Electric Pulses as Words

Okay, so maybe this is a bit Australian-centric, but I came across this old Pseudo Echo clip from the 80's when I was messing about on YouTube before. It features:

- an electric drum kit
- air blown curtainy things in the background
- an electric guitar which, well, you can't really hear cause its drowned out by the drums and synths
- parachute pants on all band members

One disappointing feature is that there's a full sized electric keyboard, not one of those hand held ones that have a shoulder strap, like a guitar, which is usually the case. Shame really... Although there seems to be two of them for some strange reason.

Enjoy!

So I'm on the bus yesterday, standing up, totally minding my own business and this African lady stands next to me (though her ethnicity has nothing to do with this story). Anyhow, she suddenly says to me...

"It's funny isn't it?"
"Excuse me?" says I.
"How the rain comes and goes so quickly."
"Oh, well, it happens like that"
"Yes. Those evil Indians."

RIGHT. As she finished that sentence I decided she was probably a little frea-kay. But then, she starts singing (dunno what it was), like, LOUDLY, so the whole bus could hear. Thankfully it was a short bus trip and I got off a couple of minutes later.

I got off the bus and was walking behind some guy in bike shorts, who was extremely thin, and was walking down Orchard Rd like he'd been, well, riding something other than a bike for a while. Turns out he was going to my gym lol.

So I get to the gym, and walk through the little sitting area they have, and the ultra hot personal trainer was there. But, ugh, it smelt like, for want of a better description, "lady smell". Then later, he walked past with a client, and this time smelt like he'd been bathing in CK One.

Thankfully after that we resumed normal transmission :-)

...a gift returned in the mail. Address checked with recipient, parcel sent, and returned almost two months later unclaimed.

So today I went for a stroll down to the botanical gardens today cause its like 5 minutes down the road from where I live. So... ROLL ON THE PIX

This is a nice... errr... island type thing... in the middle of a pond. Or maybe that's a lake?





Now THIS really caught my eye. You know, botanical names for plants usually bear little resemblance to normal English, but this is just weird.





Hmmmm.... this got me thinking of soup



While this got me thinking of two bowls of soup



Ducks... these look really nice cooked Peking style, served in thin crepes with some greens and that sweetish dark plum sauce. I've been wary of ducks ever since I was attacked by one when I was a little kid!



No smart arse caption for this one... it just looks nice.



I don't know what the point of this sculpture is - maybe all the real swans fucked off someplace else.



After a couple of hours walking around there I was severely dehydrated and headed for a shopping mall (as you do) to cool down... I guess more pix some other time!

Well I am back in Sing after about a week and a half off back home in Melbourne and also in Sydney. Now I have a serious case of the shits. I might go into details later, maybe I won't... It's gettin kinda late and I should probably keep this post to a minimum, cause like, I do have to go to work tomorrow, its midnight, and my body thinks it is 3am.

So I been thinkin a lot about the future over the last couple of days... Being in the country (Batemans Bay in NSW to be exact) with not much to do except get sunburnt, and hours and hours of driving over broad, flat country gives you time to do that. Jesus my tenure over here is meant to be two years and I am coming up on 5 months already. That means moving back in august next year (its 2007 now after all). There's something I am planning on doing, and I'm not sure if it is the right thing or not. It won't be until like June anyway, when I next go back home (well that is the next planned trip at the moment). And trying not to be too cryptic, its because I can't get someone out of my head, and I need to do something about it. And you know what? If it meant fucking off from here a little earlier to make it all happen I'd do that. I think I'd even quit and move back unemployed as long as my finances supported that route. Wow. Craziness. Its kinda scary actually reading that in black and white. But need to jump that first hurdle before I get too far ahead of myself.

I was gonna write all these great things, and all I can think of is how shitty I am... 2007 is officially the year i stop being a fucking idiot. Yikes I think this Bundy OP Rum is going to my head...

In an earlier post, I made a rather uninformed remark that when I went to Little India when I was on holidays here in Singapore last, that the only Indians I saw were in the back of trucks, looking as though they were being carted off to concentration camps. Well, I can now confirm that this is happily not the case! They are construction workers (more Bangladeshi than Indian I think) being bussed around to fuck knows where - and if the guy who asks me several times a month for money near the MRT is anything to go by, not being paid a hell of a lot for their toil.

Well things have been goin all right here lately... Have had a couple of visitors in town to keep me busy (one totally unexpected and not seen for a coupla years!), and fuck, Christmas is but 2 and a bit weeks away, so as I type this, 2 weeks from now I will be on a plane headed back to Australia. Need to get my act together as to what I am doing when I'm down there - will probably head up to Sydney, and either back to Melbourne for New Years or down to the NSW South Coast before I come back up here on the 2nd. Hmmm... I need to get Christmas presents sorted out too. Ugh.

Actually I've had more than a couple of visitors... Well... 3? Maybe 2. I dunno if you'd class one as a visitor per se... They weren't specifically here to see me... Whole nuther story anyway. Can I be arsed to go into detail? I'm on the verge of changing the subject here... That means no I guess. Maybe some other time. I went for a run earlier and when you're poundin' the pavement its hard to stop thoughts driftin' through your head - not that the thoughts resulted in a conclusion, a plan of action, or anything like that... Just thoughts, nothing more.

I'll finish by statin' that compassion is big in Singapore at the moment. Apparently there has been a spate of people jumping in front of MRT trains and committing suicide. Not so nice. Not when you have one dead person, a heap of traumatised onlookers, and worst of all the train driver. Someone wrote into the newspaper today suggesting that the FAMILY of the jumper should be fined for "the misdemeanor" to deter further jumpers as well as the inconvenience to travellers. Un-fucking-believable.

Another letter writer was concerned that these jumpers exposed Singapore to a security risk. Al Qaeda or some other terrorist organisation may (and I am not making this up) organise for suicide jumpers to jump in front of trains across the island SIMULTANEOUSLY, causing transportation chaos. Obviously making people late for work as Al Qaeda operatives killed only themselves, rather than strapping a bomb to their bodies and taking a few hundred train travellers with them as they blew emselves up, is of greater concern to your average Singaporean.

Some of the things people write into the paper about really amaze me. I think I might start publishing some of the better (worse?) ones here...

Well I've been here just on two months now so I thought it was about time I posted again. So much for me doin this on a regular basis! So what have I been doin with myself? Well I have moved into a place and pretty much got everything on the home front sorted. Location is pretty cool, with a bus stop to work on the other side of the highway, and a pool in the complex which I take a dip in about every second night.

So anyhow I was gonna go out last Sunday and take a few photos of around town, but became a bit discouraged when it became apparent to me that the haze was gonna make photos come out, well, kinda crapola. Take this pic of the Singapore skyline for example:



Today was the first day in a long time actually that you could actually see blue sky, which was nice, and to be honest a bit of a surprise when i looked out the window this morning when the sun came up and could see it.

I took a couple of other non-descript photos, namely this one of the law courts...



And this one of the steps of what I think is the city hall building, tricked out for the Singapore Bienniele arts event - as you can see you needed to elbow your way through the crowds to see whatever was going on inside...



Cause the heat was startin to shit me and I was getting hungry, I wandered back to the Raffles City Mall, where I was excited to see that Gloria Jeans has set up shop here...



I wonder if they are closely linked to the Happy Clappers like they are in Australia? I was loitering around trying to get a discreet photo of the above when I realised I was actually hanging directly outside the toilets. How dodgy must have that looked? Anyhow I got a nice wrap from some place and a rather expensive juice smoothie thing (it cost me S$15 all up which is obscene here) for lunch and was on my way before it started shitting down rain, which it tends to do quite unexpectedly around here.

I've started doing a beginners German class here given I want to travel to Germany for a short spell next year. Its pretty good, and the locals provide a bit of entertainment. There's one girl who abbreviates her first name to KY which I think is hilarious. We had to ask one another our names and then spell them out as a group exercise in our last class, and amazingly a lot of people managed to spell my name completely with consonants (no y's), which I thought was hilarious. Our class even has a resident low talker.

Anyhoo, that's about all I can be bothered posting right now... More later!

Fuck... They've changed a lot... Since the last time I posted here I applied for, was offered and accepted a job in Singapore. And now I'm here! Arrived last Tuesday, and have already started work. Am stayin in a nice apartment off Orchard Rd while I look for a place to live - the pool is very nice! So I had a crazy month of trying to get organised back home for the move... All my worldly possessions (well the ones that I didn't bring with me) are floating on a ship somewhere on their way here. Had a great night out before I left where I got pretty trashed - the next day was a total right off but it was so worth it.

I wonder if I have left anything behind sometimes - both in tangible and intangible terms if you get what I mean. I guess time will tell on that one. I've wondered about the whole "going back" thing - its really just a little early to be thinking about it to be honest, but its always at the back of your mind.

So yeah... I'm here... So I may as well try to make the most of it!

...next time i go to Berlin. How cool is this hotel?!?!?! Click the numbers for the different rooms.

Propeller Lodge