Tru Playas: Portable music thru the ears.

Rummaging thru my cupboard, i discover my collection of old walkmans, i look at the ipods on my table and i see the line running right thru them. most of us might know the walkman kicked of portable music and in 2005 apple seems to have that bit of the market sewn up. whatever.


Here we go!


On the left!

That my friends , ( if i am right ) is the first walkman ever released. My dad came back from work erm, maybe 20 years ago and bought us each one ( i know lucky bugger ). I thank my mum for not ever throwing it away. made completely of metal, it had some really odd features. becuase it was a shrunked cassette deck, it was still seen to be not a completely private audio experience. so! it had 2 head phone jacks ( and i don't mean to scare you but the distance between the 2 jacks are the same as those found on double pin aircraft head phones) sorry, so it has 2 head phone jacks so you and your friend could listen at the same time BUTTTT. It had a HOTLINE button! hot line? hot line?? what the hell is hot line i hear you ask. So imagine this you and your friend are listening to the Pointer Sisters. Half way thru " Jump" you really got to let your friend hear you out, you want to tell him that :" jump is the best song ever written, but you both have the huge orange head phones on, and really you are not about to reach over and yank them off.. so... You pick up the walkman, Hit the HOTLINE button and speak into the inbuilt mike. your voice comes over the music! both of you can talk to each other!...MC!
Other silly fetures. independent volume control? as in Left/right ear not headphone 1 and 2 ...and a tone switch. Play is labeled " listen "
2005, i put in 2 AA batts and the " operation' lamp lights up but motors are screwed...




2nd on the left.

This was ipod 1988. this was the golden age of the walkman, they were beautifully put together and this one had an amazing finish, deep glossy lusture... `this baby had it all, barely larger than a cassette, it had DBB ( dynamic bass bosst i assume, mid and max settings !) 3 tape positions ( till now i think this is a con ) Dolby NR, wired remote and.. Auto Reverse. Now some of you might be too young to understand this, but auto reverse was the fu$%ing holy grail of cassette player nirvana. you could listen to rattle and hum Non stop! no silly flipping of the tape over manually, it did all that with a crisp ' tchnk". music.. " all day all day.... watchhhhh them awl phol down.. all day ... ..... Unfortunatly this also means that bono ( or neil tennant ) kept on singing if you accidentally switched the bloody thing on. This meant a flat battery by the time you were on the bus home. and auto reverse kept on breaking down on these ones.







but see how sony slid in the later years, the two walkmans above i owned from the early 90's to the mid 90's. loveless pieces of shit. i dunno why i still have them.

then something called the disc man appeared and to me, they all never worked, too big, i mean who carries a disc? and the idea of moving around with a spinning disc in an enclosure never seemed right. so i think i've thrown away all my discmans..

2002 to 5

ipod you know what they are so, yes, much better...



Dancer!

The lobster and the crab

In this comprehensive thesis on shell fish, i attempt to analyse in 7 well written paragraphs why we pay more for lobster than , crab or prawns. It makes no sense to think that a lobster is inherently more expensive than a crab, afterall both are ridiculious looking bottom dwellers that feed on the shit that real swimming fish pass out.

So let;s analyse the lobster from an aesthetic point. here we have a creatre that is not exactly enderaing ( puppy ) or regal ( eagle ), and yet we find the appearance of a lobster to be a high point on the dinner table, a poached lobster will out shine any roasted chunk of meat. A lobster is symmetrical, a lobseter is also sleek with it;s pincers outstretched, it meets the feelers ( that we all love to pull at chinese restaurants) where the head is, and on to cute little inky black eyes. the lobster is a baroque dream come true with its great number of folds and complex layering. A lobster is fussy and exotic, but most of all.. a lobster is rear wheel drive. it;s general appearace suggests speed, or a potential for a certain type of explosive sprung accleration. A lobster looks in herently right because of vauge associations of power that comes from the rear. ( cheeta, BMW, farts ) . And as dull conservative humans, we like that..

And the beguiling attractiveness of the lobster extends itself to past the point the poor bugger has met it's maker in a quickly warming pot. The japanese love to do a lobster salad that is all victorian fetish. the creature is topped and tailed and has its head cleaned, up turned and presented on it back. With its tail in a similar position at the far end of the platter, the chunks of lobster flesh are laid out in between on a fussy graphic of layered tomatos and sequenced cucumbers. But as if we would find it odd that we might be shocked to actually see the nakedness of the shelled meat, the japanese then smother the whole lot is a smooth fruity salad cream concotion. the qualities of the lobster needs to be carried through from poach to paunch. the dish obeys the lobster.

As a counterpoint let us briefly examine the crab.

oh dear, what a mess, it;s squat, it's square, it's got eight legs so it is always confused, and it is crossed eyed like one of your distant uncles. to make matters worse it moves like it has got ginormous forearms that it does not want and the poor bastard walks side ways. In summary the crab looks like it has got no friends.

Go to a restaurant and order crab, and see how it arrives. pulverised to bits, quatered and tossed in stuff, the crab arrives at the table looking distinvly uncrab like, stewing in a virtual pool of muck.

a lobster needs to stay alive and pretty in water, crabs are left like dirty rocks in a basket.

So these are the reasons why lobsters costs more than crabs. Got it?

The next time you are out for a meal at the food court, get ahead in life and screw the wan tan mee, and have a lobster instead, your elegance and symmetry will thank you for it.


this is a poor homage to roland barthes.

Eco Blog : Recycle my stuff, it's still funny on the 10th read!

Dear all who have confronted me about the lack of new posts. I have been busy desigining cabinets, but..... please feel free to re-read my stuff while i dream up other bits of crap to write.

Love

Me

A little gift : Bendingcorners.com

If you, like me, are a pervert big on the jazz flute, then go to bendingcorners.com and get some excellent podcasts. The warm fronts show ( scroll down lah ) is an excellent way to pop your jazz flute cherry!

Floot!

The Pity Party : A reason to be happy!

Now for those of you who know me, well you do know that i am a moany bastard of the highest order. Yes i love to complain and winge and moan, and i do it even though i know it pisses people off. as a result, i have many faithful friends, ( hah caught you there! )

So now that i am broke, it only exacerbates the moaning and complaining. Recently , a well meaning friend tried to cheer me up and good bless his soul but he only succeeded in annoying me even more. He said that we should get together for a "pity party."

A Pity Party? Good lord what does that mean? i mean i kind of understood that, but jesus was that my karma? What sort of statment was that?

But get real, we all do feel kind of sorry for ourselves, and if you don't, i suggest to stay in your faded blue jeans and smile like a moron at every passing letter box.

So: actually! What a great idea! the pity party is the one to have when ever things go balls up! And for most of us, that means every blinking waking minute godammit.

Some annoying people call it " experience" or " learning". Wrong, A screw up is exactly what it is. but now with a reason to celebrate.

This will change your life. ( like green tea )

Are you still wearing faded blue jeans?

If you are then please stop it. Thank You.

YONEX : You heard it here first. Now follow me to Mustafa.

Before i lose pole position, i, an arbiter of taste and deep, deep style must declare to you " in my wake" fashionistas, that YONEX is the brand to be seen in. Hah! I caught you lot off guard in your vintage Adidas, and urks... Pumas.. hah! Pumas!

YONEX, long the brand of sweaty loser athelets, the brand of choice of people who play a sport that involves something called a shuttle cock, is in the here and now. NOW! You will struggle hard to find much merchandise at the moment, but when you do, the reward will be sweet. Be blown away by the vileness of airbrush effect polo tops, be blinded by the overlay of freeform graphics, hot splattering and the plan/ section and elevations of primitave shapes ( sphere, torus, cylinder, cone ..etc ) The aftermath of the graphic collison is nothing that even deeply ironic european low code high fashion lables can muster.

It happend to Fred Perry, It will happen to Yonex. Watch as i drag the brand kicking and screaming out of the Singapore Badminton Hall and into the queues at Velvet. Watch as they tie up with Hussein Chalayan. or Giordano.

YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST.

Flambé!~

The Rules of my Blog

Dear All

thanks so much for reading my blog. I must say that it has been perhaps the most significant thing i have done the last few ,months because it has confirmed that i can get points across in english but that my punctuation and spelling are below par. Also , as i am perpetually broke, this keeps me at home and off the streets. I started this blog with some basic rules, of which i think i have successfully broken nearly all of them.

1. The blog should not be a dreary flow of consciousness :, like,..... err, today i walked down the street wif my Bf and fell into a vat of shit. we dunno how to get out so we muakz lorrrr... see not interesting at all.

2. The blog should not be low brow obvious irony driven drivel against any political party because there are many many self righteous right/left wing twats doing that who are really left/ right wing.

3. The blog should not try to be a source of information where the idiot writing it gets all his facts wrong.


4, The Blog should not be used as evidence of taste. Like this one blog i went to today where the moron had listed down " what's on my ipod". I mean Who in Gods great name gives a flying F. I mean COLDPLAY! F8&k me, COLDPLAY! James Blunt! Rubbish ! the load of them.

So, as you can see i am in a bit of a jam at the moment as i am now left with no room to move. But keep the faith! i will sort this out somehow!

Love

Me

5 and a half Reasons for doing Judo ( a martial art that bruce lee did not do )

This is a post for a specific audience. Apologies to everyone who might not find this totally completely funny.

1. You wanted to do a martial art and guessed that judo was karate.

2. You wanted to wear that white thing martial arts people wear with the belt thing which you thought look so heroic in street figher and you walked into the shop, looked at the first rack of white-thing-outfits that you saw, it said "Judo" and that was it. fate sealed.

3. You wanted to do Kendo but could not afford the outfit, and the sticks could not fit into your perodua kelisa.

4. You have a thing for feet. And the short trousers look is just like so now and so cute.

5. You are a secret dancer, but can't find an outlet for your expression.

6. You do it as a secret test of your.........

Uniquely Singapore : Bad service? Nahhh... Good Service that just falls way short of the mark

You can't make this shit up...

let me tell you a little story.

I moved back to Singapore after 6 years in London one of the first things I had to do was shop for a mobile phone, had to get connected, stay connected .. you know that sort of thing. Now, instead of heading to one of the bigger retailers staffed by the usual gang of bright eyed but usually incredibly thick yewts, i decided to keep it at the grassroots level and try a neighbourhood purveyor of mobile tech. A brief walk around a local hood' and i finally located a suitable mobile phone shop, It met all the criteria :

1. On the second floor by the public lavatories
2. Exclusively lit by fluorescent tubes
3. Staffed by the most bored looking people in the world.

I walked in, chose a phone and paid for it, did all the registration bits, etc, job done, and really it could have just ended there and then.

About to turn to walk out.

" so can i intelest you in some s-sessories?"

OOOoooooooooooohhhh ... he piqued my interest, Mmmmmmm s-sessories you say...

"Yes. actually i would like a car charger please "

Laconically, ( let's give the dear boy a name... marcus ) Marcus looks across at a tiny rack with boxes and packets hanging off of it and studies it carefully..."car charger..car charger"... he mutters to himself... and after about 30 seconds ( a long time mind you , if you think About it ) he declares with some confidence.. "



" Don't have "



the fact that both the rack and the boxes bore the brand NOKIA, and the fact that i had , yes indeed purchased a Panasonic .. was lost on him.. but never mind... i retreat, to the entrance..

" wait wait" punches speaker phone on, dials number, phone rings

and rings

and rings

( the phone rang for as long as phones were allowed to ring )

Dead tone

2 minutes of my life down the toilet as we both stare wordlessly at the phone.



" Wait wait"

Punches speaker phone on, dials, what i presume was a different number and..

ring

Oh! someone picks up, Sharp exchange in Hokkien, some Hemming and hawing, urms and ahs, furrowed brow, the works ...and then punches the speaker phone off and...



" NO stock"




I retreat to the entrance ( yes i was retreating, i did not turn around to leave , i was walking backwards )

"You want COSMO?"

Cosmo? what was that? Was this finally it? The rapture ? Space ? Do I want Cosmo?

Hell! i do.. but.

" What is cosmo ?" i ask meekly..

" COSMo is give you one s-tra betterley, des charger and reder case...."

Now i am normally not one for 3rd party products, but i felt we had reached some sort of tipping point. Dear marcus was indeed trying his level best to sell me s-ssories and i felt compelled to help him see his mission through...

" Only egg-ty egg lollar, if you by seplately, is more than hurrened."

"Yes i want cosmo" I flatly declare

Marcus proceeds to rummage in the lower reaches of the little display case ... shuffle shuffle, flip flip..


" Don't Have..:


AH.... yes i see....

At the detection of my slightly sharp intake of breath , Marcus:

" Squeen Plotecter"?
" Yes please"
" Also don't have"

I thanked marcus and sadly bid him farewell.

As i left i could see that he too was sad to see me leave.


So really , the man was doing his job, he tried his best, he was executing the set pieces perfectly.

Dear marcus i thank you for serving me that day, not only were you earnest, you also provided me with a great story that is now finally written down, and for those among you who know this story. Yes it is finally down for posterity, and Let's celebrate!

Yay!

P.S Thanks to S. Paine for drawing the parallels with the Monty Python Cheese shop skit.

Thanks for the positive feedback. And now...

It hits you in the face.

After the mental rush of writing about the key things on my mind ( green, tea ,blue, shit, running, french cars, old calculators ) i was dragging my feet to the train station, asking myself.. how was i going to keep this blogging up? what Was there left to report on in this world? How was i going to keep the fans happy and yet wanting more.?!

At this point i entered the ( sorry i am still walking to the train station at this point, stay with me ) slipstream of a bunch of , well what seemed to be a bunch of tourists i think... from ( not the occident, the.... anyone..anyone? ... you there at the back ..) when it hit me in the face... I will have to write about body odour. And this is serious. Don't let the badly punctuated nature of this blog fool you into thinking that I don't have some sort of underlying message. Ahem .. so

Let's make somethings about Body Odour clear :

The following don't make up for B. O.

1. A good heart
2. A nice personality
3. Talent
4. Looks ( good )
5. Anything actually

B O is a problem in our climate and yes it does happen. it happens to me, him, her and yes you . So let me present a very objective and non-bitchy guide to dealing with the problem. But i will do this via 2 specific groups of individuals.

1. Those who don't know that they smell.
2. Those who like to be smelly.

Yes these people do exist.

THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW THEY ARE SMELLY

To this group I say, please consider larger noses. Or if you are not too sure, adopt a new walk that includes taking 5 rapid steps backwards when you feel a tail wind. To these people may I introduce to you the following pieces of equipment.

1. The shower

Showering involves the washing of one's body with a constant stream of water and a soap of some sort. You can find out more about the actual chemistry of this on the internet, but safe to say it helps in controlling the odour problem. Please give it a try and note that ... The shower is not an oversized toilet bowl and it is not a way to take a secret piss. It is also not true that your stomach grows fatter if you shower after dinner, Well not anymore. this problem only affected humans born in and around the 2nd world war. The development of Far - infrared technology has rendered this problem obsolete. Do the shower twice a day and unlike most medical prescriptions, stay on a constant course of it and don't stop. ever.

2. The washing machine

the washing machine is a large device smaller than the largest of its type and is often avalilable in a white paint finish but can often be found with a round door on the front that does not usually have a television where the more senile among you might think that it eats clothes. The ultimate point of this device is to wet and twist your clothes with a substance called detergent. This white powder has the healing power of Jesus and slays evil smells, but like humans and sin, the redemption is short lived and original odour returns at first sweat. Why do we do this, when it would be more convenient to tear your garments away, gnash teeth and start afresh with new robes? Well simply because unlike some of camels that have passed through the eyes of needles, most of our cups do not runneth over. ie: it is expensive.

3. Deodorant

How to put it. De- odourant, Un- odourant, Dis- odourant, Ok?

Ask for it taxonomically from your chemist/ mama stall and start from the top of the family tree, just buy anyone. In these early days you can afford to not be choosy because we all have to start somewhere. Follow, the instructions on the can/ bottle and yes, apply it to your body, don't just pop it down the front of your trousers you weirdo.


Now for the next lot:


PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO BE SMELLY

Screw you bunch. I promised to be objective and non-bitchy, so screw you lot and stay away from me.

Exonerate!

Tres Xpress : Renault Fuego Turbo ( GTX actually )

2005. I'm walking through fort canning park and lo and behold a gold Renault fuego Turbo.



A distant cousin had one a long time ago.

When I was a kid, all i longed to see were nice cars, but it was the 80's and the roads in singapore were not looking too interesting. But then there was the Renault Fuego.

I can't recall how i first heard of it. And for years it was the... urm," Rare-nolt Few-goh"? ..Ah! I didn't care! It was just bloody exotic, It had arrived from another planet... i mean i had seen the odd ferrari around and there was always magnum PI to fill in the gaps... But this Oh la la, it was sleeque, dynamique, fantastique, baton, beret, all frenchy with 2 doors and no boot! whoooo... but most of all it had something called a turbo, which was to me, a magic hyperspace switch that made it the fastest car is the world. And it was RARE to boot. Magnum did not have one and neither did michael Knight.

No patience for long posts. So one day my cousin came over, and well.. the car was crap. I was 11. I was not, objectively, supposed to know that it was crap and slow . I mean... it was Pfftsssssssss.....zzzzzzzzzzz....tzchu tzchu chu...fpstttt....zzzzz....rarrrrrrarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr........tiewwwwwwwwwww........ooo gah ooogah... I wanted this car to blow my f*&$ing head off. i was prepared for a worm hole jump. all i got was the worm bit. I wanted to go back to tell my dad to ditch the opel and get this spaceship. but i didn't. and that was pretty bad for an 11 year old who spent all his time in class drawing cars.

Years later I still recall with some dread, my cousion trying to convince me to stare at the turbo boost gague ( still a cool thing ) and wait till it hit the far end of the dial . All hell was supposed to have broken loose. hmmmm.. the needle seemed to be moving faster than the car unfortunately.

2005 ( again ) . I was kind of happy to see it. In the fading evening light. It still looked ... kind of special in a slightly mental way. It was 2005 and cars on the road were hardly as crap as this plie before me. And in a very strange way. I kind of resent that.




P.S. the car is badged both " GTX 2Litres" and " Turbo" at the front. There was no 2 Litre GTX Turbo variant. So this owner is frontin'. But given that it is a right pile, I'll let him go, but jesus 3 spoke wheels? and who spells out "2- L I T R E S" . Well the French i suppose...

The Casio fx-5508 : it's scientific!

The fx-5508. I discovered one sitting on a desk in some office and proceeded to take pictures of it. It helped me screw up my 'O' levels and most other calculations i tried to perform back in the day... but wow Look at it! .... design wise, it is dead on the money for some reason. i think

Top Tips for People who run/jog out of guilt

Okay this is not one of those self deprecating posts loaded with irony. But it could be. You see i am a stout and sometimes ungainly person. But I also think that i am not stout or ungainly. at all. so when i have a vague feeling of something that has to do with fitness and taking charge of my health, i do what men instinctively do. I go running.

Now people express concern when i tell them that i run... if not the conversation usually lapses into momentary silence, a slight clearing of the throat, i sometimes detect a glazing over of the eyes of the person that i am speaking to...okay granted. So some qualifications:

1. I don't know what technically counts as running, so i think i jog. and jogging, in my eyes does not concern itself with anything as vulgar as speed. look at the graphic of the word - jog-. see "j" is a man with flat feet, "o" means fat/stout/round and "g" feels kinda bouncy no? So if you run then you might mean that you jog... which is like bouncing along. So if you bounce, then ... that's str8 hip-hop! Job done!

2. Music- you need music , so if you slap your sweaty self into a passing rollerblader or dawdling person, then you can shrug it off and just.. you know blame the music.

3. Running exposes your gait. if you walk funny then you probably look totally stupid running. So run at night. and in the shadows.

4. But don't get scared of your shadow! The One thing that most inexperienced runners have to deal with is the sudden-ness of their animated shadow that is cast on the path as they pass a street lamp. Yes you do look like that! Boowah!

5. Stop if you feel tired. You must trust yourself.

6. Try to select something nice to run in. Gone are the days where you can wear an old tee shirt and run in some bad bad shorts. better cut running tops and shorts are out on sale. if you look daft running , bad running clothes only compound the problem irretrievably. Bouncing + nice clothes... Distracted! Bouncing + bad outfit.... Dissected! Oh . but skimpy running shorts are very subjective... and if you have found the advice here useful so far then you really are not a candidate for skimpy running shorts.

7. And finally - Run with your eyes half closed. 2 main benefits: 1. you can pretend that people don't see you... in the shadows.. at night. 2. Somehow the cutting down of your sensory inputs means that you can focus on the fact that your legs are doing the bouncing thing, and for a few minutes, it feels like you are not running at all, kind of like an out of body experience.... until you slam straight into a dog... which nearly happened on my first attempt.

So there you have it.... a guide to running for some people.

Exodus!

Sort Your Shit Out®

Take it from me. you want to drink at least 3 cups of green tea a day to Sort your shit out®.

Some of you might find this needlessly tasteless, or well.... you and your shit part company amicably, but dammit after suffering from those explosive situations that leave the inner surface of the bowl coated in such an expansive manner... the occasions where flushing only serves to highlight the dead zones where the water don't reach.... the ones where you go: "how the hell did my shit get there and what sort of angle would i need to be.. "you get the idea.

SO. look the remedy is real. kettle, cup, water, and some decent quality green tea bags and , after 2 weeks... you'll be sorted. this is practical real world advice.

Or am i the only one facing this problem?

4 Social Evenings I want to do

1. Avril Lavigne & Whiskey Appreciation Night

Who can say no! Good single malts mixed with the best straight forward power pop.

2. New Car Equipment Specification Enthusiasts Evening ( Stock parts only please )

If you rattle off equipment and spec wishlists on cars that don't exist to help you get to sleep Then this is the gathering for you!

3. USB Cables and Dongles Breakfast

Show and tell your collection of USB dongles and cables with like minded individuals over some scrambled eggs and coffee. Mac & PC compatible, but you already knew that.

4. Blue in the face! Dinner

The group votes to hear a song from Blue on repeat. The last man standing is admired. And gets extra dessert.