Quickie Fun

If you're looking for a good time, check out Apple Trailer page. Just the top 10 trailers to tickle your fancy and keep you smiling. And planning your cinema outings for 2009.

I have always wondered why there wasn't a TV programme that just featured movie trailers. They are so much fun to watch. I always enjoyed being early for movies to check out the trailers. All the anticipation and excitement about a film wrapped in a minute of action, drama, klaboois and kahbooms, kisses and hugs etc etc.

There's Star Trek and Terminator Salvation coming out this year. I got goose pimples listening to the "tah-dum tah-dum tah-dum" in the Terminator trailer. Woof.

Dunlop Street Snaps & Zsofi's Tapas Delights

It's always good to shake things up a bit, break off from the routine. Most people my age quite likely live a "wake up - go to work - go home" life most of the week. Take a detour man, it'll do you some good.

I ended up at Dunlop Street on the shophouse fringes of Little India. The street is a surprise. I started at Serangoon Road and cross over at the lights - indoctrinated procedure for Singaporeans - while throngs of others simply dodged traffic in a lane by lane approach to jaywalking. No chicken would make it across this road safely.

Dunlop Street has shops galore, filled with Indian spices, saris, cloth, religious ornaments, food, electronics, mobile phones, CDs, VCDs, DVDs and many other things. Komala vegetable market was a sight to behold. All the greens and beans an Indian chef would need lay in crates displayed across one side of a no-signal junction. Beautiful.

Further down, lay one reason why Dunlop Street shot back to fame - The Prince of Wales. Pub and backpackers' inn, the POW, as its term of endearment goes, has given a interesting lifeline to the area. Backpackers from all over now stay in the area and more such hostels have opened up to cater for the budget traveller who doesn't mind sharing. The angmohs trawling the street are an interesting contrast to the overwhelming number of Indian and Bangladeshi workers who do the same.

Opposite the POW lay my endpoint. Zsofi, a tapas bar, opened about a month ago and Ashlynn, recommended meeting up there with Farah (author from previous post) and Ravi. I got there early and was the only one being served at the first floor bar. Armed with my Ixus and not much else to do with my hands, I went around snapping. Soon, company arrived and we moved upstairs to the 2nd floor rooftop, a horizontal plane shared by all the adjoining shophouses, partitioned only by low walls and zinc roofing. How cool. Thankfully, the weather was too. Next door, Filipino ladies were singing real bad karaoke. We beared with their rants and made good conversation.

Turns out that down the street towards Jalan Besar, many Thai massage parlours had come to be. They, ahem, provided reasonably priced services. I think the prophylactics come per entry.

Well, go check out Zsofi. You get a small plate of excellently crafted tapas item for each alkie ordered. And the quality of the produce is amazing. Seriously, the chicken wings, prawns, mushrooms, salad, potato frittata, sundried tomatoes, tomato poppers and salad will have you raving (They've got a really experienced chef apparently). Perhaps even ordering larger portions from the menu. The alkie is cheap too, a pint of Heiny from the tap is $10, no taxes. Check out Zsofi's online presence at www.tapasbar.com.sg. Go make an evening, and a friend or two, at the place.

Got home way past midnight, too tired but happy.

Department For Appropriate Behaviour

I was fooled.
Maybe I have been waking up too early in the morning. Department For Appopriate Behaviour! You would believe it too if you lived in Singapore. It would probably sit with Home Affairs with members from Info and the Arts, and report to the PM directly about our trangressions. "Don't read that" and "Don't watch this" and "Smell this because I said so" - that's what I imagine this department would come up with. And of course "Are you wearing clean underwear?".

Smart though, especially with our appetite for risque TV of late. All these shows, Mad Men, Californication and The Riches have had rave reviews. Good job FX. Good thing I have FX.

The Ride Of Your Life

Now this is what I call dreaming big. "8 stories up and 120 meters long" kind of big.



I bet all the skateboarders dream like this - huge monster ramps to conquer because the only way forward is bigger and scarier for the high that comes with pride of conquest, ownership of feat and conviction that comes with hard work and wrecked knees, shoulders and skull.

We need skateboarders in gahmen. To inspire and fly.

Red Laser Spectacular

We went to this art gallery, Collectors for a talk on the psychoanalsis of art in conjuction with an exhibition of work called Confabulation. We learned about looking at things from the eye versus the gaze, reality versus intent, however unplanned. It was quite an eye-opener.

The exhibits were cool and thought-provoking. This pix is a shot of low-level red lasers emanating from a circle arrangement of emitters. With a smoke machine and the light turned off, we got this wondrous 3D, star-trekish effect. Stunning, especially when you walk towards the source.

The gallery is a little out of the way in the city, haha. Jalan Kilang Barat. You'll realise it's so close yet so far. Confabulation is on till Oct 25.

Burn After Reading

I managed to catch the much lauded Coen brothers film Burn After Reading on Saturday. It's got some real high profile actors who come together really well in a film that is essentially about pride and paranoia. Without giving too much away, the film goes through the paces of how one misplaced item can transform the lives of a small group of individuals in an interconnectedness that goes beyond humour and into alarm. The story is pretty single-minded but plays upon the unique traits and desires of each character. You get to understand how each person thinks and hence plays out his or her life.

Then it gets funny. The funny is sort of like adding a bucket of KFC to traditional, homecooked dinner. Both strange funny and haha funny. Some people are afraid, others jump in and some don't care. But everybody experience has been twisted, forever. Maybe that isn't a great analogy. But it made you think eh. And the smell of fried chicken rekindled in the nether reaches of your nostrils, didn't it? Gotcha.

Go watch it for yourself. It's a little slow in the beginning but soon you'll be giggling (and grimacing) along nicely. It's NC16 and when you suddenly get shown why, you might think it should have been R rated. Just rock it baby. Hahaha.

And listen to the song that plays over the credits appears. It's so funny.

Burn After Reading official site

Relive The Big Bang!

On Wednesday 10 September 2008, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is going to recreate the BIG BANG. Yes, the one that created the universe.

At about 0900 Swiss time (quite apt eh) (1500 SG time), some scientists are going flip a switch and send tiny atomic particles accelerating to near light speed around a set of tunnels 27 kilometers long under the Swiss-French border. The colossal complex is known as the Large Hadron Collider. The particles will then hurtle into each other, releasing massive amounts of energy in as many as 600 million collisions each second. Cool eh. All this in the pursuit of knowledge, and hopefully answers to questions like "What other dimensions are there?", "What happened to all the anti-matter?" and "Why do women need so many shoes?".

CERN had to commission an new computer system called The Grid to capture all that day and beam it to labs all over the world. Lagi cooler.

For more geeky background into the multi-billion dollar project, go to BBCNews.

You can watch the live webcast on Wednesday here.

In honour of the project, I have embedded a YouTube video that deserves a Nobel Prize of its own. Presenting the Large Hadron Rap! (BTW hadrons are too complicated to explain simply. The best known hadrons are protons and neutrons.)

Party Hearty

This pix about sums it up. It was Carolyn's birthday (the damsel in the middle) and she set up this shindig, ho-down, shebang, rocker rave at Wala Wala. On a Thursday no less. We had the good time, the band was excellent and there was cake to boot. Who could ask for more?

The rest of madness exposed at my Flickr.

Don't Be Afraid - It's Just A Colour

Carolina has a fetish. Well two actually. The colour pink and Hello Kitty.

So her XX birthday celebration was centered around these two elements of desire. And of course, the rest of us paid the price of friendship. The following pics are evidence of our gargantuan sacrifice.

And feather boas itch! To think all these years, all these cabaret people couldn't solve that problem.

The rest of the sordid images are at my Flickr.

Primary Barbeque

You slice them up and throw on the fire. Give them about 5 mins on each side. Then chomp down on them juicy sweet morsels of fruity pleasure. The Italians have a pasta sauce made from grilled red peppers. Yeah I like peppers. This was at Farah and Iggy's Cat and Dog Show.

More pixes at my Flickr.

Wedding First, Cider After

Saturday was interesting because 1) I had a wedding lunch, and 2) had 3 pints of cider in the afternoon in an irish bar.

First the lunch. It was a substitute for the dinner. The groom, Solomon, wanted a simple affair and all the Mandarin Oriental could do was cater for lunch that weekend. Not so bad it seems. A very high percentage of invitees showed up on time and the food, goodness, was amazing and different. Out of the entire course of 8-9 dishes (I can't remember), the only dish in common with a typical Chinese wedding dinner was the shark's fin soup (which I left on the lazy susan for other guests to relish) (I could go on ranting about mankind killing off the highest form of life in the oceans but that deserves an angstier time)! The opening dish was prawn and lobster salad with seafood rolls served with melon. No cold dish with jellyfish and other weird things. And it came wonderfully presentable too. We had cod as the fish dish, a lovely yet intriguing yam-date-mushroom dish. Lovely prawns and the desert was a serving of 2 mousse cakes - one chocolate, the other lemony cheesy. Loved them both. How many wedding feasts can you recall fondly because of the food?

Now, the bar. Chris, the gallant gentlemen in the picture, brought us to Durty Nelly's. (The lovely lady is Ariel, fiancee. Down, boys and girls, down.) It is an Irish bar apparently set up by a company that sets up Irish bars across Asia. Who knew. Anyway I was very very happy to learn that they served Strongbow on tap. Cider is my weakness. The fruity slightly sweet fizzy alkie beverage is right up my alley next to Star Wars, Sri Sujana nasi lemak at Changi Village and taking photos as favourites. And the place was showing rugby on tv and the rule is an hour before and after a match, pints are at $10. I had 3 pints. Happy like bird, some might say. The gang of ex co-workers hung out and talked till about 6ish, after the NDP marchpast well marched past. It was an afternoon well spent.

More images at my Flickr.