Things have been pretty quiet around here.. cos there's not been much going on.

Yesterday we took the neigbour's little children to the local church for their mooncake festival bash. The neighbour's little boy is my favourite toddler.. he's super cute like a small puppy and is totally not shy. He comes to the door to play and say hi every time I leave or come home. Some toddlers get mood swings and don't like people, but this kid seems to be in a good mood most of the time.

What was surprising, though, was that there was no lantern walk! I thought the highlight of every festival is for the kids to run around at night with their paper lanterns lit with candles. Maybe it was a big logistical nightmare, plus safety concerns and all. But still...

Pensive mood today.

Sigh I want to be done with school fast. I feel like I'm missing out on a lot, like life is on a standstill. Somehow the closer I get to graduation, the more I'm feeling the massive opportunity cost.

I think this happens because I sometimes subconsciously peg myself to my peers, and think about where I could be today. Admittedly, its a very unhealthy exercise. There'll be no end to it if I'm going to compare -- I'll just never be happy.

I know that happiness is achievable when you learn to be content with what you have. It may sound trite but its pretty spot on. You just have to be your own person and find peace in the little things that make you happy. Some days, thats easy. Some days, its not.

Think now would be a good time to play with that scruffy mongrel dog that I've always wanted since I was a kid. I think there's nothing like a lick from a dog friend to bring you back into the moment. A retirement dream perhaps...

Ok its my mom's birthday today and I'm looking forward to dinner later plus that really hot looking chocolate cake with cherries in rum from Awfully Choc. I'm not a huge fan of anything too sweet or jelah, but I've tried these cakes and they're excellent.

Earlier today I met up with a fellow student at my online jazz school. Turns out he's retired and has been trying to pick up jazz for 2 years, and he just has so much passion for it! He spent a year at Lasalle doing jazz performance, has had many teachers, and goes out playing with tonnes of people. So off the cuff, he says, hey wanna go back to my place and jam? ON!! So there we were, in his little amateur home studio, with a drum set, JC160, and an original 60s Fender Bassman (OMG), keyboard, mic etc. This was my first time playing with someone for almost 4 years, but it was crazy fun. I was really rusty and nervous, but he has so much love for jazz guitar and its just infectious. We're meeting again on a weekend with the full band (hopefully the drummer can make it). I'm a total newbie at jazz, and clearly they're a lot more proficient than me, but there's no better way to learn and be motivated than with a bunch of true believers.

Why didn't this happen during the holidays??

Funny weekend..

I went to pick up an amp yesterday. Turns out the seller is an Indian expat, selling it cheap because his company was closing down locally and moving to China (where everything is cheaper). He declined to move to China, so he might be moving back to India to find work.

Turns out also that he was staying at the Grangeford. Its been no stranger to the news recently. When it got sold en bloc a couple years ago, its neighbours Horizon were incensed that their own en bloc fetched only half that of Grangeford. Horizon then sued its MC for what it alleged to be a hasty sale, introducing all sorts of pretty interesting arguments. It turned out to be a record series of lawsuits by various parties, involving almost all the major firms here.

Anyway, I was in Horizon about a year or two ago. Its old but pretty well maintained, some of the apartments are quite quaint in a 1970s way, with pretty groovy design (like a circular living room - very space age). In contrast, when I saw it yesterday, the Grangeford is pretty run-down and some parts look like an old 3 star hotel thats seen better days. Great location, but the seventh month is here and some areas can look creepy at night.

So Grangeford was again in the news because its master tenant illegally partitioned its units to pack in even more tenants. I checked out for myself what remained of the partitions yesterday -- the contractors came in and removed them but the foundations remained. It was quite funny -- basically the bedrooms and master bedrooms became a unit each, and they partitioned the living room and what was left of any common space into 2 tiny coops just big enough for a bed and a small cupboard (hence turning a unit into a 5-bed dorm of sorts). My guy paid $1,300 monthly for his master bedroom, which I think is a bad deal considering you can get a slightly smaller room at a brand spanking new condo in the fringes (Novena etc) area for the same price. Or a shared HDB nearer to his workplace, with all the amenities in the area. I don't even know where he got his meals, he can't possibly walk out to Taka every day for dinner.. no wonder he's moving!

So.. foreign talent, companies outsourcing to China, en bloc sales, overcrowding in coops, unrealistic rental rates.. wonder where we'll go from here?

Today was the most disgusting day I've had this year..... Woke up, had breakfast, headed down to Goodwood for an old friend's wedding lunch. I thought it was just a quickie lunch reception buffet, but it was actually a full scale sit-down 8 course banquet meal, except that it was during lunch. Quite a good concept I thought, cos its cheaper, easier to secure a booking, you don't break your bank on alcohol or corkage cos its lunch, everything is over faster, and you get to enjoy your complimentary suite for longer. Anyway so lunch was from 1 - 4pm.. just pure eating.. then I went home for a quick nap, and had to go out again for my auntie's birthday 10-course dinner at the civil service club chinese restaurant.. pure eating from 7 to 9pm.. Thats 6 straight hours of eating.. I'm bursting now.. And this is prob the first time in my life I had ohr-ni twice in one day.

So I was at the local gear shop the other day, fell in love with this vintage 1981 jazzbox in pretty good condition (I did a check on the net -- its only about a month older than me!). It haunted me for a while so I passed by there today again on the way to dinner. Thank goodness the stars were all aligned: there was loud ambient noise, I couldn't dial in the amp properly, found a loose knob etc, and it all combined to cure myself of the love/ compulsion to get another one. Cos it would mean I'd have to get rid of an existing one, which means yet another cycle of trading and testing and counteroffers.. so for now I'll just chill and concentrate on painting. Speaking of painting, what a pain... I must have did a poor job scraping off the loose paint in my living room the first time around, didn't wipe off the powder or something, so either my sealer didn't adhere well, or the old base coat was already loose when I painted it over with sealer . I found this out when I painted over and the sealer coat started peeling off. So I found out that when it peels, it does quite a lot of collateral damage to the dried coats -- which means MORE scraping and sealing. Hope the current layer is enough, and won't peel off on me tomorrow.

Wow have I been busy or what..

Summer school is kind of boring but its an easy 4 credits, at least thats what I tell myself. Cos I'm studying for the exams right now and its a drag.

I've finally started on painting the room, and was it a pain! I thought I could finish in 2 days, but that went all wrong cos I based it on painting over a white/light coat. My room was a dark color, so it took me 4 coats of sealer and 2 coats of pure white before i could cover up all the dark spots. 2 more coats of lily white followed, and now my room is a lovely light color, and looks bigger and much brighter now. I like how it looks as though the lights are always on. No more dark colors for me! The rest of the house will follow, after my exams on monday.

I decided to sell my white guitar, in exchange for a proper, traditional full-hollow jazz guitar. I had some second thoughts about it, because the white one was really quite unique and out of production. But my 4-guitar moratorium still stands (space, practicality, and funds constraints), so it has to go. It was a great hybrid, but it couldn't do what a traditional solid or hollow body could do. I've set my sights on one of these instead:




Jazz guitars just look so hot... all that natural flame maple and the pearl/abalone inlays all over.. Anyway this is exactly why I LOVE globalisation and capitalism. I can actually keep some small change after the swap cos the jazz guitar above is made in China. Case in point -- if the main American brand made this to the same specs, then it would cost something like S$5,500, AND the American product would still be inferior, with their notoriously shoddy construction!!

The history is that the Japanese stunned the Americans in the 80s by making the best replicas in the world, and for something like a quarter or a third of the prices. Only the highest-end boutique stuff is made there now, so from the 80s till about 2000s, mass production was in Korea. Which made ok stuff. Competent, decent quality, but nothing to shout about. Then most recently, most OEM guitars made the switch to China. Personally I think the early years were rubbish.. poor quality, poor woods.. and then suddenly I don't know what happened but they got their act together when the high end workshops started production. By 2006 onwards, their workshop started making these Custom Shop models with crazy exotic woods and fantastic QC... just amazing stuff..

What went wrong with America? I suspect high wages, unions, medical plans, insurance, set hours, minimum wage, all that stuff that workers like. But it made the product really really expensive! Add to that, lousy QC, horrible marketing teams, non-existent product development, or even worse, new products that were so far off the mark. The American companies are just so bloated and complacent now and they charge just way too much for inferior products with horrible QC, that I hope the Chinese shock them into streamlining and getting back to basics.

What are the Chinese doing right? I'm sure they get away with much less workers benefits, but somehow there must be some magic cos the QC is so damn high. And I think they're really hungry to succeed. Whatever it is, the consumer (i.e. me) wins!

Not much has been happening, but no news is good news, yes?

I was quite shocked recently to hear that an old classmate's daughter was diagnosed with stage-4 cancer. She's barely 4 years old. It was sadder still hearing from friends about how their marriage had broken up even before the daughter was born, and of how the single mother is attempting to raise so much money all at once for overseas treatment, and that the treatment will only give her a 40% chance of survival.

But according to a doctor friend, apparently stage-4 cancer is a death sentence. There is pretty much no recovery from that stage of cancer. This means that the little girl is just a dead man walking right now. If treatment is effective, then its just a matter of prolonging an already sick life by a matter of years.

Half a mil is a lot of money but I guess it buys the idea of hope, rather than a full cure. Maybe the hope of total recovery is priceless, and worth much more than half a mil, which is really just money if you think about it.

Well whatever the outcome, I hope the mom pulls through fine. The little girl is really cute though.

Taxi drivers are the most incredible people.. today one told me that he had pretty good luck driving drunks, and that they'd rarely puke in his car. He could go for a year or two without it happening. But one time in 1991, it happened to him 22 out of 30 days! He was dead serious, and is still wondering why that happened.

Anyway, I've been "busy" with summer school (its not that taxing), and with listening to lots of music as part of my self-imposed homework for theory class. The latest guy to send chills up my spine is bossa nova pioneer Joao Gilberto, and especially his rendition of "Desafinado" -- covered to death by a million people, but no one's ever improved on his version.. its just the way he holds court by himself, with a classical guitar and his voice.. and what a voice! Its not a fancy one, but the way he sings is so sleepy and captivating. Beautiful stuff... Maybe i'd start listening to the radio more if people still compose and perform like this.

I don't know whats wrong, but I seem to be fighting off a flu right now. I felt sickish both yesterday afternoon as well as this afternoon, and had to come home both days to take a nap. I feel better when I wake up, but then the next afternoon I feel sneezy and my body temperature gets higher. And then I have to sleep it off, what a pain...  I hope its not something from the NY students..