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

1. 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.)
2. Ooh La La (1991) (Cantonese)
3. 马路英雄 (1991) (Cantonese)
4. 情不禁 (1991) (Cantonese)
5. 我应该 (Tempo starts to slow after the previous fast-paced trio of songs.)
6. 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.)
7. 深海 (1998) (Mandarin)
8. 三天两夜 (1997) (Mandarin)
9. 交叉算了 (1985) (Cantonese) (Tempo starts to pick up again.)
10. Double trouble (2010) (Cantonese)
11. 楼上来的声音 (2001) (Cantonese) (And he slows things down with a couple of slow songs.)
12. 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.)
13. 日出时让街灯安睡 (2021) (Cantonese)
14. 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.)
15. Here the band do an awesome rendition of Flight of the Bumblebee!
16. 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.)
17. 想劈酒 (2004) (Cantonese)
18. 刹那爱 (1995) (Cantonese)
19. 岁月流情 (1992) (Cantonese)
20. 分手总要在雨天 (1992) (Cantonese)
21. 只想一生跟你走 (1993) (Cantonese)
22. 爱是永恒 (1997) (Cantonese)
23. 过敏世界 (1995) (Cantonese)
24. 我等到花儿也谢了 (1995) (Mandarin)
25. 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.)
26. 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.)
27. 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

1. 着迷 (Mandarin)
2. 愿爱坚定 (Mandarin)
3. 心动 (Mandarin)
4. 等了又等 (Cantonese)
5. 担心 (Mandarin)
6. 走出黑暗的世界 (Mandarin)
7. 兄妹 (Mandarin)
8. 就让我再爱一回 (Mandarin)
9. 左右手 (Cantonese)
10. 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.)
11. The band does a fantastic instrumental rendition of 入戏太深
12. 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.)
13. 天冷就回来 / 早出早回来 (Mandarin / Cantonese)
14. 诺贝尔 (Mandarin)
15. 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.)
16. 喜欢你 (Mandarin)
17. 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…)
18. 享受寂寞 (Mandarin)
19. 分享孤独 (Cantonese)
20. 别让我再见到你 (Mandarin) (… which ends after this song.)
21. Bridge over troubled water
22. 我真的爱错 (Mandarin) (A friend’s favourite Kit Chan song. Quite partial to it myself.)
23. 心痛 (Mandarin)
24. 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.)
25. 拔河 (Mandarin)
26. 就夠了 (Mandarin)
27. 追 / 今生今世 (Cantonese) / (Cantonese)
28. (I think this is where her 30th anniversary theme song is sung – not sure what the song name is though…)
29. 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.

Hero, and more from the list of stuff I’ve been wanting to blog about

I watched Hero with a friend at the theatre today. My friend had a craving for popcorn, and the movie was as fluffy as the popcorn that the friend got. There was no danger to the protagonist or anyone I cared for, and no danger that the culprit would get away, and so the movie kept my attention because it was like an extra-long episode of a cherished TV series, and I had wanted to spend more time with the characters, who were all so reliably themselves (even though I barely remembered all but the most prominent). And later, at an unremarkable cafe very near my place, my pal and I discussed the difference between Japanese dramas and Korean dramas, which have taken over the place of the former in many TV viewers’ hearts. My pal said that the good Japanese dramas (those shown in Singapore anyway) tend to be episodic, with characters who stay in their roles and do not develop, while Korean dramas – though formulaic in that the people who matter are always inter-related in some often perverse way – tell stories better than Japanese dramas. I wonder what sort of love stories the Japanese make nowadays.

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I got hooked onto this story/song a while back – a long time ago, back when I was living in Bishan. It’s about a forlorn and steadfast and ultimately fruitless wait. Condensed in these few minutes is much more than the contents of many movies.

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This song, I got introduced to more recently, indirectly by the pal who took a class in which she was introduced to Joni Mitchell. I had thought “A Case of You” referred to some illness or affliction – like a case of rabies. Recently I realised that Joni Mitchell was comparing “You” to a case of wine. So, addiction then. She has an amazing way of performing the song, strumming that zither-like string instrument in her blithe way, but I think my favourite version is Diana Krall’s.

This is the same Diana Krall of course (I never get tired of telling this story) who had an outdoors concert in Singapore on the weekend of the first F1 race ever held here. The concert was in Fort Canning, on the Friday, when qualifications or test drives took place. On the evening of the concert, the rain had stopped an hour or so earlier, and the field in front of the erected stage was muddy and the collapsible chairs just about in their rows. And that was when I learned that yes, the zooming whines of each and every car at the Padang could be heard all the way at Fort Canning, the aggravation and discordance of each squealing squelch of tyres somehow made worse by the distance. Possibly because of this, Ms Krall was not happy. At one point, she said something along the lines of, I think I just swallowed a bug, and I’m not even kidding. I can’t quite remember what she sang that evening.

***

The coffee in the cafe was quite mediocre – too milky.

***

The latest indication that I’ve been reading via the smartphone too much, in addition to (a) turning to the next page of a magazine made from wood pulp by sliding the edge of the current page and (b) looking at the top of the page to see the current time, is that, reading a Chinese book by this Taiwanese singer/poet strewn with her photographs, when I saw one I wished was larger, the first thing that came to my mind was to double-tap it to enlarge.

***

Had passable beef noodles – well, actually the beef and beef soup were passable and I didn’t really eat the noodles – at LeNu for lunch, but I may have been slightly unfair, since I had just had some superb Mum-cooked Hokkien noodles (thick rings of fresh sotong, succulent shrimp, thin strips/slices of pork belly, yellow noodles and thin rice vermicelli, stir-fried to perfection in some prawn stock and stuff) around 10am. The beef noodles, and the friend’s enthusiastic recommendations about Taipei food, got me sort of keen (that’s the extent of my passion these days) to head to Taiwan soon. I remember Taiwan from several visits in uniform half a life ago, and a more recent trip during which I discovered one of my five favourite places in the world (another is Monterey Bay Aquarium): an eslite bookstore, open till late, woody and welcoming of browsers, a reminder of when I was curiouser and less weighed down by self-imposed loads, altogether younger.

Miscellany

I love Diana Krall’s cover of “Just the way you are”. I find that it shares its sentiment of an abiding reassurance to one’s longtime and maybe somewhat inevitably neglected loved one with a Chinese song – 黄韵玲’s 喜欢你现在的样子 (the song name translates to something like “Like how you are now”).

***

A couple of concepts that struck a chord with me:

1. Cesar Hidalgo’s idea of “personbyte” i.e. the full person’s worth of knowledge, which I came across reading Tim Harford’s post about the importance of harnessing teamwork and collaboration in today’s complex economies.

2. Resume virtues vs. eulogy virtues

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Bought my pal durian a week or so ago. Made my week when she and her family enjoyed them.

***

I recently saw a pillion-rider scrolling through her smartphone while the motorcycle she was on weaved through some sedate traffic. That is some serious addiction, I thought. Plus my own smartphone is too oily for me to confidently do that. Then another time I passed by Chong Pang in a cab. This was either early morning or late, late in the evening. The shops were closed. Under the dark sky, silhouetted against the fluorescent white of the HDB corridors, was a man lying on his back on a bench. His face was aglow with the light from his smartphone, which he looked up at, rapt.

***

I came across this line in a 陈绮贞 book: 生活习性越来越肖似的恋人. Loosely translated, the line means lovers whose habits become more and more alike. And I got to thinking about my pal and her soon-to-be-husband.

***

Watched Hail, Caesar! and Deadpool within a few days of each other. Both were entertaining, but while Hail, Caesar! had an intriguing mystery and fun set-pieces and some engrossing acting, Deadpool had a heart. An incorrigibly tasteless, good-for-nothing bum-with-a-sex-joke-a-second sort of heart, but a heart nonetheless. I enjoyed Deadpool more.

Kit Chan and emptying out my “to be blogged about” folder

I watched Kit Chan sing last Saturday, and there are seven things I remember from the concert.

1. She started with a slightly trancey version of 担心, which was highly unsatisfactory, since that song is in the top three of my favourite Kit Chan songs when sung like it was originally sung.

2. She sang both the Chinese and English versions of Home, and the arrangement managed to be more soothing than emotional, and maybe it was also because it was sort of at the unremarkable two-third (?) point of the concert, but my friend who said that she would cry at the concert and think of Mr Lee if Kit Chan sang Home did not. The bits of white lights studded throughout the sellout crowd waving along as she sang made a real spectacle though. There was to be no real climax during the whole concert.

3. She was super-comfortable with the audience, chill and relaxed, never more than when she sang Marilyn Monroe’s My Heart Belongs to Daddy, which, Kit Chan recounted, her secondary school teacher persuaded her and her fellow songstresses from school to perform (with the appropriate moves apparently) at a fundraising event in front of many older guys. She thought it was a little off.

4. She sang 是谁在敲打我窗 是谁在撩动琴弦 (I can’t remember now if she sang more than this, but definitely at least these two lines). At the next interval (the concert was peppered with banter, very enjoyable), she explained that after watching the scene in which Tony Leung and Andy Lau share a *moment* listening to these two lines, she had been wanting to sing just these two lines at her concert someday.

5. She also sang 天冷就回来; Leslie Cheung’s 左右手 and 追; Stefanie Sun’s 尚好的青春; Jacky Cheung’s 原来只要共你活一天. And once the usual concert issues like over-loud instruments wore off and her voice warmed up, she sang so well.

6. She sang 我真的爱错 perfectly, and I rediscovered that I love the song, the lilting tenor bits accompanied by the sad lonely guitar strums. My friend smiled so widely when she announced it was her next song, and sat back to enjoy it.

7. So, even though she has many more-than-listenable songs and even I’d say more outstanding covers, one of her songs stays in my brain, partly because it’s so dramatic and partly because the lyrics conjure an image of someone luxuriating in the emptiness of her lost love (drama right?). And at this point somewhere in the middle of her concert, she started talking about a type of song called 芭喇歌, which are essentially ballads, and there is a type of song which is essentially a ballad, but with tightly packed words sung in a 洒狗血 (spray dog blood, literally) fashion. So I took this type of song to mean a power ballad basically overflowing with drama, which was why I was not so surprised when that turned out to be the preamble for my favourite Kit Chan song 炫耀. And she sang it the way I wanted it to be sung.

Not about the Kit Chan concert

I really enjoyed how 江美琪’s fans made her cry/sing/shine in this video.

A couple more songs from the senseless score of my life, plucked from my half-awake mind as I zombie-lurch to the bathroom at 6am:

4 December 2014 – 龙卷风

26 March 2015 – 春娇与志明

And one day in April, on the 7th to be exact, my dad made for our dining pleasure some soup with duck and salted vegetables and tomatoes which was yummy, and a potato and sliced pork stir-fried in brown gravy which he had been improving. I am a very fortunate son.

I’ve amassed quite a few tumblers in my time at work, some I bought, some colleagues gave. I don’t use them, preferring to use a CNA mug. That’s a quite a few – which, surprise surprise, means the same as quite a lot – of tumblers I don’t use i.e. vessels I don’t fill, which immediately got me thinking about how substanceless I maybe am.

9 thoughts I had while I was not blogging

1. [22 September] So today, in my fourth week in emy new department, which is one floor down on the sixth floor, I pressed 7 in the lift. Apparently a muscle memory built up over the last two years takes over when I’m in automaton mode.

2. [In a cab on the way to work, passing by Yishun Avenue 1 going towards the expressway, looking left] The clouds today are like fog-shrouded hilltops seen from a nearby peak. One can see which is nearer, and which further, and the nearest one actually looks approachable.

3. [About a coffee start-up near the workplace; I will call it X] The coffee in X really isn’t very good – this is after trying maybe 20-plus lattes from the place, generally around 8 in the morning, when sometimes I’d see my friend’s mum alight from her other daughter’s car – in particular compared to lattes from Symmetry (the only food I’ve tried from the place is the crispy baby squid – it looks cute written like that, not in the least edible – and it’s so good).

4. [About my normal day, and the song-list in my head) My alarm is set for 6.05am. I usually wake up a bit earlier than that. When I actually get off my bed and zombie-slouch-walk my way to wash up, there is usually a song in my head. For a few weeks it was the same 许茹芸 song. On 24 September, it was 那些年. The next day, the One Night in Beijing chorus caught me unawares. And on 26 September it was – I took a while to pin it down, my brain was playing only snatches – Pharrell Williams’ Happy. And today, it was the music accompanying this FANTASTIC and violent fight scene in 杀破狼.

5. [On my first MRT ride in some weeks] I had forgotten what it is like to ride the MRT as a routine – there are people you expect to see, and stories you begin to make up about them. The harried mum with two always sleepy, always not-quite-kempt children, the boy with a repaired cleft lip who is more tolerant than his older sister of his mother’s nudges to wake up when they reach Bishan. From this, my brother and I thought their family situation must be difficult. But I do not think of them during that MRT ride, because I see a motorcycle with lime-green spokes and it falls behind the MRT and I keep waiting for it to catch up.

6. [During a lull in a busy period in August] Huh – I haven’t changed the month on my calendar since May.

7. The nasi lemak from that corner stall at the Old People’s Park Food Centre is lousy.

8. But the nutella crepe – made by a lady from Saybons (I didn’t know they did catering) – is perfect.

9. A long time ago, I learnt about fastest plane in the world, faster than the F15 or the F16, with the highest cruising altitude: the Blackbird. And recently I came across this totally amazing story about someone who test-piloted this plane for a living.

Salt Lake City and flakes of snow I did not see

In Salt Lake City, I saw no lakes, but I did see a gray day, mist descending upon the streets, and a bright day, with smears of clouds and sun-rays that made the cold crisp and clear, and the colder aftermath of a storm I’d slept through, stained sidewalks and puddles and gusts of condensed breaths, all from the inside of the hotel, the most luxurious I’ve ever stayed at, where my colleagues and I met with other folks and talked and talked.

***

These days I seem to only read proper books during my work trips. I finished two and a half of them this time round. One was Kathleen Jamie’s collection of essays, one of which was about a trip to see auroras and which I thought was a work of beauty, something I literally gasped at, and which was generous, because she described stuff in a way that made me think, she really wants you to see and feel what she does. I want you to read it and take it in in all its context and be happy, but I also want to share a bit of it with you, so here’s a bit of it:

Luminous green, teal green, the aurora borealis glows almost directly overhead. It intensifies against the starry night like breath on a mirror, and it moves. Across the whole sky from east to west, the green lights shift and alter. Now it’s an emerald veil, now with a surge it remakes itself into a swizzle which reach toward some far-away place in the east.

***

Apart from being a stunningly lyrical essayist, Kathleen Jamie is also a poet. And talking about poets, I found one, I can’t remember whom or where from, but I found a good one who writes about commonplace things and is supremely accessible. (This makes a difference to literalist me.) Check out Billy Collins, and his poem The Lanyard. I enjoyed how the poem sort of does a slow little pirouette to end off.

***

And this year, I also discovered Ken Liu and his stories which often mix in some aspect of Chinese typography or myth or history to poignant effect. How wonderful, that some of them are freely available. Like Mono no aware. (Gravity fans (i.e. those who like the movie starring Bullock and Clooney, not those who ensure the feel of weight) should especially enjoy it. I wouldn’t know – I haven’t watched Gravity yet.)

***

A couple of months back, I heard a song on the radio. It was a sad Chinese pop ballad, and at first I could not place the familiar voice. Then it hit a clear high note, and I realised it was 张信哲. When I got over the voice, these lyrics stayed with me.

飞机起飞之后 我的笑容永不再相同 (After the plane lifts off, my smile will no longer be the same)

Somehow, in Chinese, it’s more poetic.

***

This year, I discovered many many things about myself. One of these is that I always ruin my candles. You know, those that fill up jars? I always drop matches in them, or add in potpourri petals and bits to see how they would smell burnt, or the wick would shorten to an untenable length. Then, the candles get neglected and then the neglect becomes abandonment.

***

Also quite recently, I heard the first few piano plonks of Jewel’s Foolish Games, and immediately knew what song it was and remembered that I hadn’t heard it for many yonks, that it had been big when I was in my first year of university and that I had thought the world of its lyrics and her singing. Listening to it this time, Jewel sounded strident and pretentious, instead of raw and heartfelt. I don’t think the song has aged well.

Or maybe it’s my taste that hasn’t.

 

Death, YouTube meandering and not liking the part of me that looks down on dwarfs

Recently, a local TV star died. He was 60. I’ve stopped watching television for a while now, so I hadn’t seen him in anything recently, but to read that he is still best remembered for a role he played in a 1984 series struck me as sad – to have one’s life in the 30 years since that show reduced to unmentioned irrelevance – and then made me think about how there is no truly adequate way to memorialise any life, and surely no one same way all those who knew him would remember him.

His death was a reminder of mortality, like so many things are nowadays for me. To me, 60 is just about the age one could arguably say people start to die because they are old. As in, you wouldn’t be surprised if someone died, at 60. That was in my mind. And then I remembered that my parents were into their 60s. Of course I had known that before, even made a big do of their 60th birthdays. But the death of this actor – whose defining role was an experience my parents and I shared when I was still limited to a world they curated for me – was a more forceful reminder.

***

I went YouTube meandering again last night, and found a Wilson Phillips playlist with four songs that I hadn’t heard in a bit and that I realised I could sing to. The songs are oh, about 24 years old.

And I also saw the ending to the Japanese drama series Overtime, again, and enjoyed revisiting what the show made me feel.

And I came across this gem of a cover of Journey’s Faithfully. A lot of these acoustic covers are so brilliant. Boyce Avenue – worth checking out.

***

I started religiously following a podcast a while back – if you like tabletop role-playing, the sort of stuff where a “game-master” creates and manages a world for other players, you should really give Critical Hit a try – and recently I saw one of the folks on the podcast in a video and he appeared to me he might be a dwarf. That disturbed me. My instinct, I think (nice oxymoron sequence there), was a feeling of wrongness – he couldn’t be a dwarf, he’s part of this great podcast I enjoy so much! Then I thought, why can’t a dwarf be part of a great podcast? Anyway, I don’t like this part of me – the part that unthinkingly looks down on dwarfs.

Don’t know why I had not done it…

it being buy Debbie Gibson’s We Could Be Together (Campfire Mix) from iTunes. That song never fails to make me happier :)

Well anyhow the song’s now in my iTunes library.

Thanks to a colleague

I can’t get 2Cellos’ rendition of Smooth Criminal out of my brain.