lichone

In Geneva, occasionally sunny

I don’t remember when I was last in Geneva, but when I have been here, it has always been for work. The first time I just followed the example set by colleagues. I remember collecting the documents for the meetings of the day from post-boxes, sometimes very close to the time of a meeting. Today, documents come to us, like many other things, via a dedicated app. I remember having a buffet of grilled shrimp in olive oil and garlic, as delicious as it sounds, with my first taste of rosé. I had never been so agile with my fork and knife, cutting off the head, pinning down the portion where the legs meet the shell and finding a spot between the legs and then pulling away the shell away, around the body of the shrimp, so satisfying when done smoothly, and then cutting off the tail while keeping as much of the flesh as possible, again and again and again. Today, my colleagues talk about having to throw away their jackets after such meal, so potent apparently are the fumes from the dish as to render them unusable after a period of exposure. I remember having excellent seafood pasta at Spaghetti Factory, and was glad to find it on this trip on Google, renamed The Pasta People after Covid, and even gladder to find it along one path to the cannons in the Old Town area. I remember one weekend travelling from Geneva to Interlaken via train, playing some bridge with colleagues and then hauling 30 kg of stuff up a never. ending. incline, and then being harnessed and tethered to a stranger and jogging off a hill downslope – wondering if this was actually going to work – and then being airborne, paragliding, having a literal bird’s eye view of the stuff on the ground, which was familiar but also disorientingly and exhilaratingly not. What eyesight must birds have, those that hunt, I thought for a very brief moment, before trying to commit to memory every single sight and perspective, glare of sun (it was a gorgeous day), plume of cloud (very few, but here were jet trails, white streaks on blue, a different speed to the paragliding), every ripple and dimple of the lakes, looking like swathes of rich velvet or leather from this high up.* I remember being in Chamonix, cold among the snow, in my business jacket (I was not prepared), and a colleague threw a snowball at me, and I just laughed, like she did. How epic might that snowball battle have been, if I had thrown one back. I remember hiking down a trail – this was after we had paraglided back to a grassy landing – and taking longer than expected, hurrying, another colleague ruining her Ecco work shoes, meeting locals and their dogs (dogs being happily abundant in Switzerland) going jauntily uphill, until we finally found level ground and were just in time for the ferry. I remember struggling to keep my eyes open during the ride back – the summer afternoon sun was strong, perfect for a nap.

* I will be forever grateful to my colleague who asked me to go paraglide with this other one – can’t imagine that I would have done so otherwise

This trip, getting to know Geneva again, I discovered that Volvic menthol cucumber (infused? flavoured?) water is tasty, as a colleague had enthusiastically recommended. And yesterday, sunny and cloudless, the sort of day one sometimes feels in March can only be wished for when one feels extra-extravagant, as I set out for a walk to the Old Town area, I saw several jet trails cross the clear blue sky and thought that those in these airplanes must never think of us, looking up and wondering where they were going.

I hope that I manage to buy back stuff for my folks that they will like.

Leo and other things from the list of stuff I want to blog about

It is already almost a month since, so I should probably document for reading in my dotage the set list for Leo Ku’s 19 Jan 2024 (yes I typed 2023 before catching myself; am still doing that occasionally) concert, which was in one of the high-ceilinged convention spaces at MBS. My brother is a fan from Ku’s very young acting days. Here we go.

劲歌金曲 [Loosely translated as “Golden hit songs”. Leo Ku has in his oeuvre two medleys, both over 10 minutes long. This was the mainly Cantonese one, and a staple in the Spotify playlist that I open when my brother is in the car.]
爱的解释 [“Explanation of love”. A Cantonese song from his oeuvre I had not heard.]
漂流教室 [“Drifting classroom”. Sort of about the lessons of love I suppose. This sounded more familiar – it is likely that a Mandarin adapation was popular.]
忘了时间的钟 [“The clock that forgot time”. A light, gently quick-tempoed song that is another staple in that Spotify playlist, though in a rock/dance arrangement that came across as stilted and not energetic enough. Probably reflected my own tiredness with singers arranging songs that I like in ways that I don’t.]
喜欢 [“Like”. Another light, gently quick-tempoed song but one that I had somehow forgotten to include in that playlist – that has since been rectified – but otherwise also in that rock/dance arrangement. Darn.]
Can we try [Hadn’t heard this one. Not memorable.]
第二最爱 [“The second most loved”. The singer is speaking to a former beau, asking how she is, whether she is living happily now, whether she is still angry, whether someone else has given her a home for him et cetera. The song title does not appear in the lyrics.]
义海豪情 [“Righteous sea, heroic passion”. A song befitting its dramatic title, so a tad strange sung by Leo Ku, as he generally favours his falsetto.]
一生最爱 [“Love of my life” (to be clear, in the Chinese song title there is no subject, but “Love of life” or “One life’s most loved” – probably the most literal translation – sounds weird). Leo Ku did a very competent cover of this song (which is the ending theme for “A Chinese Odyssey”, a Stephen Chow remake of the Chinese literary classic “Journey to the West” with his usual jokes-that-you-have-to-be-on-his-wavelength-to-find-funny and physical gags and also Buddhist concepts that made me laugh out of my nose and also think), but the original, by Hong Kong songwriter Lowell Lo, which evokes longing and regret, and a version by Karen Mok, in which the instruments do more of the evoking, are to me superior.]
找到你是我最伟大的成功 [“Finding you is my greatest success”. Here he said that this song most described his feeling about his marriage. This was after he announced early on in the concert that it was his wife’s birthday and she was backstage and asked if the audience wanted to wish her a happy birthday. Duh! We sang her both Cantonese and Mandarin birthday songs. Leo Ku is a good guy.]
情深深雨蒙蒙 [“Romance in the rain” (or literally “Love deep deep, rain blur blur”). The theme for an old TV series of the same name that Leo Ku acted in got one of the loudest cheers of the night.]
爱与梦飞行 [“The flight of love and dreams”. The song was not memorable, but the set onstage came alive with some retro neon.]
罗马假期 [“Rome holiday”. Ditto.]
Then came an interactive segment where Leo Ku asked couples in the audience to volunteer to come onstage to tell their love stories – how they met, et cetera. There were two couples. The first couple’s story was quite bland. The second: The guy worked at a sugarcane drink stall. The girl found him cute and wanted to get his number and went to order 20 drinks so she would have a chance to, but he was on leave that day. So she was very sad and went to the bar for drinks. At the bar, he walked in, her friend exclaiming, “That’s sugarcane, go, go!” This would have been a very awkward and risky segment if Leo Ku were not an awesome experienced good-natured compere.]
嗜好 [“Hobby”. To give an idea of how sweet this song is, one hobby is hugging you. And getting the flu on your behalf. It’s a good thing these songs are consumed aurally; change a couple of letters there and Leo Ku would be contributing to the diabetes incidence in the region.]
许愿 [“Making a wish”. Originally a duet with Gigi Leung. He sings it better on his own.]
好想好想 [“I want to so much”. Similarly, the singer wants to be together with you, count the stars in the sky together with you, collect the spring drizzle, listen to you tell old stories. And there is more in the song.]
欢乐今宵 [“Happy tonight”. Added to my Spotify playlist.]
爱与诚 [“Love and honesty”. Classic lyrics: Don’t be a lover. Be a cat, be a dog, be a pet, at least cute and attractive.]
地球很危险 [“Earth is dangerous”, about Earth being mad and messy and leaving this lost paradise and finding warmth and an oasis in space. This was the first time I’d heard a song referencing the state of our society with that kind of pessimism.]
爱得太迟 [“Loved too late”.]
必杀技 [“Finishing move”, about the singer’s former love asking how he is being a deadly finishing move. Weird sort of imagery for a ballad, which this is.]
情歌王 [“King of love songs”. The other medley in his oeuvre, the Mandarin one.]

Leo Ku’s series of concerts was called “I really like to sing”, and I think it showed in his cheeriness (in comparison to Jacky Cheung, whose repartee with the audience came across as professional stagecraft, and similar to Kit Chan, who was more comfortable with the audience and who also talked about the meaning of the songs she sang). At the end of Leo Ku’s concert, I took away very positive vibes and I found that sort of rare – I felt that I had seen a virtuoso performance at the end of the Jacky Cheung concert, and at the end of Kit Chan concerts, I generally feel a little nostalgic.

In December 2022, the night before I returned to Singapore from a work trip in Brisbane, I got some weird incredibly itchy swellings. Imagine the itchy swelling you get after a mosquito bite, but slightly flattened and not any redder than your skin. And spreading across your thighs and wrists. That’s what I got. Apart from itching, it didn’t seem to cause an issue. But it itched like mad.

I tested positive for COVID around that time too, with very mild symptoms. And recently I came across this, and now I can say with some certainty that it was COVID after all. COVID is so weird.

On Valentine’s this year, I realised that I was wrong about a phrase I thought that I knew and I could not be wrong about. I always thought that the sort of formal way to promise to do all one can is to say one would do something on a “best effort” basis. I discovered I was wrong only when someone who I knew wouldn’t say something unless he was sure about it said it was “best efforts”. I checked and he was right.

And I got very worried that if it had been someone that I did not hold in such serious regard, I would have ignored him and continued to be wrong. It does not bear thinking about.

This was probably late last year i.e. 2023, and after a good meal WK and I were discussing classic songs and realising that we remembered the lyrics to songs we hadn’t heard in yonks. One was 古皓’s 遍体鳞伤 (loosely translated as “Wounds all over”). Another was 黄大炜’s 你把我灌醉 (“You made me drunk” – this is an especially stunning recent version). 黄大炜’s ballads are amazing – only he could sing them – but in the very early days of a Taiwan talent show (before they were all Chinese), he sang with a contestant called 林宥嘉 (Yoga Lin) and 黄大炜 was so generous, and Yoga was so talented, and it was great.

(I’m probably going to have to gather my music-related t0-blog-abouts in a future blog.)

From January 2024: Wearing all black is not a good idea when there are mosquitos around. I can’t track them well enough to smash them with all that camouflage.

From October 2023: Are staycations still a thing? It would be good if they are – good for Singapore folks, good for Singapore businesses.

From July 2023:

One’s answer to this question is telling – Is calling people their preferred pronoun a manners thing or a morals thing?
I’m on my first Korean flight and finally realised that when someone says “break a leg” to someone going onstage, he/she is not just conveying well wishes, but the best of best wishes – the complete and essential opposite to the ill luck that would lead to one breaking a leg onstage.
Milk chocolate is good with Chardonnay.

From June 2022: There was a farewell gathering with some former colleagues – one was heading to the US for his Master’s and hosting us for dinner at his place. I didn’t being anything for the dinner – even though I deliberately went to a Sheng Siong to see what there might have been to buy, I didn’t bring anything – whereas the others all did. It’s probably normal and right to get a token of appreciation for the chap hosting us. I really should have gotten something.

From January 2022: I subscribe to this YouTuber who produces a Top 10 list of tv series every year. In his list of top 2021 series, he said something like this about a Japanese series involving a struggling comedy team (the name of the show is 短剧开始啦, “Life’s punchline” in English): What the creator most wants to share with the audience is how we can accept being a normal person outside of the secular definitions. Faced with the comedy team’s dissolution after many years, Chun Do – one of the struggling comedians – is lost and confused. Shouldn’t hard work bring rewards? What would be the meaning of the past 10 years’ hard work if one gave up now? To that, Chun Hua speaks about her experience learning floral arrangements. She had come second in a national competition, but appreciated its meaning only 10 years later. “They asked me the name of the flowers in the arrangement in my shop. Coincidentally I knew them all, so I very smoothly answered. And the two women were very moved. I felt for the first time that I could express recognition to the me that had worked hard at this all this time.”

From November 2021: I have come to realise that I appreciate the energy of the young. That is something that even a slightly younger me would not have thought I would do.

On some night in August 2021, I apparently dreamt that a small dog had burrowed under my skin. In the dream, it was definitely a dog, small of course but the feeling of something burrowing under my skin was so disturbing and horrific and so real that on waking I had to pat my duvet all over a couple of times to make sure there wasn’t a real-life inspiration for the nightmare.

In July 2021

I remember this one colleague but not her name. I can picture her – she is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and competent and pleasant – but I can’t remember her name. I can hear her voice – the accent, the unique lilt – but I can’t remember her name. Then in the mysterious way that one’s memory works, it reported – dusty from disuse but triumphant – that her name was C!
Groupthink happens because we all want to belong, and it is important to have a process to mitigate that.

In September 2019, I heard an “Infinite Monkey Cage” episode that had this gem of a fact: The tyrannosaurus rex is nearer in time to the iPad than it is to the stegosaurus.

On the last day of 2018, and I’m sure on many other days, I wanted to express some appreciation for the guys working on the sky. On that day, on their canvas, there were streaks of clouds like light saber slashes. On another greyer day, one part of the sky seemed immovable even in the wind, like a piece of puffy but stiff meringue.

From April in 2017: I realise, reading a Donna Leon book, that there was a time in my life that I would chase down all of the books in a detective series that I was reading (in my mind it started with Sherlock Holmes, then Hercule Poirot (I didn’t really care for Miss Marple) in the old red brick National Library building, then Nero Wolfe), or heck all the books by a particular author (Dean R Koontz before he became known simply as Dean Koontz). That me would have chased down the Guido Brunetti books.

From 2016 (probably): Back when I frequented Starbucks, I would arrive sort of just as they opened, and so would a neatly but casually dressed bald old man, average proportions. He would unfailingly walk behind the pillar in the Starbucks outlet, so that he was out of view of the baristas but not to the passers-by looking in through the clear glass. And he would from one of those very common plastic bags take out a short-sleeved shirt and change into it – actually take off the shirt that he was wearing and change into the shirt from his plastic bag. The baristas acted as if they never saw him. I don’t remember if he ever bought any coffee.

Back when I frequented Starbucks, I used to have the egg white wrap, double-toasted – so yummy, but I eat it like a curry puff, so I don’t cut it into slices like popiah, and have to be careful about the hot juices flowing out.

From October 2023: I wish that, in every instance where a person someone deeply cares about and loves comes out to that someone, that someone would store the empathy that someone feels, and nurture it, and apply it like a tincture across this whole world.

Songs

So I went to a couple of concerts this year, and as is my usual will try to put down annotated set lists, so I can better remember them in my doddering dotage (I wonder if it is better to get there or not).

***

A story about the good kind of surprise: My friend and her hubby and I wanted to go to Jacky Cheung’s concert (any one of eventually 11 of them would do).* There were a few rounds of ticket buying (the dates for the concerts were not all released at the same time), and one round happened when I was in Kyushu April this year, so my friend and her hubby were helping me buy the tickets. And her hubby called me to make sure I was all in for any type of ticket, anywhere in the venue for a particular date, and I was all yes, anything. And then he messaged to ask if another date was ok, and I had not responded immediately (probably because I was driving in Kyushu) and he called to confirm it, and I was all yes, I’m in. I heard nothing from my friend after that, and that was to be expected since the tickets were notoriously difficult to get.** Cut to my friend and me at a play sometime in July.*** She asked another friend and his wife – who were with us at this play – whether they were going for the Jacky Cheung concert, and after they answered (I cannot remember now what they said), I said that I had been trying to get tickets too but no luck. And wonder of wonders, she looked puzzled and said no, I was watching Jacky Cheung with her and her hubby in less than two weeks, and that her hubby had said that she should ask me where we should have dinner before the concert. Cue car crash and a major traffic jam in this writer’s mind: Wait, what concert? Oh! But you cannot mean that one – the tickets are so hard to get! Didn’t we fail to get the tickets? It was a welcome surprise.

Annotated set list for Jacky Cheung concert, 23 July 2023

留住这时光 (released in 1993) (Cantonese) (Although I haven’t heard the tune for ages, I recognise that this was the Cantonese version of a Mandarin song that was the theme for the President’s Star Charity variety shows ~~two~~ three decades ago.)
Ooh La La (1991) (Cantonese)
马路英雄 (1991) (Cantonese)
情不禁 (1991) (Cantonese)
我应该 (Tempo starts to slow after the previous fast-paced trio of songs.)
等你等到我心痛 (1993) (Mandarin) (The first Mandarin song, and also the first song I am familiar with. Not minding. He sings so well, and works so hard doing it.)
深海 (1998) (Mandarin)
三天两夜 (1997) (Mandarin)
交叉算了 (1985) (Cantonese) (Tempo starts to pick up again.)
Double trouble (2010) (Cantonese)
楼上来的声音 (2001) (Cantonese) (And he slows things down with a couple of slow songs.)
没有童话时 (2001) (Cantonese) (After 12 songs, he takes a break to introduce us to his band, who are arranged in different levels onstage. Think about those car parks where cars are stacked up – the musicians are arranged somewhat like that, towards the back of the stage.)
日出时让街灯安睡 (2021) (Cantonese)
又十年 (Alongside the song, the screen showed some significant developments in Hong Kong’s entertainment world – passings away, milestone movies (Infernal Affairs was prominent) – over the last few decades. Elevates a so-so song to one of the emotional highlights of the concert.)
Here the band do an awesome rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee!
天气这么热 (2001) (Mandarin) (The band might have been doing Flight of the Bumblebee to prepare for this song, I think to myself – the song is fast-paced and dense with lyrics.)
想劈酒 (2004) (Cantonese)
刹那爱 (1995) (Cantonese)
岁月流情 (1992) (Cantonese)
分手总要在雨天 (1992) (Cantonese)
只想一生跟你走 (1993) (Cantonese)
爱是永恒 (1997) (Cantonese)
过敏世界 (1995) (Cantonese)
我等到花儿也谢了 (1995) (Mandarin)
她来听我的演唱会 (1999) (Mandarin) (This song grabs the loudest cheers of the night. It is about a fan going to his concert when she is 17. Her first love spends half his year’s savings for their concert tickets, and after three years, rescinds the relationship with but one letter. At 25, she goes to his concert again and love is in full bloom. But her boyfriend gives someone a rose behind her back. She refuses calls and listens to songs every night instead of sleeping. For adults, breakups need not mean much. She goes karaoke-ing, and sings his songs, and cries to the music videos. At 33, love is precious. A younger girl asks her to step aside, so the man can go with the younger girl instead. She tries so hard not to look tired, crying as she sings along in the audience. After 40, women listening to songs are so beautiful. (At this point, to my surprise, there are massive cheers, screams and hollers of affirmation. Quite telling of the audience’s age makeup, and how appreciated they may normally feel. I really am in my own world all the time – need to pay more attention to the women in my life.) The child asks her why she is crying, and the man beside her is just about slumbering, and she quietly continues listening to their concert.)
李香兰 (1990) (Cantonese) (He says he is singing this because his condition during the performance was below par. (I hadn’t noticed anything like that.) If let’s say I came to his concert to hear him sing only one song, which I did not – given that his oeuvre is such that this concert could have tripled in length and I think there would be still songs the audience would want him to sing – but let’s just say that, right, I came to his concert to hear him sing only one song, this is probably that song (marginally above #25 and #21 – and that’s only among the songs in this set list), so I feel properly stoked. So good.)
吻别 (1993) (Mandarin) (Ending on a rendition of probably his most famous song (in a career of 30-plus years productively (to significantly understate things) studded with hits) as a rock anthem. He is still so eager to perform his craft after all these years, and to innovate.)

And he left, and we – having been told there would be no encore by the excellent concert ushers – filed out, sated.

* These were across three or four weekends, and the fact that he flew back to Hong Kong, where he lives, after each set of weekend concerts surprised me a little when I learned of it, but now that I think about it, it is cheaper and probably more restful to do it this way, then to stay in a suite in Singapore during this time.

** I think we have to make ticket purchasing fairer – meaning buyers should not have to compete with bots.

*** It took me a solid couple of minutes to remember that the play was Hotel. Hotel was thoroughly enjoyable – especially memorable was the interplay between the Malay comfort woman and the Japanese military officer / translator (I think it’s stunning how precisely Alfian Sa’at wields the multiple languages involved) – and deserving of the five hours over two weekday evenings spent watching it.

***

Annotated set list for Kit Chan concert, 10 September 2023

着迷 (Mandarin)
愿爱坚定 (Mandarin)
心动 (Mandarin)
等了又等 (Cantonese)
担心 (Mandarin)
走出黑暗的世界 (Mandarin)
兄妹 (Mandarin)
就让我再爱一回 (Mandarin)
左右手 (Cantonese)
Nothing compares 2U (To memorialise the people who passed away recently, including her friend, Kit Chan sings Sinead O’Connor’s plaintive and desolate hit like a combination of a dirge and a rock song, with regret that they are no longer with us and in suitably muted celebration of their lives.)
The band does a fantastic instrumental rendition of 入戏太深
Home (A nice look-back at how this song came to be is here. I have never been away from Singapore for a long-enough period – the best way to put it is that I’ve been away long enough to miss my bolster, but not Singapore, you know? Or maybe you don’t.*^,~ In any case, even I who have never been away from Singapore for an appreciable amount of time unfailingly tear up and in particularly maudlin moments ugly-sob when I listen to Home. Imagine those who have been away long enough to really miss Singapore and being able to be in the same time and space as their family and friends. Home would pull their heart strings and open the curtains to all the feels and tears.)
天冷就回来 / 早出早回来 (Mandarin / Cantonese)
诺贝尔 (Mandarin)
东弯土星 (Mandarin) (The title of the song when spoken out loud sound just like “Don’t want to sing”. The song touches on feeling like not wanting to sing anymore, even the microphone makes one upset, how the singer has had enough of performing artistically beautiful love songs… quite meta.)
喜欢你 (Mandarin)
别问我为什么爱你 (Mandarin) (Here Kit starts an unplugged medley she called 女人爱情观 i.e. the love philosophy of women…)
享受寂寞 (Mandarin)
分享孤独 (Cantonese)
别让我再见到你 (Mandarin) (… which ends after this song.)
Bridge over troubled water
我真的爱错 (Mandarin) (A friend’s favourite Kit Chan song. Quite partial to it myself.)
心痛 (Mandarin)
炫耀 (Mandarin) (This is my favourite song to hear Kit Chan perform, even beyond Home. The song name means “flaunt”, and the Chinese word implies the thing being flaunted is shiny – the kind of shiny that comes from silver sequins, too loud. And I really love to hear her flaunt her voice throughout this song’s dramatic arrangement.)
拔河 (Mandarin)
就夠了 (Mandarin)
追 / 今生今世 (Cantonese) / (Cantonese)
(I think this is where her 30th anniversary theme song is sung – not sure what the song name is though…)
A time for everything

* I wonder from time to time who I should be writing to. I know I am writing to document things that moved me, and to converse with my future self – so I guess I am writing to future me, in a way that I hope will entertain him? Some of this writing is so performative I doubt this is the full intent. Hm. Let’s hope future me writes better and looks back on these older posts and sees them as building blocks.

^~ I was on an exchange programme in university for four or so months. Did not miss Singapore, though I missed my folks fiercely. Those were some interesting times. Even exchanged cassettes with my pal who was on exchange elsewhere.

[cracks knuckles]

I have been too lazy to write for so long and lost so many opportunities to record things that moved me and compare the me in future and the me at the point of writing. Here’s to starting to take many many of these opportunities.

***

In my list of things to blog about from my work trip to Catania about two years and a half ago now, I find this: “Ariel Tsai popular YouTube videos”. I do not remember what led me to note this down – I probably saw or listened to something from her during the flight there or back and liked it. And so I google “Ariel Tsai” and come across this music video of The Canon Song, which uses chords from Pachelbel’s Canon, a piece of music whose name I coincidentally learned only two days ago from a colleague. A happy piece of serendipity, that.*

In my list of things to blog about from my work trip to Catania, I also find this: “Teo You Yenn’s book is worth reading”. Said book is Assoc Prof Teo’s “This is what inequality looks like”, which is about the experience and impact of being poor, and what should be done to help them, on top of the help that is already there but sometimes not-so-well delivered. The book is well-researched (of course), plainly written (a plus for any book by an academic) and engaging (so important when the book aims to bring attention and interest to the plight of the poor and voiceless). Very much recommended.

In my list of things to blog about from my work trip to Catania, I also find this: “Got to watch grandma positioning system again (不见不散 song)”. “Grandma Positioning System” is one of the short films in the anthology “7 letters”, which collected responses from seven filmmakers to Singapore’s 50th birthday. It was such a pleasant surprise to see it among the flight entertainment options, and I immediately scrolled to Kelvin Tong’s film, for the good cry I knew it would give me. This is its theme song.

*And Pachelbel’s Canon is undeniably a happy piece of music. But I feel that’s not a sufficiently precise description for it. Is it jaunty then? Hmm… that doesn’t quite match its moderate tempo – one of the marvels of Canon is how it lifts the mood with more than sheer tempo. Is it uplifting then? It is, it is – but “uplifting” does not quite reflect Canon’s effects through its entire length; the start already positively gets one beaming and the crescendo is all kinds of inspiring and moving. In any case, I find that Hiromi Uehara’s performance here is the best expression of that quality of Pechelbel’s Canon – she is just so happy there creating, bouncy with joy from her mastery and love of her craft, and being loved by the crowd.

***

This is completely ridiculous, but a few nights ago, I was having trouble sleeping, and thought about a stingray passing away and meeting at the place where things that pass away go a strapping chap. The chap had been waiting for the stingray for some months; he knows how long stingrays typically live, but did not want to miss this particular one. The stingray recognises the chap and turns around to swim away, but the chap goes, cor, what a beauty, and this time approaches it from a direction so as not to scare it and starts to tell the kids that are with him how stingrays stingray, and at the appropriate time the stingray knows to whip up its sting and the chap knows the stingray is playing along and goes, you’re alright, mate, you’re alright, showing the kids – looking at him with adoring and serious my-ambition-is-to-work-in-something-I-love-to-do-as-much-as-this-chap-loves-to-teach-people-about-animals eyes – how stingrays may sting if they feel threatened, and that they are amazing animals well worth learning more about. And later the chap and the stingray that killed him go have a beer. And perhaps joke about how some folks in Southeast Asia, in jest but also in fellowship with someone who entertained them so thoroughly and passionately, would say when ordering one more sambal stingray that they were avenging Steve Irwin.

Kobo and other sparks

A friend jio-ed me for a steamboat dinner a few weeks ago at Thomson Plaza. I reached said Plaza in good time, but I might still be making my rounds of the first floor if not for the fact that, while I was on my second round, said friend whatsapped to remind me that the entrance to the steamboat place we were meeting at was outside of the mall itself. We ordered quite quickly, and the meal included the best sliced pig liver I ever cooked for myself – surprisingly, thinly sliced pig liver turns out quite well when poached in tomato stock.

Sometime during the dinner (to be honest, this could have been later during coffee, or even later when I drove her home – that is how my memory is these days), my friend talked about how she was no longer reading on her Kindle, she was in fact the proud owner of a Kobo, which wonder of wonders connects to the National Library’s catalogue of e-books and allows for convenient borrowing of said e-books.

I decided to get my own Kobo there and then.

I would say, about 4-5 years ago now (very probably longer), reading at least a book per month had been a part of my identity. Since then, it probably hasn’t even been a proper book or two in a year. I have often thought about exactly how that change happened, and reckon that the time I spent reading books was taken over by (a) reading shorter pieces on my computer and phone, liking the relative reduction in effort, devolving into laziness, (b) YouTube and Netflix binges – YouTube in particular does not stop suggesting stuff for you to watch, and I am not disciplined enough to not binge – and (c) listening to podcasts and people-watching during my commute to work, which used to be by MRT and afforded some time to have one’s face buried in a book, but then came to be by Grab (the much higher costs were guilt-inducing for a while, emphasis unfortunately on the “a while”), and therefore even more truncated. I’ve tried to “recover” by buying books now and then – guilting myself to read – but all that did was to add to the to-read pile.

I got my Kobo two days after, and in less than a week finished my first library e-book, a heart-wrenching crime novel with an impetuous, super-brave, foul-mouthed, prickly, vulnerable, defiant, fierce teenage heroine who will make you cry for her and call her stupid and want to hug her hurt away all at the same time, called “We Begin At The End”, written by Chris Whitaker. (Please please please go read it, and let me know you’ve read it, so we can talk about it.) (I would normally say I will go buy it, just so I can refer to it as we talk about it, but I am unlikely to forget that story soon. Though, with my memory the way it is these days…)

Then it was on to Tana French, who was on my list of authors whose books I need to borrow from the library, this particular author because an ex-colleague had recommended her. It’s interesting – I had searched for Tana French in the library’s Overdrive catalogue, and the first book that came up was the Chris Whitaker novel (probably because Tana French was one of those whose praise was quoted on the cover or within the book?), and since it had won some first crime novel of the year award and I am a sucker for such recognition, I had gone for it.

And then came the Tana French books, and I realised that some belonged to a Murder Squad series, so I chose the first of them, “In The Woods”. This also turned out to be such a satisfying read, but also sad, the kind of sad that stays with you for a while. With some distance from the book (am now on to the second in the series), I realise that the writer plays a trick on us, and the trick is actually telegraphed at the start, and the trick is that the protagonist, far from being a good detective and therefore smart and together and reliable, is irresponsible and damaged, so damaged he irrevocably wrecks the best relationship he has, so that for the second freaking book in a row I’m lounging on my bed telling an imaginary person how stupid they are. Grr. (Also grr-inducing – ok, more like sigh-inducing – was French’s writing; for example, how in a few quick paragraphs she creates this fast platonic pal-dom between the protagonist and his colleague. Reading it made me realise I have never had and never will have the creativity or granular observation skills to write like that; this also made me a bit sad. Such good writing!)

The thing with e-book borrowing though is the library does not keep a record of the e-books you’ve borrowed, so I don’t know for sure today how long it took me to read those two books, but I know that the last books I’d physically borrowed from the library were travel guides. To Switzerland (went paragliding in Interlaken; they did not tell me that a pre-condition for soaring in the sky for a number of extremely unforgettable minutes was lugging 30kg of the contraption that would serve as your wings up a hill (the only time a walk up a hill was more interminable was in Indonesia, during a route march up some sort of dune, heavy radio set, heavy boots, sands shifting so that each step was so hard, and so futile, thighs burning but needing to double-time it because otherwise there was no getting out of that hell, sliding back was not an option because it would mean having to do the climb all over again), but oh the sky was so welcoming, and the terrain so laughably unrecognisable from all that way up), Taiwan, a different part of Taiwan, and most recently Hokkaido. (Darn you COVID!)

I shall have to stop borrowing after this Tana French novel – my to-read pile awaits!

A year of not reading

Well, it wasn’t really without any leisure reading. For example, one book which I did start on during a work trip to Auckland in early October 2019 – and finished last week – delightfully explores which animals also fart. (Thanks for the gift, Bryce!)

Being a reader used to be part of my identity. Books used to fill the interstices of my life. Now, those are stuffed full by bits and bytes from football websites and articles recommended by social media (I favour Reddit, but don’t participate except to upvote worthy items, such as many from r/NatureIsFuckingLit, pardon me). I still like reading, but I’ve not read a book that made me put off sleep – which used to be a not uncommon occurrence – since I read the Chinese web novel turned hit drama 琅琊榜, the second volume of which I had to finish before I took off my spectacles and turned over, tired from the sadness in the book. But although I did not read many books, there were experiences that still made me want to write about them, and so here they are.

A JJ Lin concert

2019 was a year in which, so impressed by JJ Lin’s performances on variety shows, which I caught on my many YouTube binges, I got my brother to join me for the second night of his concerts in Singapore, even though I was not by any measure a fan, being unfamiliar with probably 80% of his oeuvre, a fact which struck me several times while I was sitting on the very basic plastic chairs on the National Stadium pitch, buffeted from the ground by the deep vibrations of the thunderous sound system, so loud I wondered if the hearing of those in the front rows survived – I am surprised mine seemed to have, and in fact my tinnitus is gone, possibly because I am now deaf to my tinnitus even. Have plonked the set list for this particular night below:

曹操
新地球
圣所

[1st break. Every time I am at a concert, at the first break, I remember something that happened at a Sandy Lam concert I enjoyed. At a break – this was near the end of the concert, rather than at the start – the lead drummer played a little part of a song, like a chord or two, then stopped. It was a very familiar song, one of Sandy Lam’s big hits, a duet with Jonathan Lee, but the audience wasn’t expecting it, and drumming doesn’t necessarily convey the tune of the song easily, so there was no reaction. Then the drummer drummed out a longer part of it, then stopped. And a longer part, waving his hands, and we got the message – he wanted us to sing along. And sing along we did – the indoor stadium crowd gave a joyous, at times jumbled, but wholehearted version of 当爱已成往事, the love theme of Farewell My Concubine, until the drummer bashed out one final flourish to welcome back on stage the only person we would have preferred to be singing at that time, and we lapsed back into listening mode.]

地球毁灭了以后

[2nd break]

转动
无法克制
关键词
Always online
那些你很冒险的梦
明天
黑暗騎士
可惜没如果

[3rd break]

黑夜问白天
背对背拥抱
第几个100天
我们很好
她说
只对你说
（with 阿杜）坚持到底
记得 [I used to think JJ Lin depended too much on the way he arranged his music to make his songs sound good. As proof, I played my pal A Mei’s version of this song, and then JJ Lin’s version of this song, and my pal agreed that, come to think of it, played side by side like that, JJ Lin did emphasise the string instruments a tad. I thought this was enough to make the artifice too showy. At that time.]
输了你赢了世界又如何 [Then I heard JJ Lin’s version of this song. His own arrangement. His very own, rock-star version of a classic, the original version of which is immaculate but still standard fare placed beside this incandescence.]

[4th break]

对的时间点
进了门，开了灯，一家人
White Christmas
我继续
Show the world
因你而在
丹宁执着
伟大的渺小

[Encore]

进阶
江南
不为谁而作的歌

A card shop at the corner of Junction 8

I saw this composite picture, and immediately remembered a card shop at a corner of Junction 8, where there is now a restaurant, probably a fast food restaurant, and felt so sad about the time that had passed, and the paucity of stuff I buy cards for now, and the stuff I could have done in all that intervening time. Gosh that was a while ago.

Her

I missed her birthday last year, the first time I ever had since I knew her. Then one ordinary Tuesday in October, she made an unexpected appearance in a dream. Even as I sobered up on hearing the alarm the details were sinking back into dream murk, but I remember I had bought three things for her, three, but I couldn’t remember what they were, though one was in an A4-sized box, like a stack of printer paper. The place was an almost deserted Jurong East bus interchange, from school days, sort of near where she used to live. I stopped by to talk to an acquaintance, and then suddenly she walked by; she also knew the acquaintance, and stopped; they were together. I said her name, and when she did not hear me – I was sure with dream certainty that she did not hear me – I said it again, and when she did not hear me again, I handed over what I had gotten for her. Writing this down, I realise that I did not hear her voice; she did not say anything, just looked mildly puzzled, and keen to go about her original business. And I as usual simply left.

Liverpool

I am a Liverpool fan, of the vintage that will always think John Barnes would keep even the currently en fuego Sadio Mane out of the team. Liverpool are as of this very moment doing extremely well. And the comms nut that I am, I cannot get over the clear difference between the highlights which the losing team showed, those which the winning team did.

What the losing team showed

What the winning team showed

Cinema Paradiso, and a poem

By happy accident, Facebook alerted me that my cousin-in-law and erstwhile classmate back in Primary School – fate is weird like that – had played the theme from Cinema Paradiso. I loved how it sounded, and got to searching YouTube for other performances of the theme, and came across this one of the theme’s composer Ennio Morricone conducting a bravura performance, accompanied by probably the most beautiful poem I’ve ever read.

Dreaming Water – Rhina Espaillat

I woke up this damp day

thinking of Venice:

how lapping water

smoothed into grace a garment

of old stones, put on

tangled reflections.

Bridges curved like the small of

the spine arched over

whispering water

that gilded their knees with quick

coins of shifting light.

My bones dreamt water;

and I thought of green-dappled

ceilings glimpsed from our

gondola, the sea

domestic in its stone gloves.

A moving rendition of the theme to Cinema Paradiso

Stef Sun

I think Stefanie Sun has the effect of enhancing any piece of music she lends her voice to. As an example, witness her collaboration with Mayday, courtesy of the magic that is YouTube recommendations:

Amid the craziness, a concert

Should have set out this setlist from a Kit Chan concert from more than half a year back some months ago, but with the laziness to read or write that has become my preoccupying affliction these days, doing so only now. (There was also the small matter of the culmination of a years-long work project, a scarce 10 days after this 10 Nov 2018 concert.) Dedicated to a friend who was not there.

天冷
喜欢你
（粤）等了又等
（粤）分享孤独
诺贝尔
心痛
担心
（粤）麻醉 – The love theme from a Hong Kong series she was one of the leads in.
看月亮-拔河 medley
那些被风吹散的人
我是不是该安静地走开 – An affecting version of an Aaron Kwok standard
我会唱歌
Flexible man
Fever
走出黑暗的世界吧，朋友
我真的爱错
享受寂寞
最好的年纪
追-今生今世 medley – A pair of songs from the 1994 movie “He’s a woman, she’s a man” starring Leslie Cheung, Anita Yuen, Eric Tsang, Jordan Chan and Carina Lau. One of my favourites, and listening to these songs from the original soundtrack gets me reminiscing every time.
心动
A time for everything

Encore

Easy come easy go (?)
早去早回-家-Home medley

And among these, an excellent instrumental rendition of drama-filled ballad 入戏太深.

***

I like Kit Chan’s singing. I like it in its recorded state – polished, wonderfully controlled, evocative. I have found that I like it too in its raw state, the way she sings in concerts and on those shows where established singers sing “live” – beautifully emotional, dramatic, but at ease, very much in line with her stage persona.

An appreciation of the Piano Guys, via an annotated setlist from their Singapore concert of 25 September 2018

1. Batman series (A quick romp through the campy Adam West TV series, the Tim Burton-directed, Danny Elfman-scored 1989 hit and the Dark Knight trilogy. Setting the mood.)

2. (A familiar-sounding tune which I don’t know the title of. My first live experience of a cello as a percussion instrument.)

3. “Let it go” from Frozen + Vivaldi’s Winter (A modern hit studded with elements of a hit from yonks ago. See a version from the Piano Guys’ YouTube channel here.)

4. “Love story” + “Viva la vida” *

5. “With or without you” (Steve shows off his “loop pedal”, which enables him to record and play back snippets of sound from his cello, so that he can add in loops and improvise with them, live. Steve and Jon (the pianist) proceed with a bravura rendition of the U2 classic, with haunting cello bits. Note to self: Find out the technical term for cello bits.)

6. “Kung fu piano: Cello ascends” (A combo of the “Oogway ascends” theme from Kung Fu Panda – Steve explains that Kung Fu Panda was scored by Hans Zimmer, justifying the Guys’ decision to play this on the Great Wall of China – and one of Chopin’s preludes. A version here.)

7. “A million dreams” from The Greatest Showman (Jon’s solo. A version here.)

8. “The Cello Song” (Steve shows off his cellos. He has 29, he says. The carbon fibre one is French, he says, and is named “Car-born Fee-bray”. There is also an electric one which is basically the outline of a cello, with the strings intact.)

9. “It’s gonna be OKAY” (Al (as far as I can figure he does a lot of the mixing and arrangements) lends his vocals to this upbeat tune. A version here.)

10. (All four Piano Guys onstage. Use the piano as a percussion instrument, before which they warn those learning to play the piano that they should not try that at home.)**

11. Blues riff (Jon relates that, at a previous concert, he had invited someone from the audience to play jazz on the piano with him, and the audience at that concert had loved it, “blew the roof off”. Says he will try it here too, and asks for someone from the audience. Assures everyone this is not prearranged. Someone from the audience goes onstage. He is Ishan. Jon asks him where he is from. He says he is from Sri Lanka. Jon asks him about his experience with the piano. He says he plays a bit a jazz. Walks to the piano with Jon, tickles the ivory with a little flourish which gets the crowd ooh-ing. Steve jokes, “a bit of jazz”. The trio proceeds to perform a grandstanding barnstorming riff which gets even me moving – Ishan is apparently very good (I wouldn’t know, so asked my cello-playing friend who was with me; she said he was very good) – and after the end and an extended ovation, Ishan steps off the stage. Steve jokes that he forgot to get Ishan’s number in case his current pianist doesn’t work out. I still can’t figure out if there was any prearrangement. My friend is quite sure there was. I waver between agreeing wholeheartedly, and thinking the Piano Guys are too wholesome to engage in such subterfuge.)

12. “Gabriel’s Oboe” from The Mission + “How great thou art” (Steve talks about the time they played at the Christ the Redeemer statue, and then at the Iguazu Falls, and how they felt more at the latter. He goes on to say that his own explanation is that Christ the Redeemer statue is man’s way of showing love for God, and the Falls God’s way of showing love for man. I’m not religious, but I like that explanation. There is inspiration that comes from something bigger than oneself, than what one can create. A version here.)***

13. “I want you Bach” (A mash-up of Bach and “I want you back” by the Jackson Five. Suitably funky. A version here.)****

14. “Rockelbel’s canon” (Jon says they are going to play Pachelbel’s canon. Steve laments that the cello part consists of just a few chords, repeated endlessly. Pretends to be so bored by the straight-ish part of the performance that he falls asleep. Jon wakes him up, and he embarks on a rock version. A cool music video here.)

15. “A thousand years” (Jon says it’s their last two songs. Announces that they will next play their most romantic piece. Notes that he is aware there are those who used the Piano Guys’ version of this song in their wedding. Finds out some of those are in the audience. Performs with Steve a beatific version of the Christina Perri tune.)*****

16. “This is your fight song” (An unforgettable combo of Rachel Platten’s “Fight song” and “Amazing grace”, infused with elements of Scottish march music. Gah. The version here conveys some of the spirit of resilience and unbreakable faith from the performance. Brilliant. Wipe my eyes a couple of times.)

17. Encore (All four Piano Guys onstage doing their thing e.g. using the piano as a percussion ^and^ string instrument. I can tell you more about this in person if you are interested.)

* After some Googling, I think this was a combo of the Taylor Swift song and the Coldplay song (which I confused with the Ricky Martin tune at the concert).

** I already don’t remember when the intermission was, but I think it came after this item.

*** Around here I start to realise this is a great concert experience. The music is superb, and the absence of lyrics frees my mind to free-associate and the more conscious part of my mind to pay attention to that. I remember that someone had gotten baptised in a swimming pool in her friend’s condo, and I really envied her friend. I notice that I hadn’t remembered that in a very long time.

**** My sort of pun. Cements my patronage of the Piano Guys for the foreseeable future.

***** My friend was surprised this is used at weddings – she thought it was sad. I personally think the song is about abiding love, and there is an optimistic note to it.

Revisiting Tuesdays with Morrie

Many years ago, I read Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie. Before I read it, I had no idea I could sob so hard reading a book. So when I saw that a play based on the book was going to be staged in Singapore – a translated production by Godot Theatre Company from Taiwan was coming to the Esplanade – I asked a few of the regular folks I’d watch plays with if they’d like to watch it too, and when none of them did, I got a ticket for myself.

The play was largely faithful to the original text, which was satisfying, but the translation sapped it of some coherence – for example, the word “love” is more versatile in the English language than its equivalent in Chinese is, and so it was natural in the book that Mitch says to his wise coach Morrie “I love you”, but awkward onstage when he said the same in Chinese.

I enjoyed the chemistry between the two leads, which allowed some of the added humour in the adaptation – judiciously injected, I think, to lighten a weighty subject in a more visceral medium than print – to shine. Morrie has ALS, and accepts that he will one day lose the ability to wipe his own behind, and his mischievous threat to Mitch that he would have to help his old prof do that is played out with great timing and poignancy. In another part of the play, Morrie is having Mitch read out loud the many letters that he has received and dictating replies to them. There is a 21-page letter from a former student who had gone through a lot, and this is played out in a silent scene, with the lights down. Then the words “One hour later” flashed on the screens at the side of the stage, and the two ponder how to start the reply, until Morrie suggests: “Thank you for your long letter.” In the book, the volume of letters is clear from the author’s short summaries of different letters, and this last letter is given a summary lasting an entire paragraph of woe and misery, and it is Morrie’s son who suggests how to start the reply, and Morrie beams at him.

I also enjoyed how the play made me think back. When I first read the book, my bed was in a different place in my room, the headboard against the window. And I remember, in one of my first years of work in my current workplace, I had the opportunity to share my love of the book through giving it to a boss I admired via a Secret Santa gift exchange. We had a small festive celebration at Sentosa, and I remember Andrew playing the guitar. That was altogether a time of bigger possibilities.

Stuff which moved me recently

The MICappella concert in early November may have been the best concert I’ve ever been to. Juni, Kexin, Calin, Peter, Eugene and Mingwei performed with energy and joy – and maybe because they were doing a cappella, there was less between the audience and the group’s unvarnished stage presence. I’ve never been so glad to have been jioed by a friend to something. Their rendition of “One Night in Beijing” had jaded me just wowed and stunned in my seat.

See some YouTube clips of their work below, and go to their next concert!

A cover of JJ Lin’s 可惜没如果

(I enjoy both MICappella’s cover and the original, but I find the original (see here) too “produced”, with its instrumental flourishes almost literally tugging at the heartstrings. I believe the phrase in Chinese would be 匠心太重. I find that I have that feeling about many JJ Lin songs.)

A medley of covers of popular Chinese hits in 2016

A cover of “One Night in Beijing”

***

I reread this profile of Ted Williams’ last game for the Boston Red Sox, and found John Updike’s writing timeless and observant – his use of nameless fellow common people just so well done – and touching.

And I got reminded of another virtuoso piece of writing about a sportsman that this time I have had the pleasure of watching. The writer himself is unfortunately no longer around, but David Foster Wallace’s profile of Roger Federer and his whip of a forehand – done more than 10 years ago and still fresh, a testament to Federer’s staying power and Wallace’s ability to convey a sense of what it must be like to see that talent in the flesh.

***

I resumed reading Charles Duhigg’s Smart Better Faster about a week ago. It was in my pile of books to read and I realised that I never finished it after opening it and finding a bookmark inside. It is a book that tries to break down what makes people productive, and does that well, partly through stories illustrating certain principles. An early one – about a chap who suffered brain damage which removed his motivation and how the chap’s wife helped him to regain it by persistently and patiently asking him question after question to make him make choices and take agency – gave me the chills.

***

I am moved by more things now, getting decidedly more maudlin as I get decisively older. The first book which made me bawl was Mitch Albom’s “Tuesdays with Morrie”, in my first year at work. Now the above books/articles/experiences, which I went through in the last two months, have all done that.