Crystalised by The xx

I’ve been searching high and low for a copy of The xx. Gramophone and HMV are both out of stock dammit.

I’m a little slow in latching on to this band I suppose. They sort of remind me a little bit of Joy Division I guess tho the song I’m sharing actually reminded me of Interpol at first! Apparently they’re influenced by R&B. erm yeah.

It’s nice to listen to music these days that aren’t all manic pogo-ing or auto-tune or mixes full of electro distorts and light saber duels mid-track.

I enjoy the mellowness and the deliberateness of the songs.Electro-pop if you’d need to label them I guess?  You can call them melancholic too I suppose, it’s a bit brooding at times. They kind of resemble, in my opinion,  The Album Leaf. Not sonically, just the overall vibe you know?

Definitely, one of the better bands I’ve heard this year. Can’t wait to get my hands on the album. Anyway here’s Crystalised by The xx.

anfield showdown

Can Torres help Rafa smile tonight?

So tonight’s the big game between Liverpool and Manchester United. We haven’t been in the best of forms coming into this game so it’ll be a nervous encounter I’m sure.

Rafa’s been under a fair bit of stick this week, probably the most since he’s taken over. I know I have been rather angry at him but I think some of the comments flying about at the moment are unfair.

Two things to address: the hate towards the American owners and calling for Rafa to go.

It’s easy to point fingers at H&G but I think we’re in that transition period from a club living in the 80s to one who’s only now catching up with the financial realities and potential of the 21st century. We’re a slumbering giant shaking off the cobwebs but we’re trying to make up for lost time now.

Some positives I’ve seen from the new setup are the new sponsorship deal with Standard Chartered that’s worth about 84 million pounds over 4 years. That’s about 20 million pounds per year compared to the paltry 7 million pounds Carlsberg has been shelling out annually. This is more in line with similar sponsorship deals that Chelsea and Manchester United have been enjoying.

With Liverpool’s fanatical support all over the world, coupled with StanChart’s global presence, merchandising revenue is expected to grow. The disassociation from an alcohol brand should also boost jersey sales in Islamic markets where having a haram brand splashed across the front of your shirt is taboo.

The new stadium with improved capacity is also expected to generate greater revenue for the club via ticket sales and better advertising packages.

The projected influx of money into the club will obviously help us battle on the transfer front with major players but it obviously takes time and money to finance these projects.

However, I don’t agree with some of the public going-ons in the press between manager and owner. Nobody wants their dirty linen to be washed in public and the animosity between the two parties doesn’t do anything for club harmony.

With regards to Rafa, am I frustrated? Yes like his choice of personnel, tactics – like two holding midfielders against teams we should be attacking –  but overall I think he’s a good manager.

Up till the later half of last season, where we saw Liverpool at their most rampant, I have always believed that Rafa didn’t have enough confidence in his team as an attacking force.

This year unfortunately, the loss of Xabi Alonso has screwed the balance badly. With his departure so late into the transfer window, there wasn’t any time to tweak tactics to mould a new playbook. So far, the experiments haven’t been going too well. Gerrard has gotten to used to playing in the hole to retain the discipline as a central midfielder like Alonso was. However, I feel in this current squad,  Gerrard is probably our best choice in the middle with Mascherano.

Like I mentioned in my last post, the team lacks belief at the moment. The early defeats probably played a part but we’re still the same group of players from last season. If Rafa can manage to instill the confidence back into the players, hopefully we can still get something out of this season.

Anyway, I read an interesting article by Paul Tomkins on the Liverpool FC site where he spent a day with Rafa. He spoke about how Rafa said he had to ship out about 50 of the players he inherited – from youth, reserve and first team – because they just weren’t good enough.

It’s easy to point fingers at the owners to say they haven’t given the manager enough money to buy new players but with the club in debt, it’s crazy to expect Real Madrid type of prices for players. Madrid’s net debt is 296 million pounds! That sort of numbers can send a club into administration!

But let’s look at our Academy. It’s been a decade since Gerrard stepped up into the first team. What’s happened since then? None of the players seem to have been of decent quality, except maybe Stephen Warnock though even then…It’s been extremely disappointing that the youth system hasn’t produced enough quality players to bolster the squad.

Then again, some of Rafa’s buys have been really quite questionable. But at the end of the day, we can’t go around just buying new players. Obviously, the scouting network and youth setup are part of the long-term strategies that Rafa’s trying to improve.

Just like everyone else, I too am a frustrated Liverpool fan, but I don’t think removing Rafa is the answer. Obviously, he’s instilled a new system into the team which has worked most of the time. Ultimately, the game depends on the 11 players out on the field for that 90 minutes. If they don’t believe that they can win the game (or the title), we can give up the fight now.

About 2 hours to kick off now. Cross our fingers!

Sunderland 1 Liverpool 0

Sunderland’s 1-0 victory over Liverpool hurts. Despite being in a cloudy haze of painkiller-induced drowsiness, throbbing pain and a pounding headache brought about by irregular rest, this defeat sucked enough to cast more hurt on me.

It exposed a few things I’ve been thinking about. One is we lack presence – both in stature and in heart. It’s something I’ve written in my previous blog – this overall lack of belief and confidence in the side.

We’ve always relied on Gerrard to get the team out of trouble. While his influence this season has been sub-par and he doesn’t track back anymore, as a captain, he has that galvanising effect on the players. When Gerrard doesn’t play, nobody takes charge on the pitch. Carragher rants too much. It’s hard to respect someone who’s just shouting at you all the time, you want a leader who’s calm, firm and well, generally a good example. He’s been our weakest link this season. The sooner Carra realises that no man is bigger than the team, the better and we should get another cover in or at least fast-track one of the youngsters. This Mr Liverpool tag is getting to his head.

Without Gerrard and Torres, we really looked ordinary. The choice of personnel and formation was unexpected but you’d expect these fellas to at least perform or step up when presented with the chance to do so.

Spearing looked lost versus a proper battling midfield. Shame they let Danny Guthrie go for the likes of Lucas – I’m sure he has his good points but not in our shirt. That’s midfield lost.

Our defence today was poor. You mix an unsteady centre pairing of Carra/Skrtel with Agger who hasn’t played this season against the Premiership’s hottest strikeforce =disaster.

The balloon deflection was weird. Sure, Reina and his defenders could have cleared it if they had spotted it earlier but if you’ve ever played a match, you’ll realise you’re usually following the action too and you don’t have time to look around to clean up. Especially when you’re too busy marking players etc. If the linesman had spotted it, couldn’t he have signalled the ref? It’s easy to blame the balloon but honestly, let’s admit it – the team sucked and deserved to lose.

The worst culprit was Babel.  He’s so frustrating. We know how good he can be when he applies himself. We hear noises from him about getting a regular place and what does he do when he gets it? Disappears. Miscontrols. Shoots waywardly. Miscontrols. Shirks from challenges. Miscontrols. Miscontrols. That’s criminal for a footballer who’s no longer a rookie, a full international and gets paid thousands for kicking a bloody football. I’d be surprised if he’s with us next season.

Today, maybe only Glen Johnson looked like he cared. Maybe Mascherano too. Btw someone should knock Masch’s head next time he mouths off to the ref, doesn’t he ever learn?

But really, we lack someone else who takes the game by the scruff of the neck, who imposes himself and dictates play. Maybe there’s not enough inner desire or hunger to win. And that’s really the difference when you see Chelsea, United and even Arsenal sometimes. Actually, Sunderland was a good enough example. People step up whether it’s a team spirit thing or a desire to prove people wrong – Liverpool players are too docile, too meek to fight. Forget Istanbul – that was 4 years ago coming to 5. The past counts for jack.

Maybe it’s the way Benitez manages – I’m sure it’s good for him that he has a bunch of yes-men under him but I’d always want the guys who work for me to be able to stand up for themselves, have a backbone, have conviction in what they do and be willing to fight for that. Sometimes they’ll head in the wrong direction but that’s when we’ll see a good manager who can show them the right path and guide them but not stub out their fire.

Honestly, based on my expectations of a Liverpool team, none of the players who wore the jersey today deserve to play for the club.

short film career

When I say short film career, I mean short film career. It’s not even a career but you know, I needed something clever to tie the title together  (woot alliteration FTW!)

So basically, a long time ago, 11 years ago in fact, I was a calafare in the Teenage Textbook the Movie. the book itself was one of those growing pain series that was rudimentary reading for all teenagers in Singapore – some of us read it more than our O level literature text I’m sure. Think Adrian Mole, but local. It was written by Adrian Tan, anyway.

Anyway I loved the books. I heard they were auditioning for extras in the movie at the Substation one day so since I was waiting for NS, I thought, why not. It wasn’t so much an audition but more like sign up your name and you’re in!

Shot a handful of scenes actually – one party scene in Pasir Panjang, the movie opening sequence at Millenia Walk, one after hours scene in Borders, late night shoot at Holland V and a party scene at the now-defunct Celebrity Asia!

Sadly, I’ve never really watched the show though I think Selena sent me the link before. I got bored and didn’t load part 2. Doh! (erm not that the show sucked cos it was tres super awesome lor) So anyway I can’t even tell you which scenes I’m in, though I swear I saw myself in that party scene. Srsly. But yeah, that was fun though. Wish I did see the damn show!

My other brush in front of the camera would be for a short promo my friend, Randy, did for the Design Council as part of their 10touchpoints initiative a few years back. I actually uploaded the clip on my YouTube! hee. If you watch the clip below, I’m the perv at 1:03! hahaha. Good times. Some say, I’m not even acting. Yeah, I know, us method-types!

Oh, I just remembered I shot and produced a short film too. It’s rather bad though since we’re all amateurs but it was for a Substation initiative too. But we noticed one of the winners the year after us took our concept. One of those documentary/social commentary pieces. Another time maybe.

Stuff I’ve done for money

Legal stuff I should add. As far as I know, at least…anyway here’s a listing of all the many, many odd-jobs (and proper ones) i’ve had over the last 15 years or so. Posted this on my Vox blog as a reminder for myself cos I will probably forget some of these a few years down. Since I can’t transfer that here, I’ve cut and pasted it instead.

• temp bookfair salesperson – going around school to school, setting up the books for displays and manning sales counters, after O levels.
• temp flower shop salesperson at an exhibition – opening the booth and manning the displays. I remember one extremely hot chick. I think she was either Filipino or Indonesian. But she looked money. I literally stared at her. My friend told me to pickup my jaw off the ground haha. I was smitten! One of my poly vacations I think, I can’t remember.
• sales assistant at daimaru department store. can you believe this was my industrial attachment during my poly days? unlike my other friends who ended up in office jobs and drawing $400 working 9-6 mon-fridays, i worked mon to sunday, sometimes for an entire day but then again i drew like close to $1000 for each of those two months. I ain’t complaining. I worked with a bunch of lovely folks too. and learnt how to swear in cantonese. heh.
• part-time web-designer – after-school job during poly days. basically all i did was follow the template and edited accordingly. nice folks at the student link unit.
• temp admin asst – Helping inventorise assets and equipment at Kent Ridge Digital Labs after I graduated from poly and was waiting for NS. worked with a good friend of mine called Lynn. We had a lot of fun, mainly surfing and sleeping. And we had this crazy colleague called Chen Nee or something. Great company, good money and easy job. Nice way to swing into NS.
• Part time security officer at S-League matches. My friend’s father provided security services to these football games so one day they needed more help. It was surprisingly easy and I got to watch a game for free to boot!
• Marketing Exec for spa consultancy. Details on my resume but anyway this was my first proper job and I spent 2 1/2yrs there. I quit to move on to greener pastures but I took a break in between to figure out what I wanted to do.
• Freelance online marketing exec
• Freelance design – helped set up a spa for my friend.
• temp marketing campaign testers – i dunno how to describe this but i spent 2 weeks on behalf of Shell going around their petrol stations with a bunch of other folks and testing and training their service staff on their knowledge of their marketing campaign back then. Fun job with fun folks and really good money surprisingly! Best temp job evar!
• sales executive – sold sponsorship packages and advertising packages for a sports marketing firm, included magazine ad sales and sponsorship for the Football Association of Singapore. Sadly, sports marketing was ahead of its time during that period.  But I learnt so much during that short period of time in terms of sales. Nicest guys I ever worked for too.
• project coordinator for a film festival organised by an event company. tiring but very fulfilling and fun to see and meet the amount of local talent we have right here.
• account planner with the abovesaid event company who created the position for me. i found a great niche for myself in this position, a good marriage of sales, business development and creative conceptualisation. my boss wasn’t willing to give me a raise although i felt i more than deserved it. so i walked. Plus it was really wearing me out physically and emotionally.
• freelance writer – i quit the events job without anything and did some freelance proposal writing and sales etc.
• assistant management executive with the media development authority of singapore.  Anyway I came in initially on the HDTV project, managed to get a fulltime position, decided that it wasn’t the best position for me and took the next opportunity that came along. But I liked being involved in the digital media space. Couldn’t live with the red tape and the fact that they’re so paper-driven. It’s ironic how the authority that promotes media would be so reliant on paper qualifications when let’s face it, the media space is one of the last places your degree would matter so much (imo).
• writer – a lot of my friends said this is a dream job for me cos i’ve been writing for so long and i suppose to a certain extent yes it is. Been lucky to cover the entertainment beat for two local lad mags – NewMan and Maxim Singapore.  Definitely interesting, learnt a lot and am grateful I still have a job now despite all that’s happened.
• Content producer – My namecard says online writer but the letter HR sent me was content producer. I’d say that’s about right since this job is more than just writing. Interesting position to be in right now straddling print and online and trying to trailblaze into this new market for us. Learning new things everyday though there’s much more to pick up and a long way to go but it’s nice to put in practice some theories you’ve learnt and observed. I think my marketing background is helping quite a bit. It’s a nice challenge to grapple with.

What other stuff have I done…made friendship bands to sell in school. I had 2 buyers. haha. suckers! erm…and I was a calafare! Will post those clips soon.

of hand scans and sandwiches

this week i realised that…

My wrists are screwed.

I went to NUH on tuesday as referred by my company doctor. Specifically, I went to see a hand specialist for my wonky wrist. The x-ray I had taken showed my bones were too far apart (wtf right?) so he suspected it was a dislocation. Although it could also be gout if it was an inflamed tissue.

Anyway the doc at NUH said it wasn’t gout. Asked me to wiggle my hands and said my left wrist is way more sluggish than my right but both of them are loose. Going for CT scans next Tuesday. Hoping my HR clears things up bout the medical claims. bloody expensive it’ll be!

The problems with my wrists can be traced back to injuries I had during my army days. I’d sprained both of them back then but never really bothered to exploit them. When you’re young, you’re superman you know. What’s a wonky wrist when you’ve got an obstacle course to clear?  Does explain why I have problems bowling and lifting stuff properly. Hopefully I won’t need surgery.

I am fussy about sandwiches.

I love sandwiches. They’re so convenient. Two slices of bread encompassing any filling you have on hand – that makes me a happy man. I used to make a mean roast chicken sandwich (any form of meat to be honest), topped with strawberry jam, cheese and thinly-sliced waterchestnuts for the crunch. On focaccia bread.

This week I had Cedele for lunch when they were at our office lobby. Had a spicy roasted chicken whatever. I found it rather dry. It was filling but not great. Realised that my last Cedele sandwich wasn’t very tasty either. It was of an alright portion – generous but not huge. Also dry. Not much in terms of taste.

Then I had a poached chicken sandwich from Moomba’s yesterday. It was rather vile. the sprouts and carrots and cilantro were overpowering. perhaps I should’ve picked a different sandwich but come on man, where’s all the taste in food gone? I can sort of taste the bread but I don’t want to taste just the condiments. That’s why I suppose Quiznos rank better in my books than Subway – simply because they taste better. i still haven’t found a place with nice sandwiches. Disappointing.

Would love a proper sandwich shop in our office canteen. Rather sick of rice for sure. Whenever I queue at the makcik’s stall, i can taste the food without even actually eating it. Sadly, that doesn’t actually make it more tempting.

we’re ignorant about beauty pageants

Firstly, enough with the Ris Low crap. The girl had an unfortunate video interview and everyone’s all over her ass. All of y’all laughing at her – why? your English A1 issit?  Why aren’t we making fun of those Mediacorp actors/actresses who mangle English too? How come we don’t go to town with that?

You think the other beauty queens we’ve had are master linguists? Come on. It’s not a debating contest, it’s a fuckin beauty pageant – something I wonder why we even bother taking part in. I mean, if we really want to win these events, our efforts are woeful. It’s always the same old girls on the same old circuit isn’t it? I don’t think there’s enough interest among participants or fans to warrant so many pageants going on – even the international ones don’t seem to garner enough proper support. As ambassadors of Singapore, you’d think the relevant authorities would be more steadfast in QC-ing the international pageants.

the latest news is they claim Ris won top spot because she paid $12k in advertisements etc. firstly, why the fuck are the pageant contestants advertising for themselves in the competition?? what kinda cockamamie sense is that and why hasn’t anyone questioned this? Obviously it offers unfair advantage to the richer contestants (those who can afford nips/tucks and nice fancy boob jobs. or at least have rich sugardaddies to pay for em).

Plus, newsflash – Ris Low isn’t the only one who’s spent on a pageant and ended up as the title winner. It’ll be interesting to see what they can dig about the local pageants that’s been going on for years. It’s quite shameful considering how our standard of beauty winners have deteriorated. I think the onus is on the organisers to bring back credibility to this industry otherwise there’ll be no more industry to speak of.

a few more stuff i wanted to get off my chest but it’s too much negativity in one post.

F1 Thoughts In Singapore

Random thoughts  and observations during the F1 week here in Singapore.

- Been a busy week tying up stories to post on Men’s Health. Quite pleased we could churn out the number of stories we did in a short space of time. It’s a bit newsy for a magazine I guess and not everyone gets it but it does demonstrate we can produce it if it’s not just one person running around making the stories happen. Not easy to get all the interviews that I’d wanted but I feel we did okay with the ones that did go through though there are some others like the girls that I wished would have happened since we had a head start in talks.

My view is we can’t think like a monthly magazine anymore. I don’t think there’s a differentiation between magazine and newspaper online anymore. All we are are content aggregators and providers.  The contextual and relevancy factor definitely needs to be ramped up if we don’t want to look stodgy I suppose. Hyper-localising our content at this point in time is probably one of the few differentiating weapons we possess.

Part of my experiment for future event-based coverage and naturally, hoping for some traffic to the site. We’ll see.

- There are so many events and parties going on! Even if you’re the most hardcore partyslut, how do you keep up? I’m not even one for parties and I’m sure how I did it last year – coming back at 3am and going back to work the next morning..damn. 2009 feels a real old year for me. I haven’t had the mood to attend any gig or party this year. Some of these folks are doing it every day? WTF.

- You can really see the freeloaders who emerge with all these events n parties! haha.  But sometimes, you do wonder how do organisers’ minds work? Some arrangements I can understand but in some case…what’s the deal? How come these people get in and not those?

- Am a bit disappointed that I had to miss on some key events due to conflicting office events. I don’t understand why you have to have these events in the middle of the busiest week of the month when there are so many press launches going on. Missed out on a paddock visit and some other drivers’ thingies.

And attended a talk by a guest lecturer that was useful but didn’t reveal things we didn’t already know or had been already repeated by past speakers. I suspect he’s just here to watch the F1 really. Plus, it’s not like he did any of the work, he just presented case studies. We’ve been gypped.

- Taxi drivers in Singapore are feeling the F1 spirit. Rant to be on my Men’s Health blog. Sometime later.

Anyway ok enough for a Sunday morning. Early by my standards. Gotta return the flash I rented from Camera Rental. They’re pretty cool and loan out flashes, cameras, lens etc. Useful if you just wanna use short term with no intention to buy.

then I have a 2pm interview with Janet Hsieh, the Discovery Channel host. Yes she’s cute but meh, it’s a sunday. not that i don’t work on sundays but i’d rather work from the comfort of home know what i mean?

Freddie’s Burger FTW

Had dinner with Elisa at Ion Orchard tonight. Finally managed to try Freddie’s Burger at Basement 4.

I tried the Victorian Burger which was a simple chicken patty topped with a slice of pineapple, shredded lettuce and a dollop of mayo. I ordered a side of curly fries as well.

Didn’t expect too much but wow, I have to say it was one of the best burgers I’ve ever had! The chicken patty was juicy and moist without being flaky. very nice springy texture and the lettuce was fresh which added a bit of crunch to things. The pineapple slice coulda been thicker but everything melded together beautifully. very flavourful and I would highly recommend them if you’re wondering what to grab at Ion.

Check out the Freddie’s Burger website and salivate already.

How-to Videos For Work

Part of my work involves producing videos for Men’s Health Singapore. I figured I’d post them up here because I really quite enjoy them.

A lot of credit goes to Steven, my video editor and videographer for his mad skills and ideas in making these clips happen. Thanks bro. You can check out our website for future updates or check out Men’s Health TV on YouTube for updates. We’re on Facebook and Twitter as well!

Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal

Just wanted to share the video for this song, White Winter Hymnal by Fleet Foxes. I like it although the gentle harmony hides lyrics that are actually quite macabre. The video has nothing to do with the song as far as I can see though.

The Fleet Foxes album from last year was rather good. I still enjoy listening to it.  Beautiful harmonies; almost a choral-like quality to the vocals. Lush, gentle and melodic all spring to mind.