29/8/2002
(Note: nonsensical ramblings ahead)

I give up. Feet back on solid earth. It's never gonna happen. And Betty came again last night. Can't seem to get her to stay away. This one took a lot quicker than the last one huh, Martin?

27/8/2002
Caetano Veloso's rendition of Tomas Mendez Sosa's Cucurrucucu Paloma is one of the most beautiful songs that I've heard in a long time.

And go see the new Pedro Almodovar film, Hable Con Ella.

24/8/2002
Alright, haven't been updating for ages, but nothing much has been happening lately.

Until this past week that is.

Right, first and foremost, I might actually be appearing in a music video for ubiquitous techno celebrity Sasha! How'd it happen? No auditions, no being spotted hanging out in hip clubs (which is highly unlikely, given my lack of social life) or anything else that you might expect. I was doing my laundry. Yes, I was merely washing my clothes. So there I was putting my clothes into the machine when these guys came in with cameras and tripods. I thought they must be filming some kinda documentary or something. What else could you possibly film in a laundrette? Anyway, I got kinda curious, so I asked the guy with the camera what they were filming for. He said they were making a music video. I thought, hey, well cool. Who's it for? They asked if I knew who Sasha was. I don't like his music, but yeah I know who he is. The crew asked us to go about doing our laundry and be natural, so we did. Well, of course, there was the odd hand-in-pocket, legs-crossed, hand-on-mouth posing - couldn't help it.

At one point I was the only one left in the place. The cameraman approached me and asked if he could film just me alone. I was like, yeah, sure dude! I was asked to stand next to the dryer, peer into it as if I'm checking on my clothes, stood up, sat down, did a bit of embarrassing pseudo-acting and the coup de grâce was me looking straight into the camera and - wait for it - winking at it. Surreal. So the next time you see a Sasha video on TV look out for a skinny Chinese male with messy hair, trying very hard to look real smug and winking at the camera. All while doing his laundry. Then again, I probably won't make it into the final cut. Yeah, and they'd replace me with a felt puppet or something.

Then, on Thursday the 22nd of August 2002 (a date worth remembering for the rest of my life, read on), I was at Great Russell Street to attend a Neil Gaiman reading for his latest book Coraline. The event was supposed to start at 7 pm, but I was there at 6, so I wandered around, took some pics of the British Museum and then made my way back. Suddenly, there was this guy walking towards me wearing a black BAPE shirt with black jeans, pulling his light-traveller suitcase behind him. At first glance, I thought, this guy looks a lot like DJ Shadow! I didn't dare to just go up and say, "Lookit! Shadow! You da man! You rawk! Me, you, big, big, BIG, fan!" So I tailed him round the street corner for a while when he turned into a newsagent. I followed him in and I thought, hey, no harm in asking, right?

So I went up to him and said, "Umm, Shadow, right?" "Well, yeah, hey there." At which point my palms started sweating and I lost all self-respect and went, "Ohmigawd! Shadow! Can't believe it's you man!" The next thing I said was utterly embarrassing - I went, "How come you're alone? I woulda thought you would be travelling with your whole posse or something!" Here's the one person who single-handedly changed my entire perspective on music and whose debut album has been dubbed one of the most important records of the 20th century and who probably came to London seeking some privacy by travelling alone, and out pops an uber-geeky fanboy with stalker tendencies asking, "Hey dude, where's your posse?!" I could have said, "Hey there, how's your mum?" and it wouldn't have got any worse.

Anyway, what'd you expect from a starstruck fan meeting his idol? I took out my camera and started snapping away (thank goodness I had it fully charged for the Neil Gaiman event the night before) like a mad paparazzo. I calmed down a bit and managed to restore enough normal brain activity to ask him how long he was gonna be in London, is he performing tonight, is the Quannum crew with him and some other stuff. Either he was a bit shy or he was freaked out by Uber-Geeky Fanboy© (probably the latter) but he was very laid back all the time.

By this time the newsagent was obviously curious about who this guy was and he asked me, "Is he a famous person"? I said, "Well, yeah, to me at least!" I mean, honestly, you wouldn't expect a newsagent to know who Shadow is now, would you? He started relating his story about Ian Brown being in his store the week before, and Shadow was like, "Yeah, I know him, I worked with him." To which the newsagent replied, "Oh, you must be just as famous then!"

I was still taking pics of Josh when it struck me that I should really have an autograph of him on something. Initially I just grabbed Wallpaper off the shelf (it was glossy and shimmering in the fluorescent light; I took it as a sign) but Shadow was like, "You sure you want that? Looks kinda expensive ..." In the end we settled on Q, and Shadow started flipping the pages looking for a page to sign on. He picked a page with a picture of Jimi Hendrix and I handed him my marker which I initially brought along for the book signing. In the words of Weebl & Bob, "How handy!" Indeed. Now that I look at the autographed page again, there's actually a review of the reissue of Eugene McDaniels' Headless Heroes Of The Apocalypse on the same page, which is one of the most oft-sampled records in hip-hop history and one of my favourite albums ever. Probably sampled by Shadow himself too. Man, this is real good luck you know? GOOD BLOODY LUCK I TELL YOU!!!

So in the end, I took one last pic of me and him for the road, wished him good luck, and off he went, out of the store. Aside from saying thanks, the last thing he said to me was, "Don't forget to pay for the magazines!" So there. The most memorable 15 minutes of my entire life so far. Phew! You da man Shadow! You da man!!!

And of course, there was the Neil Gaiman reading of Coraline. It was the first time I attended a book reading and I enjoyed it. And being able to see the creator of the Sandman series in person, it's like, a double-whammy of starstruck-ness all within a day. Another weird coincidence was actually meeting Michelle at the event! She was sitting beside me the whole time and oddly enough, we were queuing behind one another for the book signing session too. This lady came along and asked us to put our names down on a piece of paper to make it easier for Neil to dedicate his autograph to (which, come to think of it, I didn't ask Shadow for - bummer!). When I asked her to write 'Benny' down, the girl in front of me was like, "You're Benny?" Well, you can guess what happened next. Still oddly enough, when I asked Michelle to guess who I just met, she jokingly replied, "Who, DJ Shadow?" 'Nuff said.

Gosh, I love London.

(P.S. - Check out the pics of Shadow under the 'stuff' section.)

7/8/2002
I've been ill for the past couple of days. Cough, running nose, the whole shebang. In a very odd way, I actually like being ill. You must think I'm a real nutter, huh? Hang on, let me try and explain ... how should I put it ... I like that woozy feeling when I have a cold, when you're not quite awake and every thing around you seems to move at half its normal frame rate (behold my video editing jargon!). Every noise that you hear is muted and music seems to reach both your ears at different times (or maybe it's just the stereo effect on Maxwell's 'Ascension'). Perhaps this is as close as it can get to the feeling of being high on drugs or something. Never taken any, so I wouldn't know. I didn't take any medication for my flu either.

It's raining again today, pretty heavily too. There have been brilliant flashes of lightning and loud reverberations of thunder. Which is quite rare in London, because London rain is usually dull, lazy and cold. I can see all these people in the buses passing outside my room, misting up the bus windows. Occasionally there'll be a random clear blotch on the windows, clearly having been made by someone's hand as well as the random, nonsensical doodling, some of which were evidently made for people like me who like looking at people in buses (because they are mirror-imaged).

All this coupled with being ill reminds me a lot about being back at my first home in Malaysia, in Cheras, as well as being in primary school during the second half of the academic year when we start school in the afternoon and end in the evening. I get the flu very easily when the weather switches rapidly from hot to cold and back again, typical of Malaysian weather. And that's what's been happening in London for the past few days. I remember how it was a lot more fun getting on the bus with your clothes and shoes all soaked, getting extra junk food for the trip back home because you know the bus ride's gonna take longer than usual (heavy rain equals flooding on roads equals massive gridlocks). And when you're nine years old you don't care if you get sick from the rain. You go to school either way, you never skip a single class. Because you actually want to go to school. Unlike a lot of things that you have to do nowadays because you have to.

Anyway, excuse me now, I have to go blow my nose.