WELCOME TO MY GUITAR EXTRAVAGANZA!

Wednesday, August 24, 2005
I got my results today. They fucked me off big time. I did quite well for everything else, but I got a C minus for music. Music...of all things in the world. Here's the rest...

INTRODUCTION TO ACCOUNTING II - B-
ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR & ADMINISTRATION - B+
HRM & LABOR RELATIONS FOR MANAGERS - A-
STATISTICAL DECISIONS IN MANAGEMENT - B-
MUS116 THEORY OF MUSIC FOR NONMAJORS - C-

Don't complain about the caps, I can't be bothered to go convert them.

I recorded another video tonight with the help of my little sister.
It's dedicated to the Kinder of pure heart in Perth, but I'm sure the rest of you will like it...hopefully! Initially I really wanted to do a parody of the whole heavy metal rock god thing. Complete with all the leather and chains, not BDSM but the share their links too. I wanted to like this...

Ozzfest 2001, PNC Bank Arts Center, NJ, 8/11/01Photo by Glyn Emmerson © 2001 NY Rock

I searched round the house for chains and leather, all that came up with my sisters' jewellery and some belts. Not really the effect I was looking for, nonetheless Charmaine still took a picture for me.

Like I said not the effect I was looking for.

This one looks slightly better for the bluriness hiding my mug.


Ok enough blabbering. Some info first, the track's taken from Guitarist Magazine, in the style of that mean looking guitar player in the picture about...not mine the other one...Zakk FOOKIN' Wylde. The guitar setup is as follows, Ibanez Jem '97 FP, Morley Steve Vai Bad Horsie Wah Pedal, and my humble 15 Watt Fender Tweed Bronco Amplifier.

You'll need quicktime to view the file, it's in .mov format, just wait at the site once you're in.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=352MPXMW

Enjoy.

Christopher.

Stroke My Toys...

I got the day off today. It made it all the more better to wake up at 12 today. Absolute blissfulness, no mother boss banging on my door shouting "IT'S 730 ALREADY!", no dragging my sleepy self still in REM mode out of bed. Shiokness. I met up with my ex-PC from Army. Not personal computer, platoon commander. I still call him Sir although I'm no longer in uniform and under his command. I never felt like a subordinate on his, it's more of a mutual respect from one commander to another. He always went out of his way to make our lives easier...the commanders of course.

Anyways I met up with Shadrach to check out some amplifiers. He's in the market right now for a new guitar amplifier. We went to peninsula to numerous guitar stores, annoying each and every owner with our cacophonic blend of noise. I've been convinced by my test drives today that it's time for me to get a new amp as well. I've had enough of unresponsive solid state tones, time to get tubes. The Carvin Amp today really rocked my socks.

After all those hours of musical masturbation I still had a couple of hours on my hands. I went across the street from Bras Barsah shopping centre to the new library! Yes my intellectual streak decided to make a come back today. It's a massive place. What struck me first were the walls, they are adorned with figured flamed maple wood, enough for making enough PRS private stocks to last 2 lifetimes. There's an equally massive collection of books, I only managed to check out 2 levels. Yes 2 levels...there are levels dedicated to specific subjects.

I took some pictures while I was there too.




I also did another video today....

more on that later.

Christopher.

Love On 4 Wheels...

My Dad's very nice vintage 1960s Mercedes SL.




Time to get license.

Christopher.

Wish you were here.

Monday, August 22, 2005
I haven't got the chance to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory yet. I've read the book though. More appropriately, I do know what it feels like to have chanced upon a golden ticket. I experience possibly the same bliss today.

My friend Ben invited me over to his house today. It's situated somewhere in the east coast of Singapore. To me, it's better known as Guitar Wonderland. He owns a whopping number of 11 guitars. I wanna be just like him when I grow up. He's younger than me though. :D

I've known this guy for ages already, at first I got to know him on IRC (Hey I was 16 ok!), then it became apparent that he was actually in the same secondary school as me, just one year my junior. We kept bumping into each other through the years showing up at the same music stores and other concerts. Until of course I went to SIM...and we were in the same class. He's more of a traditionalist than me, more blues based. Prefer the less is more, for me less is good, but more is definately more.


Pretty Maids all in a row.

I got a chance to borrow his custom Van Zandt Stratocaster at one point of time. I spent about 3 weeks honeymooning with this guitar. Beautiful flamed maple on the neck, the nicest wood I've ever seen in my life. And a tone to die for. Loaded up with custom wound John Suhr pickups, the exact same ones used by Scott Henderson.

What's a nice piece of wood?


I spent the whole day using and abusing her.

Loved every moment.

Paul Reed Smith, a relatively new guitar maker has been at it since the '80s. Right now demand has grown so high for his instruments, he no longer makes them himself and relies almost exclusively on CNC machines to make them. The 80s were a great time for PRS guitars. Don't believe me? See for yourself...

The picture does almost no justice to this immaculate example of craftsmanship, the wood looks even three dimensional in real life. And it feels like butter, the notes just melt off this baby.


Abalone shell bird inlays on rosewood. Sigh.


PRS Hollowbody. I love this one the most, you can get both acoustic and electric tones out of this instrument. The tone is sweet like honey.

I spent about 4 hours mucking around with Ben and Kenny, jamming to a couple of Jimi Hendrix tunes, using and abusing these guitars like they were suppose to. We improvised using screwdrivers due to the fact that the drumsticks were stolen. A unique tone to say the least. Watched a bit of John Mayer and his facial contortions together with his jumping leg.

I want guitar.....

I want.


Donations are welcome.

Christopher.

If only she knew, if only...

Saturday, August 20, 2005
I don't think I've ever been so tired in my entire life. I got off my computer after a very interesting conversation due to the fact that I had to wake up at approximately 7am in order to make my timely arrival to work. My original intention was to seek some solace in slumber, instead that solace came, only about 4 hours late. I got to sleep at around 5, only to haul my sorry ass out of bed at 7 due to the loud banging request of my mother on my door to wake me up.

A feeble attempt at most, I finally got going half an hour later.

I honestly think the best sleep is the one which you get once you're slightly awoken and just refuse to get out of bed. Only wished it could last longer.

I survived the rest of the morning getting slightly jittery on the momentous, well at the same time copious amounts of fake adrenalin; supplied by my usual double shot mocha made by the consistent folks at spinellis.

Oh the joy!

Things went pretty well at work today. I was on fire to say the least, I'm one proud mother fucker, I did pretty good sales today. Mom and Pop would be proud.

Everything went well until I got stuck in the rain while getting lunch. I observed it in a wideyed childlike manner as it was coming down. It reminded me of how ricefields in Taiwan look liked waves in the wind. Except that this time it was all happening vertically. This time it looked more to me like a willow waving in the wind. It turned my light blue dress shirt into an irritating shade of navy.

I made my way across to taka with help of an umbrella. My mind wandered again while I was taking the escalator. I pondered about the practical purpose of bodily hair as I saw this really fuzzy Caucasian man in front of me with equally fuzzy legs. The curls of his hair looked like cartoonish pig tails. For me it really serves no practical purpose, other than to my sister of course; who likes to grab and pull on it until I bleed as part of her last resorts to get back at me. It's not funny once you start to bleed, believe me.

What else did I do?

I'm asking myself not you.

I met up with mark and watched him stuff himself with burger king. Headed down to zouk really early to get me invites for localized.

I'll try my very best not to get smashed tonight.

Don't hold your breath.

Christopher.

Mystery's Not Ready to Reveal.

Thursday, August 18, 2005
Sometimes I wish I had a better range of vocabulary. A wider palette of linguistic tonalities to describe all the things I experience. It really hit me today when I was listening to a piece of music. I listened to "Night after Sidewalk" by Kaki King today for the umpteenth today. Something inside me stirred so much. How such a beautiful melody could actually crafted out of the imagination of a mere human being. No words just music, just a guitarist and her instrument conveying the image that she had set out to. Influenced and inspired by some passing or maybe an important event that took place and somehow at that point she decided to represent it by stringing together a line of notes. With her fingers tenderly plucking each string, enforcing the meaning of each and every single note. I listened to it over and over, each time picking out little morsels of hidden beauty.

It just really amaze me. Humbles me ever more so.

Ok at this very point you're probably thinking, OMG THERE HE GOES AGAIN RATTLING OFF ABOUT SOME GEEEEETARRRR NONSENSE.

Here's an eye opener. Prepare to be floored by the presence that is Kaki King.

http://www.sonymusic.com/artists/KakiKing/video/KakiKing_ConanVidFull.ram

Hopefully the link works. She's only slightly over 20. And already this good.

Pure genius if you ask me.

Let me know if you want "Night After Sidewalk", I'm totally in love with it.

In other news, the insect plagues of the times of Moses have been beset on me. I got tormented all through the night by a huge mosquito. That really reminded me of army, how I used to cover myself in my uniform, parka and groundsheet. And even with all that sound proofing the high frequency buzzing did not cease. The same happened to me last night. I got up in the morning with war scars in the form of swollen bites across my body and killed that sucker dead.

In the other creepy crawly episode...a flying lizard decided to drop off a tree and land on my leg while I was waiting to cross the road to work. Yes you read that right, A FOOKIN FLYING LIZARD. The only with improvised biological wing flaps adjoining thier legs to their bodies. Thankfully I sucked it up and didn't scream like a woman. It ran away after some serious leg shaking.

It's a sign, she says :D

Work was pretty good. I guess it's because I had something to look forward to. 2 hours of pure musical enjoyment in the form of a jam session with my bass player friend Adrian. I usually prepare a bunch of covers to work on so that we can at least start off from a familiar footing but this time everything was mostly improvised. I did come up with some stuff before hand, but almost all of it revolved around the Jimi Hendrix chord found in his song Purple Haze...

So it was 2 hours of "SCUSE ME WHILE I KISS THE SKY!"

I proceeded to spend the next 2 hours playing expensive instruments and tormenting music store owners with my unique brand of pharsing.

The song is still playing on my PC.

Beauty in it's most purest.

Christopher.


Celebrating the present tense...

Tuesday, August 16, 2005
Ok first off the activities of the past few days since my exams ended have been pretty much a blur to me. I've totally lost track of time. I can't believe it's already tuesday bloody damn night! Let's see. If I'm not wrong it was most probably friday night that I played mah jong. I was so extremely drained out after that whole after the whole study session. I slept from the time I got back after the exam, probably 1 pm, only waking up for pee breaks. I found myself strangely awoken at 11pm. Best.

Friday was pretty good though. I was of course initially intimidated by the whole game of mah jong. Firstly because its totally shrouded in mystery thanks to that fact that my mandarin sucks ass. Marshall gave me a nice verbal primer by tell me stuff like there are 4 suits. Character, number, circles and bamboo. What the hell that means to me in the beginning was totally beyond my comphrehension. Bamboo suit at the time sounded to me like Bamboo shoot over the telephone. Secondly I have a tendency to shy away from any game that has to do with gambling. I hate gambling to the core due to a personal experience attributed to a member of my family.

Anyways morals and fears aside. I jumped into the game with half-hearted excitement and eagerness. Bearing in mind the fact that I was already really tired. I took a train to meet up with Marshall first who convinced me very nicely to play. I took on the game pretty well in my opinion for a beginner. I won 2 games. But I lost 10 dollars. TEN BLOODY DOLLARS.

I thought that the whole magical whiff of beginners luck would spear me to big bucks. Take mrt there, take helicopter back home. But of course that was not the scenario to be. There's something in the game called Tai, whereby which a winner's winning is multiplied, that of course did not catch on too well with me. Till the next time. I'll count the ten bucks as tuition fees for now.

The whole session ended at around 4 in the morning. Thankfully for me, brother Avis was there to provide me a place to stay. I love going to the east. It's so damn relaxed, so quiet and serene. Unlike of course my area where noise pollution is at its peak. I wake up in the morning to the sounds of construction, and sometimes traffic from the driveway below.

I went to tampines central for lunch had cheap and good chicken rice, and went to cash convertor for the first time in my life! That place has a character of its own. There's nothing of value there, it seems like a friggin junkyard full of cheap spares off loaded from karang gunis. I stumbled upon a keyboard missing several keys, price...fifty cents. So much useless shit there, it's unbelievable.

Avis is a very loyal patron of tanning. But more rather he's a fanatic when it comes to getting as baked as a Red Lobster. So much so that I think he should be the spokesperson of the American restaurant chain of the same name.

I did the gayest thing in my life that night. I moisturized the overly sunkissed back of my best friend. It made the hairs on the back stand. It didn't help when he made manly groans and moans everytime I laid it down on him.

I met up with Marshall again the next day for our trip to Johor Bahru. While waiting downstairs in the psuedo courtyard below her house I took this picture.

Bet you never thought it could look like this.

Anyways JB was pretty good. Although I was really tired having almost close to no sleep the night before. Actually everything other than the fact that we squeeze 4 people including my oversized self in the back seat of my dad's old E class Merc. We headed to some yong tau fu place called Ah Koong for lunch.

My little Sister Charmaine and Lixian.

Charm and Me with her doing the ole seafood trick.

The very creative Marshall carving.

One of the problems with going to JB is having to sneak in clandestine smoke breaks while my dad is around. We made our way through the toilet to some back alley that smelt like 2 year old sewage.



The rest of the day we spent wandering around buying the usual pirated Dvds, Xbox games and cheap cigarettes!

I wanna do it all over again. And then some.

Christopher.

Gotta keep things moving till my personality starts improving...

Monday, August 15, 2005
The dreaded exams have finally ended. I took a pretty long break from blogging for 2 main reasons, I had to study hard hard good good for the exams, and sad to say nothing interesting was happening in my life. Well at this point of time I don't really have a strong feeling toward the potential outcomes of all those irritating papers. I loathed every single one of them. I guess you can never be fully prepared over something you have so much speculation over. But knowing myself, I should have studied more. Music went pretty fine. My understanding of the topic proper seemed to ease me through the paper. However it's one of those subjects where if you screw up the first bit, every other damn thing is going to suffer. Mara proved to be a real champion finishing up merely 20 minutes into the paper!

Statistics was pretty ok as well. I couldn't answer the questions in the second section. For some fucked up reason my mind just went blank.

On the second last day of the examinations, more appropriately thursday of last week, I went over to Adnan's place at night. The number grew and soon we were joined by Francessca and Felicia in our battle against accounting. Get this, prior of this little meeting, I had absolutely no idea about what the fuck was going on, some people however think that I have everything under control. I'm not one of those types that does not need to study, just read over the damn notes and BAM! get an A plus on the paper. This fortune never shines on me in my case. I have to bloody mug like a maniac before I can at least get a mediocre amount of information.

Well other than the fascinating revalations of accounting. We all talked about the usual bullshit, argued on whether there were Zebras in Pakistand, dabbled into making the design of those cigar case handbags more effectively, and just hung out together till the morning in our very unique fashion. That's right, I didn't sleep a wink the whole damn night. I'm still at present trying to recover from the whole ordeal. I was kept awake by Adnan, who even at times where I wasn't sleeping (E.g. Sitting on the couch feverishly going over accounts notes), never failed to tell me "DON'T SLEEP AH". Felicia was kept awake by me though. I constantly irritated every ounce of quality shut eye by saying "EH YOU SLEEPING AH?" whenever she closed her eyes.



Anyways we tried out the Macdonalds delivery service for the first time in the wee hours of friday morning. Best bit of it was that they had the breakfast menu available at about 3 plus! I could not resist the temptation of having 2 sausage macmuffins with egg to perk up my study momentum. Everything seemed fine, the food arrived on time as mentioned by the operator, nice warm food and all in the midst of an early morning pouring of rain. However they forgot to give us the 2 hashbrowns that were suppose to be included in the delivery. The best part of it all, when we called they asked us whether we still wanted it! WTF...no dude I just called to say I love you, and inform you about the absence of 2 hashbrowns in my order at fucking 4 am in the morning. Professionalism for you there.

I'll speak of my other happenings later, I've got a pressing matter to attend to at this very point in time.

I've got to make some wrongs right.

Christopher.

I Need Some Sensible Shoes

Sunday, August 07, 2005
As of now, I've totally given up on the sneaker game. It's got to the point where people are just queuing up to get shoes and then sell then at higher prices. It bloody sickens me so damn much. I remember the time when I first started buying Nike SB sneakers, no one batted an eye, and even went to the extent to say that my sneakers were outlandish and ugly. Now everyone's going crazy over them, some peeps even bloody queue overnight! They're just shoes man. Shoes made by some third world labourer in a cooped up factory for a cost price of way below 10 US dollars! The hype is just nuts these days. The friggin' pair of kicks get sold off at the store for about 170SGD only to be sold off by resellers for over 300 Buckeroos!

Anyways in other news, I've been working hard at the wood shed getting all this otherwise useless information under my belt. I'm almost done with statistics, or more rather sadistics. I'm going to start on music tomorrow and fatten up my chordal theory.

I also worked in a run today! Felt really damn good to be away from the tempting claustrophobic confines of my house. Tempting due to the fact that my guitars are hanging on the wall begging for me to go squeeze a couple of notes out from them. Anyways the run felt slightly better than the previous time round, I worked in an extra kilometer this time round. I seriously got to cut down on my cigarettes, I had visions of myself collapsing in sudden death style throughout the entire ordeal.

Well what post from me is complete without some pictures? Here's a slightly better picture from my parents' wedding anniversary picture. The silly smug expression is still there though.

Here's a picture from the time me and Marshall went to eat Indian food exotica at little india.


Ok it's time for me to finish up the rest of the sadistics questions. I'm going to head to school tomorrow to study music. 2 pm stuck in the study room for as long as it takes!

Christopher.

Stressfest.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Exams are just next week. I'm worried to bits right now, I've got 3 papers to handle come Wednesday of next week. Music, Stats and....OMFG ACCOUNTING. Anyways my week has been pretty surreal. I guess it's just the way time seems to confront me and then all of a sudden pass me by without me even noticing it to begin with. I can't even really remember what the hell has been happening over the past few days.

Good points...

I got a call from my long time friend PENG WEI, yes folks Ah Fit is back, and well. I'm gonna meet up with him after my exams end next week! I got a call from him at 9am the other waking me up from my otherwise peaceful slumber.

Nicholas is coming back as well. But I feel so sorry for him. No first class this time round. Only business class. It's like telling the president to take 171 bus to the Istana. Sigh.

After next Friday I will have 3 weeks of pure relaxation. I can do any damn thing I want without having to worry about the consequences they have on my academic progress.

I went to some funny looking Indian restaurant the other day with Marshall. I found out about it while passing by the other day when one of the workers decided to enquire about my preferences toward Indian Naan Bread. It was good...damn fookin' good I tell you. But slightly pricey for roadside Asian cuisine. I wanna go back there again. But it costs like 3 bucks for a cup 'o Lassi!

Sniper Rambo/ Aka Mark came over last night. He's got quite a good singing voice. We jammed out while playing really cheesy songs like La Bamba with my "squeeze as many notes into a single phrase" brand of guitar playing. It sounded pretty good...La Bamba. But I couldn't get pass the first line of the song without cracking up hysterically in laughter.

AH LA LA LA KA NI NA!

Mark...one day...play live!

For now I'll have to be contented with the very small audience consisting of my mother and sister.

Bad Points...

I have absolutely no idea WTF is going on in accounting.

I have almost zero knowledge of music chordal theory.

I'm not going rollerblading on friday. I'm a really sad puppy about this.
I'm just kidding. =P

Anyways saturday is Ivins' day! Ivins' is some peranakan restaurant which I last went to when I was in the earlier half of my secondary days. Marshall's suppose to take me there on saturday to celebrate the end of her exams, as well as the various contributions I have made to her cognitive progress.

I still owe Mark money. Fucking hell.

One dollar a day...

Christopher.