Update.

So yes, there has been lots of running around and meeting up with old faces in the past month. And as always, there follows an obstacle or two in every journey. To get through mine, I had to pay with my left big toenail last week. I won't get into how I managed to do it cuz its really boring. The point is, it got lifted off my toe, and had to be removed...
I actually have a picture of the dead toenail before it got removed but my feet are ugly so I won't bother posting it.

But yeah, went to the doctors in the hopes that it's not a big deal and he started poking my toe with a fucking scalpel. Only after he was done slicing up the skin, he thinks it should be removed so THEN comes the anaesthesia, which was equally painful. Fucking asshole.
Luckily for him, my toenail healed up quickly and I was able to walk and run again in about 4days. And my travels continued...


During these boring days indoors, I remembered that I had bought some stretched canvas and paint a week back. I had bought these in the thought that I'll give out my stencil paintings as Birthday presents and Christmas presents to relatives and friends. And that was the time to get onto it. These pieces have all been given away but I took the time to take pictures before I sent them off, so here they are.

The Icononic "I'm disgusted by you" face - Agent Smith

The also-iconic counterpart - Neo (Sorta screwed up doing the face)

Neo with a rifle (probably a M4A1 Carbine) - PEW PEW

... And finally ol' Marlon Brando Himself

Oh dear...

Sure, football excites me.

But not in the same way it does for this guy.

Singapore - Day 2

I knew the day would be a fine one even before I woke up because the sunlight was seeping in through the curtains and eventually into people's foreheads. Well rested, but still rather pissed off at the sunshine, I found some relief at the fact that the breakfast was free from the hostel. As you can imagine, free breakfast from a place that's $8 a night is just coffee and toast but it was all I needed anyway.

I spent most of the morning hanging out with Tom from Ireland, who was sleeping on the other side of the dorm. He turned out to be an accountant who's traveling around the world and eventually heading over to New Zealand later next year to work for a few months. He and I got along pretty well - both of us having been raised in a country that is divided north and south, we landed on some interesting topics - we talked quite a bit about everything from Politics and Economies to Rugby. After being ripped off at a local restaurant - we both asked for a dish that was $2.50 each on the menu, but the guy said we were given the wrong order and asked us to pay $4.50 each. Fortunately for them, they did not speak hardly any English and I wasn't in the mood to argue any further in this weather - Tom was off to Thailand and I begin my own trek.

Entrance into Suntec City Mall from the MRT Station - this is steaming outdoors BTW,
don't let roof fool you. Beyond those doors is sweet, sweet air-conditioning!!!

Since I was planning to go on a guided tour of the other parts of the city, I chose Suntec City Mall as my first destination and decided to walk aimlessly inside and around, which I did. After almost an hour of not-pretending-to-be-lost, I finally gave in and looked at the building directory. After scrutinising the layout, I then realised that I was doing circles in only ONE of the FIVE towers that make up the complex... Later on in the trip, I found out that the buildings were constructed so that each of the 5 towers represent a finger of the left hand, with one 'thumb' tower being shorter than the rest. Supposedly, according to Chinese Geomancy, the fountain in the 'palm' area of the complex is supposed to symbolise "Wealth flowing into one's hand", guess its a good thing.

By 5:30PM, I was getting rather hungry from all that walking so I hesitantly walked out of Toys R'us and checked out the restaurants on the other side. Japanese, Hong Kong, Turkish, Steamboat... Bingo, Korean restaurant. And guess what they had on the menu.

냉면 Naeng-myun - Possibly the food that I like the most in the world, and this dish happened to be a specialty of this place. Cold noodles with pickled radish and cucumbers. Very chewy noodles, sweet yet vinegary goodness. Not to mention, the ice cold soup was a godsend in the weather.

Around the time I was halfway through the bowl, the Korean owner came up to me and started conversation since I was the only customer there. He was a man around 50 He was curious as to why I was having dinner so early and explained to me that restaurants don't get much customers until at least 8PM - apparently Southeast Asians (or any countries with a hot climate) follow a somewhat delayed daily timetable compared to the rest of the world. Once I literally cleaned up the bowl, the gentleman kindly pointed out places to check out and where to grab cheap, decent food on my tourist map. After saying thanks, I headed outside where I was met by drizzly skies...

Hello to my almost-non-existant readers

It would seem that I have been keeping you folks in the dark for a while. Even though this blog isn't as popular with 200k visitors, I still feel obligated to my irregular little online diary. Anyway first of all, as I probably have mentioned before, I planned to extend my 6hr stopover on my way to Korea and stay 3 nights at pleasant old Singapura. There were many concerns, mine and others alike, that 3 days were more than enough to look around the little island state. This was somewhat true, as I did end up having a fair amount of free time in between schedules. Even still, however, in the end I did not manage to do all the things that I had originally set my mind and budget on.


Day 1 - Wednesday

Unaware of the time difference, I gathered that the flight to Sinapore would only be from 11:50AM till 5:25PM but that was a miscalculation. The unexpected 2hrs + 1hr from daylight savings seem to go more slowly than normal. As Von warned me beforehand, I suffocated from the humidity the moment I stepped out the aircraft and into the jet bridge. Fellow passengers, who seemed to be quite happy with the climate, just stood watching me gasping in shock for a moment or two at the airport gate.

After freshening up, I headed straight to the Tourist Information corner and grabbed practically every brouchers and maps, proceeded to the guided tour companies corners and basically robbed each of their pamphlets respectively. Then came the

"Oh shit!"

moment. I had already booked the hostel but had not written down nor paid much attention to directions to the place. Luckily, the name of the hostel was rather short and unconventional so that it was quite easy to remember : 98SG. Yeah I know it sounds like some Stargate brigade but I am still clueless as to why they named it like that but it was easy to find nonetheless. From then on its was pretty easy for me as I was fortunate enough to be familiar with asian public transport, and I was away and laughing while a couple of Aussies were having the time of their life in front of the ticket vending machine.

Rain was what met me at my destination. And not just ordinary rain, flashfloodomgitstheendoftheworld heavy rain. Trucking thru the streets in my school-shoes and jeans with wet & wild ponytail, I think I would have looked like some crazy ex-commando in the eyes of others.

Then after asking around frantically, and scaring a few locals in the process, I finally got to the bloody hostel... Completely soaked and wasted, I find out that I am to pay a $50 deposit on check in. I was booked in to a 6bed dorm ($8 a night for 3 nights) and I was not previously uninformed of the amount of the deposit I was supposed to pay. Finding this unreasonable, I left my passport with them instead of my deposit. By the way, as I found out, apparently this is a conventional method amongst youth hostels - I thought of it as them safekeeping my passport so it was all good.

The common area of the hostel, with some fellow stayers - this was taken on my last day there, unfortunately the camera battery went flat before I could take a picture of the dorm.

Anyway, the room itself was not much bigger than a standard bedroom, but it still, just, barely managed to accomodate 3 two-storey bunks and a decent sized locker. And after randomly throwing my stuff on to my bed (mind you, this was potentially hazardous as my allocated bed was the top bunk) I zombie-walked into the showers straight away.

Feeling a little revived, I zoomed down to the Seven-Eleven down the street and helped myself to a blatantly overfilled, extra large apple flavoured slurpie for the first time in years. With frozen happiness in one hand, and a can of eclipse on the other, I retreated back to the hostel to study the travel brouchers and set plans for tomorrow...

거의 무슨 나라가 망하는 기분

내가 지금 너한테 쫄아서 우는 줄 아냐?

내가 지금 슬퍼서 우는 줄 아나?

어떻게 매일 보는 바로 앞에 있는 난 병신 취급하면서

언제부터 생전 처음 보는 또라이들은 다 믿을 만 한 놈이 됐냐?

우리 선조들이 나라를 빼앗겼을 때 쪽발이들이 무서워서 울었다냐?

내가 네 앞에서 주먹도 못 쥐는 게 두려워서 그렇다고 생각하나?

내가 인간으로서의 그 최소한 만큼의 도리는 있기에 내가 병신인 척 못이긴 척 했지만

I’ve witnessed you my whole life and you’re one fucking piece of work

남이라면 “병신” 하고 나중에 뒤땅까면 속이라도 후련하지

자식이라면 혼내주게 되더라도 이해까진 해줄 수 있겠지

주먹을 부르는 주문과도 같은 너의 효과적인 지껄임 속에

나는 모순 말고는 도무지 찾을 수가 없었어

네 광대뼈를 갈기려는 욕구를 어떻게 참았는지도 참 신기해

더 웃긴 건 이게 나 혼자만의 생각이 아니라는 거…

Black Clouds and Silver Linings - Dream Theater (2009)

And after a brief break from posting I have returned with a proper post rather than another tantrum.

Some of you may remember a post on last October about news of Dream Theater working on a new album. The highly anticipated album, which is their second record with Roadrunner, was released on June 23 and debuted at #6 on the Billboard 200. It consists of 6 songs, 5 of which are based on actual experiences of difficulties and life-threatening events of the lyricists; drummer Mike Portnoy and guitarist John Petrucci. As the album’s name suggests, all these seemingly hopeless and near-fatal incidents (the “Black Clouds”) mentioned in the songs are followed by hope and relief (the“Silver Linings”).

1."A Nightmare to Remember" 16:10

When I first put this album opener on, I almost couldn’t believe what I was listening to was a Dream Theater album. Because as soon as the main theme came roaring out, the combination of organ and choir sound produced by the keyboard gave a very EPIC sound, similar to that of the band Nightwish. The song is about John Petrucci’s experience of surviving a near fatal car crash during his childhood. Starting from 4:57, the song slows down to a dreamy mood and goes into telling the story at the ER where Petrucci is given painkillers. Somewhere in this part, if you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of the vitals monitor beeping with the beat - I just love details like this. The song is overall very sick and rockin’ until 11:19, where Mike Portnoy goes into a chant that is reminiscent of 90’s pop rap which was a bit too much for me.

2."A Rite of Passage" 8:35

As the only song in the album that is not based on the members personal experiences, it delves into a theme of freemasonry. The video edited version of this song was released couple of months ahead of the actual album’s release. Quite frankly, it left with me with a concern that the rest of the album might be of around this song’s standard because I believed that the song lacked depth, fluidity and there was nothing special about it. Fortunately, contrary to my first impression, the rest of the album was great.

3."Wither" 5:25

I can’t comment a lot about this song as I have only listened to it twice, but I don’t recall it was as memorable as the other tracks on the album. The lyrics deal with John Petrucci’s fear of writer’s block. I personally interpreted this could be a hint that maybe Petrucci is starting to run out of ideas to write about.

4."The Shattered Fortress” 12:49

X. "Restraint"

XI. "Receive"

XII. "Responsible"

The long awaited final part of the Alcoholic Anonymous Twelve Step Suite is here! The tunes from previous chapters of the saga are reprised for the most part of the song and concluded with newly introduced theme. Equipped with epic solos and genuine, heavy riffs, I declare this song as the best in this album and a worthy finish to the suite. I still get chills every time I listen to this.

5."The Best of Times" 13:07

This particular song by Portnoy is a tribute to his father who died of cancer during the making of this album. The song had a feeling of looking back at the good times compared to a rather depressed and dejected atmosphere depicted in A Change of Seasons (1995), which was inspired by the death of his mother.

6."The Count of Tuscany" 19:16

For the past month, this song has my absolute favourite. A classic Dream Theater epic from start to finish, it talks about an actual encounter John Petrucci had in Tuscany several years ago. Apparently, the brother of the aforementioned Count was the original inspiration for the character of Hannibal Lector and the song talks about Petrucci fearing for his life during his stay in the Count’s estate. There are several golden moments in this song, but out of them all, the chorus is just fucking amazing in this song. I just can’t get enough of the layered vocal harmonies – the kind of stuff queen used to do a lot. I’m actually listening to that part of the song as I write this review. Best. Shit. Ever.

In times like these where dumb crackwhores like Lady Gaga are allowed to roam the stage, DT’s musical brilliance shines more than ever. However, it does come with their one recurring weakness. Lyrics. There were discussions about the extent of straightforwardness in the words and the ambiguity that metaphors provide. In particular, someone compared the lyrics to The Count of Tuscany to a Scooby-doo plot. But really, this is just a matter purely of personal taste. There are plenty of big-name bands out there that put out songs that are not even worth criticising. If you ask me, this is another solid album and the most diverse and exploratory work by DT in almost a decade.

Fail

People say that way too much.

It's starting to bore me.
It also tells me that a lot of other people fail at a lot of things and that it's nothing out of the ordinary, therefore boring.

On the other hand, if I heard someone say they want to do something crazy (ie: spend lots of money, murder, freefalling, adbuction, insulting pedestrians, throwing food) I'd understand their frustration better. Some may wonder why I didn't include suicide in there. In spite of the fact that suicide is the strongest way to express such frustration, it's boring because it is so common nowdays.

You guys are all lame.

Screw you guys, I'm going home.