Back in Singapore. First you, then I, became victims of food poisoning. It must have been something we ate in Cambodia. Still, it was a good trip.

Too tired to blog much, but today is the last good day of the year.
Happy new year folks.

Nearly a month late but here you go:
Nov 21 was No Music Day.

Discover the sweet music of Bobby Baby.

Oh yes. Will be off to Cambodia soon with my saner half, and we'll be back end of the year. Hopefully the weather is better there.

Check out this wonderful indie label Stereo Test Kit Records and mp3s of their bands. Every song is a gem!

One of the books I've started reading and well, it's yours actually:
Jeffrey Steingarten's "The Man Who Ate Everything"

I think one of the things that distinguishes music from the other arts is that music often requires other people. The performance of music is a public occasion or a social occasion. This brings it about that the performance of a piece of music can be a metaphor of society, of how we want society to be. Though we are not now living in a society which we consider good, we could make a piece of music in which we would be willing to live.
- John Cage

To find a person who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.
- Robert Brault, software developer & writer

Run Wrake's Rabbit, for those who've missed the screenings.

Strange Star Wars tribute, Japanese style.

Of all things, will I ever cook a turducken?

Had a conversation with VJ about how it's getting harder to like new music, new films, new anything. But then I thought that life is a balance of likes and dislikes, meaning that if we start to find we like some things less, somewhere else there are other things we'll like more. It's just that we have to go find them, but that'll probably be part of the fun.

I really hope it's that simple.

What I learnt today from VJ:
All Art is quite useless.

Time and time again, you'd be amazed at how I'd leave a smudge of toothpaste on the left side of my face. I'd ask where it was and try furtively to remove it, and you'd lick a finger and wipe it off instead. I blame this on the fact that I'm a right-hander who holds the toothbrush in my left hand.

Only you and my mum ever notice my careless trait.

This evening I was just going for my routine 8km run but ended up breaking my own personal record by running 12km. I didn't plan it. I just thought: hey, what if I run a bit more and see how that goes?

Life yields surprises if you nudge it a little.

What I'm reading now.

I was not abused, abandoned or locked up as a child. My parents were not alcoholics, nor were they ever divorced or dead. We did not live in poverty, or in misery, or in an exotic country. I am not a misunderstood genius, a former child celebrity, or the child of a celebrity. I am not a drug addict, sex addict, food addict, or recovered anything. If I indeed had a past life, I have no recollection of who I was.

I have not survived against all odds.
I have not lived to tell.
I have not witnessed the extraordinary.

This is my story.
- Amy Krouse Rosenthal, "Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life"

I know I do reasonably good and productive work, but I've not used my brain in ages. All this reading, listening to music and watching of films, what do they really add up to?

Your fridge is a refugee camp for food.. it's the only place I know where 3 month-old bread, a mooncake since Mid-Autumn Festival, shrivelled lady's fingers, charcoal-black bananas and last year's ice-cream co-exist happily.

Well, at least till I liberated them last night.