For some reason, no one in my family (immediate and extended) took more than a passing interest in photography. And because of that same reason, I have had no well-intended hand-me-downs, and I have no recollection of having taken a photograph until I was 19 (Seriously? Seriously.) and enrolled in a photojournalism class. And, that is why I couldn’t relate to this article at all.

Even though space is very limited in Japanese homes and apartments, most Japanese seem to pass their cameras down to the next generation. In the United States, looking at various local classifieds sites, Craigslist, Internet camera ads, eBay ads, I’m always struck by how many sellers say the camera was their father’s or grandfather’s camera. Since moving to Japan, I’ve myself benefited by my wife’s family passing down their cameras to me.

So, this might also explain why I was BFF with ebay last year and now have a whole box of cameras that I might never get around to using again. I have gotten better since, though I do get a little gear envy from time to time.

Watched Milk. Watch Milk.

Gus Van Sant’s films have always been rather hit-or-miss for me. For when I do watch them, I guess (since I just realised that the last film I saw from him was Elephant and that was an ancient six years ago). But anyway, Milk was fantastic. Gay or not, you’d be heartless if you come away without feeling the least bit indigant and saddened.

NYT’s review here.

abandoned-places.com

Hello, extreme envy.

Egg picnic on the 2nd day of the new year. The idea was conceived by Cindy a few weeks back (brought on, if I recall right, by some meal that had involved some delicious seasoned eggs in some Japanese restaurant somewhere in Central, something like that), and so we decided to have an egg-themed picnic. Pictured here: April’s onion egg omelette and flan, Cin’s seasoned eggs (see second photo), my egg soup (which reminded me of cold winter days during uni), and oyster omelette from Cin’s neighourhood coffee shop. All in all, a good meal that was surprisingly filling, even though it was just all eggs. I think we were all rather impressed that we had quite a variety of dishes, and that it felt like a complete meal – we had dessert even! 

Prior to deciding on making the soup, I actually tried to make hardboiled eggs but with their yolks gorged out and filled with tuna / crab sticks instead. That was the ideal idea. Turned out that trying to hardboil an egg after taking out its yolk takes a lot more time than usual. Even after 20 long minutes, the white was still rather runny and I ran out of patience trying to balance my little block of crab stick (stuck through a satay stick, which I held so that the egg would stay upright in the water). And thus, two eggs in (my stomach) later, I decided that soup was a much healthier choice.

M1 Singapore Fringe Festival is on till Sunday. I first saw Phillip Toledano’s Days with My Father a few months ago, and thought it a wonderfully moving series. Quite to my (pleasant) surprise, I found out that the photographs are now shown as part of the Fringe Festival. (Image from artist’s site)

The Museum of Broken Relationships looks interesting as well.

» Continue reading “you had time”

Sometimes I wonder why I don’t visit some of the sites that I adore more. Like this Japanese comic journal/weblog. Wonderful, whimsical little comic strips that say so much in so little, that alternate between happy and carefree times and achingly sad and tender moments (sometimes imbued with a cruelty that is oh so Japanese i.e. being unkind and spiteful yet vulnerable at the same time – yeah, I call that cruelty). Oh well, am quite happy that I have a whole backlog of stuff to enjoy.

フェンス (Fence)

顔 (Face)
消失点 (Vanishing Point)
小さい星 (Small Star)

Images from artist’s site

Interesting post on Conscientious: Consuming vs Experiencing Art

Some initial thoughts:
- If you are to compare my drawings from my university days and the ones I have now, there is a rather high probability that you would think them quite similar. Black ink on paper/card, colourless; repetitive lines and patterns etc. I wouldn’t know how to convince you otherwise, and you probably wouldn’t want to be, anyway. But I do see differences between my past and current drawings, and though I am obviously writing from a very biased perspective, I know that they are changes significant enough for me to want to continue what I am doing, and to want to find out what comes after, or what might or might not. It is hard to pinpoint when enough is enough, but I do think that the “end” often does come naturally and moving on to other subject matter/media/etc should ultimately not arise from a “I-have-to” situation, but more from a curiosity / interest.

- This might be slightly irrelevant, but his thoughts on Sigur Rós had me thinking a little about this band I used to love. I still like them, but excitement about new music is a lot more muted than what it used to be. It isn’t because the band has gotten any worse; they are probably still a very good band. A more accurate reason is probably that we have both “progressed” in different ways. I liked them because at that time, their music was relevant and their lyrics rang true, but it is as though that even as we met at that point, we had immediately started to diverge. Lives go on, and we write about someone else and travel to someplace else, and in time, what had resonated ceased to matter much. Well, this would be a little ironic, if I can articulate it nicely, but it seems like I can’t so I won’t.

Stars was great, though people should stop taking flash photography during concerts. Especially when the band hasn’t come on, and the hall is darkened simply because there is nothing to see. There is absolutely no point in trying to blind the rest of your fellow concert-goers. May you all have overexposed shots of whoever’s sitting in front of you. Nice hair. Hairy back. But Stars was great. Loved Calendar Girl and Soft Revolution, and thought their performance of Your Ex-Lover is Dead was especially poignant last night. 

A little bummed because they didn’t play Barricade, but they did My Favourite Book, which I thought they wouldn’t. Why isn’t today yesterday? Ah. For some reason, I had always thought that the lyrics to Window Bird went like “you’re so full of shit” when in fact they are “you’re so ferocious”. Haha. 

And if you are a lefthander and in a band, chances are I like you already. 

» Continue reading “post-stars; and that changes everything”

Oh, what I would do for a copy of this. Oh, what I wouldn’t do. Probably a lot, but let’s romanticise things for a bit. Bright lights.

I want to be reading right now, and I blame my inability to do just that on my train ride back from work. I do most of my reading on the train home and it so happened that this evening my train decided that sudden variations in its speed (coming to a halt, speeding up, slowing down, let’s bring this baby home) were necessary for a safer journey. And, of course, I was standing and trying to find a suitable paragraph to stop reading. Not wise. So now, my head feels as though someone had struck a metal rod against a metal pipe in an empty room (please, no analogies here), except the reverberations are of misaligned fragments from random sentences. Kinda like CAPTCHA. Only less necessary.

Tuesday. “Alright” is a common misspelling of “all right”. A list of commonly misspelled words from Wiki.

I reckon we have a few more days before we should stop using the new year as an excuse to get out of stuff. Clean up the room? But the year’s barely begun. Draw something? But this is my last official holiday before the new work year starts. So, let’s play more Wii and watch some movies. Next, read a book and write an email. Next, next.

Ani Difranco is coming! Well, despite me knowing only 10% of her entire repertoire (she is much too prolific), I doooooooo want to go. It is depressing how expensive the tickets are though.

Some Ani:

32 Flavours. This is quite likely her most heard-of song, since Alana Davis did a cover of that and it was pretty popular when it came out. And this is probably blasphemous to Ani fans, but I do like the cover as much as I like the original.





Shy

Untouchable Face
Both Hands
Jukebox
Millennium Theater
Napolean

Bah. I don’t know any of her newer stuff.