Friday, November 28

Hong Kong in two days. Even though I'm free of my responsibilities with edesigns and Snappy Snaps there's still a great many things I need to do in the remaining 48 hours, all of which is annoyingly throwing off my tstgu songwriting and nostalgic photo uploading plans. Oh well, it all has to be done so I guess we'll see what happens. I will probably update this some more later tonight when I have more time...

Monday, November 24

A string of HK friends have been paying visits lately so I've finally made an overdue return to the West End theatres. I think it must've been a year or so ago since I went. I guess you just kinda take this stuff for granted after living here for a while. So yeah, last week we managed to get tickets for both The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables. Phantom I hadn't seen since my trip with Hugo to London three years ago so it pretty much felt like watching it again for the first time apart from sharp rise of the ticket prices. Les Mis on the other hand I know all too well and can picture in my head from start to finish (my own romanticized version) so instead of being completely captivated I found myself being horribly let down by the person playing my fave character Enjolras. His voice just didn't cut it. Too thin, too soft. And the guy playing Marius I thought would be far better suited to a boyband with his nice clean looks and super sweet voice. A bit too sweet.

BUT the roles of Fantine and Eponine more than made up for it! Imagine my surprise to find out that Joanna Ampil (of Miss Saigon fame and who had performed brilliantly as Eponine the first few times I saw Les Mis) had returned to join the UK cast as Fantine. As always she shone through every scene, but it would've been nice to see her resume her Eponine role. Yet having said that, the current Eponine whose face adorns Les Mis posters all over the London Underground was just phenomenal. She's one of those singers that you watch and wonder how they can manage to sing so well and with such effortless ease. She gave every note everything she had and judging by the applause it was clear that I wasn't the only one who felt this way. I hope she'll stick around for a while.

It really has been a delight catching up with a couple old classmates in London despite it being horribly wet. Not that I'm trying to trivlialize the other relationships I have but there's just something unique about being with people you went to school with 10-15 years ago. Of course we've all 'grown up' somewhat now and lead very different lives but if you dig past all that you find that we're pretty much still the same bunch of friends at the core and can just talk about the same kind of nonsense as we did back in primary/secondary school. Here's a photo booth snap of Andy, Christian and myself after an evening in Brick Lane.

Wednesday, November 19

Anyone in the country will be well aware that George W Bush is in town this week for an official 'state visit' and as expected a huge protest march will be staged tomorrow in the afternoon. Just my luck that I'm in edesigns all of this week which means it'll be near impossible for me to rush over to Trafalgar Square to join the demonstrators for small portion of the march during the one hour lunch break. I came across a rather interesting article this morning in the paper about London Mayor Ken Livingstone's decision to increase this month's council tax by a couple of pounds for each household in order to help pay for Mr Bush's five million pound security/police extravaganza... you know, bomb-proof limos, mobile operating theatre and all. He then went on to say '... but most people would probably be willing to pay double that to stop him from coming'. Haha. Well at least Bush isn't granted that three mile bubble which would've REALLY screwed things up in central London.

In completely unrelated news, I must give the props out to Graham Lowden at Andy's. The guy's been servicing everyone's guitars and basses on Denmark Street for the last 21 years and sure did a superb job of setting up my lousy ESP bass. I decided to bring it in for an examination as the recent drop in temperature seems to have bent the truss rod way too straight. Gone now are the fret buzzes, funky intonations, over-magnetic pickups, etc. Wow I had no idea that so much can be done to an instrument to enhance the experience... now I can really have a good time on stage instead of avoiding the 5-7th frets on the G string or worrying how out of tune the notes beyond the 12th fret are. Setting up only costs 40 pounds on the regular 2 weeks turnaround... if you want to see whether anything can be done to improve the feel of your instrument then by all means pay Graham a visit. He's also a real jolly chap to have a chat with and will seriously overwhelm you with guitar geekspeak!

Tuesday, November 18

People in London seem to spend half their lives on the city's appallingly inefficient buses, or shivering in the cold and wet waiting for one, myself included. Ever since I got cut off from a steady source of income I've resorted to riding buses to get around. At half the cost (and sadly twice the length of journey times) it makes perfect sense for anyone who can't afford forking out 4-5 quid a day on transport. I don't even want to think what that means in terms of HK dollars. My biggest gripe though has to be aimed squarely at their inability to punctually show up at a stop. You don't state that a bus runs every 8-12 minutes if you're going to keep someone standing there for 40 minutes. Where I catch my bus in the morning to Hampstead the timetable clearly indicates that one passes by at 7:45 followed closely by another at 7:49. You have no idea how many times I've shown up at 7:42-3 and waited until 8:15 or something for one to show up. And of course since the tardiness affects EVERY stop along the way, you can be sure that it is already rather jam-packed by the time it's my turn to board, and it's not an uncommon sight at all for a bus to just nonchalantly speed along without letting more passengers get on.

Grrr. I know it's all pretty trivial but small things like this can really do your head in if repeated on a daily basis. Plus the recent shift towards gloomy lethargic weather hasn't helped improve the experience. This morning I must've waited a grand total of an hour for buses... 20 minutes for no.232, then an additional 40 minutes at Brent Cross for the C11 change. And then in predictable fashion three of them turns up at the terminus a couple of minutes apart. I think one of the most ridiculous incidents involved a procession of five no.46's going along bumper to bumper along the route. Naturally the last 2-
3 were empty.

I'm so ready for Hong Kong...

Monday, November 17

Apologies to everyone who's been visiting this site in the hope of discovering an update in either the form of words or images. Without making as much as a whisper in recent times, it's no surprise that the number of visitors has been on a steady decline. The last few weeks have seen me removed further and further away from the computer (for recreational purposes), which in all seriousness has been a good thing. It all started when one of my co-workers went away to Mexico for vacation and another was incapable of turning up to work due to health problems, so I ended up getting scheduled in to work a whole lot more than I was supposed to. Thankfully everything's under control once again and I can once again take a breather.

And in addition to that I've also been occupied with a couple of things in the music department, namely a short string of Mika Bomb gigs for the month of November as well as helping my friend Kari Kleiv the Norwegian future popstar out with some smooth dirty basslines. Not that I can really call it helping out since Mark Owen is in the picture and has actually been writing me out some fairly fat pay checks. Hehe. Well it's not really all that much but definitely more than anything I've ever seen from my own bands. Let's not forget about the new spirit that guides us album that I'm hoping to help write. We're scheduled to go into the studio at different times throughout the months of December and January. Should prove to be a rather interesting collaboration as I'm yet to hear the materials that Axel and Minco have been working on. I wonder if our sounds will all gel together nicely.

Biggest news though (well if you can call it that) would have to be my temporary return to edesigns. To make a long story short, I received a phone call from my old boss a week ago with the offer of a month-long contract as they had suddenly found themselves successfully seducing more clients than they could handle. So here's a toast to my unglamourous return to the world of computers and cubicles. Although it's been rather pleasant returning to a semi-familiar environment, I'm thankful that I'm not permanently attached to any of it. I'm quite content to let this remain a thing of the past. The money comes at just the right time though, with Hong Kong and Christmas gleaming on the horizon.

Well that about wraps it up. I'll endeavour to respond to my ragged collection of emails, friendsters and guestbook entries, as well as upload some new pics on here. I imagine all the tour pics must be getting pretty old and I should really showcase a little more of my immediate surroundings ie London and Brighton.

Friday, November 7

It's been a relatively quiet period in England apart from the massive build up of postal letters/parcels due to the recent postal worker strike. Now here's to hoping that my new passport will show up before I need to leave the country.

Oh shoot. It has just occurred to me that I'm going to lose my old passport which has its pages beautifully adorned with stamps from my Australia college days, my multiple visits to the US, as well as an extinct one from Kai Tak that I received the time I failed to enter HK without my ID card.

At this point I'm not quite sure where I stand on their decision to take such drastic industrial actions, for however noble and well-intentioned such actions may be, the ones most affected are common folks like you and I who are simply hoping to send and receive our letters on time. I wonder if it would've been more effective had they decided to target government mail instead. Oh well. People in this country have the luxury of kicking up a storm if they're discontent about their job instead of just throwing in the towel and looking for another one. Now the firefighters are threatening to do something similar (again).

On a much lighter note, I too have succumbed to the geeky Matrix quiz and below is my result. If you are a Trinity then drop me a line...

You are Neo
You are Neo, from "The Matrix." You
display a perfect fusion of heroism and
compassion.


What Matrix Persona Are You?
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