Food delivery from miles away...

Freshly made Onde Onde by my sis who's miles and miles away from home. Yeap, these furry balls may not exactly be a feast to the eyes but I'm pretty sure they taste bloody good.

Let's fight on, papa...

I'm finally regaining this moment of clarity that's bringing me back into focus. There're actually not that many responsibilities and tasks to shoulder and to attend to right now. So i'm gonna quit hollering the sky is falling like chicken little and to focus on the responsibilities at hand.

My dad's resumed his chemo-treatment now with this extremely toxic drug infusing into his body...3 cycles in all...1st one's done with...and things don't look that good. All those side effects I've read about are slowly creeping in on him and it's a heart-wrenching sight to see him fighting at the battlefront again.

Imagine how Lance Armstrong described chemo as being such a difficult process that even the Alps seemed flat when compared to overcoming the terrible side effects.

Pa, I'm with you all the way thru these hard times. Let's kill this bastard crawling inside you man...

Sado - the way of tea!

Attended some form of Japanese tea appreciation session at Chado Urasenke Tankokai S'pore Assn at Liang Court today.



It was pretty interesting to know that there are actually so much to learn about the traditional Japanese way of life through something as simple as sipping green tea. There's supposed to be a great deal of respect exchanged between the host who serves the tea and the guest who gulps it down.



And then i met the people of the SMU Jap Cultural Club led by one of the SMU Social Anthropology professor who's a japanese. And there were these 2 chinese girls who spoke japanese like as though it is their natural language. It was impressive and I really hope I can see myself with such fluency and enunciation in a few years to come.



And here's the 5-dollars' worth of tea I got to savour...just a bitter mouthful but with lots of meaning behind every movement from holding the bowl to addressing the host and the person next to you.

Oh yeah, not to forget, kneeling on those tatami was a real pain in the ass. I gave up kneeling after 10 minutes and was sitting cross-legged thru'out the whole session...so much about poise and gracefulness..haha..

Old guy in a young man's body...

It's one of my late night blogging sessions again...and I'm here nicely resting my butt on my comfy armchair, staring at my bedside lamp and looking at all the weird stuff I have on the walls of my bedroom...movie posters, colourful postcards, kitkat boxes and vintage ad posters.. and then it struck me that I'm really into all the old things - outdated cantopop, retro music, vintage ads, old women... and constantly living the fantasy of travelling back in time to experience my mom and dad's lives and to witness the entire process of how the monochrome world had evolved into what it is today.

Lately, I heard about the upcoming musical Grease - It's still the word! and got so excited over it. I was first influenced by my sister when she was back in secondary school where there's this huge craze over That Thing You Do! and the ever-famous John Travolta's Grease. My sis bought the Grease soundtrack and after hearing it for the first time, I was immediately hooked onto it. Songs like You're The One That I Want, Grease Lightning and We Go Together have become my favour shower tunes since then. And then I remember downloading a hell lot of 80s music from the #retronite channel on IRC... and before I turned 16, I was already an avid listener of hardcore retro music.

And it's at the same time that I began listening to lots of old cantonese songs performed by Sandy Lam, Beyond and even Sam Hui. It's more of the early 90s exposure actually and I basically lived through my years of schooling listening to these old sappy and cheesy love songs. I could sing and play some of them on guitar and occasionally, I forgot how old I was and felt a little anachronistically displaced.

I also love to see old cars scooting along the busy cosmopolitan streets of Singapore, cars ranging from the super old ones with S or E prefixed license plates to those old Mercedez and Jaguar models that had undergone a little touching up. I would love to get an old beetle or something in the future but I guess it's best to be more practical at the end of the day.

When it comes to travelling, even though I love combing through the concrete forests of those huge bustling cities, I do enjoy taking a stroll down the quiet streets of an old quaint town. It's the quaintness that I particularly feel so special about cos it seems as though I'm walking the footsteps of my Dad or Granddad and there's this element of surprise and intriguity.

Into vintage ads recently as well...I managed to tear a few pages off an old diary filled with vintage posters from the worldwarII era and had them scanned, printed and stuck onto my walls. I'm not quite an art person myself honestly, but somehow I seem to be able to appreciate these vintage ads and understand why they have such high reprint values.

I feel like an old guy in a young man's body, but thank god I don't quite dress like my Dad. Both my Dad and I enjoy listening to songs by Teresa Teng & Fei Yu Qing though, so I guess there's still this old feeling lingering somewhere in me. And really, I would love to trace his footsteps back in time and see what kind of person he was, what kind of life he led, how many girlfriends he had, what secrets he kept, how he and my mom met etc etc ...

Band of brothers...

It's been 3 years since Ka Chun left Singapore. I visited him a few times in HK and somehow it feels so different to have him here , and this time with finn, the love of his life. And that's only possible cos he took the opportunity to transit in Singapore for a few days after celebrating V-day with finnie in Bali.

We went for some drinks and relived those days when we used to play football at our secondary school field. His trip was pretty short and untimely to my expectation cos I was mugging for midterms then =( But it's still nice to have him here again and that would perhaps save me a trip to go HK to catch him yeah.

I hope he gets a good starting job with a handsome pay and also wish him and finn perpetual bliss.

New book....

I just realized I still had 25 dollars worth of Kino vouchers at my disposal and the vouchers expire today...so i was really walkin aimlessly in the Kino@Bugis to see what's worth the money...

And i saw this book Lance Armstrong - My Journey Back to Lifewhich is about the cyclist's battle against cancer. Despite all the drug scandal the 7-time TourDeFrance champ's involved in, I still think he's one hell of an iron-bodied and iron-willed fighter, someone whom I admire and respect. Ha, I've been wearing the LIVESTRONG armband almost everyday ever since my Dad's diagnosed of cancer.

Had Lance's second book Every Second Counts but the book's more about how he fought to victory in one of the TDFs. So I guess it'd be interesting to read about his journey towards recovery and perhaps learn and apply some things to my current situation at home.

Let's get blue...

Perfect music for the mood...

I happened to stumble upon some old mp3 collection and was listening to some really nice guitarwork by this jazz guitar legend, Stanley Jordan. I love his Stolen Moments album. It's an absolute masterpiece. Another of his wonderous works not contained in this album is Riveira De Paradiso. I can literally get high on the music. Ha...



Stolen Moments
1991
Produced by: Stanley Jordan

Jazz trio with Stanley Jordan on guitar,
Charnett Moffett on bass and Kenwood Dennard on drums

Tracks: Stairway to Heaven, Impressions, Lady in My Life, Autumn Leaves, Stolen Moments, Return Expedition, Over The Rainbow

High energy, strong group interplay and a very enthusiastic audience, this album has lots of burnin' straight-ahead jazz. On several tracks Stanley plays two guitars at the same time (no overdubs). Stolen Moments features Stanley playing chords on one guitar with his left hand while simultaneously playing melodies on another guitar (attached to a synthesizer) with his right hand.

(RECORDED LIVE at The Blue Note, Tokyo, Japan)