Baybeats 2005: Day Two

Given that we only had a wedding lunch to attend on Saturday, I’d originally thought we’d make it for the start of day 2 of Baybeats, but I’d forgotten this was Tamara and her family we were talking about, so great company and countless glasses of champagne got considerably in the way. It’s a special sort of joy leaving a wedding party knowing your dear friend is in wonderful hands. Congratulations, Mr and Mrs Pritchard!

* * *

My views of Surreal and Furniture haven’t changed since last year, so let’s leave it at that.

I Am David Sparkle was pleasant enough but didn’t post-rock my socks that much either. The problem well may be mine though, I think I’m the world’s most impatient quietLOUD type post-rock fan. I love walls of bonecrushing sound but get restless in the slow peaceful bits that build up to them. This is why my favourite local band is Astreal, they just skip the foreplay and go right to the orgasm, which then continues for at least five minutes.

Let it not be said that I’m biased against all emo, I actually liked Brandtson quite a lot. They had nice songs with strong melodic hooks, and enough variety of chords and song structures that it didn’t sound like the same nice song repeated 8 times. Also, they do a pretty mean Cry Me A River. Mad strobe lighting during the chorus was a fun dramatic flourish but I wish they’d put a bit more death metal in the guitars.

* * *

At this point I have to mention my main frustration of the night: the stitches in my right boob are freaking cramping my style.

In normal circumstances I’d have left at this point to see Ice T in Zouk, but I was worried about getting pushed around or elbowed in the crowds there. I’d also have liked to go to Subvert’s 2nd birthday, but having to restrain myself from my usual vigorous drum’n’bass dancing would have been too frustrating.

So I stayed at Baybeats for Poptart and Twilight Action Girl’s DJ sets instead, but even within indie pop lies hardship. Witness my measured jumping during the “In LOVE, in FEAR, in HATE, in TEARS” bit of Sit Down, my restrained air guitar during Bullet With Butterfly Wings, and my wimpy gesticulating to Sabotage. Okay, I cracked a little when they played Here Comes Your Man, scampered down to the front and broke into a weird sway-hop-kick dance, but in general it could truly be said that despite all my rage, I was still just a rat in a cage.

* * *

Don’t these tiiiiimes fill your eeeeeeyes?

Baybeats 2005: Day One, Quick Notes

I arrived quite late from dinner and drinks with my former colleagues, so only saw Shamejoannshame and Nakedbreed.

The former was unremarkable instrumental post-rock which seemed to take overlong overdescriptive song-naming inspiration from A Silver Mount Zion. (Exhibit A: Shamejoannshame’s “I Heard You Singing A S Club 7 Song While You Were Super Wasted.” Exhibit B: A Silver Mount Zion’s “Sisters! Brothers! Small Boats Of Fire Are Falling From The Sky!”)

The latter was energetic pop-rock with catchy harmonies and occasional excursions into Joe Satriani guitar territory. Better than many similarly styled bands I’ve heard in Singapore – they deserve to do fairly well and probably will, given the accessibility of their sound.

Incongruous Hair Day

Yesterday I was finally called to the Bar as an Advocate and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Singapore. I celebrated this momentous occasion by heading almost immediately to the hair salon, to get my hair cut and coloured such that any self-respecting judge would throw me out of his courtroom. (This is possible because I’m only starting work at my scholarship company in September, and it’s not a law firm.)

It was quite amusing when I left the hair salon, walking through Raffles Place in the evening with my ultra-conservative black and white court attire and my new hairdo, which is basically like the chick in Sinfest, plus bright purple streaks.

Rainforest Music Festival 2005, Sarawak

The idea of going to the Rainforest Music Festival was first planted in my head by Joe raving about it, but it took someone with Louise’s energy to gather a group of 12 like-minded people and actually get us to Sarawak to attend it. I won’t be needing any further prompting to make my bookings for next year though.

Sarawak Sunset

 

(Click on photos for larger versions.)

THE FESTIVAL:


Tribal statue against surrounding mountains

The Sarawak Cultural Village is that very rare exception to the general rule that cultural villages are tacky. It’s beautifully situated, well-maintained, lovingly curated, and loads of fun.

 

Fay on the swing
Yes, the blurring is deliberate

We clambered up narrow bridges and staircases to longhouses elevated nearly three storeys in the air by stilts (no photographs could do them justice), cheered Fay on as she threw herself down from a height clinging on to a ring of bamboo (a traditional swing), and had a brief but precious ad hoc performance from one of the few remaining players of the Sarawak nose-flute.

 


Fish-traps to light the way

Unfortunately, we still never really got time to explore the Village properly, because we couldn’t manage to get there early enough before the concerts started at night, and once the concerts started it was hard to tear ourselves away from the great music. Even so, little details continued to make me happy. On my way to the toilet, I learned that traditional fish-traps make stunning lamps.

 

The venue for the night concerts was a huge field with naturally sloping sides, and the stages were set against backdrops of tall rainforest trees. A particularly nice touch was that there was no back wall to the stages, so you could see right through them to the greenery behind. I wish I could show you photos, but the lack of a tripod rendered all of them hopelessly blurry.

I’ve heard that WOMAD gets more prestigious acts than this festival, but for some reason I enjoyed this much more than either of the WOMADs I’ve attended. Caution about my stitches meant I didn’t do the vigorous dancing I’d normally have engaged in, but I couldn’t help giving in twice – the Old Spice Boys (Australia) got me itching to swing, Petrona Martinez (Colombia) drove everyone wild with hot mama vocals and asstastic beats, and a capable and careful dance partner was available in the form of Louise’s tangomate Kris.


Topless kilt-clad beardy headbanging Poles

I’ve always loved men in kilts, so although I may have looked like I was dancing during the traditional Irish music performance by Shannon (Poland), it was really just the quivering of my loins. Lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Marcin Ruminski was looking hot on the big screen as I was eating grilled chicken in the (awesome) food area, so I made my way to the front few rows of the stage, and found Louise and Vivien there for exactly the same reason. I realize the hotness isn’t apparent from the photo – you really have to watch him perform to see it – but believe me, he transfixed all of us so much that his ZZ Top beard didn’t even matter any more. However, it wasn’t just him that made Shannon’s performance so bloody amazing. Individually, all the members of the band were excellent musicians and effervescent performers, and together they were incredibly tight and had great chemistry. And while I suppose a headbanging bodhran player is a bit of a gimmick, it’s still a pretty cool gimmick.

 

All in all, the festival was fabulous, so professionally organised that you’d think you were in Singapore, except, that is, for the friendly volunteers and service staff, the uninhibited exuberance of the crowd, the 6.50 RM pints of Heineken and the illicit rice wine sold in mineral water bottles for 5 RM, the dirt cheap but excellent food (grilled lobster for 9 RM) and the wonderfully cool non-humid weather. Roll on Rainforest Music Festival 2006. I’ll be there.

SIGHTSEEING:

Kuching city itself seemed rather unremarkable, though perhaps that may just have been due to my extreme sleep deprivation while we were there. Apart from strolling along the waterfront and through a pedestrianised street of Indian shops, I saw little else of it before exhaustion set in after lunch (we’d left Singapore at 4.30 AM, and I didn’t get any sleep before that) and I retreated to the hotel for a few hours of sleep before we headed to the festival.

Better rested the next day, we managed an earlyish start for a trip to the Fairy Cave and Wind Cave, about an hour’s drive from Kuching. I’m sure there are better caves in East Malaysia than these, but they were the most convenient to visit in the short time we had and more than enough to awe a city person like me.

Fairy Cave
Middle Earth? No, Malaysia.

The Fairy Cave was like something out of Tolkien. I felt like Bilbo in the Misty Mountains, about to be captured by goblins. Amazingly, I didn’t see any graffitti, not even a tiny “Kennysia wuz here”!

 

Fairy Cave detail
Stalactites and shrubbery

Details of one of the mouths of the Fairy Cave.

 

Wind Cave
Inside looking out

The Wind Cave was less transporting, but geologically more interesting, as the effects of water in hollowing out holes in the ceiling and sculpting river channels were more pronounced. As you’ll see if you view the large version of the photo, there was some graffitti this time.

 

Everybody Offer Centre shop sign
These Kuching people are so friendly!

As I do everywhere I go, I noticed some amusing shop signs as we were driving to the caves and wandering around Kuching city.

 

Mushroom King's Bridal Studio shop sign
If you’re marrying a “fun guy”…

I really don’t know what to make of this one. I cannot see how fungal growths or their non-democratically elected leader for that matter have any connection with romance. Surely this must be a shit-take? (I’d apologise for that last pun, except I’m not sorry.)

 

I’m so glad I was still able to go on this trip despite my operation, and I’m even more glad no harm came to me as a result of it. I’m also very grateful to my travel companions, who rallied round me, helped me carry my luggage, and looked out for me in crowds. I couldn’t have gone without that support.

Never Surrender

I won’t lie about the stability of my mental state right now. I’m leaving for Sarawak early tomorrow morning to attend the Rainforest Music Festival, and am more than a little worried that someone could elbow me accidentally and split open my stitches.

And although this is obviously unimportant compared to everything else that happened today, it’s pretty rotten luck for me that just this afternoon, I have paid in full for a non-refundable, non-amendable return ticket to London, leaving 3 August.

The centre of the attacks is where I lived for four years. On any average day in London, I would have been more than likely to pass through Russell Square, King’s Cross or Liverpool Street (where Alec lived) tube stations, and walk past the British Medical Association on Tavistock Square, outside which a double decker bus exploded. Quite separately from the human aspect of the tragedy, watching the television footage I am again struck by the same feelings of anger and despair that I felt when watching the scenes of the fall of Berlin in Downfall – they are hurting a city I love.

Having said that, London has survived much worse and it looks like it’s handling this fine. I’ve checked and all my friends are safe, although of course my thoughts are still with any and every human affected, be they stranger or friend. London got bombed to bits during the Blitz, but while no one else dared to fight back against Nazi Germany Britain still said “We will NEVER SURRENDER” and thank God they didn’t.

I’ll have to make a decision over the next few weeks whether to go or not, and that will of course depends on what unfolds. I also have to consider the worries, perhaps exaggerated, of a mother who will be biting her fingernails the entire time I am away. Right now, I think I can only pray. Be strong, London. My heart never left, so it is there with you still.

Stupid Boob Jokes

Given that life without stupid boob jokes just isn’t worth living at all for me, it was pretty hard to keep them out of the previous post. I’ve been making them all the way through this stressful process, but ultimately didn’t want them to detract from the serious message I wanted to send.

However, now that I’ve made my point, I think there’s no harm in a little levity. I don’t intend to spend the days till the 20th worrying unduly, and neither should any of you.

So here you are, a few of the Stupid Boob Jokes Deleted From The Previous Serious Post:

  • “FOUR lumps and still so small??!”
  • While doing a pre-op ultrasound scan, my surgeon was telling me what to expect after the operation.
    Surgeon: There will be some swelling, don’t worry if it takes a few months to fully go down.
    Me: Wow, could you operate on the other one too then?
  • Janet Jackson Demonstrates:

    A good way to do breast self-examination

    A bad way to do breast self-examination

  • I think it’s always important to maintain perspective. Breast self-examination is uncomfortable, breast ultrasounds are uncomfortable, breast surgery is uncomfortable, but in the larger scheme of breast-related activities it seems to me from reading dooce’s account that breastfeeding, in contrast, is MOTHERFUCKING AGONY.

Please Take This Personally

Even as I type this I’m not sure how comfortable I am being so public about it, but a sentiment stronger than my privacy scruples is motivating me to continue.

I had day surgery today, to remove four lumps from one of my breasts. Although one was biopsied last year (needle, boob, OW OW OW) and found to be benign, they said it was best to take them all out for testing, just to be safe.

I don’t know the test results yet, and will only find out on 20 July.

I am only twenty-five years old.

None of this is written to get your pity, although for those of you who pray, I’d be grateful for your prayers. I’m writing this because I’m pretty sure that many of the females who read this blog are around my age, and I want to say to you: please don’t think you are impervious to these problems just because you’re still young. Please learn how to check yourself, and do so regularly. Lumps aren’t at all uncommon in young breasts, and are more than likely to be benign, but you owe it to yourself and everyone who loves you to make sure anyway. I know it’s damn uncomfortable to do, but don’t do it half-heartedly either – I only found one lump on my own, but a thorough scan revealed four.

I’m still quite uncomfortable in writing all this, but this is where I’m coming from: despite anti-breast-cancer messages more than amply publicized both in women’s media and mainstream media, despite all sorts of celebrity campaigns, despite the background awareness most of us have that breast cancer happens to a lot of women and kills some of them, I was still pretty cavalier about it. Irrationally, it took a distant relative’s death from a totally different cancer to get me worried enough to check myself, and then to consult a doctor.

I don’t mean to overestimate the influence my Z-list blog could have on any of you, but it seems from your emails and comments over the years that I have at least influenced some of you in terms of music and reading. And even if I didn’t influence you there, please listen to me here.

Girls: you already know what you should do. Do it.
Guys: do all you can to make sure the women you love take the time and trouble to protect themselves.

[Edit: By the way, I have no objections if any of you link to this post in order to promote its message.]

[Edit: I have received the test results, and thankfully, all is well.]

Spandex Party Boy

Context for the following conversation: Not content with his previous dangerous pastimes of flying, skiing, hunting and polo, Alec is currently learning boxing. Because, of course, he already has an excellent memory, and is not scatter-brained at all, and never does anything that horrifies his girlfriend with its complete gobshiteness such as losing her library books, or nearly leaving her house to walk home after midnight while his wallet, keys and handphone are still upstairs in her room, or thinking he can windsurf when he hasn’t windsurfed since he was twelve, subsequently necessitating the rescue boat, and so he can therefore CLEARLY, CRYSTAL-CLEARLY afford the potential brain damage…

Um, where was I? Oh yes – I was meaning to explain that for boxing training, he needed to buy a skipping rope the other day. In case you guys thought he was a paedophile.

Alec: When I was paying for my skipping rope at World Of Sports the cashier asked me if I needed anything else and I said, yes actually, I could do with a pair of black shorts. So he went and brought me a pair, they were black, medium sized, price was okay, so I bought them too. Trouble was, when I got home and looked at them a bit closer, they were made of this rather stretchy…
Me: Oh dear.
Alec: …spandex material.
Me: Oh God.
Alec: I tried them on and they were, well, quite skin-tight. But I thought if I wore them with a long T-shirt, maybe I could just use them for exercise in the condo compound.
Me: NOOOO! Nonononononononononono!
Alec: So I got into the lift in my shorts and with my skipping-rope and there were two other people in there and you know that habit Singaporeans have of talking about people in another language when you don’t want them to know you’re talking about them?
Me: Yeah.
Alec: Well it’s pretty bleeding obvious you’re talking about them when you stare them up and down blatantly and the conversation’s all in Chinese except for the word “skipping-rope”!
Me: Tee-hee. See, if you had a blog like everyone’s begging you to, you could write stuff like this down. Though I daresay your fans would probably ignore the point of multicultural etiquette you’re trying to make and instead just start chanting SPAN-DEX! SPAN-DEX!
Alec: A-LEX! IN SPAN-DEX!
Me: HAHAHAHAHA! A-LEX! IN SPAN-DEX! A-LEX! IN SPAN-DEX!
Alec: I was wearing a really long T-shirt with them!
Me: A-LEX! IN SPAN-DEX! A-LEX! IN SPAN-DEX!
Alec: This is why I hated primary school.

All About The Jonathans I: Motherless Brooklyn (Jonathan Lethem)

Not only is Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn funny, well-written, well-plotted and really quite touching for a crime novel, it is all these things consistently throughout the book.

Lionel Essrog, our protagonist, has Tourette’s syndrome. While he has come up with ways to disguise his offensive vocal outbursts, his “kissing phase” tic doesn’t exactly go down well in the Brooklyn school for orphan boys he attends. A misfit among misfits who spends most of his time in the school library, he is plucked along with a few other schoolmates to do grunt work for Frank Minna, a local small time crook with big time ambitions. Frank’s a foul-mouthed father figure of sorts and the boys see their work for him as the best thing they’ve got going. When Frank is set up and murdered one day, Lionel takes it upon himself to try and solve the murder, incessant tics and all.

It isn’t easy to explain the charm of this book, because it’s one of those you-had-to-be-there reads, and its many funny/poignant moments don’t lend themselves well to excerpting. I guess I found Lionel an extremely appealing protagonist, superficially at the mercy of his tics but able to transcend them, where it counted, through resilience and ingenuity. The people around him don’t really know much about his problem; to them he’s undeniably weird but over the years they’ve come to understand him well enough not to beat him up when he taps them six times on each shoulder or tells them to EAT ME FUCKFACE. Frank calls him Freakshow, and asks him to tell jokes because he gets a kick out of seeing how far Lionel can get through the joke without ticcing, but there’s a real fondness between Frank and Lionel which Lethem skilfully and unsentimentally depicts throughout the novel. It’s ultimately what keeps Lionel going in his efforts to solve the murder – the wish to do right by someone who did him right, and who he misses deeply.

Even if you’re totally unconvinced by anything I’ve written about Motherless Brooklyn, I’d recommend you try it anyway. It’s been quite a struggle to explain why exactly I thought it was so good, but I don’t want my failure to do you out of a really good read.