29/11/2002
What would Billie Holiday's boyfriend have anything to do with my site?

I'm worried now.

23/11/2002
Note to self: always be humble enough to admit defeat, especially when faced with the challenge of having to finish two bowls of noodles in one meal. So me, Michelle and Alec were at this little Malaysian Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. My first impression of the place the moment I stepped in was how authentic it was. I don't mean authentic in terms of an interior with, like, dragon carvings on pillars, lots of cultural knickknacks and an omnipresent stream of traditional Chinese music, which, if you pay enough attention to it, is probably just one track put on eternal repeat. All of which constitutes as inauthentic actually. Keeping it real in a Malaysian Chinese restaurant means greasy floors, horrible tile colour schemes, stools with enough space to accommodate half a buttock and, of course, good ol' chicken rice and noodles.

My initial order consisted of soy bean milk and a plate of Ipoh hor fun. I was expecting the drink to be heavily diluted but to my surprise it wasn't, which put my hopes up for some really good hor fun to go with it. But as the saying goes, you can't always have your radish cake and eat it. The noodles were a bit bland, and the sauce was too flat to supplement the taste. I'm not saying they were completely devoid of flavour but back in the 'hood, Ipoh hor fun tastes a lot more exciting. Then again, this was Leicester Square.

Determined to make up for that, I decided to order another bowl of noodles. This time round I had some pan mein. The noodles came with a generous amount of minced pork, vegetables, anchovies, mushrooms and this certain type of crunchy Chinese fungi. I thought to myself, now this was more like it! Another 10 aunthenticity points. Nevertheless my joy was short-lived when I realised I was actually quite full. Under normal circumstances, this would never happen. Only after struggling through half the bowl did I realise that it was probably due to the cheesecake and two cappuccinos I had in Starbucks right before we came to the restaurant.

Anyway, I left feeling a bit disappointed with my less than optimum performance and was awfully bloated until I got home. I'll be back though. Cos there's always a next time. There always is.

(Cue evil laughter, fade to black, roll credits. And a cup of Eno.)

12/11/2002
Should I or should I not be happy that people are getting to my site while searching for 'pics of guy doing laundry'?

Meanwhile, Mamoru Oshii's Avalon failed to live up to expectations. The film was overly-stylised, the acting was god-awful (perhaps not to Polish standards, I dunno) and the blurred-realities-in-virtual-environments story was anything but new. The opening scenes were promising, with impressive CG sequences such as the circling camera view of explosions freezing midway but these were few and far between. And wait till you see the excruciatingly lengthy and boring 'final showdown' sequence towards the end of the film. Terrible. All this, from the same man who brought you the excellent Ghost In The Shell. I already had a bad impression from the moment the film began; the virtual-reality game that the film revolves around is referred to as very 'addicive' (sic). Wait for the next Matrix instead.

10/11/2002
Taken from a Yahoo! news article on Malaysian politicians not paying their speeding fines:

"Sometimes we are in a hurry to attend functions because people will get angry if we are late. So we end up exceeding the speed limit."

You have to love Malaysia.

6/11/2002
Everyone go see Morvern Callar. It was less of a movie for me but more like an extended, feature length music video. I love the fact that Samantha Morton's character is given a Walkman and a tape full of stuff from the likes of Can, Boards Of Canada and Aphex Twin - a bloody good excuse to have lots of music in the film. In most films, music serves as an offscreen element, a mere accompaniment, with the single purpose of adding something extra to the mood and atmosphere. But in Morvern Callar it's transformed into an integral, if not the integral part of the film, so much so that I feel 'Music' should have been listed as part of the cast at the end of the film. The photography style was equally brilliant; I like how everything looks zoomed-in and overfills the camera. The only qualm I have is not understanding Kathleen McDermott's character half the time when she speaks because of her heavy Scottish accent.

Moving on, an otherwise normal day at Borders today was ruined when stupid German DVD geek decided to make a big fuss out of me bumping into him. I was browsing through some magazines and 'Niklas' (we'll call him that for simplicity's sake) was beside me drooling over the latest DVD releases in some home entertainment magazine ("Herr der Ringe ... yah!"). Somehow or rather, I ever soooo slightly bumped into him while moving across the magazine aisle. He immediately turned to me and told me quite sternly to watch where I was going. Now, in situations like these I instinctively activate a defence mechanism which I call the 'Foreign Chinese Student With An 'E' For Kindergarten English' method (patent pending). I acted like I didn't know what he was talking about and only replied in smidgens of, "Sorry?", "What?" and "Huh?" After a minute or two of awkwardness, 'Niklas' eventually turned back to reading his magazine, not before letting out a huge grunt, and I returned to mine. Whether or not he surrendered to my defence mechanism I'm not entirely sure. But I had a feeling my gimmick was probably less than convincing, considering that a copy of Time was in my hands the whole time.

3/11/2002
My dreams are divided into two categories (no, not PG-13 and 18) but the purely visual and the purely aural. A visual dream is, well, visual, you know. Images, people, things, places. An aural dream is when the only thing that I can remember (vaguely, most of the time) when I wake up is a tune. Sometimes a full song, sometimes several songs even. Last night I had one of those aural dreams. I dreamt of this song, kinda like a cross between Sting's 'When We Dance' and the best of Madlib's beats. It was the best damn thing I've ever heard and I could feel the hairs at the back of my neck standing up. Whether this was a dream sensation or I really did have the hairs at the back of my neck stand up I'm not entirely sure, but the song was so, so good. At some point I started sensing the bright sunshine through my eyelids which meant that I was about to wake up so I kept telling myself, "Remember the tune, hum it! Hum it!" I opened my eyes, and I woke up. Two things came to my mind simultaneously. The first thing was, "Wow! What a brilliant song!" The second was, "Aww fuck." Cos in the process of exclaiming to myself how fantastic the dream song was, I forgot to hum the tune, and it vanished forever into the ether. I lost it completely. I couldn't even remember the most basic melody. The only thing about the song that I can recall is that there were beats and it was jazzy. Sadly, the image that comes to mind now when I think of Sting with beats is Puff Daddy.

Meanwhile, back in wasting-parents-money-on-CDs-land, attempts to broaden my knowledge in the realm of free and improvised jazz beyond the Chicago Underground Duo/Trio/Quartet and Rob Mazurek resulted in me getting 12 (+1) Imaginary Views by Ellery Eskelin with Andrea Parkins & Jim Black. I have to admit I don't quite get free jazz but I'm getting my mind round it. I have Wire to thank for that. Also, my first trip down Berwick Street in more than two weeks yielded the reissue of Latyrx's self-titled album and the wonderfully quirky Solex's Pick Up at a really good price. Sample lyric:

I won a cruise.
I'm on the loose.
Jump in a pool with lots of booze.
In my bright blue suits from Taiwan, China.
And bright yellow shirts with my collar spread open.
- from "That's What You Get With People Like That On Cruises Like These ..."

And this:

Well he had insisted on paying for the meal, but his jaw dropped when he saw the bill.
And suddenly he is just as vague as you can get, without being actually invisible.
I have to keep this body going he must have thought.
But if someone jumped the queue he would give them a sharp crack on the head with his enormous wooden, brown wooden (sic) spoon.
Where do you think he's going with her handbag.
- from "Chris The Birthday Boy"

They say the human body is comprised of 70% water. I think I'm 70% music.

1/11/2002
Xen at Cargo yesterday was a pretty decent night out. Although I have to say I only really enjoyed Hexstatic and their crazy impromptu mash-up of visuals and music (remixes of Nancy Sinatra, Julie Andrews, the theme from 'Exorcist', the Cookie Monster, the one-two-three-four-five counting-with-pinballs theme from Sesame Street). Equal parts wave-your-hands-in-the-air entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny, the bottom line being that I enjoyed myself. Too bad Xen's gonna end its monthly run soon.

Pitchfork has a really good, handwritten (!) review of Pavement's recently reissued Slanted & Enchanted. One line that I found particularly spot on not just about Pavement but every other band and artist out there is that 'the best time in a band's career is the moment they find themselves with an audience, and take their work not seriously, but as more than just a good time'. My alternate take on that is that everything's still cool, until you start taking into account the expectations that come with having an audience. One name that immediately springs to mind is (and if you haven't guessed it already) DJ Shadow. It's like, when he first started doing what he does, everything was still raw and fresh. 'Zimbabwe Legit', 'In/Flux', 'Entropy' all the 'What Does Your Soul Look Like's. Endtroducing was his obvious best, and Preemptive Strike was a pretty filler in the same vein, but when Psyence Fiction came about, you can hear how evidently polished his production has become. Yes, yes, creative progression, artistic evolution, whatever. But I can confidently place my bet on the fact that he must've also been influenced in no small part by the knowledge that people were now actually listening.

Even more so with The Private Press. Like, how he went on and on about 'Monosyllabik' being his most laborious track ever. And how he said 'Six Days' was his best work so far ("Whot? 'Six Days'? Christ!", said Benny). It's like he wanted so much for people to know how he did this and how he achieved that. Correct me if I'm wrong (please do) but I don't think he's ever said as much about Endtroducing as he did about those two tracks. I have a feeling that in a parallel universe where no one paid any mind to Shadow, he would've actually made a better sophomore album than Private Press. Why? It's a good thing when you want to impress yourself and surpass your own creative and artistic limits. It's not, when you start thinking of what might impress the audience, even if it's just a teeny weeny thought. And that's what I think happened to Shadow with The Private Press.

On the other hand, some names that immediately come to mind whom I think never let their audience shape their musical paths include Massive Attack, Beck and ... and ... umm, that's it really. Again that's what I think, IMHO. Anyone who disagrees can take it outside. Now.