What the hell is Matt doing?

I don’t believe Matt got out onto that rock in Norway (Matt being Matt Harding from wherethehellismatt.com).

Was mucking around the Internet today. Doing research for work. (I love how anything and everything is “doing research”.) Ended up at the “Where the hell is Matt?” videos again. It always makes me smile. Here is the stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor.

I still don’t believe he got out onto that rock in Norway. (For the record, I would have got out onto that rock in Norway. Getting off that rock would have been the issue of concern.)

Viking comeback

And the reunions continue. My old Norwegian ex-boss was in town from Oslo, taking his family through Asia, using here as a base to fly to Vietnam and Bali (sigh). The guy loves Southeast Asia. His wife never wanted to leave in the first place. Something about no snow here. Nice to see him again and some of the others from the old agency. Some of them are now management in various multinational agencies and it was good to get advice from them on the direction where the industry is heading.

As for the old creative teams, my former art director is in KL. BB went back to Canada. Pam is now working in Chicago. MZ came for drinks after tucking his kid to bed (his new job sounds really busy but not as bad as our freelance gig, at least his current agency has better creative leadership, a much, much better reputation and more appreciative clients; that last gig got especially depressing when one morning he was leaving for work and his wife told his son to “say bye-bye Daddy, you’ll see him tomorrow.”). His former writer CW is now working in China (must have been a real good package coz the whole family moved up). I like CW. He was my senior but not by so much that Sling and I can’t tell him he’s talking bullshit. And he did talk a lot of crap. That’s what made him brilliant. CW and MZ together were the agency jokers, always trying to fit mimes, monsters and mud-wrestling midgets into their ads, much to the exasperation of our ex-boss. (They actually succeeded on the monsters a few times, once on the midget, though without the mud wrestling, and once on the mime, and even had cavemen, dinosaurs, cowboys and indians, a bison stampede, mad scientists, giant pandas, a man in a rabbit bodysuit, aliens, and an opera-singing Helga in their career at this agency.) Sling and I learnt a lot from them. We still keep in touch with them. CW still owes me a hundred bucks.

My ex-boss was the last of the vikings to leave (at one time, the agency has something like eight Norwegians, hired by the Norwegian Regional Creative Head). He was a really nice guy and we were sad to see him go. The old agency was fun, which made life less miserable.

(There was another video about the creative process, but it was removed. Bugger.)

Look at my face. Am I bothered?

It was a weekend of reunions.

My old partner Sling who’s switched from Hot Talented Advertising Art Director to Hot New Commercials Female Director was in town from KL to visit her parents.

We worked together for over five years, having moved from the agency where we teamed up and found we worked well together, to our last agency where we spent four and a half years until we took different career paths (she changed hers and I stopped mine, hah). We’ve been though hell and worse, and have probably seen both the better and worser sides of one another. We shared a room for a month because the agency didn’t have the budget to give us our own rooms (which was bs — MZ, who was my art director and co-group head at my last gig, and the one who helped Sling and I get into our last agency, says he doesn’t know why we’re always so unlucky with our projects; MZ should know, he’s stayed at the Mondrian in LA, we stayed at the Best Western in LA). Later, on another project, we got our own rooms but the apartment only had one bath (so it would be one showers while the other pulls the hairdryer wire out the gap in the door). Sometimes it’s creepy how well we know each other. It happens, I guess, when you sit in the same tiny room across from the same person 15 hours a day for 5 years. At times, we don’t even need words. We’ve even evolved beyond whispering “three o’clock”; just a split-second sideways glance to that cute guy walking past would suffice. Sometimes something would happen and I would just look up and she would know exactly what mood I’m in. Most times we just talk shit, like her plan to marry a coconut tycoon, whereupon she’ll introduce some oil palm tycoon, or any geek, to me.

Anyway, it was good to see her again. We’re online all the time, she messages me whenever she has a question, but we’ve not met for over half a year. I said I’ll let her settle down in KL first, then visit her so we can shop and eat our way around the city. But I suspect she would be too busy.

Her colleagues were with her. They came down to do some colour grading at one of the production houses. She’s doing very well. For a director who’s just six months old, she’s been working non-stop. As her fellow director said: if you’ve just started as a director, don’t complain that you’ve got too much work.

From one reunion coffee session to another. A reunion-and-farewell coffee session, rather.

For O, the Former-Regional-Big-Kahuna-Serving-The-Pantheon-Of-Those-Who-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned. O worked with MZ and I on that crazy gig. But no matter how insane things got — and things did get quite insane — we never saw him lose it.

In the midst of the insanity, such as clients calling the APAC CEO to tell them that their team was wasting paper by printing layouts and mounting them on presentation boards (because as we know, APAC CEOs have nothing else better to do between golf games and buying up companies in the high growth regions of India and China except twiddle their thumbs and entertain calls like that), O, who would eventually have to answer the APAC CEO’s call, would tell us: ”Look at my face. Am I bothered?” And he’d smile.

He would get stressed — we’d pass by his office and he’d be on some concall with the big client in New York frowning away — but he never showed it to us; he was always a gentleman to MZ and I. If he had a crisis, it was always a proper discussion on how best to solve it, not some melodrama or some hissy fit (he saved his flamboyance for after work).

When we left, MZ found some pictures of him in the main server and comped up an inspirational moment, motivational-type of poster with his big happy grin, titled “OPTIMISM”, with the caption “Look at my face.”

So, now that he was leaving to work (not in agency, thank goodness) in Shanghai, the whole team met up for coffee. Even MZ, who was in the office on a Sunday, left early to join us for the tail end. It was fun. The girls had a good time coz we share a common interest with O — guys. And MZ had fun coz all he wanted to do was pinch O’s butt.

As for “Look at my face. Am I bothered?”, it comes from Lauren Cooper, a fictional character played by Catherine Tate, a British comedienne, on her show The Catherine Tate Show. The schtick is the same, lightning fast repartee, “Face? Bothered?”, but I still find the variations funny. Like this one (only coz it involves Shakespeare and a Scottish guy).

Otherwise, the French Oral Exam sketch is also funny (it helps if you grew up watching ‘Allo ‘Allo). And this skit also, on some live show.

Monday. It’s back to the office again. I’m in a white tee, flouncy light green skirt with a light green flower brooch and my favourite (but falling apart) ballet flats — happy clothes to beat the Monday blues. But Velvet Underground’s Venus in Furs is playing in my head, together with images of guys, hot women in skimpy bikinis and leather. It’s for work. Honest. And I’m not bothered.

Has it been twenty years already?

Happy twentieth birthday to Just Do It.

Swaying daisies (at last)

Sit beside a mountain stream, see her waters rise.
Listen to the pretty sounds of music as she flies.

The Beatles – Mother Nature’s Son

Swaying daisies sing a happy song beneath the sun, indeed.

Flying dreams

Last Friday I was supposed to accompany Dave and his camera to see the Night Festival at the National Museum, where Italian troupe Studio Festi was performing Dancing Sky. Imagine mystical Renaissance balloons lit up like the full Man on the Moon come down to earth while around them, ballerinas suspended on cables danced gracefully through the air, weightless and magical, gauzy dresses trailing behind. Or a nimble acrobat in the middle of a giant bubble rolling down the path, lithe and supple, doing amazing spins and somersaults. Orbs of light with a dancing fairy trapped inside. Or a ship with silken sails flapping in the wind, cutting through the air bathed in a glow of moonlight. Enthralling. Ethereal. Like the flying dreams I get every now and then (I love flying dreams). You enter another world, one step closer to taking flight yourself.

But Dave was down with a migraine so we didn’t go in the end. As I’m writing this, I’m regretting I didn’t just go see it on my own. (I don’t see as much performing arts as I wish I did; I wish I had more kakis to go to these things with me. Still, last Friday…) Really regretting. Really.

So, if ever Studio Festi’s Dancing Sky comes to your town, watch it on my behalf. Write back in great detail and tell me how beautiful it was. And what an idiot I was for missing it.

  

Boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada

The world is awesome, whether you’re an astronaut or archeologist, a surfer or base jumper. Whether you’re chasing tornados or fishing in the Bering Sea, climbing volcanoes or crawling in a rat-infested sewer. Or simply sitting on a beach watching fireworks. But in case you didn’t realise that yet, Discovery Channel offers some nudging.

Everybody, all together now: boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada, boom-de-yada…

The Dark Dark Knight

It is dark, deeply dark. It’s fraught with twists and turns. It’s got well developed characters. It’s well written, the story is airtight, nothing is wasted. Its plot is complex with multiple layers and yet you still know what’s going on. It’s not over-explained. What it is NOT is a superhero movie. Calling it a superhero movie would be doing it great injustice. It is chilling and engrossing, a thriller that happens to have a hero in a bat suit. What it is is a movie that will never be forgotten and will unanimously instantly enter our list of movies with cult and legendary status.

For a movie whose tagline reads: Welcome To a World Without Rules, Christopher Nolan has changed the rules. Yes, Heath has redefined the Joker, but Nolan wrote and directed the movie.

Nolan first. What we have here isn’t a comic-book plot of good guys kill bad guys. The Dark Knight’s themes delve into the nature of good versus evil and the fine line or grey area that divides the two in the humans.

And the dissertation is put in motion with the appearance of Joker. This is no villain harboring a dark past and sob story now plotting world domination, or revenge, or infinite wealth, or destruction for some personal agenda. In fact, we don’t even know what his past us. And it doesn’t matter. That’s the beauty of the Joker. What if, just imagine for a moment, power and brains had no ulterior motive other than to wreak anarchy?

Now, Heath — No, I’m not going to really talk about how his incarnation of Joker has changed the character and its evilness forever. I mean, c’mon… your personal reaction watching the movie would probably speak louder than any reviewer’s analysis.

The character he portrays, however, is ruthless. Plays with lives. There are scenes where we see this demonstrated out with great graphic (and well edited) finesse, and then there are scenes where it’s only suggested. In which case, our imaginations figure the rest of the violence out. The beauty of the Joker is also how he fcuks with your mind so effortlessly.

Make no mistake the movie is graphic. Far more sinister in subject and tone than Batman Begins, which was also by Nolan. One friend called it disturbing. The Joker’s insane and no one doubts it. It’s actually Alfred’s voice in the first trailer from long ago that put it best: Some men aren’t looking for anything logical. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

It’s a strange comment, but I see a lot more windows in this film. It almost makes this version of Gotham more real, more familiar. (I’m not saying this just coz I was recently in Chicago and was also distracted by- Hey, that’s the IBM Building/Wacker Drive/Marina City/etc! Hey, I was on that bridge!) It’s bleak, but believable enough to be what we might see outside our windows. Crime is the mob, the gangs, the drug dealers. And in this case, the Joker as well. The same way this feels like a crime saga which happens to have a good guy in a bad suit. The hideouts are still there, and the ”cool superhero technology stuff”, but they’re played down, as are the gadgets and hardware.

Another thing that I love about this movie is that things are not over-explained. Viewers are not morons. Save for a handful who’ve just arrived from some obscure nation with no access to media in the past seventy years, or from Mars, everyone knows who Batman is, and what the basic premise of costumed hero and villain would be. So let’s just can with the time-wasting, oft-conflicting non-canon back-story and go straight into how psychotic and evil the guy is and how the heck are we gonna stop his mindless violence and rampaging crime.

Anyway, I heard the hype days before the movie opened. People were talking about it like it was the Second Coming. Even the ones who weren’t comic book or movie fans or geeks were whispering juicy news they heard about it.

“The night is darkest before the dawn.”

Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman deliver as expected. I love how Gary Oldman is simply absorbed into any role he plays, like Lt James Gordon. Aaron Eckhart did a stellar job as Harvey Dent. The public hero, the people’s poster boy, the White Knight to the nameless, faceless Dark Knight. Maggie Gyllenhaal makes a noble Rachel Dawes.

Over the weekend, The Dark Knight broke box office records by pulling in $158.4 million. It deserves every cent. RIP Heath.

Going to work on Monday walking funny

Dragon boat training started on Saturday. After two weeks’ break, we’re all back to being unfit and lazy and weighed down by inertia. We had two boats, but attendance was far from average (only two girls turned up). Training was technically not as intense as before, but we did stationary rowing on the beach, which was hard. After three sets of that, rowing out into the water was like freedom. Our paddles dipped into the water like a hot knife into butter. 

Saturday night, however, we were up and awake for the team barbecue and pot luck party at Eam’s place. Too bad the weather was a little uncooperative, so it was more pot luck and less barbecue, not that it dampened our spirits. The star of the party and indisputable beau of the ball was Skyler Boy, who wowed the room with his solo dance. His moves were so powerful, he sometimes didn’t even need music.

Later, the scene became a Taboo party. I don’t know whose idea it was to pit boys against girls. Imagine having over seven girls hovering over you going “BEHHHTTT!!!”. Even under the mild high of some red wine, we were in perfect unison and loud enough to bring the roof down (especially since one of the girls was Y)… If only our rowing was as synchronised and as enthusiastic. Girls won — after about two rounds, some guys went off to play Chor Dai-Di (wow, it’s on Wikipedia, not bad) — and we broke for ice cream.

Even later, the party evolved into an Indian Poker party. I don’t know how to play the game, but there’s supposed to be betting involved based on what you think your chances of winning by having the higher/highest card is. Only the players didn’t bet cash here. In our version, they pour alcohol into a cup. I’m guessing that the less you think you’re going to lose, the more you pour. I heard the Sprite bottle in the middle of the circle didn’t contain Sprite.

After Indian Poker, things progressed to Zero-Zero-Seven-BANG. How to play this drinking game: Everyone sits in a circle. One person starts off by randomly pointing at someone, saying “Zero.” This targetted player then points to another, saying “Zero.” The third person points to any fourth, saying “Seven”. The fourth person points to a fifth person, “Bang”. This fifth target has to remain completely still while the two players beside him/her has to raise their arms and go “Ah!” Any wrong or messed up moves is punished with a shot… of whiskey or vodka or whatever was in the circle. This game is fast-paced and lethal but loads of fun (then again, anything after five shots of whisky can be loads of fun). You don’t get high, you don’t get drunk, you get annihilated.

Then we broke for cake, and for some, an oxygen break outside on the porch. An indication of how much fun the last two games were was when one of the guys, in the middle of a (sort of) conversation, finished a sentence, leaned forwards in his chair and literally keeled over onto the ground and promptly fell asleep. He was sleeping so soundly the guys just placed pillows under his head, reformed the circle and kept on playing for a higher high with bigger stakes in Indian Poker Round II. Coach took that chair and just sat there taking pictures of sleeping beauty at every possible angle. It was funny.

I headed home around then. I had an early day the next day.

Sunday morning, I went to yoga class.

I love the ambience of this class. I went for a trial session at one of those chain yoga studios before with a friend and didn’t like it. Maybe it was that particular day’s session, but the instructor was just barking out instructions one after another really fast like it was Square Dance Yoga. Furthermore, there were like thirty people in the studio; even if the pace was slower, she can’t spot everyone’s movements at the same time. This class had six.

I love my instructor. Her voice is the epitome of calm. Even a simple “Don’t forget to switch your mobile phones to silent” is said with the soothing calm of a mountain brook. It helps when she’s getting you to induce more pain to yourself. “Bend your knees in a half squat. Stay there. Lean back more. Straighten your arms. Relax your shoulders. Why are all of your legs shaking?” She also lets us hold our poses to a count of ten, only in between the numbers she’s giving instructions out. Hee hee ouch.

The location of the class is also amazing. It takes place in an old black and white colonial bungalow near the Botanic Gardens, and class is held in the garden in a spacious open air wooden pavilion with thatched roof, surrounded by palms, bamboo clusters, banana trees, ferns and yam plants. I’m trying to find balance on one foot and I see birds walking around the brush with the nonchalance of a Sunday morning looking for bugs. I’m trying to find a point to focus on and see instead bumble bees buzzing around the palm fronds. It’s no Himalayan mountaintop, but save for the distant sounds of traffic, you’d almost think you were in the lush green tranquility of Bali. (Ahhh… Bali…)

Great way to start a Sunday, though if I was hoping for some slow, relaxing, stress-reducing sleep inducing zen-like class, it was nothing like. The warm-ups were longer than usual because it was a weekend morning and “our bodies have been sleeping so we need to work a little harder and a bit more time to wake them up”.

Bend. Put your hands on your ankles. Inhale up. Backwards. Arms on your legs. I’m gonna be sore in the morning. Stretch. Stretch some more. Straighten your spine. Look up. Reach higher. Longer. Hold it there to the count of ten. I’m so gonna be sore in the morning. Sun Salutaion. Down dog. Weight on your back. Inhale to Child. Exhale to Cobra. Stretch. Relax your shoulders. Six sets, we’ll hold our poses on the last three. I’m gonna end up going to work on Monday walking funny. Sun Salutation. Repeat.

As we’re warming down, I love this part, relaxing everything from our eyebrows to our lips to our fingers and toes, all to the dulcet timbre of our instructor’s voice akin to a soft breeze, I wonder why it took me this long to get back to class. Oh yes, I was working till 2am at my last job.

I was feeling so good after class. Happy. I was also craving for a rosemary grilled chicken with cranberry sauce on focaccia bread sandwich with greens. That would have been so perfect (the café was just down the road upstairs from Borders… so close yet so far). But I had promised my mum I’d pick lunch up for home. Bugger. At least now I know what I’ll be doing next week (besides walking funny to work on Monday).

The Dark Knight — to watch or not to watch

The trailer, obviously. 

I like trailers. At the same time, I hate trailers. I mean, the cool ones show just enough of a glimpse to tease and taunt, and whet your appetite without giving the best scenes away, and leave you in eager anticipation for the movie to open. They’re well edited. They have a good score. Those are the cool ones.

For me, however, beyond a certain point, I don’t want to see any more. My curiosity’s piqued and I don’t need to be sold further. That’s when I try to avoid seeing more trailers.

That was the case for the much-anticipated Dark Knight. I’ve seen the early teaser trailers, the way cool Joker teaser posters, and, of course, pictures of the Joker according to Heath the Legend. But the new, longer trailer was on TV the other day and I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

The movie was shot in Chicago — that could work, Chicago as Gotham; Batman fought a lot of mob villains; Batman is darker, more gothic, whereas Superman is more New York metropolis-ish — so I went from “closemyeyesclosemyeyesdon’tseedon’tsee” to ”Hey, I’ve seen that skyscraper before! (Is that the Chicago Board of Trade?!) Yay, Batman! Cool, Joker! Hey, that’s the tunnel! That’s Wacker (love that name)! That’s the river! (I think that IS the Chicago Board of Trade!!) That’s the Old US Post Office Building! I was there! And there! And… Woohoo!”

I’m all psyched up again. Can’t wait to see it. Can’twaitcan’twaitcan’twait.

“ROAD TRIP!!!!”

When writing, I’m not a fan of all caps and exclamation marks. But that’s been the subject of some 50-odd emails that’s been shooting back and forth between the seven of us last week.

Plus, the road trip was really a blast.

All of us were early at the rendezvous point even though the meeting time was 6am (while there would have been no end of whinging if Coach had wanted us to meet this early for race day warm-up). Everyone was early, even the notorious latecomers, even the ones who’ve ever forgotten to bring passport to a previous such weekend getaway, even though the three girls sharing a cab gave the driver the wrong destination (R thought K was pulling his leg when she called him to double-check the meeting place, until he heard the cab driver scolding them in the background saying the two destinations were very different and quite on opposite ends of the city). In the end, R, our driver, was the last to arrive.

The car was a rented seven seater Hyundai Trajet (R chose it last minute after seeing that the KIA he had originally booked was really small; the Trajet cost more, but we had buffer in our transport pool). He was the designated driver while Eam was the designated navigator. I was the banker, not coz I’m good with money, but coz of my meticulousness (it’s R’s way of not saying “anal”) with accounts. Everyone hands me $50 for car and petrol costs, and another $50 for food, accommodation and all miscellaneous expenses.

Anyway, after we packed everything into the trunk — all the bags (Y packed enough for a 3D2N trip, which for a girl, would translate to 5 days’ worth of clothes — she even brought jeans, she thought Desaru was gonna be like Bali; her other excuse was that she only packed at 5am — all of this is very Y, if you know her), some alcohol (not a lot, just a bit, really), the games (Monopoly, Scrabble and Taboo), my spare sleeping bag (just in case, since we’re smuggling people into rooms and stuff, plus I heard the last time the guys went on one of these weekend getaways, the other guys kicked one of them out of the room for snoring and he ended up sleeping on the beach, so I was just being thoughtful, and they wouldn’t have any excuse not to go) — and we were off.

First stop, the jam at Customs and Immigration at JB. (Okay, it was just a slight jam. Scarier was the thousands of motorbikes that were in the queue heading the other direction.)

First stop after the checkpoint was the money changer and suddenly I was carrying a small fortune. Quite stressful, considering where I am. I stay close to the guys — R and Eam look like they belong to this hood. And Eam looks like a thug with caveman strength and anger management issues (meaner, if he’s not smiling).

Next stop, breakfast. We had prata and apam (it’s been ages since I had gula melaka… mmm… gula melaka…) and teh tarik at one of the best stalls in town — R’s a regular so he knows the good places to eat.

Then, after a stop for petrol and purchase of our first round of snacks, which lightens the small fortune by a bit, we’re off to destination Desaru.

It’s been decades since I last went to Desaru; it used to make for economical family holidays when I was a kid. Last Saturday, the weather was beautiful with skies the same hue as the coveted Colleen Sky Blue colour pencils of my primary school days. But instead of cassettes playing Stevie Wonder, oil palm plantations and forest flew by to the sounds of our singing.

“Ziggy played guitar, jammin’ good with Weird and Gilly, the spiders from Mars, he played it left hand but made it too far…”, “This Romeo is bleeding, but you can’t see his blood…”, “Maybe I’ve forgotten the name and the address of everyone I’ve ever known. It’s nothing I regret…”, ”Open your eyes, I see, your eyes are open…”, “Sometimes I feel I’ve got to (dum dum) run away I’ve got to (dum dum) get away…”, ”I’ve been looking so long at these pictures of you, that I almost believe that they’re real…”, ”Does that make me craaazy? Does that make me craaazy? (Possibly)”, “Remember how we used to talk, about busting out, we’d break their hearts, together… forever… Never say goodbye. Never say goodbyeee-ai…”, “Why does it always rain on me? Is it because I lied when I was seventeen…”, “You are one in a million and I love to watch the flowers grooow…”, “Let’s go to the park, I wanna kiss you underneath the stars. Maybe we’ll go too far, we just don’t care, we just don’t care…” — then starting girls’ hour karaoke special — ”R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Find out what it means to me…”, ” “谁让爱变沉重, 谁忘了要给你温柔。(Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh… wooooaaahh…) 我怀念的 我还有想要爱你的冲动。(hands grab fistfuls of air in anguish)” (one day I’ll post something about Chinese pop ballads and the power they wield)…

We made such good time we arrived in Desaru at 10:30am.

But by 11:30am, we were beginning to panic.

The plan was to not have one, just drive around and find accommodation. It was part of that whole romantic notion of the road trip. But turns out there’s some big event taking place, Seafood Night 2008, planned out of the capital. Kuala Lumpur had booked every room in the area.

We had driven in and out of ten over chalets/resorts/hotels/motels/beach huts. Even the run down places were fully booked.

Our last resort (pun not intended) (no, really) was Sebana. Over half and hour’s drive away, it’s a golf resort near a river estuary (so there’s no beach) and used to be popular with wakeboarders from home until crocodiles were seen in the area. I think it’s also a timeshare place coz we read about two room apartments there while doing research for the road trip.

Nope. Nein. Nada. Nil. They were all fully booked.

By then it was past noon. Since it seemed highly unlikely that we were going to get a room in Desaru, we figured we might as well have a good lunch at the resort coffee house. The menu was overpriced, but we deserved that much at least.

Later, bellies full with grub and eyes blurred with booze, we sank low into our seats and planned the next step. Y was going on about what losers we were and that she didn’t care how but we were NOT going to tell anyone about our failed road trip, and that come Monday, all our chat messages and sigs would have to contain statuses like “Desaru was great! The beach was beautiful!”, “What a great weekend…”, “Oh hum, back to reality”, etc… So we had to get our stories and facts straight. (All this, also, is very Y. Hee.)

One thing we did agree on, though — we would not go home. Instead, we’ll head back to JB, find a decent hotel, hang out by the pool, go to the spa, do pedicures and manicures or whatever, then go go-karting at our usual haunt (one of the regular dragon boat team non-training fun and leisure activities) on Sunday.

Since I don’t drink, I took over driving duty.

And got a rude reminder what Malaysian highways are like. We had left the last resort not ten minutes when I saw a coach overtaking a lorry in the distance. The road has only one lane in each direction and they were far away, but going quite fast. I’m thinking, “Great, R drives for an uneventful three hours and this has to happen now.” I slowly lower my foot on the brake pedal but the bus is getting nearer and the lorry is not relenting, and in the end, the bus veers back into its lane just barely a foot away from our already stationary vehicle. #%@*&$^£%!!!!!!! All of us were cursing to high heaven in several languages, except for R, who missed the entire thing coz he was fast asleep in the backseat.

Then, just minutes after that, Jun’s phone rang. We had left our number at the last resort in case someone cancelled, and it was them: Someone had indeed cancelled, do we want the two-room apartment?

We were singing again when we made the U-turn back to last resort.

  Our apartment was spacious and clean. Us four girls took the room with the king-size bed while the three guys took the room with the two single beds (+ 1 sleeping bag). Within half an hour, we had the drinks in the fridge, changed into our swimsuits and were headed to the pool. The rest of the afternoon was spent playing water polo over beer, playing scrabble by the pool over beer, and relaxing in the pool over beer.

Y now owes Eam (and R) two jugs of beer coz he met her dare and swam the length of the pool in one breath (R gets beer because he backed Eam on the bet).

That evening, we braved the crowds and headed to the event that sucked up every room in Desaru — it was a Seafood Barbeque county fair thingie, they wanted to build a world record-breaking ikan bakar (local seafood barbeque).

We didn’t hang around to see it happen though, but headed to town for a feast of a dinner instead at Jun Kedai Makanan Dan Minuman. They do a mean steamed patin. R and Jun who don’t like freshwater fish were hesitant but converts by the end of the meal. It was like one of those cartoons where you see the fish, then later just the head, bones and tail. And coz we’re Chinese, even later, just the bones and tail. Honest. And it cost us all of RM$15 a person. That’s like US$4.

  Slipping into a food coma back at the resort, a few of us ended up watching King Arthur while some of the girls went to nap. But we later bugged them till they woke up and all of us played Taboo till 3am. The box didn’t have the buzzer but that was ok. It would have been drowned out by our stereo surround sound cries of “Behhtttt!!”

Sunday, we woke up late.

Us girls wanted to go to the pool for a while but we had to check out by noon. So we basked on the small jetty on the river outside our place for a while. We’re trying out darndest to be rid of our uneven tans, thanks to week after week of training in the hot Saturday afternoon sun. I look like a tapir. (Yes, feel free to comment about the shape and size as well, it may well be true the way I’ve been eating on this trip.)

We pretty much ate our way back home. We were pretty well-behaved at the start, until we approached the countryside bordering JB and began to pass makeshift tents and wooden stalls selling durian by the highway.

Durian… There is a local saying about how the locals would pawn their sarongs for a good durian. And here we were, right in durian country at the peak of durian season.

Sure, it’s said to have the smell of rotting flesh, and its texture has been described as being similar to that of rotting onions, but to take a bite of that soft yellow meat is to taste the sweet flavour of heaven. The moment of ecstasy is sweet, bittersweet, creamy and rich. There is a reason this region calls the durian the King of the Fruits.

Waiting for the stall holder to open the fruit was pure agony. Seven of us were gathered round in nervous anticipation as his expert hands peeled the durian apart. The moment it was split open, hands just rushed straight in for the soft fleshy lumps of durian. Held gingerly between fingers, lips that began with tiny nibbles soon succumbed to hungry bites of the precious golden flesh. No one spoke. The moment of pleasure was to be savoured with a deserved reverence.

Anthony Bourdain, while a lover of durian, relates his encounter with the fruit as thus: “Its taste can only be described as… indescribable, something you will either love or despise. …Your breath will smell as if you’d been French-kissing your dead grandmother.”

Seriously, you have not lived till you’ve tried durian…

Later, after we hit the suburbs of JB, we had our late lunch of bak kut teh. Then coffee and cake at the gratuitous shopping mall stop right before the checkpoint.

It was a good weekend. We’re trying to plan another getaway soon. In the meantime, the diet begins this week and training starts this Saturday.

0.015 seconds of fame

Check out this globe-trotting world-spanning totally absolutely fun video. Somewhere in this is a crazy blogger and two of her girlfriends.

Actually, if you go to Youtube here, you can click on a slightly higher quality video than above. But if you’d like to see said blogger’s zits, there’s a HD version here. If you missed the original “Where the Hell is Matt” video (tsk, tsk), you can see where it all began.

See the world. Many people dream it, only a handful do it.

www.wherethehellismatt.com 

www.stridegum.com

2 days to road trip

Two more days to: Fighting over who rides shotgun*. Fighting over who sits in the back-most seats. Setting off. Customs and Immigration. “Passports, everyone!” “Look casual. And stop it, Eam!” Clear Customs and Immigration. Rock-paper-scissors over whose iPod to plug in. Discovering the rented car has no iPod port. Arguing over what radio station to play. Voting on radio station. Driver vetoes vote. Group grudgingly gives in (but secretly doesn’t mind the station).  Group karaoke-ing in the car begins. Prata bomb and teh tarik for breakfast. Go-now-or-forever-hold-your-pee break. Finding Highway 3. Group karaoke-ing in the car. Group dancing while karaoke-ing singing in car. ”Eam, stop it!” Take photos of highway stretching out ahead. Take turns expressing out strong feelings about our various jobs in impromptu support group session. ”Eam, stop it!” Take photos of oil palm plantations. Y launches into a soliloquy on (insert topic here). Eam arm wrestles anyone but the driver. “Stop it, Eam!” “Stoppit!Stoppit!Stoppit!” Tussle in the middle row of seats. Scuffle of pelting arms and jabbing fingers. K and Y combine to overpower Eam (just maybe). Nap time (except for shotgun rider and driver). Nap time over. “We’re lost.” “Yes, we are.” “Ask someone already!” Getting back on the right highway. Arrival, finally, hopefully before lunch. Look for cheapest accommodation. Try to bargain some more. Try to sneak people into the rooms. Break out the beer. Hit the beach.

*It’s a battle I’ll never win; I can read maps but the other guy can read signs in Malay. Plus R says me sitting up front is just a waste of good space. Grrr.

The Flying Tigers 天长地久

Years before I knew what a “concept” or “idea” was. Before I’d ever seen a copysheet or layout. Before I’d heard of the Unique Selling Point, The Button or the Thompson Way. Before “Interactive”, “360 Communications”, “Viral” and “Activation” (heck, this was in the days of Mosaic). All I know is that I just liked this commercial. And if advertising can produce epics like this, I want to work in advertising.

不在乎天长地久, 只在乎曾经拥有 。That’s the Chinese strapline. The English one is a quote from Alfred, Lord Tennyson. “Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” Their meanings are pretty close.

Yes, that’s 周润发 (Chow Yun Fatt)。 The actress is Taiwanese, 吴倩莲 。The commercial is titled The Flying Tigers and it’s directed by acclaimed Hong Kong commercials director, David Tsui. The longer director’s cut version can be found here.

This commercial is one of many through the years by Solvil et Titus, and they all touch on the theme of love lost, told in a grand and epic setting.

It’s interesting to note that they chose to romanticise the gift of a watch on a sad note because there is a Chinese superstition that believes that’s very bad luck. The words “送钟” (sòng zhōng), giving a watch/clock, sounds the same as a funeral send-off. Even today, this topic is taboo. As modern and cosmopolitan as some Asian cities are, where there is a big Chinese community, big corporations and brands, even if they’re from outside Asia, sometimes don’t like to feature clocks in their advertising unless they’re relevant, eg anti-ageing products.

Yet, the Solvil et Titus campaign was a marketing success as teenaged boys scrambled to buy their sweethearts watches with the words “天长地久” engraved on the back. (Translated, “天” is sky/heaven, “地” is ground/earth. It’s a Chinese proverb that refers to a love that “lasts forever as heaven and earth do”, one that is “as eternal and unchanging as the universe”.) Just imagine, if love was in the air, watches would fly off the shelves.

What’s amazing about all of this: In my first job in advertising, in client servicing, I worked on this account. It was all print adaptations and TV tape dupes though, the brand and creative work came out of Hong Kong (the parent company is a Hong Kong watchmaker) .

Anyhoo, I think Solvil et Titus has since re-positioned itself and moved away from that “antique” watch look. They still use Hong Kong celebrities and the recent posters (the ones I saw) are brighter, cheerier in a bubblegum teeny-bopperish kind of way. I wonder how sales are faring. I guess times change.

2008 to Stone Age in 2.8 seconds

From Information Superhighway to almost putting hammer and chisel to a stupid modem.

It’s vexing how the Internet at home is not working coz the modem’s broke and the one person who knows how to fix it is busy. How am I supposed to utilise (waste) my hours like that? I’ve got to access work email by remote, email the headhunter, and an ex-boss, support a friend who’s doing some charity work, research dive sites and dive resorts for a trip in early August, research work for some side projects, help my ex-partner-slash-up-and-coming star director in KL locate a reference video from D&AD 2003, get distracted by wikipedia for an hour, then get sidetracked by youtube for another hour, check credit card bills, then pay credit card bills, and fill in timesheets via the agency website (okay, skip that last one) — tonight. Not to mention I’m now behind on my porn downloads. I’ve resorted to stationing my fat ass at a crappy fast food joint with bad hot chocolate (damn, no macha latte) trying to access free Wi-Fi that hiccups and gets disconnected every 3 seconds. It’s as though the hamster running in the wheel of the wireless modem falls off at random spurts then gets in and starts running again. (I find that if i hit “return” non-stop, the webpage will finally load, at first just the text and lots of question marks, then after a few more hits, the whole page will load, but to click another link would be to repeat the whole process again.) I’m not sure if this whole post is just an example of how the Internet controls my life, or if I’m the one allowing it control it (b-but… my friends are all on the Net…). Anyhoo, since this is a rant, it’ll be short. (It’s not like the hamster can cope with anything more.)

Consider me vexed. Very.

Nitrogen Withdrawal Syndrome

Since the beginning of the year, Jun and I were making plans to go scuba diving in Cebu or Sipadan in July or August. I want to go diving coz I’ve not been in over a year. And Jun, if she doesn’t go diving soon, will stab someone at work with a blunt pencil any moment now. (Working in advertising does that to people.)

A few weeks back, we found a shop that was planning a trip to Malapascua in Cebu, Philippines. But Typhoon Fengshen hit. So the shop postponed the trip to later in the year. Bugger. An alternative would have been Sipadan or Manado, but none of the shops we called were making trips to those places in early August. 

Of course, there’s always Bali. And I love Bali. The people, the food, the beaches, the idyllic pace of life there… Bali is wonderful. I would go Bali at the drop of a hat. Really. Like drop everything and go. Anywhere in Bali. Even Ubud, which has no beach but is so lush and green with padi fields, forests and deep river ravines. I love Bali, just to spend the day doing absolutely nothing, be more laid back than a sleep deprived sloth on a hot Saturday afternoon lying in a hammock in the shade of a couple of coconut trees… Or spend it charged, learning to surf (which I’ve not tried, yet another excuse to go to Bali) or go trekking on her dormant volcanoes. And diving in Bali… *Sigh*… Bali’s waters are rich in volcanic minerals, making for a wealth of anemones, muck-diving things and all manners of other reef creatures. In one dive — one dive, not one trip — at Tulamben Wreck (the USS Liberty), you could see more in 45 minutes than on an entire weekend trip to Pulau Tioman or Perhentian. Sharks, barracudas, green turtles, triggers, sea snakes, pygmy seahorses, cleaner shrimp, lionfishes, stonefishes,puffers, boxfishes, nudibranches, countless numbers of reef fishes, and even big creatures like manta rays(!) and mola molas(!) (which, again, I’ve not seen either, so…)

Where was I? Oh, yes. Dive trip in August. Jun knows I would go Bali in a heartbeat, so there is always that for Plan B.

We’re madly searching for alternative dive trips now, further afield of Malaysia but still within Asia due to budget constraints, and time is running out. Gotta dive quick. Before I forget how to. Before my wetsuit rots to crumbly bits. Before we both go crazy from Nitrogen Withdrawal Syndrome. We hope to find something soon (before someone gets stabbed with a blunt pencil).

the spotted moray i spotted

The sun, the beach and a not really female dog

No dragon boat training this weekend (yay), so a bunch of us made plans to hit the beach on Saturday afternoon.

The morning was cloudy with patches of sun, but free Saturdays are precious, so as long as cats and dogs weren’t falling from the sky, the message went out that the beach outing was on. I got my brother’s van, so picked Jun and Eam, and Eam’s foster dog.

A bit of background here: I have a good mind to report the real owner of the dog to the SPCA for pet abuse. She named the dog Roxy; the dog is a he*. Furthermore, she sublet her whole place and moved out, and conveniently left her dog behind. If Eam wasn’t one of her tenants, who knows what would have become of the dog. Anyway, Eam’s taken over the care of the dog – mind you, Roxy is a retriever, and a damn cute one (he looks like a pet food poster dog when he stands and peeps in the backyard window, tilting his head just a little), so he’s not a small pet, he’s a big responsibility - feeds it, bathes it, takes it to the groomers. The dog’s healthy, albeit a little anorexic-looking. The biggest worry he’s got these days is the potential identity crisis; he’s probably as confused as everybody, who refers to him as a “she”, to which Eam retorts, “It’s a he.” Followed by, “I didn’t name her… him!”

By 3pm, the mat is on the sand. The gang has arrived. We’ve got water, we’ve got chips. We’ve got some sun every now and then.

And Roxy loves the sea. We throw his leash out and he swims out to fetch it. And it’s cute how he swims out after his master. They then race back and Eam inevitably wins. I tried suggesting he let Roxy win occasionally as I heard it could help the dog’s confidence, but he replied that he wants to be the alpha male (he has the upper edge already, since the dog’s name is Roxy). He’s also training Roxy to be a mini-him, an abettor of irritating-ness, as he leads the dog from the water to the beach mat where we are lying, and the dog shakes himself in a spray of cold sea water all over us. The dog may soon begin to associate the word “Eam!” with a cry of protest of some sort. Hee.

not roxy, but like him

Then we saw rain clouds looming in the distance. Then it began to drizzle. So we packed up and rinsed the dog. And then the drizzle stopped. Typical.

That’s when we headed to a cafe-pub on another neighbouring beach and ordered lots of food and beer (strawberry banana smoothie for me; it was crap, more like strawberry syrup and no banana). Afterwards, a few of us headed to Eam’s place for dinner, and spent Saturday night watching “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” — they’ve been showing it over the past three Saturdays — whereupon we (the girls) promptly launched into a discussion on how hot Orlando Bloom is, and how much hotter and manlier and drool-worthier Viggo Mortensen is, who can kick Orlando’s nancy-boy elf-ass back to the realm of Mirkwood if he so wanted to (déjà vu, coz we had that same discussion during “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” last Saturday when we went to Eam’s place after the dragon boat race to play Monopoly, and the week before that while watching “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring” when we went to Eam’s place after dragon boat training for poker night.)

elven prince?

or king of the men of the west?

* If I had a dollar for every time I wrote “she/her” instead of “he/him” here, I could buy myself a nice dress by now.

Founded in 1853, cool ever since

Rebel spirit. Sex appeal. Cool soundtrack. Some things will never change.

•  ”Wrong Places”
 

•  ”Creek” (1994) Directed by Vaughn Arnell, Anthea Benton
 

• “Drugstore” (1994) Directed by Michel Gondry 

•  ”Mermaids” (1997) Directed by Michel Gondry

•  ”Bruce Lee” (2000) Directed by Jonathan Glazer

•  ”Odyssey” (2002) Directed by Jonathan Glazer

•  ”Twisted” (2003) Directed by Frank Budgen

More coolness…
•  ”Doctor” by Spike Jonze
•  ”Elevator” by Michael Bay (yes, that Michael Bay)
•  ”Mr Bombastic“
•  ”Swimmer” by Tarsem
•  ”Flat Eric“
•  ”Crazy Legs“
•  ”Swap” by Michel Gondry
•  ”Dangerous” (with the swoonworthy Gael Garcia Bernal)
•  ”Rodeo” by Jorn Haagen
•  ”Midsummer Night’s Dream” (part of a series of talking Levi’s ads)
•  ”Walk the Line” (Girl version, Guy version)
•  ”Dangerous Liaisons” by Ringan Ledwidge

There are more, but not all are great. Some of them, including one with Brad Pitt, you can give a miss. (Yes, I said give Mr Pitt a miss. It’s an old commercial and not very good. You almost feel embarrassed for him. But he still looks hot. I guess that still sells jeans.)

14 days to road trip

It’s not a road trip to somewhere exotic, just a two hour drive to a mediocre beach in a neighbouring country — but I’ll take whatever I can get. It’s not this weekend as I thought it was — but it’s okay, I can wait another seven days. What it will likely be is lots of noise, lots of singing to the plugged in iPod (whoever wins the toss to plug his/hers in), lots of yells to please stop singing, and even more “Eam, STOP IT!” (maybe even a tussle or a minor brawl in an enclosed mini-van). And hopefully good weather, good food and a safe journey there and back. Adventure beckons.