Merdeka, take #50

Malaysia celebrates its 50th Independence day today. Looking back, I think we've come a really long way from where we started, but still short of our fullest potential as a country. I shall not go into details.

A huge part of me has always, and will always be proud to be Malaysian. Then, there's this tiny part that would want to leave elsewhere, just to get a glimpse of how it could have been done differently.

To be honest, the 50th Independence wasn't such a 'hoo-haa' to me. I wish I had felt some sense on nationalism, but I didn't. I was looking forward more to the public holiday it brought. My bad. Note to self: take pride in your country and its going-ons.

Anyways, I admit that I was wanting to do, (in the words of Philip) 'stupid stuff' and have a nice opening to a long weekend. After all the waiting for people and massive jams, we found ourselves inches away (alrite, meters) away from Sunway Pyramid. The jam was quite the suck. Looking at the number of people packing the streets around Sunway, I thought the fireworks was gonna be the bomb. So here I was in the car, with the couple, nipple pincher and the chick.

12 o'clock came. No signs of fireworks. People were getting restless and wanting to make a move. They probably thought Sunway pulled a fast one on them. 12.05....that's when the fireworks came up. For a good....less than a minute. Maybe a minute max. It was so ..... for all that jam and rushing to find a spot, pathetic. So much for fireworks. Felt even worse after I heard The Curve and Putrajaya had better stuff to offer.

Got to run. Will pen my thoughts down another time.

The Two-ted Gig

For those of you who didn't know, my band is known as One-ted. My drummer is heading the band. So far, he's one person that keeps on improving musically all the time. He's had the chance to play in front of Mia Palencia. One day, I think he will play with Mia Palencia. As for now, he's played for Juwita Suwito. Recently, he offered to be a sessionist for this local band called The HaHas.

So far he's had one gig with them. On the following gig, they invited us (as in One-ted) to play with them. It was last minute notice, but we jumped at it anyhow. Unfortunately, 2 of our band members couldn't make it. One was flying off to Oz land for a conference, and the other had a company holiday. So we were a 3 piece. Then we decided that we could be a quartet if we invited the *half-korean keyboardist to join us for this gig. On such last minute notice, he agreed.

Imagine this, we were informed on Tuesday about the gig, we invited the half-korean on Wednesday, we learned the song and practiced on Thursday, and played the gig on Friday. Sweet. It wasn't as great as we expected, neither was it bad. In my opinion, for such a short notice and that 2 hour practice, we did quite OK.

The place we gigged in was called Rhasta Shack.


It was a small place opposite Menara The Star. 3 bands played that night: The One-ted, The Hahas, and The Wave. It's all 'the' something.


There was hardly anybody. At most, there was less than 20 people in the crowd, say, even less than 15. And half of the spectators were from the other 2 bands. So it was a small crowd. The good thing about small gigs such as this is that we get to mess up and learn from experience without too many people watching the blunder. Some bands mature by doing lots of gigs and making all the mistakes they can, and then learning from it and improving on their band. Not all bands start of big and great. Some had to go through years of toiling and messing up before they made it. We haven't had the opportunity to play in a lot of gigs. So, this was one of the rare opportunities.

We did 4 songs. 2 of them was our songs and 2 more were covers. Our songs were All These Time and Out Of Here. The covers we did were Linkin Park's What I've Done and Incubus' Drive. We pulled off all the songs really well, with the *half-korean doing his 'thing' on the keys and backing up on vocals. The bassist sang for the covers. Thank God his voice was high enough to hit the notes. The drummer...was well....the drummer.

I eventually screwed up on Drive, when I left the tuner function ON, instead of turning it off. This made the guitar sound funny and when it was time to execute the solo, I stepped on the pedal, and nothing happened! There I was playing some stupid notes without the effects (which totally caught me off guard) and looking kinda stupid. After that, I was looking face-down all the way. Well, that's the good thing about small gigs. You get to mess up without so many people seeing you mess up. At least I managed to get some exposure and experience, and learn a valuable lesson: if you're using a multi-effect pedal, always check that your tuner is off before you start playing.

Here are some pictures of the gig




And this were the stupid stuff we did after the gig


before we finally got to our senses

from left to right : *half-korean, drummer, me, this.bassist.is.

By the way, just want to say a big thank you to the 2 people that came to support us even though they were supposed to go to another gig. Much appreciated.

*the half-korean appears courtesy of PG165

Insomnia

Last night was one of the earliest I've ever slept since I started working....11.15pm!!! Just decided to lie down and....bam! I was gone.

But look at what time I'm up.....it's 4.00am!!!

I have a feeling that I need about 5+ hours on sleep only before my body gets restless and decides to wake up. Looking at 'normal' days where I sleep at 2.30am and wake up around 7.30-8.00am, I think that this conclusion is pretty apparent. Problem is, by 10.00 am, I'm yawning my head off in the office.

In about 2 hours time, I speculate I'll be yawning my head off and back into bed.

Romancing my guitar

It is 4.16am, Malaysian time. I've been tossing in bed for 2 hours, but I still can't get some shut eye. I dreamt that I was trying to sleep, while actually trying to sleep. So here I am figuring out what's keeping me awake. I have a strong feeling that it has something to do with the Super Mocha Ice Blended Coffee from San Francisco Coffee that I had in the evening. To be honest, that is one really awesome mocha smoothie that I have ever drank! It was just smooth all the way. Take that Starbucks and Coffee Bean!

The last time I had this kinda 'can't sleep' experience was when I was in Melaka and was supposed to drive back to KL the next day. That night, I had some drink with some ex-classmates. And of all things I had to drink, I chose some crazy coffee stuff which left me wide-eyed the entire night and feeling like crap the next morning.

Since I'm up, I'm just gonna leave some pictures of me and my guitar at the recent Teenacity Camp : Relentless. It was one superb camp. I look somewhat weird in those pictures, but it's gonna be up anyways. Never went that crazy with my guitar before. If only I had the video version of those pictures.



















































These were from last year's Teenacity Camp : Dream On

It's finally running again!

I've been wanting to blog for a long time already, but somehow, Blogger just won't load on my pc the past few times I tried it. Let me check, the last I blogged was more than a month ago. It's been awhile.

I've been wanting to blog about my Hong Kong trip. I will soon. After I figure out how to input 900+ pictures on this blog.

I miss blogging. Just realised that blogging forces me to think through my life, some sort of reflection therapy. No wonder for this past month, I haven't been thinking straight. I so need this.

It's been a year since I graduated. A year since I failed that *toot* paper and by God's grace, passed it. It's been a year since I missed the Philippines mission trip due to the *toot* paper that I failed. It's also almost a year since I moved out of Cyberjaya...and had my convocation. It's been a year since I stepped out to be a working man. A lot has happened. Some good , some bad.

Alot has been running through my head. Sometimes I catch myself staring blankly, just thinking random thoughts. These random thoughts are quiet loud at times, till I can't hear what's going on around me. And then, I wake up.

I have been working close to 8 months in my present company. It's been OK so far. I haven't sold anything big...YET! I will soon. Still wondering why I'm here. Making the best of it anyway. A lot of travelling. A lot of waiting. A lot of studying. A lot of thinking of how to tackle the clients. A lot of praying.

There's just so much going on. Changes. I find it hard to keep up. My table's a mess, with bills and other what nots. It's coz I can't keep up. My report is 6 weeks overdue. I can't keep up. I seriously need some help. And there are the plannings that I need to do. The people I need to follow-up. The songs that I need to write. The music that I need to make. The business plans that I want to come up with.

This entry seems like the pouring frustrations of a busy person. I haven't been blogging for awhile, and my thoughts are all over the place, hence, the many sudden changes in directions.

It's 2.15am, and I have work tommorow.

And yeah...one more....money is such a depleting resource.......

Priorities

It's been awhile since I actually wrote something here that really speaks of what's on my mind.
I'm not emo or anything of that sort. Just overwhelmed...the bad kind.

It's more apparent since I left university life. That's the funny thing. I thought that once I graduated, I would have more time for myself. As a student, the main priority was study (which I did but to no avail). Then there was CF,CG and church, and not to forget, DOTA.

Since I entered the working phase, life has been speeding by so quickly. It's almost a year since I graduated, and a little over half a year since I seriously started working. It's hard to believe that a year is almost gone.

Now, there is work, church, Teenacity, band, friends, family, self and some etc etc stuff like dating and planning for future life partner. And also...paying billls. I know paying through the Net is alot faster, but I'm quite an old skool guy. Maybe I just like queing to pay my bills.

I'm already sleepy. A sign that I'm getting old.

*yawn*

Thankful beyond measure

Lord, I know I don't deserve this, this and this.
I didn't even ask for it.
Well, maybe I just thought about it, but I never did verbalize it.
OK, I did voice out one of the 3 things.
But it wasn't as if I desperately needed them.
Yet, You still gave them.
And I am overwhelmed.
And thankful beyond measure.
May what you have blessed me with become a blessing in return.
Thank You.

Singapore

This was supposed to be up quite some time ago, but I've been putting it off. It's not everyday that I'm in the mood to blog. Tonight's a quiet night. My clock reads 3am on a Saturday morning. I am giving it a go.

On the 4th till the 6th of March this year, I had the opportunity to visit Singapore on work-related grounds. My company is a medical distributor for various brands, and the product that I'm handling is called Lumenis (USA). They would host a Distributor's Meeting anually, and this year, Singapore was the venue for the Asia-Pacific Distributor's Meeting.

For this trip, my manager (aka the Boss) and another colleague went with me. It was a tight scheduled meeting. I reached Singapore on Sunday evening, to be immediately ushered into a fancy restaurant with distributor's from all over Asia. As I looked around, I realised I was the youngest punk there. The rest of the folks occupying the tables were in their mid-30s to late 40s. Other than my female colleague, who's a year older than me, everyone else was an old-timer. They've been in this medical industry for years. And for a moment, I felt like a noob in their presence.

The next day, I was practically stuck in the Mariott Hotel on Orchard Road from morning till night. We had many talks and discussion and at one point, I had to give a presentation in front of these veterans. It was intimidating, but also rewarding as they did give me a pat on my back for the good effort. After all those meetings, it was a fantastic buffet dinner. I'm not complaining. They really fed us well:)

I tried my best to enjoy Singapore, but the meetings was just draining. At the first chance of escape, I took it. My colleague and I explored the streets after everything was over, which was aroudn 10pm. Just walking along that 1km stretch, I discovered so many interesting places that I would have wanted to visit, if only it was open.

My bus back to Malaysia the next day was at 10am. That left me very little time to do what I wanted to do. I went to Singapore wanting to get loads of things, but since my departure time was way before any of the stores came alive, I just had to make do with photographs.

All in all, it was a fun experience. I'm still learning the art of play while working.


This is the fancy bus that I boarded to Singapore. Felt kinda like the airlines.


The solid stuff that kept me occupied. A really good book.





The view from my room on the 11th floor.



What should I expect from a budget hotel?


A familiar sight that brought me closer to home.





Some of the nice places along the street.


















This area is called CHIJMES. Don't really know how to pronounce it, but it's a really cool place. During the day, it looks prety ordinary. But at night, it's just beautiful . Unfortunately, my camera's not that good taking night shots. It looks like a really romantic place.






This was the main reason why I wanted to come to Singapore! But the shop was closed...as in, it wasn't going to be open till much later, but my bus was already waiting for me. Sigh. So near, yet so far.

My next stop, Hong Kong:)