One day during my Form Five school holidays, I was at a youth camp when i heard this guy from Kuantan play this fantastic riff on the acoustic guitar. When he saw me watching, he just smiled and said, “Clapton”. The only Eric Clapton fan i knew back then was my own brother. He was a HUGE fan, had all his tapes and posters. So when i got home from the youth camp, I dug out my brother’s Clapton greatest hits cassette (he was on holiday in KL at the time) and played it until I found that riff again. Didn’t take me long – I found out that it…

Here’s what I’ve been up to recently. I set up a marine aquarium, for saltwater fish. Here’s the tank – it’s been cycling without fish for the past 1 month. It’s a 2 feet open top 20 gallon tank, with a hang-on filter, carbon filter, wave pump, protein skimmer, and light. In the saltwater is 1.5″ of crushed coral substrate, 2kg of live rock (4 pieces), and some seashells my wife kept from many years ago. The set up also comes with a beautiful wooden cabinet stand, very nice. So anyway after a month of patiently cycling the water to build up the bacteria, we went to bought some fish!…

Took a long weekend holiday back home. Going home is always a bittersweet experience for me – i love the town, its where i lived and grew up for the first 18 years of my life. But home wasn’t always a happy place. So i don’t really go home that often since. This time round, spent some time going round my old haunts, taking photos. Maybe to remind me of the past. This was my primary school, Ismail One. Finest in town. This entrance wasn’t there back then. There was an old fence with a narrow gate. Outside there was always an Indian man selling ‘kacang puteh’ for 20 sen.…

Back home for the weekend, my mom asked me to clear a small bookshelf in the store room that contained my books and stuff from my uni days. I had faithfully kept the stuff for the past 13 years, but now its time to see what’s worth keeping and what’s not. Clearing the bookshelf unearthed lots of other stuff i’d forgotten about. These are the files for each subject i took in uni. Some photocopy books in the foreground. Since books were expensive, everyone photocopied them. The purple coloured book is STPM Kimia, which i used for all the 3 months i studied Lower Six. I was still in two…

It’s some time in the late 90’s, i was back home at my parent’s place on holiday. There was no Astro and no Internet for me back then, so i had to flip through the 3 local channels in between reading. One of the channels was showing ‘Chungking Express’ so i started watching. I hadn’t even heard of Wong Kar-Wai then, but i was enthralled by this simple movie that was so brilliant, so different from the other Hong Kong movies. As different as night and day. I watched it again last Sunday. While some of the editing (especially in the first story) looked a little dated, the movie still…

If that’s one anime that tries to extra-hard make itself more complicated than necessary, Ergo Proxy has to be one. On first impression, the 22 episode anime centres on futuristic wasteland world, and a society inside a domed city called Romdeau. Everything is very ordered, with androids called AutoRaves serving humans in many ways. But even from the first few epsiodes, they start throwing curveballs of in the form of philosophical and mythological references. Sure, lots of anime do that, but not as much as Ergo Proxy. There are two main characters in the story Real Mayar and Vincent Law, plus an infected AutoRave child called Pino, added for some…

Been eating a lot of soft boiled eggs recently sometimes up to 6 a day. Don’t worry i only eat the whites, never the yolks. Protein quota, you know. Most of the time i eat it at the coffeeshop behind my office, the Nepalese waiters know very well the texture that i want from the whites. And they get it right everytime, without fail. (Unlike the other coffeeshop down the road). So i tried making it myself a few weeks back. I googled “how to make half boiled eggs” and tried the various methods. First i tried simmering the eggs for 4 minutes, turned out pretty well, except the eggs…

Just read it here via Tomorrow.sg. (apparently this happened 2 weeks ago, one of the downsides of not reading the MSM) I first heard the story of Maria Hertogh from (of all places) a song by Handy Black. After some research i learnt gripping yet tragic story. Short version – a Dutch girl who was adopted and brought up by a Malay lady in Singapore, Che Aminah for several years in the 1940s. Some years later her natural parents, Dutch Catholics, asked the courts to get their daughter back. The judge ruled in favour of the natural parents, and the girl was put in a convent before being sent back…

Quick question – what popular TV show in the 80’s (shown here on TV3) starred a very young Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd as a pair of private investigators? Answer – Moonlighting, of course. I love that show, although i never really got to watch the whole series (due to the fact that i didn’t get TV3 at home, dammit). The premise of the show (whenever they kept to the plot) was about David Addison (Willis) and Maddie Hays (Shepherd) who run a PI firm called Blue Moon Detective Agency. The only other main character on the show was their quirky receptionist, Agnes DiPesto. What made the show interesting was…

For those of you looking for something interesting to do on a lazy Saturday afternoon, get down to Panasonic Sports Complex in Section 21 Shah Alam to catch the Bon Odori Festival in Malaysia. The Bon Odori Festival is an excellent place to eat Japanese (and Malaysian-Japanese) food and snacks, meet new people and watch some interesting performances (and participate too if you like). We went for the 31st one last year, pics and write-up here. Go early, if you don’t want to park 2 miles away or on the main road. Unfortunately, after waiting a year for it, we are unable to make it there this time due to…