I'm back from a renovation-imposed hiatus. So apparently lots of stuff have happened. Presidents have died. NS is now two years (calling for the rewrite of at least three army songs). PSC intake is now slashed by half so that the creamy pustules of our nation who don't get PSC (read: ME) can better participate in some lameassed attempt at entrepreneurship.

Maybe next year they can turn the 21-day OBS trip into a Battle Royale kinda thing - arm them with subautos and hatchets, ffa. God knows there's people desperate enough to become civil servants.

Anyway I'm back.

The Sound of Young Pianists IV

The Sound of Young Pianists, Redux Edition IV was held last night at the Young Musician's Society, off Waterloo Street. From the moment this reviewer received the album sleeve-sized programme booklet I knew this was going to be a straight-to-CD performance. My suspicions were further confirmed by the opening act, aptly titled "The Cockroach" - describing all too well the stage charisma of its insipid performer. Lumbering onto stage in a frilly undershirt and what passes for a blue collar (except in this case it was a red bowtie), Tim Teo fumbled his way across three elementary-grade pieces, crashing out at least twice on a cold serving of Turkey in the Straw. After this dose of pablum, this reviewer realized that this was hardly turning out to be the virtuostic display he had paid good money to see. What followed were a series of rather lacklustre performances, slept through by a lukewarm audience who typically applauded between the movements of Beethoven's Sonata in C#.

The repetoire was largely Romantic, with a kitsch rating notched at two Claydermans. Some variation in the arrangements and order of performance was obviously attempted, this astute auteur realized, with songs alternating fast-slow-dance-fast in the classical sonata format, the dance in this instance being Si Chen's Tarantella(more on that later). The slow pieces were interminably boring and protracted, accompanied by the overexcessive emoting (read: headbanging on the keyboard) that is the plague of all half-baked pianists the world over. The fast pieces were amazingly dull, with nary an accentuated nor coherent melodic line, sending at least two audience members (an underestimate) into instant narcoleptic fits.

Performance-wise, much has been made of the costunmes (including the recycled Altar Maid draperies of the undynamic duo QiQi and QuanQuan) and the aforementioned emoting (read: headbanging), creating awful visual distractions that plague an already dismal performance. The inherent desire of the young un's to curl into fetal position is understandable considering the highly stressful environs of the YMS, but putting foetuses on stage is nevertheless a highly unethical use of embryonic stem cells that Bush has banned under Presidential Decree No. 243.

The highlights of the concert came in the first half with the Tarantella, a folk dance that allegedly drives out the venom of the tarantula spider. Kitsch folklore aside, the adept hands of Zhang Si Chen injected fiery poison into the spine of this reviewer, while the tap-dancing fingers took on a life of their one reminiscent of hexed arachnids.

The main show came in the second half, with the Junyang and Jaow double bill. The largely martial Brahms Rhapsody impressed this reviewer, but the jazzy undercurrents of Gershwin's Preludes simply blew me away. Jonathan's rendition of Debussy's uncharacteristically atonal Etude No. 9 went right over the collective heads of the plebian masses filling the auditorium. His Rachmaninov quartet however, was by far the most worthy virtuoso performance of the night. Exuding exquisite showmanship, this consumnate artiste (he's single, girls) channeled all the Sturm und Drang of Russia's Last Romantic, giving a palpable performance that was quite worthy of a standing ovation, had the audience understood it. While Rach's Elegie and Preludes (including Prelude No. 4, one of the rare major-key Rachs) were altogether impressive, they were a case of too little, too late. The scintillating sensation that was Jonathan could not uplift the leaden weight of the whole dreary concert, last night at Waterloo.

[The reviewer is aware that the performers are by and large prepubescent pianists, and that a certain degree of patronization is required to refrain from crushing their young tremulous hearts in twain. However, in the tradition of LitCrit (why should Cowell take credit for essentially rediscovering this genre?), it is hoped that the personal affronts in this review will not attract any flying inkpots in his direction.]

"A story about probability"

DISCLAIMER: This story is purely fictional and any resemblance to any real life characters (or to yourself) is completely coincidental. The author takes no responsibility for any loss of life, ego, or whatnot resulting from the publication of this story.


In a place far far away, not too long ago (for they had concrete buildings and electron microscopes and other not-so-long-ago stuff), there lived some people. And they lived very happily there.

One day, some of these people started falling sick.

As sick people were not so happy, thus the Facility of Overall Complete Sciences (FoOCS for short) started to do some research.

And soon, indeed, they managed to isolate the germ that was making the kingdom not-so-happy. They called it Yet Another Naughty Germ (or YANG) for short, as Naughty people made mischief and made the kingdom not-so-happy-after-all. They called the disease YANGitis.

Now, being a very naughty germ, YANG only selectively infected people. In fact, it only infected people with a particular trait. Unfortunately, no one knew (or to this day, knows) what this trait is. We know, however (background info from some other sources unbeknown to to these people), that 90% of people did not have this trait. So YANG only infected 10% of people, making them so unhappy.

So FoOCS did some more research, and came up with a test to detect if people suffered from YANGitis. Unfortunately, being not as overall complete as its name suggested (a consequence of being too happy and complacent), the test gave 20% false positives and 10% false negatives (that is, if you don't have the disease, 20% of the time the test will say you have it etc).

So once the test was discovered, two clinics started administering the test. Like every story should have, there were good guys and bad guys. Everyone knew about the bad guys, but they were Happy bad guys, so no one bothered. The test was made compulsory for all citizens, so that everybody could be happy and live happily ever after.

Now the good guys were the Clinic of Health And RelaxZation (CHARZ). CHARZ studiously and dutifully gave the test to everyone who came there. CHARZ then sent all the people who tested positive to FoOCS for treatment, and they became a very happy lot once again.

However, the bad guys, (who refuse to reveal their names as they are bad guys), chose a more happy-go-lucky approach. They told everyone who visited them that they were free of YANG, and thus very happy.

So after a while, everyone in the nation was happy again and they lived happily ever after. Really?

The End? No....

Q1. Who is more accurate? CHARZ or the bad guys?

Q2. What is the moral of the story?

[ed: added comment button so this lamebrained riddle can actually be answered.]

my first post.

while I'm waiting for b.net to match me to a game (45 mins already for a 1v1 and still no game! omfg thank you 1.15 AMM) I might as well contribute to this humble "we"blog (wonder when the "we" came out of weblog?).

when you're having a blocked nose, a itchy throat that feels like phlegm perpetually stuck there, and stomach cramping from coughing too much, which one is the biggest obstruction to you sleeping?

Can you feel two or more things at once? Or is it you feel two different sensations so close to each other that they virtually superimpose? So if I have a blocked nose and a stomach cramp, which one do I feel first? Does the order even matter?

[photo blog]
Hanging out with the mohster and foo, it came down to a single game of the parapara. The moh preparing for the grind with two tokens from fortune's own hand, a twinkle in his eye and the faintest of smirks on his lips. He throws a couple of snaps with his fingers (for luck) to get into the groove of the beat, paws the ground impatiently during the intro, and launches into dance hall immortality.





By the second song a sizable crowd has gathered around the virtuoso. A group of American tweens have planted themselves on an adjoining machine, while a couple of female Goths stare, spellbound. The Man is himself to oblivious to all but the gyrating figure on the screen, and the syncophantic gyrations of his own well-toned body.



He performs the final encore piece (Love YOu 4Ever), and dances his heart out, dedicating his art to his muse and lost love. By this time the crowd has hit 20, with a few arcade attendants (and cashier) standing stockstill, all swept up in his sheer animal charisma. And all at once the song has ended, and there is a moment of perfectly poised silence.

And then there is applause. Sweet raucous applause.

~~~*~~~


The mohster in one of his more characteristic closeups. He's the dude on the left.

To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:


A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill,
And a time to heal;
A time to break down,
And a time to build up;
A time to weep,
And a time to laugh;
A time to mourn,
And a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones,
And a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace,
And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to gain,
And a time to lose;
A time to keep,
And a time to throw away;
A time to tear,
And a time to sew;
A time to keep silence,
And a time to speak;
A time to love,
And a time to hate;
A time of war,
And a time of peace.

[P.S. in case you're wondering, no, i didn't write this.]
[Ed. The position of annoying whimpering bard (a la Cacophonix) has already been taken. Future verses will be restricted to um... haikus. Yeah haikus.]

Sand? Beaten rock, detritus, stonedust. It's practically zen how the final shroud of Tutankhamen is found ground beneath both the hooves of the camel and the spray of the ocean. Sand perpetuates itself - shifting sands, saltatory conduction, traction - but when it is drawn amidst the turbulence of a desert storm, uplifted by a chance confluence of earth and air, it remembers when it was once a mountain.

For even mountains crumble, under the incessant coaxing of time and the elements, under the clean sweep of a longshore drift, under a wind that breathes one breath, another, another. For it is in the nature of all things to decay.

That is why we use decay to mark time. Two cojoined flasks - one from which the sand carreens and ebbs away like the vital force of a moribund warrior; and the second, the Great Collecter, the Omega, where the grains cover and consume themselves, like a serpent that swallows its own tail, like the veiling of erstwhile Eden under the deserts of Mestapotamia.

Ashes? Memories, life extinguished, words unspoken and deeds undone. They are the only tokens of our existence, beyond human remembrance and lethe. They are our only legacy in a world racked with infirmity and impermanence.

That is why we lock the ashes of our dead in urns, that is why we scatter them over halcyon waves, launch them beyond space. For we seek Prospero's "we are such stuff as dreams are made of", the sands of a primeval sandman who doles his dust to Creators. And when the urns are unlocked, when the oceans are dried, when the stars have twinkled into nothingness, the ashes remember when they were once, too, a man.