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...and the next moment Faith bends over to her left and plants a kiss on her baby sister's tummy.
And all I said was, "Faithie, look at 妹妹!"
It took Faith months, more than a year, before she acknowledged Isaac's existence but two months for her to kiss Joy.
I didn't even realise I was holding my breath till seconds after she did it.
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We are watching tv, after putting Faith and Isaac to bed.
The wife says, as she is nursing Joy, "You know, you were right. It is possible to make room in your heart to love a third one without loving the first two any less."
She continues, "We had a nice chat today, Joy and I. I did most of the talking."
She fingers Joy's hair, now noticeably thicker, "I think I am in love."
I give her an "uh huh" without looking up, because I am busy being fascinated at Joy's eyelashes.
Babies have such tiny everything.
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Reader Jerm spotted this appropriate banner ad in the Straits Times Online Forum, accompanying a letter from "this boy who wants to get out of NS because he has an American accent" (Jerm's words, not mine hor).
Excerpt from the letter:
I share the same sentiment as Mr Paul Wong, feeling no allegiance to Singapore and not being able to assimilate into Singaporean culture even though I was born and raised here.
As a child, I grew up watching classic American movies and cartoons, and listening to American-genre music like country, southern gospel and classic American oldies.
My paternal aunts and uncles are Ivy League students and speak with a slight American accent and use American grammar in speech. I was influenced by them.
Because I am the child of a Thai father and a Singaporean mother, I am a citizen of both Thailand and Singapore. I hold a Singapore passport and will have to serve national service next year.
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Which is not so closed anymore, damn those bloggers. Sorry, cannot tell you what it is about, or I will have to kill you, haha!
Update: Big mouth Miyagi!
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Update: I think I know why the video is not displaying for some of you. You need Quicktime 7 for this. Sorry for the inconvenience. Was trying out the H.264 codec and didn't realise it was only found in this version of QT.
Our very first video podcast! Shot entirely on location in Holland (Village), this first episode takes an in-depth look into the real reasons for the changing electoral boundaries of Singapore.
Video file for the mrbrown show (video) 18 Jan 2006: Show 1
(Quicktime Movie, Filesize: 8.2mb, Time: 00:03:47)
Subscribe to the podcast feed here.
(Or click here to subscribe via iTunes)
Technorati tags: singapore, mrbrown, podcast, podcasting
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After spending the weekend looking at podcast hosts to solve our recent podcast server traffic problem — plus rushing to interview Shelley and Az because they were here only for a short spell, and doing podcast post-production, and taking the kids to the playgound where I met Anantya in my worst possible pair of running shorts with iron burns and a 10-year-old Maui and Sons t-shirt, and taking the kids to the over-crowded Chinese New Year pasar malam, and taking the kids out for breakfast with Grandma and Grandpa, and going to my in-laws, and playing a few minutes of WoW, and fighting RSS feed and Feedburner problems, and catching Scary Movie on DVD with the missus — I am pleased to announce that your podcasts will now be delivered without you guys having timeouts. Yes, we zhnged our server a bit.
We will still need to beef up our hosting further but at least, for now, we have a stopgap measure.
That is why we were confident enough to release Shelley and Az's (check out their songs here and here) podcast so close to The Sun's. And judging from some of the comments this morning, the better bandwidth has already been felt. Good.
This has been an exciting few months for us and it is only going to get better. We have an exciting lineup of shows and guests for you. Another podcast project is also in the works.
Which is why there is a need to make the infrastructure more robust.
Now if we can only zhng our days longer so we can fit in all the recording schedules into our crazy lives.
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Singapore's greatest rock band, The Suns, formerly known as Boredphucks, are our guests.
Recorded at drummer Wayne Thunder's home, the band tells us what it is like to be fulltime rockers. Mr Miyagi provides the mints (and does a great write-up)
The three blokes also starred in Zhng My Car 5, released last week.
Warning! This podcast has an MA18 rating: Contains coarse language in English and Hokkien dialect, toilet humour, and references to bapok groupies. Do not listen if you are a minor or are offended by bad words.
Audio file for the mrbrown show 16 Jan 2006: The Suns guest
(MP3, Filesize: 9.9mb, Time: 00:28:44)
Subscribe to the podcast feed here.
(Or click here to subscribe via iTunes)
Technorati tags: singapore, mrbrown, podcast, podcasting
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The iPod is playing Virtual Insanity through the car stereo via the new hookup, as I drive my brood to the in-laws for our usual Sunday visit.
The wife turns to look at me, her face recognising the song, and asks, "That is by... Jerry... Macguire, right?"
"No lah," I say, "by his brother, Jamiroquai."
Then again, I always refer to singer/mumbler Jay Chou (周杰倫 - Zhou Jie Lun) as 周慧倫 (Zhou Hui Lun), mixing his name up with Tarcy Su (蘇慧倫 - Su Hui Lun), requiring my bilingual wife's frequent correction.
Yeah, I can totally see Tom "No Neck" Cruise groovin' with a big hat on a conveyer belt.
Not.
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We have Malaysian singer-songwriter Shelley Leong on our show, with guitarist Az Samad! And not only do we chat, Shelley and Az play and sing a "live" accoustic set on our show, totally impromptu and unrehearsed! This is a mrbrown show first, and one of the new songs have not even been recorded before!
Shelley, Az and their band will be playing tonight (Sat, 14 Jan 2006) at 10pm, at the Esplanade Outdoor Stage, courtesy of Music for Good. Go catch them there and buy their CDs!
Audio file for the mrbrown show 14 Jan 2006: Shelley Leong and Az Samad guest
(MP3, Filesize: 10.2mb, Time: 00:29:27)
Subscribe to the podcast feed here.
(Or click here to subscribe via iTunes)
Technorati tags: singapore, mrbrown, podcast, podcasting
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Not bad, twice in a week. This time we are having dinner at Curry Favor, at Stamford House. They specialise in Japanese curries, and the wife had a beef curry rice, I had the prawn and scallop curry rice (extra spicy), and we shared the pork rolls (last two left for the evening).
The drinks were Irish cream Italian soda, and Mango smoothie. We sat in a nice cosy corner sofa area and I have to say, the food was superb.
The service was also helpful (we ordered all the chef's recommendations) and friendly (we were asked if everything was ok, twice).
Excellent stuff.
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I tell you what, young bloggers, here is some advice. Instead of streaming that pop song you need to pay license fees for (at a low low price of $1000 for 10 songs or less, EVERY YEAR), how about playing some podsafe music to play for your site. There is a lot of great music out there for you to discover, and music from the big labels is not the only deal in town.
More news and views from deblock and Han. Try podsafeaudio.com or podshow.com for some good music.
Excerpt from ST:
'We increasingly see more bloggers who upload music onto their webpages,' he said.
'We want to encourage them to come forward to our one-stop centre to get licensed, for a reasonable fee.'
For websites where the song cannot be downloaded or have any advertising, owners have to pay $1,000 a year for playing 10 songs or fewer, $5,000 for playing 11 to 49 songs and $10,000 for over 50 songs.
This is a 'competitive rate', said Mr Melvin Tan, the licensing manager of Compass, which protects the interests of composers and lyricists, and administers royalties to them.
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Gillian Tan made a funny spoof driving school commercial that someone submitted to Tomorrow.sg.
Over at her site, there is also an even funnier movie, Live with Bambi, your favourite relationship helpline show, hosted by Bambi who "dishes relationship advice with no professional knowledge whatsoever". Bambi featured an example of the women men should avoid, the Possessive Freak or Stalker, (Janice, 27 years old, loves roses) who was both scary and funny at the same time.
*Shudder*
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Bobby Lee as Sayuri in the Mad TV version of Memoirs of a Geisha. Watch it on YouTube, or just click the above image to play.
My eyes, my eyes!
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Latest TODAY column: Singapore is an open (but wet) society.
Excerpt:
Ya lor, Mr Soros, we are quite an open society here in Singapore, really. Sure, we can say things quite freely. I can even say that a politician like Mr (bleep) of the (bleep) party looks like a giant (bleep) and smells like (bleep).
Besides, I recall most Singaporeans filled in the application forms to become an open society and we meet all the necessary criteria to be responsibly open. Don't want no irresponsible openness here, you know?
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We haven't had a proper date night since Joy arrived, so this was a nice time to have one. The movie was not too bad. The wife loved the book and was not too disappointed with the movie either. She did say they omitted book details like how the geisha tied their hair differently depending on whether they were virgins or not.
Young lass Suzuka Ohgo, who played young Chiyo, was way prettier than Zhang Ziyi and also gave the best acting performance in the movie. And a little bit of sumo trivia can be found in q-taro.com.
I wish they had cast good Japanese actresses to play the leads. Somehow, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi did not quite cut it as believeable Japanese women though their acting was credible. I watch too many Japanese dramas to suspend my disbelief at the Japanese-ness of these actresses, I suppose.
I think Oshin (imdb link) was a much better Japanese melodrama, but then that was a TV series. And an epic one at that.
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Update: I apologise for the downloading traffic jam. The surge in traffic in the recent weeks has overwhelmed our podcast server somewhat. It is an interesting problem to have, since the more popular a podcast becomes, the higher the cost of distributing it. Mr Miyagi has set up a temporary mirror for this episode to alleviate the load until the traffic returns to a saner level. We are looking at ways to increase the amount of bandwidth, especially in the first few days of a new episode. Thanks again for your patience and understanding, and thank you for your support.
Johnny tries to zhng The Suns (formerly known as the Boredphucks), Singapore's Greatest Rock Band.
San Singer, Jboss and Wayne Thunder are given the Johnny Zhng treatment to make them the kind of band Johnny thinks they should be.
Warning! This podcast has an MA18 rating: Contains Crude Humor, Coarse Language in English and Hokkien Dialect, and Sci-Fi Action. Do not listen if you are a minor or are offended by bad words.
Audio file for the mrbrown show 11 Jan 2006: zhng my car 5 (Temporary mirror site)
(MP3, Filesize: 7.2mb, Time: 00:20:50)
Subscribe to the podcast feed here.
(Or click here to subscribe via iTunes)
Technorati tags: singapore, mrbrown, podcast, podcasting
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The weather has been cold these days, with the nonstop raining. So we make sure all the three kids are sufficiently covered up and warm before they go out. Faith, Isaac and even little Joy have their hoods on.
Isaac looks so much like a little Jedi padawan. Or Kenny from South Park.
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It was touch and go. I had been up and about since 9am on Saturday, and did not get home until it was time to change and go for the Wedding of the Year. I almost could not go because I had family commitments to settle but in the end, I left everything to the capable missus to settle.
After sms-ing Cowboy that we would be late, I picked Daryl up at Orchard Road at 7pm and drove over to pick James up from his place. Mr "Fly Aeroplane" Miyagi was tied up with work and could not join us. Even James almost could not make it, because he sounded sick like heck on the phone when I called him at 2pm that afternoon, but he managed to recharge his health/mana bar somehow to join our little road trip up North.
The weather was bad. Rain and poor visibility. We went via the Second Link because James warned that the Causeway would be jammed badly on a Saturday evening. So instead of a 15km drive, we took a longer 38km one. The missus kept sending me smses to check on my progress.
I drove with a morbid fear of knocking down hard-to-see motorbike but good thing nothing horrible happened. Sure we got a little lost in the rain, and could not see the signs that the hotel website maps said to look out for, and sure, there was this massive pothole at the hotel entrance that almost everyone drove into, but the drive was fine.
We stumbled in the darkness of the car park, wondering if we were at the right place, but seeing Cowboy and his bride's photo in the lobby made us sigh with relief. Of course, we whipped out our cameras and snapped away. What else do bloggers do?
In fact, I spent the whole night snapping. Snapped with my mobile phone, snapped with my own digital camera, and even got hold of Terz's Canon 5D (I am in love — with the camera, I mean) and took a boatload of photos.
James, Daryl and I sat at the table with LMD, Agagooga and the femes Minishorts and her Eric, from KL. I believe there were at least four tables of bloggers there.
The highlight of the evening had to be the sabo games, which the last few tables of bloggers did to Cowboy. He was blindfolded on stage and made to touch the hands of many a maiden, and to guess which one was his wife's. We, of course, cheated, and moved his wife around the group and he got all his three guesses wrong.
They also made him drink a nasty concoction of liquor (it was chocolate in colour) and then move on to another wedding classic, the Make Bride Move an Egg Through Groom's Trousers game, which provided much mirth to us all.
The raw egg got stuck at a most unfortunate spot, as his bride tried to move it past his, er, groin area. The egg spent a long time there.
We told him to stop thinking naughty thoughts so that the egg could go over to the other trouser leg. It finally made it without being cracked inside his pants (which we threatened to do, but in our benevolence, did not).
LMD made him drink a whole glass of German wine, then spin around five times with his head on a chair, and then he had to walk towards his wife. He staggered to her fairly well. In fact, he was still lucid enough to do the other Wedding Sabo Classic, The Long Kiss (with Tongue Action).
After the last guests left, Terz and Tym brought us to the massive rooms at the resort, which had two king-sized beds in them. The rooms were HUGE. They could have fit four king-sized beds in there with space to spare. The corridors were so wide, you could have a paintball game if you booked the whole floor.
We left at about 12 midnight, and drove back towards the Causeway, this time we drove around the Big Porthole. We made sure we borrowed some extra Ringgit from Terz, because the three blur blobs that we were, none of us had any Malaysian money on us. If it wasn't for my mother shoving RM17 into my wallet, I would not even have money to pay the Second Link and highway tolls.
We drove to Restoran Ayub, in Pelangi, a 24-hour place that James said was famous for its otak-otak. The three of us had a feast of satay, otak, Maggi Goreng (one of the better ones we have tasted), Roti Chenai, and teh tarik. The bill? RM19.50. Cheap and good.
We were relieved that we had enough Ringgit, or James would have had to show some leg to get us some discount.
Opposite Restoran Ayub were two karoke pubs, Diamond and another one I forget the name of. Sandwiched between the karaoke pubs? Singing schools.
The only bummer part of this whole trip was the silly Causeway jam. Jalan Wong Ah Fook was jammed with Singapore cars going back after a Saturday night in JB, and we got stuck in traffic for more than an hour.
We will be back, I am sure. Maybe a makan road trip next time. We went home tired but happy for Cowboy and his bride. We hope to see little cowboys and cowgirls soon!
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My 4-year old Sony head unit that came with the car finally decided to die on me, specifically the radio. Not that I listen to radio much (though my mother does when she drives my car) but it was the way I got my iPod to play in the car's sound system.
Since it would be a travesty to deny Mom her Gold 90.5FM and since I was sick of buying FM transmitter after FM transmitter in search of better sound, I decided to do it right once and for all.
I have tried the Griffin iTrip , the Belkin Tunecast II, the Xtreme Mac Airplay and they all kinda worked, but the sound never satisfied, and driving into the city with all the competing radio stations meant a lot of interference.
I also wanted to keep my 10-disc changer, which was working fine, so the new setup had to allow me to switch between the changer and the iPod.
At first, the car audio guy recommended a S$469 Sony CDX-F7710S head unit, which had Aux-in Lite as well as the Unilink connector (their proprietary control bus technology) to hook up the disc changer.
But as they were about to hook up the new head unit, they read the manual and realised that you could either use the Unilink connector for a disc-changer or the Aux-in Lite for another external device, but not both at the same time. Installing one would deactivate the other.
Damn you, Sony!
In the end, we chose a cheaper Sony CDX-R3410S head unit (which also had the 7710's ability to play MP3 or ATRAC discs) and hooked it up to a Sony XA-300 Auxiliary Input Adapter. This small box can support up to 4 audio sources, and can be controlled by the head unit. With this S$180 device, you can hook up the disc-changer, plus two other devices via the 2 Stereo RCA Aux inputs, and even a laptop via the USB 16-bit Stereo input. All of which can be accessed via the head-unit.
The car audio guys ran a Rockford RCA cable from the Aux 1 of the XA-300 and used an RCA-to-stereo-minijack adaptor so that I could plug that into the iPod's headphone jack.
I still have to view and select the songs via the iPod, but I don't do that often, so it is ok. I have it mounted in front of me with a Dicota Keeper suction-cup car holder (love it!) so viewing the iPod screen is easy.
The sound is clean and good, but I had to push the volume of the iPod to max. The next thing I will probably get is an adaptor that lets me connect the cable to the iPod's line-out circuitry, for better sound (like a PocketDock, a Belkin Auto Kit, or a Monster iCharger).
My front speakers were also blown, so they put in a pair of 2-way JBLs.
I am quite pleased with the setup, though I would have gone for other brands like Alpine, who have their own iPod adaptor, if I didn't have to hang on to the Sony disc-changer.
Never mind, later got money can try the Harmon Kardon Drive+Play (review here).
Or if really got money, get an iPod-ready BMW.
Yeah right.
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We took a long Second Link route here, and the barflies saboed our late attempted sneak-in entrance by clapping (yes, clapping, the whole table), but we made it to the hotel.
And for the record, Cowboy and his bride glowed. Got to go, he is at our table now to take photo. Sorry, cannot show you his face, anonymous International Man of Mystery that he is.
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