Tiger Balm Garden, August 2003

Tiger Balm Gardens, September 2010

We had a great wander through the grounds. Here are a few more pictures to show what we encountered throughout the day:

Tiger Balm Garden pixie

Three kids, one tiger

Zen rides the tiger

Zen rides the leopard.

Kai and the Monkey King

Freaky businessmen

Seashellgirl

Mermaidgirls

Crabgirl

Cabaret Voltaire

Action!

Action!

Action!

Action!

Peter and the gorilla!

Seamen!

Pandas!

Tigermobile!!

Scary monsters!

Peter and Naoko standing at the Gates of Hell

Yan Luo Wang, the chief magistrate of the Buddhist Hell.

The Buddhist Hell.

The Buddhist Hell.

The Buddhist Hell.

After that, we headed to our place and hung out all afternoon, drinking coffee, chatting, the kids played, and from 5:00 to 6:00 the boys went out to kick the soccer ball around. It was a wonderful afternoon. Brian also gave me a very good idea that I want to follow up on, thanks Brian!

Carnation, September 3rd, Home Club, Singapore tour 2010.

Saturday night I went to a barbecue held by Zen’s baseball team the Coconuts. Talking to the Japanese dads, I found out that one of them had lived in Germany and spoke German, and another guy had lived in Taiwan and could speak Chinese. He even lived in the same small city (Tainan) that Naoko and I had, so it was a night of coincidences.

Today I spent a lot of time at home, where I did a bit of work, I also had a lot of fun learning a new Black Sabbath song – “Planet Caravan.” Good stuff. Here’s a pic of me playing the guitar with my band:

live with Supertzar

Here are some interesting photos I took around town recently:

O'Bama's Irish pub in Singapore.

The world's number one vegetarian restaurant - rock 'n' roll!!

Last night Naoko and Zen and I watched The Lightning Thief, which is a recent film based on the book, published in 2005, called Percy Jackson and the Olympians Part 1: The Lightning Thief. The book is not bad – it rips off Harry Potter a fair bit, and gets its inspiration otherwise from Greek mythology, so no need to invent anything there either, but it is a fun piece of work for kids to enjoy, and Zen loves the story. I read the book to him for a while, so that he could understand the plot better, and also so that he could understand what was going on with the Greek gods, but now he loves the story as his own.

I didn’t find the film better than the book, simply because it trimmed out so much (good and bad) from the original tale. Here’s a list of the characters that the film didn’t include:

• Thalia (a late-era daughter of Zeus)
• Ares, God of War
• Clarice (a late-era daughter of Ares)
• Two of the three Furies (the film depicts one, the book introduces all three)
• Nancy Bobofit, a bratty prep school girl
• a zebra, a lion and an antelope
• a poodle
• Procrustes (a.k.a. Crusty, the waterbed salesman)
• Echidna
• Chimera
• Kronos
• Dionysus
• the Oracle
• the Fates
• … not to mention Hades’ Helm of Darkness

That’s quite a few characters. Ares and Kronos are actually central to the book’s plot, so as the books get filmed the divergence from the plot is going to become hard to keep up with, since Kronos is this series’ Voldemort, but I care more for the book than the film. Another thing that is a bit odd is that the gods are a bit more “dad-like” and “mom-like” than they are in the book, where they are just as aloof about the actions of their offspring as you’d imagine an immortal would be

Interestingly, the film does introduce two characters that the book doesn’t, namely Hydra and Persephone, the latter of which provides great comic entertainment. The film also has a lot of fun with Medusa (and her head), played by Uma Thurman, that isn’t really alluded to in the book.  And there’s also something else that is interesting – while it seems that the film doesn’t deal with Sally Jackson’s loathsome husband (Percy’s step-dad Gabe Ugliano, played by Joe Pantoliano of Matrix/Memento/Sopranos) in the movie, there’s a secret scene in the middle of the credits where they do just that).

But Zen liked it a lot. He even blogged about it today, which was good fun. And that’s what really counts.

The Lightning Thief

We went to the nearby Tomcut, where we usually go because it’s close, but there were about six people waiting and there was only one guy cutting. The place is nothing special anyway, so I decided to go to a nearby barbershop that I had seen many times when I passed by, but had never used. Turns out the place is really great! It was nearly empty, and there were two Indian gentlemen waiting to cut our hair and only one previous customer who was just finishing up. The younger gentleman cut Zen’s hair and chatted nicely with him. We got cuts, massages and some “old man” hair oil rubbed into our scalps. They would have shaved our necks, but I wasn’t interested and waived it.

Before the haircut...

...and after the haircut!

We got there and wandered around, caught a wee bit of “Car Crash Hearts” at the outdoor theatre, they were okay; then headed over to the Powerhouse stage 50 metres away to catch Duxton Plains, who were a bit better. They had a bit of the U2 Big Sound thing happening, but they weren’t great either. After their short set, we went off to see Typewriter, who were playing with Jon Auer of the Posies, back at the outdoor theatre, and they were amazing. Typewriter are one of these great Singapore bands that I’ve heard about on Myspace, but haven’t come across while in Singapore. And then I got a chance to see them for the first time on a proper stage on the riverfront, this time playing with Jon Auer oftthe Posies, who has also come to fame in recent years for playing with Big Star – one of my favourite bands! They played nice songs throughout the first part of their set, and I kept yelling for Big Star of course (since I don’t know any Typewriter or Posies songs). And so, they play beautiful, jangly songs, they play that cool Typewriter song that is on their Myspace page, and then Jon plays a beautiful solo song. Unfortunately, it’s 10:30, and a bunch of fireworks pop off in the background. Typewriter rejoin him on stage, and they launch into a great version of Big Star’s “September Gurls.” Amazing! Here’s the video:

After that, they played a Typewriter original, “That Deepest Blue”. Here’s a look at that.

A few others have posted videos of the night. Someone who was standing near where I was put up some up, as did someone who was in mid-section seating, they’re pretty good:

Flavor of the Month:

Six Feet Under:

Pop Music of the Future (this is where the fireworks start going off in the background, nearly ruining a beautiful, mellow song:

By the way, this song is by a band called “Say Hi To Your Mom.”

Details:

Afterwards, Arash and I moved another 50 metres to the Powerhouse stage to catch Rudra. We got there just in time – a huge crowd had gathered, and the band cut loose just after we arrived. They came out dressed in identical outfits – cutoff black t-shirts, black pants, black ESP guitars, and all that cool stuff. The lights were all over the place and going crazy. The band was amazing. They zoomed out into this crazy metallic grindcore vedic death metal and we all loved it. I looked around, and most of the crowd was either Singapore Malay or Singapore South Indian, not a lot of Chinese faces at all. I guess that’s just the way rock ‘n’ roll is. But it was fantastic. Check out the video for the opening song (it got cut off when my camera ran out of memory – I’ll have to do something about that…).

Someone else managed to catch my favourite part of the show on video – this was when the lead singer introduced the rest of the band:

Here’s Rudra’s video for “Hymns From The Blazing Chariot”, to give a sense of what ‘vedic metal’ is all about:

Here are a few pics:

Rudra!!!

Rudra!!!!!!

Rudra!!!!!!!!!

Arush and I stayed there for about five songs, then headed back. I was lucky, got a bus almost right away, and drifted home, listened to “Dark Side of the Moon”, finished reading Carlucci’s Edge, got off the bus, walked home, blogged.

After a slow wander from the eighth floor down to the second floor, we took the bus to North Bridge Road and the Renaissance and Excelsior Hotel basement where we shopped for a guitar for Naoko. We first found a shoe shop, where we bought Adidas cleats for Zen (he’s taking soccer as an extracurricular activity in his school) at a good price, then we picked up Naoko’s guitar at Guitar 77. It’s an electric acoustic cutaway built by Celtone, a very handsome device. We then tried to take Zen’s broken camera to some camera shops to see if they would repair them, but they all laughed at us. Camera salesmen are really the biggest assholes in retail sales, at least in Singapore. Then we headed home by bus.

When we got home, Zen’s mood disintegrated, and he sulked and fought about the three pages of homework that he needed to do. Finally, he got it done after dinner, and that night we just watched an episode of Space: 1999 (”Voyager’s Return”) and read from The Lightning Thief. I stayed up late watching the Leonard Cohen concert DVD “Live In London.”

Sunday we slept late, but Zen was up early. As difficult as Zen was on Saturday about homework, Sunday he was the opposite – he had it all done before breakfast! Naoko whipped up apple pancakes, and we had a great morning playing catch in the park and kicking the soccer ball. In the afternoon. I did a bunch of work, and listened to Leonard Cohen.

Zen ordered kids' hamburger steak, with a cool flag of Norway in it.

Ootoya is great!

Super Peggy and Ultra-Zen

Naoko and Peter and their guitars

His 'n' hers guitars.