count”? I imagine the pained expression of the actress’s face to be the pain of actually having to say that out loud whilst trying to look convincing.

Oh, what I would do to put my hand in the pool of scripts in Mediacorp and change the way these stories are written…

more cat pictures

Iz addiktud to LOLcatz.

http://icanhascheezburger.com

I find this story quite fitting of this blog.

So I was at my 3rd sister’s house having a family dinner in celebration of my dad’s birthday (and Father’s Day for that matter). It was drawing near the end of the night, when my 2nd sister lost her phone for some reason.

The entire family started a nationwide search for this missing phone (which incidentally 2nd Sis didn’t really like anyway but refused to admit it in public), beginning with looking in every bag, under every chair, inside every container, under every bed blanket, etc. in the house. We then proceeded to look around the swimming pool, in the carpark, in the car that was in the car park, calling multiple times and not getting connected (which led us to think the phone was stolen and switched off) before we decided to give up looking.

Having had a rather filling steamboat dinner, some of which contained half-cooked meat, I decided to visit my 3rd sis’ ivory throne before moving on home for the night. (At this point you will probably have guessed where I am going with this, but just carry on reading for the heck of it.) After about 2 or 3 efforts of concentration, I pushed down the flush button, and subsequently experienced a moment of every visiting house guest’s nightmare.

The toilet won’t flush. Not only that, it was choking; the water was rising up, with a floater threatening to jump at me.

While some of the water did go down eventually (thankfully bringing down one of my efforts of concentration down with it), I still had to contend with a floater and a wad of tissue stuck at the mouth of the bidet. Waiting a minute for the water to refill, I tried again. This time the floater managed to squeeze through the wad of tissue (?) and while the water rose up a little again, I saw something shiny peeping out from the wad of tissue.

That’s when I realised that was not so much a wad of tissue as it was a square of tissue with a mobile phone hiding behind it.

My first instinct was to pick up the phone, which I did with my left hand. Yep, reached right into the throat of my beloved seat of contemplation without a second thought… yet. It was later that I was informed my 2nd Sis had visited this common loo with the mobile phone in her back pocket in the late afternoon, and I had only found it after 9pm, during which time, my sister had cleared her bowels, the kids and cleared their bladders, and I had gloriously added to the fracas that short-circuited the mobile phone with my digested bits of the day. I endeavor to thoroughly disinfect my left hand with chlorine over the next 3 days.

As advised by my eldest sister (so we have established I have a total of 3 sisters only), I will end this with a philosophical thought.

The younger brother will always be picking up his older sister’s shit. But not without giving her some shit of his own first.

• … you get up to go to the toilet to take a shit, but halfway to the toilet, you lose the feeling?
• … you wake up at 9.30pm and realise you’re frigging late for work, then you rush through brushing your teeth, taking your shower (cold water too, can’t wait for the water heater to start), dressing up, grab all your stuff, look at the clock and realise it’s a Sunday?
• … you woke up thinking you had to work, but realising you didn’t have to work, and now you can’t go back to sleep?
• … you know you have to go to work, but you just can’t wake up?
• … you wake up at 8.30pm, giving you just enough time between leaving home and taking the commute to your workplace, and just as you leave the house, you realise your 3 hamsters have escaped from their cage?
• … you are walking towards your bus stop on your way to work, and see the bus coming and start running, then suddenly realise as the bus passes you and stops a lot further than expected that they moved the bus stop about 500 metres down the road for upgrading works, thus rendering you unable to catch the bus anyway no matter how hard you’re gonna try?

These have been my mornings for the past few months, particularly after moving into the new apartment. I am sure this list will be added to, as I grow to learn more and more that I am not a morning person.

This will get me on Technorati for sure…

Over the past couple of days, one question I’ve been looking forward to answering has been “How did your photoshoot go?” Thus far, I’ve answered it twice already, and both times to it’s desired effect. Here’s an example (in this case, involving my eldest sister and me) of what would transpire between a hapless victim and me when this conversation kicks off…

Susan: “So how was your photoshoot?”
Me: “Not bad. My bridal gown was very nice.”
Susan: (obligingly) “Heheheh…”

Pause.

Me: “Why does everyone think I’m joking when I say that?”
Susan: (obligingly) “Heheheh…” (followed by a slow realisation of what I just said, and subsequent widening of eyes and dropping of jaw)

I do so enjoy the element of surprise.

I’m gonna spare the rest of you that conversation (I’ve had enough fun with my siblings, best man, and his fiancee). Ladies and gentlemen, call me Winnie.

This is seriously going to be hard to top.

Update:
A few hours after this post was first put up, I put it in private mode for the discretion of my more conservative readers (Donutboy had trouble eating his dinner after seeing Winnie). It’s back up, though, because I always believe, if you’re gonna post something up on a blog, you might as well keep everything open to scrutiny and leave the “Keep this post private” checkbox for emergency use only (fine $2000 for misuse).

It’s interesting to see the reactions of people I know looking at that photo. When I first thought to do this, I thought, hey, I think this will make everyone laugh. I realise on hindsight I should have taken the cue from that family of 7 or 8, who were in the studio choosing their own bridal gowns when they saw me walk out in my plus-size chiffon-shouldered bridal gown, and promptly left the studio in a hurry.

I am quite surprised that this is really no laughing matter in some people’s eyes. Every 5 years or so I am awakened a little more by how closed a society we live in and how carefully we have to tread in our own social circles. It’s also one of the main reasons why I have so few friends in the first place.

To a friend and slightly distant neighbour who had considered doing the same thing, this thing takes more guts than you think.