Yesterday was a good day – I hung out, did some chores, ate good food that Naoko prepared for me before she went to Japan, and I did some work (less nice). At 9:00 I went over to my friend Prakash’s place to check out his guitars. I’ve known Prakash for many years, only recently found out that he lives across the street from me. He’s got tons of cool guitars and recording stuff, and billions of CDs, really amazing stuff! I listened to some of his new stuff, and then we went off to Ten Years After pub in Bukit Timah Shopping Centre to meet another friend… same story, I’ve known him for many years, only recently found out that he lived close by. Neither one of these dudes was familiar with Ten Years After (or many other local businesses, I later found out), so I showed them the place. Unfortunately, once I got to Ten Years After I noticed that something had changed – there was the Music and Emotion bassist Eddie, but no Susanna on vocals, and the other fellow who played the keyboard console and programmes and did the guitar parts was also gone. Now Eddie is playing a stratocaster, and another fellow who plays a left-handed electric-acoustic was backing him up. They had everything programmed into a laptop and were playing some of the old songs that they used to do. The new guy had a good singing voice and was a decent guitarist, but all of the soul was gone, it was a bit sad. I talked to Eddie for a while, he’s just as erratic as ever. He said “so which song are you singing? What stage name should I call you up with?” So I asked him to pull up Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid,” I sang that without a lyric sheet, I think I did a pretty good job of it, although I forgot the second-last verse (Make a joke and I will cry and you will laugh and I will sigh/ Happiness I cannot feel and love to me is so unreal). That was good fun and pumped some mood into the place. So we chatted, drank beer, and headed home. Went home and watched Jack and the Witch, and then went to sleep.
Sunday I went for a haircut and did some work, played guitar, watched a lot of YouTube clips. I need to do something productive this weekend, it’s already nearly 4:00 PM!
Near me on the main street there are some four-storey apartment buildings that have shops on the ground floor. For about six months now they’ve gated off a certain area in front of the shops, where they initially did a big of digging around but the project has been idle for a long time. Yesterday, they brought out a massive backhoe to dig around, and blocked off the entire sidewalk to get the work done. I feel sorry for the businesses on the ground floor that are now blocked from view, I wonder if they lose business as a result of callous building committees that don’t care a fig about long delays. It used to be a nice neighbourhood…
Singapore's dodgiest construction techniques, Part 1
All this just to build an elevator. Is it worth it?
Singapore's dodgiest construction techniques, Part 2
Speaking of construction, check out what they’re doing in front of Beauty World – the newbuy tadalafil 20mg, due to open in 2020!
Beauty World MRT station construction site, Upper Bukit Timah, Part 1
Beauty World MRT station construction site, Upper Bukit Timah, Part 2
Beauty World MRT station construction site, Upper Bukit Timah, Part 3
I spotted this in the garbage yesterday. Who would throw away such a LOVELY painting?!?!
Sad clowns
I found some groovy YouTube clips today that I want to share:
Singapore band Zero Sequence, with drummer Brandon Khoo and violinist Joan Chew of UnXpected. Good music.
Scenes of Singapore, from local singer Shirlyn Tan, also of UnXpected, from her release of original songs “Newfound Jealousy”. Great stuff.
My friend Prakash’s band, Morpheus Dream.
A young Frank Zappa (22 years old, and pre-mustache) on the Steve Allen show:
Frank Zappa doing “Muffin Man”. I don’t like Zappa’s music that much (I like the guy a lot, but his music is a bit too all-over-the-place for me), but here he’s got a deep Black Sabbath thing on and he really rocks out. I’m amazed – he’s a total rock god!!
This is the weirdest Bollywood bit I’ve ever seen – SuperIndian and SpiderIndian, bad CG, terrible dance steps, and the un-sexiest costume I’ve ever seen.
Completely bizarre Pepsi commercial, starring Alisan Porter (The “Curly Sue” girl) and Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero (Vincent Pastore) from the Sopranos doing what he does best.
Tantilizingly awful commercial. It’s like a horror movie trailer!