SAFISAM 2003 has ended, and with it my glorious, wonderful attachment there. The char-broiled skin and Malay food (though curry is remarkably agreeable once you get used to it. At least when the burnign sensation subsides) notwithstanding, I think I have grown used to the stayout life, the early fallouts, the chance to read and sleep (albeit on rough and dity surfaces) and the lack of anything remotely strenuous, mentally or physically, to do. I've become nua!

One guy was complaining, during SAFISAM at Nee Soon range, about his nymphomaniac girlfriend, who pestered him for her fix everyday. In the end he grew exhausted and had to trick her by saying he had to go outfield the next day. Hah!

Recently there was a blood donation drive. All those who donated one day off and got to go for a night off everyday for a week, and my department gets to go for one everyday in the month of March. Somehow, this is just plain wrong. Bribing people to donate blood? I don't even want to consider the ethics of that.

Our new MO is often vivacious and jovial. And he's very professional and meticulous too. Yeh.

A few sightings of friends and acquaintances this period too, but they're too trivial to blog here, and I'll feel silly doing so.


Hearing Geraldine's imitation of the revolting singing unicorn wasn't enough for me, so being the masochist that I am, I asked her to let me listen to it over the phone. It was horrible. It was bone chilling. It was spine shattering. It was perhaps the most gruesome sound that I have ever heard, and on hearing it, I suffered apoplexy and began to go into a seizure.

After a long hiatus, Tym is back. Hurrah!

Why do all Chinese Dictionaries have the same names? All of them are proclaimed to be, in big bold letters on the cover, "Zhui4 Xin1 Han4 Yu3 Ci2 Dian3" (Newest Chinese Dictionary), and you have to scrutinise the fine print to look for the company's name. Maybe it's a reminder of the roots of Communist China. Anyhow, since they all have the same name, you never know which is the newest of the dictionaries. I remember, when I was with my first Chinese tuition teacher in the 90s, this dictionary (with pictures of things and their chinese names at the back) which proclaimed itself to be "Zhui4 Xin1" (the Newest), when actually it had been published in the 80s. So much for being "Zhui4 Xin1"

I was at Boon Lay station again, one station I'm starting to dread due to the unbearable MRT announcements (which is one of the many factors weighing in on the side of taking the MRT home from Choa Chu Kang instead), and they only played the dreaded long announcement about not boarding the train (which I've spelt out in its full horror before) 5 times, and thankfully didn't play the even longer one. In tandem with the noise pollution, the staff had dispatched this Indian man in a tie to run down the cabins chasing people out, and from my vantage point, it appeared that all those who were chased out were Bangladeshi construction workers, most of whom probably don't understand English anyway. I guess they've finally figured out that bombarding commuters with irritating messages relentlessly won't work. Perhaps they should just let the idiots who choose to enter the train carriages be carted off to an unnamed depot, and fine them $10 each. The idea behind this is actually pretty similar to that of clamping car wheels, so why not?


David asked me to go to the Harmony Awards 2003 Semi-Finals at Scotts, and as usual I had nothing to do so I followed. Not unpredictably, I saw not a few familiar faces, though why Jason ran off to eat at Marche (one MRT stop down the road!) instead of watching the show with his friend I don't quite comprehend.

Imponderable imponderables:

- Why is it always the guys who make the sleazy percussion / mouth-drumming noises? The girls never rise to the challenge. Except for Yunxin :)
- Where do they get such cringe-worthy group names? Do they randomise them out of a computer, or draw them out of a hat? Perhaps a quote can explain better. "We were sitting outside the school toilet and we saw the hosereel. So we decided to call ourselves 'hosereel'" *wince*
- Why were there so many groups of kiddos? I applaud the effort, but many of them were really unbearable.
- Do you even need an audition to get to the Semi-Finals?
- Why did Bach's Menuet in G (the famous one used as a handphone ringtone) appear suddenly in a medley of Chinese songs?
- How come Edmund got to appear in both the Resonance subgroups? I thought you aren't allowed to moonlight. He changed his shirt for his second appearance, but naturally that didn't fool eagle eyed me! Anyhow he really got into his element the second time he was onstage. I think he's the best person I know at making sleazy percussion noises
- Why does almost all A Capella include sleazy percussion noises? Upping the sleaze factor isn't always good!
- Why did the judges - Neri Per Caso, some Italian A Capella group performing in Singapore sometime soon - consent to even judge this? Must have been in the small print
- Why did Neri Per Caso sing some songs at the end of the whole thing, putting most of the groups that had performed to shame by showing how measly they were?
- Why does David think I give all my friends nicknames?

To keep it all in perspective, some comments about last year's from someone who may prefer to remain anonymous:

"i went for it last year.. the finals. it was atrocious. they couldn't bloody even sing in pitch. simple third apart harmony.. like shit. different key.. both singers.

a few kids who can't think of a name for nuts, and can't sing to save their lives.. in contention for the HARMONY awards.. the standard has really dropped to shit... i remember in 2000 the grps were all of such standard, the judges had a difficult decision

imagine.. a grp named popcorn. i still remember "we [the grp] popped like popcorn because we shared a love for singing.. and so we popped into a grp!"
............

i felt so ashamed that these fantastic foreign grps were coming to singapore to judge such shit stuff comin' from kids.. they must think that our acappella scene is so sad... but there are pretty good grps around just that they seemed to have boycotted the harmony awards...

i was a judge recently at my own vjc's music fest
even the grps i heard were so much better than the harmony award finalists... which is like a NATIONAL competition. goodness. even the "laymen" in vj sing better than them."

About halfway through the groups' performances, I noticed something vaguely familiar about 3 of the people sitting in front of me, and after a while, seeing more clues, I got it. They were none other than members of the group which won the titles: All Female A Cappella Group of the Year Award (2001) [Ed: For which they were the only nominee] and All Female A Cappella Group of the Year Award (2000) - Vis-a-vis! I was rather disappointed that I took so long to recognise Culottes Girl and Blank Faced Girl's Understudy [Ed: If word of this gets around, as it surely will, I'd like to reiterate that no stigma at all is attached to these monikers]. Must be the stress of the As - look what they do to people! I wonder if they recognised me as "that weird, freaky RJ J4 guy" ('Weird' pops up a lot when people describe me, I have noticed :) Apparently that's how Peggy described me when she was relief teaching in RJ last year) I was actually considering going rabid and professing to be a great fan and pressing them for an autograph :)


Geraldine had a dinner to celebrate her birthday. She's now 18 and can drink herself silly and do many other stupid things. Whee. Anyhow, somehow I was the only one at dinner *not* born in 1985. Gah.

Yechao was telling me about 10 or so boys in his class who are bored and lonely, like us. Maybe we can form a club. Hah!

Later, Geraldine *had* to goad Yujia into asking me what I call her Secondary School. Gah. So of course she fumbled some manner of defence, that you needed to "know how to wear the uniform properly". But anyway my theory was further vindicated when the other ex-SC girl, Jiawen, said that she always preferred to go out in the PE Shirt and skirt.

Later, at an aracde, someone accidentally hit Geraldine and she started whining and sulking to Kenneth for a ludicrously long period of time. So I got fed up and cuffed her lightly with the back of my hand, and she started sulking even more. Apparently it wasn't as light as it was supposed to be. Or her threshold of pain is even lower than mine, pathetic as that already is.

The dinner was free, but what made it more rewarding was that, just before I left, she gave the first proper hug in more than a year.


Quotes:

[On marginally sensitive information] If I see it anywhere on the Internet, I'm going to kill you.

What's your nickname for me? Idiot? Specky?... Or Screwed Up Boy? No that's Yechao.

[On the 2003 Harmony Awards Semi Finals] Yeh! The end! We can all go home now... I'm exhausted. [Me: I'm exhausted from listening to bad music]

[Me: Medical Appointment] Wow. [Me: I've 2 Medical Appointments today] Wow. Can you give me one?