$85 + $38 = Not too fucking bad

Because I'm the coolest and most indie person in the world, I receive spam from Mosaic telling me about upcoming concerts but most of the time, it's a jazz band that I don't care about. I'm sure they are very talented performers and masters of entertaining a live audience but they're just not my cup of MTV-and-Napster-fueled cup of tea.



So imagine my surprise when they sent me a mail about the Scottish darling of the indie music scene Camera Obscura playing in Singapore and I will only have to pay $38. Sweet as fuck. Look at how gloomy they (except for Specky McBurns there) look, they have to be from the UK. Not sure about the sun though, maybe they shot the photo somewhere else, in Spain or something. This is their most well-known song, Lloyd I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken.

While looking through Sistic for details, I found out that another band that I listen to, Ash, will be coming to Singapore as well. I first heard of them on MTV when I was younger and only recently, I decided to re-listen to all their songs again and yeah, they're still good.



This must be a pretty recent photo because I remember them looking much younger and less...sullen. They used to have a female guitarist (Charlotte Hatterly) but she left a few years ago and still, Sistic claims that this (the pic above) is "the original lineup". Nitpick nitpick nitpick. They had a few hits back in the day but this is my favourite.

Neither of these bands are my absolute favourites, the kind I'd kill to watch live (Still waiting for Against Me!) but two good bands in one month? Sounds pretty good to me.

Mat Thambi Ah bu neh neh Minah Cheena Ah Tiongs

This is something I happened to be thinking about this morning when I just woke up. It's a funny timing to even be thinking, I know, but it was probably influenced by the article about Malays being Singapore's least favourite child in The Sunday Times. The content itself wasn't ground-breaking as it's something we all know about but the fact that it got through the SPH editors (SPH, SINGAPORE PRESS HOLDINGS, STATE-OWNED MEDIA) was pretty surprising, to say the least.

Not trying to go all seventeen-year-old anti-government angst on you but I'm sure everyone knows about Singapore's press freedom (not a lot). Even though I'm sure the original draft was ten times longer, it still ended up as a memorable read.


Ching Chong Chinaman

Memorable to the extent that I thought about a related topic when I woke up this morning. How many of you, be honest, think that there are personality traits that apply to an entire race? Like, you know, smelly Indians and lazy Malays?

If you still think that way, have you honestly thought about it before? Have you gone, "Oh, that wasn't a fair sample size of that particular race. It would be an unfair generalisation if I think that they're all cheap bastards." Can't blame you if you haven't because it's so much less of a headache to be able to group them under one category than having to deal with the idea that they're individuals as much as yourself.


Allahu Ackbar

Couple this with how confirmation bias works, you might even start to see how being racist is not the racist's fault. For example, if you hear about how Jews are cheap, money-loving bastards, you will start seeing this trait in every single thing the Jews around you do. While ignoring the fact that your own parents do it as well.


Nong dong fong bong bong

Also, remember how much the environment shapes you. It's not going to help Rizal's case much if he grows up in a rough neighbourhood hanging out with older boys whose idea of fun consists of playing football in the void deck (This is fun, don't hate). Because of his friends drop out after secondary school for a job or to pursue non-academic interests, it's more likely than not that Rizal will be influenced in thinking that studies aren't really that important.


Love invadin' other countries, dude. Also, my life pans out exactly like how they do on the OC.

How everything started in the first place, with Malay guys deciding that they needn't study, I can't give a firm answer now because very simply, I am unable to pinpoint the reasons. Maybe I can think of it tomorrow morning but meanwhile, I hope you have thought about what I just wrote before. Even if you haven't done so before, do give it a thought.

Hard Candy (A.K.A. "Don't worry, she was legal when she filmed it")

I'm talking about the 2005 movie, not Madonna's latest album which shares the same name. It's kind of odd, actually, since Madonna's been looking neither solid nor delicious nowadays.



The real genius of this film lies in its ability to make me know how it feels like to be a pedophile. For me, Hard Candy was nice to look at but hard to really get into. Other than looking pretty, I couldn't find any incentive to concentrate on the second half of the film because Hayley (Ellen "Yes, she really was legal" Page) just seemed too unbelievable as a character. When she's not panting suggestively, everything that comes out of her mouth is witty or smart, or both. I know it's just a film and not a piece of reality (Thank God, because pedophilia is evil and bad and God will hate you) but it gets really irritating because no one talks like that.

Yeah, she's a little demented and crazy, hence she must some kind of sexy self-righteous sexy child genius who's sexy allowed to speak that way but from what I've read, her character in Juno behaves the same way as well. I'll reserve my comments until I finally watch it so I can come out here and talk about how Ellen Page plays the same character in every film with a smarmy glint in my eye.

Another fault I found with the film is the stylishness of it. The director, David Slade, has done lots of music videos and it shows here; the quick cuts, the shakicam and I'm pretty sure you can play any generic alternative rock song over some of the scenes and it'll match up pretty nicely. That combined with the references to indie music ("GOLDFRAPP GOLDFRAPP FAP FAP FAP") made me feel slightly uncomfortable, like when you're hanging out with some people you just met. They wear t-shirts with random words silkscreened ("Goose.") and they go all American accents and name-dropping. It's a feeling like "That's fake as shit. What the fuck?"

Maybe I'm being a little harsh here because not every minute of the film plays out like a shiny and loud music video but one thing I really liked about the film is the colours and composition.









See, I told you the film looks good. And tight. That was unnecessary, I know.

Yes, pretty shots, pretty colours, pretty compositions until this one scene.



I fucking hate her. When the message "No animals were harmed in the making of this film" came up in the credits, it was actually in reference to the film crew making sure that Sandra Oh had her daily meals of hay and a minimum of four hours of galloping time. What the fuck, America? Is she part of some kind of genius ploy to get your entire continent to hate Asians?

To end this post..."if you somehow need a reason to clear your cache and history......you should, the police won't have the time to listen to your protests.

Old friends

I met up with a bunch of childhood playmates from 1996 - 1999 for supper just now and it's apparent that we don't have much in common anymore. It's always a little sad when this happens; guys you used to spend so many idle afternoons with are just casual acquaintances now and we probably won't recognise each other on the streets.

However, there were still laughs to be had, especially when we started talking about we were like in primary school. Apparently, this happened when we were playing void deck football and my friend got a ball kicked full-forced into his stomach by another friend.

Victim: Groan groan (Genuine pain by the way)

Perpetrator: Shit, I'm so sorry, how bad does it hurt?"

Victim: Groan groan I told you not to kick the ball so hard. (Seriously in pain, I have to emphasise this)

Perpetrator: Hey I kicked the ball from pretty far away, alright?

Me: (Runs into the argument) PRECISELY, THAT'S WHY IT HURTS BLABLA SOME FLAWED PHYSICS THEORY BLABLA FUCKING HELL THE FURTHER IT IS THE MORE IT HURTS.

It's nice to see that I was a dick even before puberty. Shows that assholes are born, not moulded.