Twitter Talk

Just joined twitter about two weeks ago, under the name ‘simontalks’. Coincidentally, there’s an article in the Star by Oon Yeoh about Twitter and microblogging, for the uninitiated.

I’m exploring all the apps related to Twitter, and believe me, there are lots and lots of them, goes to show how popular it has become. There’s Twibble, Twitteroo, Twitterific, Twitthat, Tweetybird, etc. Heheh was joking about that last one.

Anyways, I haven’t really started looking for my friends in twitter, so if your there, say hello to me and I’d love to start following you. Last week, just for the fun of it, I started following Kevin Rose and Barack Obama. Not Sarah Palin, though.

Btw, if you want to see a hilarious website about Sarah Palin being president, check this out. Click around the site and have a good laugh.

A Love Letter From AIG

Last week I got a pink birthday card from AIG, the USD$700 billion bailed out insurance company. Actually it their wholly owned subsidiary, AIA. Slightly different initials, but same same. Think financial meltdown, federal reserve bailout. But I’m digressing.

Actually last week i had already nicely worded letter from AIA telling me “everything is fine” and “don’t worry, your money is secure with us”… yadda yadda yadda. But this one is actually a birthday card for my daughter because I bought a policy from them many eons ago.

You know what? Maybe AIA Malaysia might want to use a smaller font for that “An AIG Company” line… just a suggestion though.

There are also free gifts for anyone buying a new policy! Hand Towel! Cap! Bag! UMBRELLA! Like I don’t have enough of those things lying around the house. I dunno, maybe in light of all the publicity about their parent company, their PR department might want to start giving out better gifts to restore public confidence. Maybe like Proton Wiras. Yeah, $700billion can buy a lot of those.

They also reminded me again why I should NEVER buy another AIA/AIG policy again – found at the back of the card…

AIIIIYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE… the logo on the right…..!!!

Temple of the King

It was my first semester of life in university for me, and it didn’t take me long to settle in, but I never really clicked with most of my classmates, partly because I was not Chinese educated nor very interested in studying. But i found a few good friends like Dave and Ray, who shared a lot of my interests – music, PC games, you know, the important stuff.

One day Dave came to my room and told me that another pal of his, Jedi, had problems getting past a certain PC game (I think it was Ultima VIII:Pagan) and needed help from someone who completed it before. So I went with Dave to this guy’s room, and helped him get through the difficult level (something about jumping off a ledge and catching the precipice). Suddenly the cassette player hit this sweet, magical song, that starts with enigmatic words:

One day in the year of the fox
Came a time remembered well
When the strong young man of the rising sun
Heard the tolling of the great black bell

I asked Jedi what song that was, and he was kinda surprised i haven’t heard of such a classic. “It’s ‘Temple of the King’ by Rainbow”. Later I went out to buy the album, and from fellow headbanger Dave I learnt about Ritchie Blackmore and the bands heavy connections to other 70′s rock legends like Deep Purple and Ronnie James Dio.

I’ve probably heard the song a million times since then, but although most people know it as a cheesy karaoke staple along side tunes like Hotel California and Stairway to Heaven, I still love the lilting melody and symbolic lyrics.

But what does the song really mean? I guess I never really thought Dio had any specific meaning he wanted us to get. A google search shows some guesses about Solomon’s great temple, but i don’t really see the connection. To me, I think its more about looking for and finding what you really want in life, that is the temple of the king.

One day, in the year of the fox
Came a time remembered well,
When the strong young man of the rising sun
Heard the tolling of the great black bell.
One day in the year of the fox,
When the bell began to ring,
It meant the time had come for one to go
To the temple of the king.

There in the middle of the circle he stands,
Searching, seeking.
With just one touch of his trembling hand,
The answer will be found.
Daylight waits while the old man sings,
Heaven help me!
And then like the rush of a thousand wings,
It shines upon the one.
And the day has just begun.

One day in the year of the fox
Came a time remembered well,
When the strong young man of the rising sun
Heard the tolling of the great black bell.
One day in the year of the fox,
When the bell began to sing
It meant the time had come for the one to go
To the temple of the king.

There in the middle of the people he stands,
Seeing, feeling.
With just a wave of the strong right hand, hes gone
To the temple of the king.

Far from the circle, at the edge of the world,
Hes hoping, wondering.
Thinking back on the stories hes heard of
What hes going to see.
There, in the middle of a circle it lies.
Heaven help me!
Then all could see by the shine in his eyes
The answer had been found.

Back with the people in the circle he stands,
Giving, feeling.
With just one touch of a strong right hand, they know
Of the temple and the king.

Technorati Tags: ronnie james dio, dio, ritchie blackmore, rainbow, temple of the king, rock, metal

Something On My Mechanic

My friend once told me a modern day adage that I found to be very true:

these days everybody needs to know 3 people – a doctor, a lawyer and a mechanic.

Without any of the services of these three professional, be prepared to lose lots of money when something goes wrong, ESPECIALLY the last one.

I have an excellent family doctor, a young lady who, thankfully had to inject me on the backside only once so far.

I know many lawyers who are good friends, but thankfully I haven’t had any reason to need their professional help, and hopefully don’t ever need to.

As for the mechanic, i’m pretty lucky to know this guy Ah Weng who has been servicing the series of beat-up cars I have had the misfortune to be driving for the last 12 years. Unlike many other mechanics I know, Ah Weng’s a nice guy, and is honest (well at least to me he is). I know most people believe that honest mechanics don’t exist in the real world, much like honest politicians and fat loss pills that acutally work, but trust me Ah Weng is.

But anyway when I sent my dad’s Wira for service 2 months ago, his perpetually-frowning clerk told me that Ah Weng has retired, and his assistant has taken over. According to the assistant, Ah Weng has been suffering from kidney problems and has finally decided to retire in his early forties.

Ah well, I guess I know his assistant well enough to keep sending my old junk car to the same workshop. I dunno, looking for another regular mechanic is a hassle – it is sometimes like a bank holding open interviews for prospective robbers…

Alleycats Website

Let me just wish all my Muslim friends a belated Eid Mubarak, Selamat Hari Raya. hope you guys had a good holiday.

***

Some time ago, I wrote a blog posting about the Alleycats (you can read it here). That was in April 2006.

As most of you know, on June 4, 2007, Loganathan Arumugam, or Loga, passed on after a battle with lung cancer. Since then, in addition to the comments offering condolences to the family appearing on that blog post, I have received numerous e-mails from their fans (from as far as the UK) asking me if how to get in contact with the David Arumugam and band.

But of course, other than being a big fan, I won’t have a single clue on how to contact them, other than the obvious route of going through their recording company.

There was another thing I noticed at the time I wrote the earlier posting, there seem to be very few articles or anything written about Alleycats on the Net or around the local blogs. They don’t have a website, only just a few fansites that seem to be updated infrequently.

But not anymore. Two die-hard fans (hell yeah, I love the word ‘die-hard’!!!), Kannan and Prakash has taken the trouble to set up a website for the band here, with a special section dedicated to the memory of Loga.

AlleyCatsMalaysia

The site is still new, but they’ve a very good section on the history of the band, plus album covers through the years. I think it’ll be great if readers can contribute pictures, videos, lyrics, or anything associated with the band to contribute to the website. In fact the three pics of the band here are actually taken from their archives (hope you guys don’t mind…!).

According to Kannan, the 40th anniversary box set compilation 3CD + 1DVD album and the website expected to be officially launched this month through a press conference by Universal Music Malaysia.

I don’t think the band will continue on in the forseeable future, which is for the better. But the Alleycats will always the true Malaysian music pioneers.

Terima kaSIH!!!!

Technorati Tags: alleycats