Twas the morning before the night flight to Thailand...

Okay, am now in pre-departure buzzing mode. I always do this - staying awake til early morning on the day that I leave. Did it when I went to the Philippines in 2001, did it before we went to Wellington, NZ in 2003, when we went to Europe for the honeymoon in Oct last year, and now before going to Thailand. Why? It's usually that fear of forgetting something extremely important. Like the bloody passport or the plane tickets. Or some electronic thingo that to buy overseas would cost twice as much. But then again, we're going to somewhere much much cheaper than Australia, so we can always take comfort in knowing we can buy almost everything we need over there!

Except maybe for my imaginary iPod, cos it seems to be more expensive over there than in HK or here. Yeah, that one, the 40Gb one that I'm proabably never going to buy. It's disturbing really. Remember in Mean Girls, where Lindsay Lohan's character realises she simply cannot stop talking about Regina George? It's the same with me and the iPod. A friend has already noticed the increasing frequency of mentions in our daily emails. At the moment, I've actually found the best deal is from buystation in HK, where a 40Gb iPod is on offer for around A$400. In Australia, that won't even get you the 20Gb one at most retailers.

But this again raises the question, why don't I just get the Shuffle? I've already concluded that I only need 512 as the only time I need that city soundtrack is when I'm commuting home, which should be sufficiently covered by 512 mins. of music. But it's so small, and I can't rate the music, and what if I need to have alternative storage media to transport my feature films, like they did on Lord of the Rings? Hmmm..

So what did I do today?

1. Got a haircut. Was thinking of just getting it in Thailand, cos it'd be much cheaper, but wifey reminds me, "Remember,we're going to my brother's wedding immediately after we arrive in Sydney!" [code for: Please on't embarrass me with a shitty 'do. And don't you dare shave your head and say you became a fucking Buddhist.]

2. Passed by one of the local Asian stores and almost spent too much money on food items. Bought siomai, vietnamese rice cake (the green one, with white layers), Knorr "chinese soup" mix, and 3 vietnamese Pork rolls from the shop beside it. Mmmm...

3. Watched this HK flick from the early 90s called New Dragon Inn, starring Donnie Yen, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin and Tony Leung. God, Maggie C is so cute! And the fight scenes were just awesome. The highlight for me is this scene at the end where the butcher llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk God, that was me falling asleep and pressing down on the keyboard. Am so totally screwed. Gotta go to bed.

Lemme finish that thought -- the fight is near the end, where Donnie Y's character has managed to defeat or at least seriously puncture with a sword the other three lead characters. Then to their rescue comes the Dragon Inn's in-house butcher, who was shown earlier in the movie to be seriously adept at carving away strips of human flesh from a carcass hanging in the basement. He collides and does battle with Donnie, and there is a blur showing the results of battle. Camera moves away and we see that butcher-guy's managed to strip all flesh from his left hand up to his forearm, and also from his left foot! Donnie tries to walk and his left leg breaks and he comes crashing down. He's eventually slain by Tony L's character, but Brigitte's body has already sunk into the sand.

4. Oh, and Iron Chef French (Sakai) lost to a challenger for the first time! Secret ingredient was Homard lobster, which is apparently a variety found mostly in Europe. A bit shocked to see the live lobsters being skewered and getting their shells taken off while still alive. I wish they'd hurry up and release the show on DVD already! Warning: just checked on Amazon and found an American version called Iron Chef USA, but apparently it was so awful that only two episodes got made.

I'm really going to bed now. It's 5.21 am. Do you know where your children are?

God.. just spent half an hour browsing. Bloody hell. Wanted to place a pic of Robert Patrick in that scene from Terminator 2 where he's asking "Have you seen this boy?" Couldn't find one. Then somehow ended up on a co-worker's blog. Then onward to a few of his links, one of which is Alterslash - a slashdot digest, then found a link to Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system. And found an interesting article about the early Internet, and a reporter getting in touch with Bill.

I'm really going now.

Han Solo-related thought for the day

star wars 013
Originally uploaded by tamura.

Whoever you are, whatever you do, anytime you think the pressure's too great, that things are just crashing down on you, just remind yourself: it sure beats being encased in carbonite.

Arabic cover of Rock the Casbah

Listening to Alchemy, on SBS Radio, and heard this cover of the Clash's
"Rock the Casbah", complete with Middle Eastern touches in the
instrumentation. It's by Rachid Taha, a French-Arab singer. Time to
fire up Kazaa Lite! Heheh.. Found this article about him:
http://www.montrealmirror.com/2005/022405/cover_music.html

18 May - Wong Kar Wai Retrospective, Dendy Opera Quays

Arrived at Circular Quay at around 5.20, pretty pleased with myself at being early, and not being out of breath from all my powerwalking. Then I take my ticket out and realise the movie started at 5! WTF! Serves me right for not looking at the schedule, and presuming that the same schedule as yesterday would be followed. Not that there was any reason for me to assume that!

Slimmer pickings this time around. Both films presented are
representative of early period WKW, BCD (before Chris Doyle). No hyper-saturated, neon-soaked colours here! Both are straightforward, non-arty, very 80s flicks. The first film is "Final Victory", which I guess is a comedy, but not a memorable one. Somewhat clunky, mass-market comedy. "As Tears Go By" has a more coherent plot, and has Andy Lau and Maggie Cheung. (okay, having MC is enough for me to watch it). Lots of cheese, with a Chinese version of "Take My Breath Away" at the romantic sequences. Lots of beatings, broken glass, and weapons - not so much guns as knives and baseball bats. In some scenes you see the beginnings of WKW's usual techniques - the slo-mo foreground contrasting with blurry sped-up action in the background, for example, in the scene with Andy Lau at a bar in front of a jukebox. Or I think that's what it was...

17 May - Wong Kar Wai Retrospective, Dendy Opera Quays

Test post. Let's see if mailing to this address will publish on blogspot.

Managed to get to Dendy Opera Quays in time for the screening of Wong
Kar Wai's "Fallen Angels". About a hit man, his point girl, a mute
scam artist, his psycho would-be girlfriend. One of the clearest examples of the WKW- Chris Doyle (cinematographer) combination. Some scenes tended to be blatantly self-indulgent but at times, done with such inventiveness that you don't really mind at all (ie, the scene with Takeshi Kaneshiro and Charlie Young at the bar, seemingly filmed with a time lapse camera, everyone around them moving in a blur, and TK slowly trying to nuzzle Charlie).

More people came in to catch the next one
"Chungking Express". Oh boy, more Tony Leung, this time being stalked
by a skinny but cute psycho chick played by Faye Wong. But that's the second part. The first part is about a drug smuggling attempt, and a heartbroken cop. More satisfying than the former, that's for sure.

More later, I'll edit this post anyway. Bla bla bla...

Must remember to leave work earlier next time. Was extremely lucky to get across town to Circular Quay in 30 minutes.

First Post

This will be a diary, an aid to memory, a tool to help my family use my words against me, a scrapbook, an album, a scratchpad, a post-it note stretching out for all the days from now til Google turns Evil. Or at least til I decide to self-host and move. Or my ADSL access is cut off. Or all sorts of nasty shit.

Hello.

Krang's Mood

You may ask yourself: well, how did I get here?

When I first started getting into Mr Hayes's music, I had these grand visions of becoming - if not Shaft - then definitely a (perhaps) lower-rung, but still well hung, sex machine to all da chicks, somebody who'd get chicks all hot and wet, cos I could play them deep-throated bassy vocals by someone who wasn't Barry White (who all the ladies already knew via Ally McBeal).

Picture the scene:

[late night funky stuff in da bedroom. soft female moaning, wafting thru the house]

me: MMM..mmMMMMM.. ooh.. yeah... baby, you like that doncha??

she: uh-huh... uhmm... mmm...

/krangsquared pulls supacool vinyl out of his dj bag

she: whatchu got there, baby?

me: This is Isaac Hayes's album, "... To be Continued"

she: so what?

me: This is what you could call my big gun, baby, musically speaking. This is where I go for the kill and demolish all your trainspotting, sampledelic defenses. Listen to this closely, my lovely, for almost every note in this has been sampled to a degree not too far removed from "Apache" and "Funky Drummer"

she: huh?

/krangsquared puts album on turntable, and cues up "Ike's Mood"

me: Listen that horn blast in the intro. Doesn't that remind you of every Ms Universe broadcast you ever saw back in the 70s? When the strings come in and you hear your M.C. for the evening talks about "these lovely ladies from all around the globe vying for this prestigious title"..

[music continues for a while]

Listen to that guitar riff... picked up and recycled by groups like Massive Attack and The Chemical Brothers...

she: Waitaminnit, but that riff wasn't really used on a Chemical Brothers song, I think. It was on the track "Wede Man", in the intro...

me: I see...

she: And the "Live at the Social" CD, where it's on, is pretty much just a DJ set, and only features I think 1 or 2 tracks by them.

me: mmm...MMMMM... baby, I can clearly see whose defenses are coming down... and it ain't yours. And here I was thinkin I was gonna try and impress you! I can see we've really got a groove thang going here.. Together, we'll set the sky alight. Together, we'll make each evening feel like it's our very last night. Together, we've got a chance to spot so many samples, and identify so many riffs - we could even win at musical trivial pursuit at the local bar on Wednesday nite!

she: Baby, that rhymin' was risky but heartfelt. It's almost like in Light My Fire where Jim matches "liar" and "pyre". He could've just used fire anyway, but that boy, he just had to tempt fate.

Yeah, baby, we've really got it going on.... uh huh...

Ooh, dat's right... do dat again, lovah... mmmm...

me: mmmm-mmmmm-MMMMM!

[the strings come in, and the lovin' keeps comin on]

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My friend thewilyfilipino was disturbed enough by the above posting to suggest that I set up a blog. I took that as a compliment. :)