Category Archives: Personal

Film, Gaming, Media & Marketing, Personal, Technology

Adieu

I’m off to Malaysia for the next week, visiting family for Easter; blogging frequency will almost certainly be reduced. So in good housekeeping style, there’s a few things I ought to set out clearly here, having failed to blog them in any sensible way.

Things seen:

(a) Continuing, brilliant ER, mediocre, but sometimes amusing Tripping the Rift, Simpsons, Smallville and Frasier continuing through their current seasons.
(b) Bubba Ho-Tep is a great film about a black JFK, an impotent Elvis, and a Mummy wearing a cowboy hat. Not just cult, but very clever too. Stars the epic Bruce Campbell.
(c) Zatoichi and 21 Grams are both films worth watching; the former a performance piece/far east cowboy feature, the latter a sometimes over-clever but generally moving film from the creator of Amores Perros.
(d) The remake of Starsky & Hutch is a less good film, but completely enjoyable
(e) The new Orange Film Foundation (or whatever) ads. That guy is DAMN funny. Anyone else think he’s a bit Kevin-Spacey-esque? Any links to info about these ads would be appreciated.

Things done:

(a) I’ve also been introduced to Xbox Live and intend to get it myself (if I can get it all to work, with my Xbox Live, a patch cable, a Mac and a wireless network – told you I knew about the tech) so that I can beat Americans at Magic: The Gathering.
(b) As well as the rebranding/self-hosting of this site, I’ve found an AMAZING blogging tool which posts using the Blogger API, so you know what I’m currently listening to (as seen below).
(c) Finished Jennifer Government (brilliant), and am proceeding nicely with the Rogue Nation of Badass Devils and the Republic of the Sunne on Nation States.
(d) Started Hey Nostradamus, as recommended by Chris, and Absolution Gap, as recommended by me. Alistair Reynolds’ previous Revelation-Space-Universe books are pretty good too.
(e) I’ve added Brazil, Heat and Donnie Darko to my films-I-should-have-watched-by-now list (having finally crossed off The Usual Suspects a few months ago). Any takers for some video nights?

Things revealed

(a) Damian is the one with the continental fruit beer fixation, as noted on the napkin of a thousand blogs.
(b) Tom & I are working on a secret project. It’s very exciting.
(c) I’m trying to stay up all night to prepare myself for the jetlag to Malaysia. The jetlag caused by the introduction of British Summer Time is contributing to a sense of increasing dazedness. Might post again later, especially if I decide to rewatch bits of Hi Fidelity again…

See y’all…

[Listening to: My Friends – Red Hot Chili Peppers – One Hot Minute (04:03)]
Miscellany, Personal

Sporting Goodness

I’m not a massive sports fan. Point of fact: the first time I ever spent an entire day in a pub was about a month ago, for the Wales-Scotland encounter in the Six Nations. It was a lot of fun; I sat with Daf and some of his mates at the Isaac Newton in Cambridge and cheered the Welsh onto their victory.

This weekend saw a reprise; the England-France game on Saturday (supporting England, despite a constant stream of insults from Rachel, an England fan, who’d decided that my support of Wales at any point in my life was unfounded and absurd), and the Boat Race on Sunday evening.

Unsurprisingly, the England game left me largely nonplussed (I think anyone who wears those skin tight tops deserves to lose, but both teams couldn’t, so…), but Cambridge’s victory in the boat race had me very happy. Standing on the bank near Hammersmith bridge, whooping and cheering and very definitely feeling the underdogs – Oxford seemed to have about 80 times as many supporters on the banks as we did – I finally began to understand why people support teams and follow sport.

I don’t intend to start doing it in any way – quite apart from the sport I play, I have enough hobbies… but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.

[Listening to: Zak and Sara – Ben Folds – Rockin’ The Suburbs (03:14)]
Personal, Technology

Facelift

Thanks to the help of Chris and Tom, this blog has had a substantial facelift, is now blowered by pogger, has had comments naturally disabled then artificially re-enabled by haloscan, and is now hosted on new servers. It also has a new counter, but just mentally add ‘1170’ to that, because that’s how many clickthroughs the blog had when it was hosted on motime.

I think its pretty rocking, and I can stop wasting time making it look good and get back to my arbitrary (yet pleasurable) writing of nearly completely meme-free blogs.

Although I will try to get some links up in the blog template so you can click between Chris’, Tom’s and my blogs (in our blog-ring of three), should you desire.

Personal

Happy 2004

New Year with Gil Katie Sheila Sonu & Monu‘llo all – Happy New Year and all the good things that come with it to you all. Had a great holiday in Malaysia, although far from a white Christmas (much more multi-cultural there. And of course, most of my family are varying shades of brown).

Three main bits to my holiday; Christmas, obviously, New Year, and, on Dec 21st… The Return of the King! The much awaited third Lord of the Rings film saw us check in to the Mandarin Oriental hotel, where my siblings and about 17 first cousins and one or two stray aunts got together and watched The Two Towers, played games, shopped at KLCC (a BIG mall) and eventually got to the cinema for the 3 hour extravaganza that was Peter Jackson’s final instalment in the series. Review coming, no doubt, on my flashy new ‘reviews’ blog (use the main navigation to get to reviews, or click here).

Christmas was a family affair; Christmas Eve at hour house, playing games, singing carols and having Punjabi Claus hand out the gifts at midnight. Arvind, in his MBA-isdom, decided on a ‘push’ rather than ‘pull’ system for gift distribution. That didn’t work too well, but eventually the gifts got around and there was much happiness. My haul included a batch of books, hence my motivation to get the reviews page finally up and running, if only so I can keep a log of my reading and film-watching.

New Year’s was spent with friends; Gil & Katie’s Australasian excursion ending up in Singapore/Malaysia, so, following two days of ‘tours’ around major KL malls, we ended up in Bangsar; an expatriate (and apparently Indian)- favoured drinking area in KL, where we visited a couple of bars and rang in the new year several times with a crew of several thousand crazy Malaysian Indians with spray streamers and other party favours. It was surreal, fun and ended with a slightly scary encounter with a psychotic taxi driver, who kept saying to me (and my Malay is shaky, so if there’s an alternate translation I’m not aware of, please do let me know): “tiga orang dah mati, say tak salah, saya tak salah”. My translation has this as “three people are dead, it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault”. He then proceeded to drive us home at about 120km/h in a 50 zone… Yowza.

So a good season; returned to more job applications, another bout of tonsillitis, and various new year’s resolutions concerned with healthy eating and exercise. Resolutiontastic.

Of course a lot more stuff happened over the holidays; my encore classical guitar was destroyed by Malaysian airlines, a replacement Yamaha C-40 was acquired, my cousins and I performed with professional singers an an orphans charity brunch, the Abbalorious SPSetia dinner, the lambtastic Christmas eve dinner, driving like the devil and shopping like it was 1999… All good.

Personal

Christmas Time

James gets funkylicious
Well, the party was a lot of fun. I think everyone had a good time, certainly James seems to have done. No one paid much attention to my Christmas number 2 (Pob has the Christmas number 1 – check out www.melodyfactory.com), but fortunately for the world, you can download it here. I’m off now for the holidays but will be back in the New Year. Have a good one, everybody.

Miscellany, Personal, Work

In Absentia

It’s been a pretty busy and stressful couple of months. Job applications, work experience, tidying up the MA, participating in the creation of a whole new language and group-psychology based entirely on injokes: there’s not been a lot of time for even idle blogging.

But, it’s Christmas now, and I’ve been trying to get a rant out onto the site for a few days now; something lambasting the symbolic non-event Christmas has begun, a tool for marketers and a time when innocent consumers get kicked in the wallet for caring about other people, or at least how other people perceive them. I have, however, failed for any number of reasons.

First and foremost among them, though: I am not a cynic. No matter how hard I try to see the world through jaded eyes, my rose-tinted spectacles keep falling over my face and I keep trusting and hoping beyond hope for the best in people. Only it’s not beyond hope, and every year I get infused with Christmas spirit and turn into a hyperactive zealot for (non-denominational) good cheer.

And I’m a consumer, and I know the con, and I still go out and spend money on decorations and booze and candles and presents and Christmas music; I’m throwing a party and celebrating first with my adoptive family – my friends, a substantial number of whom were at College with me – and then with my literal family. When I get back to Malaysia next Thursday, we’re going to spend a lot of time shopping, and singing, and eating, and hanging out in each other’s houses; and watching the new Lord of the Rings movie with about 16 first cousins. It’s pretty exciting.

Merry Christmas y’all. Have some good tidings, yuletide cheer and mince pies on me. There may be more ‘blogs over the season; there’s going to be photos from the part-ay tonight and it might be necessary to put some of them on display. We will see… – Oh, and look out for my Christmas single, coming soon to a website near you!

Media & Marketing, Music, Personal

Holy rusting metal, Batman… a song?

Sexy Armand on GuitarYes, folks, I’ve done it. I’ve put aside what remained of my shame, and written, played, sung and otherwise performed a song, which I’ve recorded and uploaded, in a fit of narcissism. Click here to go to it.

Thus, affirm me. Tell me I’m talented and amazing. Or don’t tell me anything, because if you give the song the criticism it probably richly deserves, you’re gravely misunderstanding the reasons I write: for fun, for learning the skills necessary to record, and so people can be polite about it and discretely enquire about my day-job.

Miscellany, Personal

Holy mama, there’s a competition

Mmmm. Caramelly
Hey all you big and little dawggs out there, scoping out my site and keeping hip with what’s hip with the aceman, I have a competition now. It’s not a good competition by any means, but it may well provide us all with some entertainment, and lots of silly pics.

The idea is that you email me silly pics, preferably of mutual friends, and definitely where you own the copyright, and also provide a silly caption. Then, at at the end of an as yet undetermined period of time, I’ll buy one of you a mars bar. Or a drink. Or a better prize if I get really bored, decide to turn this website into a career and find a sponsor.

Incidentally, if you thought this site was demonstrative of an unspeakable quantity of self-love the likes of which have never been seen, then you should (a) listen to the Robbie Williams song ‘Handsome Man’ and (b) go here.