You know a book's amazing when...

... you absolutely can NOT put it down. Last Tuesday, I decided to pick up Conn Iggulden's latest book, Wolf of the Plains.
'Tis a fine tale of the greatest Mongol of them all - Genghis Khan, lord of the grass (there's a lot of it in Mongolia). If you're not familiar with this excellent author, he did a tetralogy on Julius Caesar called Emperor (look it up on Amazon) as well as an awesome book with his brother called The Dangerous Book for Boys. Bet you're curious about what's in it already.

How kickass is this book? Ok I started it on a whim: to keep me company for dinner on Tuesday. Pages turn and turn... and it's 6am. I sleep till 11am, haul ass and get back to reading. I finish the book by 5pm. Every bloody chapter ends with a "ok one more chapter". Great stuff. It's exciting, it's enthralling, it's escapism at its finest - when you are completely taken to another world on a colourful tour with sights and sound foreign, yet you are so drawn in with the characters that the foreign becomes the norm. And when emotions are evoked by the reading, ah that's storytelling at its best.

I mean, take a nice, civilised, urban, educated man (yes, that would be me). Describe a battle where the fighter gets into 'the zone'. Adrenaline. Focus. Alertness. Heightened-ness. Bloodlust. You expect that man to relate? What the hell does a modern city-dweller know about bloodlust, about that gloriously short moment where your life hangs in the balance, subject to the whim of the falling arrow, the unseen dagger, the scything sword?

But I felt it. That need to assert my stand to life. That need to fight my side of the age-old equation of 'kill or be killed'. That call to my basest instincts.


I reached for the nearest weapon to hand. My meal ignored, I tested its balance, its weight, its feel. I allowed it to be an extension of my hand, allowed it to blend into my body, my mind, seamless. It became an extension to my will; and I willed death.

My hand dealt it all around me - accurate, swift, ruthless.

Quickly, the moment was over. I lay my weapon down, picked up my chopsticks and resumed eating.




Damned flies never stood a chance.

Nonsense of the Day

Proof that Bloody Marys (-ies?) are good for you: Alcohol boosts health benefit of fruit (unless you think a tomato's a veg, but that's a whole nother story).

Darth Vader getting down with Princess Leia: the Vader Sessions.

No pork I tell you! The hilarious R K Curry House clip.

A Singaporean Hokkien N93 ad.

Imagini Me

A clever social networking site:

http://dna.imagini.net/friends/

Pity there are too damn many of them already. Keeping up with them takes so much time, how the hell are you doing to meet anyone new (except by kay-poh-ing your friends' friends)?


Anyway here's my result from the above link:

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

An inspiration and a puzzle

A good buddy of mine has really taken his passion for dance and performance to such mad levels that I have no words to describe how inspired and motivated I feel when I think about it. Here he is, working with who I believe is Juan Matos, a very very renowned salsa dancer in the US:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mppJPW3QG4

Kickass footwork!!



And then here's an interesting 5-min waster:

http://digicc.com/fido/

If you know how it works, tell me - I'm too lazy to think about it unless someone wants to pay me to do it. ;P

Portal

The furnace within
Hotly boiling blood
Energy uncontainable
Expelled in a flood


Cursing, swearing
Vocally vehement
A too-often clash
Of wills adamant


Pain? Physical, yes
Remorse? Naught but one
The daily viewing
Of damage done


Splinters of wood
Flecks of skin
Left to remind
Of past emotional sin

I need my own place

I am reaching the end of my tether. I cannot keep fighting to be listened to, to be respected as a human being, to live life as I see fit. My defences against the WMD of Guilt, Expectation, Comparison and Conformity are wearing very thin.

So I hit. Anger. Frustration. Unreasonableness. Anger. Illogicality. Frustration. It's that kind of blood-boiling anger that makes you want to hit. All combined into a mad flurry of blows, plowed into my door. Cassius Clay would be proud.

Times like those, I wish some handbag-snatcher, or rapist, or murderer, or some other ne'er-do-well would just come strolling by so I can beat the fucking shit out of him/her. Yeah I'm a righteous motherfucker when I'm pissed.

My elbows came next. My knuckles hurt, so I swung my elbows into the door. Damn there's a lot of power there - serious shit man, if you want to beat a motherfucker at very close range, use your elbows and put your body into it. Do the twist, break an asshole's cheekbone. Nice.



I'm sorry, door. You have to bear the brunt of my volatile control over my anger. You suffer from my inability to make our relationship work. You have to endure my cowardice in moving out.

Fear not, door. Your time for peace will come soon.

Me go yoga. Then I petitioned to fire Wolfowitz.

Me heard yoga at True Fitness kicks ass. It's true - me ass got kicked.

Yoga fun. Me prefer teaching at Yoga Zone. More thorough. True Fitness, show then do. Minimal instruction. Me go Hatha, did new things. Fun. Head stand! First time. First time fun.



I later received an e-mail from Avaaz (a community dedicated to creating a global voice to influence international politics, check it out) about a petition to fire Wolfowitz. Now he's a fucker who really should be sent to Guantanamo to be beaten, bullied, bashed and shat on every moment of every day. If you don't remember, he's one of the loudest fuckers calling for dropping bombs in Eye-Rack (yes he's a tactless ignoramus too). Now he's president of the World Bank and committed to fighting corruption - but what happens? He's involved in a corruption scandal that makes sure his girlfriend gets paid more than Condoleeza Rice. Don't just fire his stupid ass, burn his whole family out and remove their stain from our gene pool forever.

Yes, abuse of power makes me go all Hitler. Fuck him up here.

Me go gym

Me long time no blog. Me miss blog. Me want blog daily. But me talk too much. So me must make blog small. "Shut the fuck up", me friend say. "Don't talk so much crap!" Me no like friend. He rude motherfucker.


Me go gym. True Fitness, Desa Sri Hartamas. Place... nice. New. Shiny. Confusing though. Like maze. Get lost, even in second trip. Me got VIP pass. Me Very Important for one week. After that, me go somewhere else to be Important.

Gym fun. Can run run run, even if very hot or raining very heavy. Running machine got plenty of buttons and numbers. But cannot recreate neighbourhood. Nothing to see besides buttons and numbers. And nearby shoplot of wedding clothes. So me listen to iPod. But stupid iPod wire keep swinging. Me hit wire. Many times. iPod fly. Not happy. iPod not meant to fly. Me sad, so me run. Me run, so me happy.

Gym fun. Plenty of funky machines. Me think of Guantanamo Bay torture chamber. Big sweaty smelly men. And women. Scary. But me brave. Me use all sorts of machines, me like. Me feel strong.

Actually, me feel pain. Ache. Body no work properly next day. So me rest. Then nexter day, me see "personal trainer". She teach me use other machines. She say me body 15.2% fat. Siu yuk is 40% fat (if good). Me no siu yuk. More like char siu. Without the marinate. Me happy. But session is teaser. 60% work out, 40% talk. Only make me want personal training. Nevermind, me learned lots.

Gym fun. Me like. But expensive, me no like.

Who want sponsor me?

Beeping SmarTAG

Anyone know why my SmarTAG keeps beeping after I go through the toll?


There's the acknowledgement beep of "yes, taken your money, you may pass", then immediately followed by multiple beeps (about 7) of... what?

NOT:
- low money (beeped when more than rm50)
- low battery (beeped after trying a different batt)


Any ideas, or contacts I could ask?

Lessons from a serial auditioner

What an emotional rollercoaster the past couple of weeks have been. Story to come, but firstly let's get the practical out of the way. 2 musical auditions, 2 film auditions, 1 film callback; and here are the lessons I shall impart from them.

1. If you're asked to prepare a monologue, make sure you create the opportunity to deliver it! At the Beauty World audition in Singapore, the director didn't ASK for the monologue (though you were told to prepare one) - after presenting your song, he just asked "do you have anything else for me?" Open-ended, and a few missed the opportunity. By extension, this applies to the song as well! This lesson I learned from a friend who is still regretting the song he didn't sing.

2. Always prepare a monologue. I was so caught by surprise at the Standoff / Taiko audition that I did the first thing that came to my head - the opening to Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood. Which I think I did "too theatre" for the camera, and it ran too quickly.

3. Make sure that the accompanist works with you. Coming from a musically inexperienced background, this is very important - my accompanist for Beauty World played some funky stuff during my song that threw me off. I'm sure that it wasn't funky in the big picture, but as a noob singer I needed some very VERY simple stuff - timing and chord. Jazz it up and I shit bricks.

4. Film is a LOT quicker than theatre. This is from very basic experiences so far (ie Jarum Halus), but what it means is that you're expected to 'get into character' a lot more quickly for film castings and callbacks. I feel with theatre you've the rehearsal times to explore and discover your character before production - with film, it seems that there's minimal rehearsal time so the exploration and discovery stages need to be done before then. Most important lesson: if you have the script, USE IT TO PREPARE IMMEDIATELY.

6. Film is a lot QUIETER than theatre. Yes #5 is "use the script". Now I have an annoying automatic program in my head that goes "if you have an audience you have to project your voice". Bloody useful program on stage, not so bloody useful in front of a camera.

7. Do NOT give up. Again, drawing from my experience at Beauty World, I had a wonderful breakthrough during the dance audition. Now this bloody dance audition was CHALLENGING. Everybody else in the damned room was keeping up better than I was. Bigger, smaller, dancer-dressed, casually-dressed, what have you. I later discovered that what they did is street jazz, or something like it, and holy shitamoly it was hard. I of course had no experience with it whatsoever. They went through the choreography so fast, and asked for such funky stuff, and in a quick timing - to say I was demoralised is mild understatement. There was a time halfway through when I was ready to quit. Raise the white flag. Throw in the towel.

I suppose I was lucky that I didn't bring one to throw. I kept at it, encouraging myself, stiffening my upper lip, and just telling myself that no Singaporean is gonna make me quit - and thankfully I think I managed a half-decent performance at the end for the director. The very fact that I kept at it and continued doing it meant that more stuff got ingrained into my body, so it helped loads and I did get better and better.

8. Practise, practise, practise. Breathing exercises. Vocal exercises. Enunciation exercises. Vocal range exercises. Pitching exercises. Dance exercises. Stretching. Monologues. Rhythm exercises. Isolation exercises. Body-building exercises. Strength exercises. Talk about discipline, eh?