where the people hope and find rest
wow.. it's been a rather crazy week. was editing the whole day yesterday, but i had a really good dinner with a coupla good friends of mine, making burgers from scratch and just having mountain loads of beef, chips, beetroot, gerkins, onions, facon bat, lemon bitters, ice cream.. good lord.. haha, if only all men could cook like this and still have enough chest hair to assert the masculinity!

anyway, its back to the editing suites later in the arvo, deadlines deadlines for people's wedding videos!! also, am on for electric guitar on friday night.. was spending the entire morning today learning the songs.. making pretty good progress, i'll work on the rest tomorrow at worship practice. also, missions training at 5pm, but that's going pretty alright.. just gotta remember to bring all the correct CDs this time round.. haha. whole day's taken up tomorrow, i have a fairly free saturday where i need to pack all my stuff so that by sunday i'm good to go to fly back to singapore.

man!

soulmates
she must be from another galaxy.

flesh out the stays, they don't shine as brightly as you
i'm getting rather bored with blogging, but yet i know i'll always love to type my thoughts down, share a little part of me before i go to bed. y'know? also feeling a little bored now that i'm waiting for my results to be released. i watched a fair bit of jungle wa itsumo hale nochi guu, practiced my dance steps and cantonese songs for my missions training, and now i'm gonna go for practice. it sounds like alot, and i'll say it is.. but i think i wanna jam *sigh*

that doesn't particularly sound like art
hmmmm, it's one of those days where you just stay home and appreciate the laziness around you. i cleaned my room yesterday, and today i already have random artifacts strewn over my floor and desk. not that it really matters, but it would be nice to be a bit more organised for just a few more days.

anyway, a coupla things on my mind. i really should be getting into my lc-a a lot more. so far, i've taken about 7 rolls of film, but i have yet to x-process any of them. it's rather expensive in perth, and a bit of a drive. something i tend to avoid when i really wanna get my car in for a service. i've sent 3 rolls in for developing, and the prints aren't much to rave about. there are a few nice ones, but none specifically with that lomo magic. and speaking of cameras, i think soon would be a good time to acquire the sony ericsson k800i.


being a slight photo-enthusiast, one might be thinking why? well, for starters, i don't think a phone could ever be a camera, but i'm seeing this more from a casual and communications point of view. i really think my next camera will actually be a digital SLR, for seriously getting into photography. the k800i is probably one of the best camera phones out in the market now, and it meets my requirements of being a fun, easy to use consumer camera just for taking those candid shots and then sharing them onto the online community. for those moments where you don't have to lug extra techno-artifacts in an urban setting. so thus, this goes in line with hopefully simplifying my life. just slightly.

plus i just hope this isn't one of those material pursuits just so i can feel better about myself. hmmmm.. there were a coupla other things on my mind, but i can't remember them after reviewing a camera phone. technology doesn't help memory in particular, or reminding us why we're human.

oh yes, how does art sound? i suppose there's a reason why i typed today's title they way i did.

if you wanna stay sane
read a blog with a pinch of salt

they told me the letter wasn't a lemon
yumin burnt me some anime and the unit. i like the unit because it's just like a video game with all the guns and combat manoeuvres. i recognise some of the combat stuff from my own training during NS, but i'm no crack delta force unit, so i won't pretend to know much. but i think i did recognise a few individual combat weapon systems from when i used to play rainbow six. very cool. makes you wonder what the future of warfare's gonna be like.

and i've also grown from being a pacifist anti-war youth to being a young adult, that actually believes some things are worth fighting for. i still have a pretty steep anti-war stance, but idealistic hippies piss me off a lot more than under-educated grunts. at least grunts seem more earnest, and maybe it's because i was drafted, and i know i don't really have much of a choice to not take part in a war should my country be attacked by some external force.

repeating, they just keep repeating
where are all the heroes? where are all the tragic stories? perhaps they'll be here tonight, if i could remember tonight, if today was tomorrow and everyday was bathed in light.

sometimes i feel as if i know you
erm.. hello.

we started talking about U2
yh and i always amuse ourselves with jokes nobody gets..

masamania didn't watch U2. U2 watched masamania says:
i think he spent half his fortune on delay systems
masamania didn't watch U2. U2 watched masamania says:
i forgot what brand. but its fucking ex
f e e l i n g l o b o t o m i s e d (me)says:
haha
f e e l i n g l o b o t o m i s e d says:
you mean its not a dd-3?
masamania didn't watch U2. U2 watched masamania says:
..
masamania didn't watch U2. U2 watched masamania says:
haha
f e e l i n g l o b o t o m i s e d says:
HHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, that has to be the best joke ive said all week
masamania didn't watch U2. U2 watched masamania says:
HAHAHA
masamania didn't watch U2. U2 watched masamania says:
ya balls
masamania didn't watch U2. U2 watched masamania says:
HAHAHAHAHAH
f e e l i n g l o b o t o m i s e d says:
haha, damn happy
f e e l i n g l o b o t o m i s e d says:
HHAHAHA
f e e l i n g l o b o t o m i s e d says:
its the best thing to go into some U2 Guitar forum
masamania didn't watch U2. U2 watched masamania says:
hahahahhahahahahahahahahaha
f e e l i n g l o b o t o m i s e d says:
and they are all taking about his delay system
masamania didn't watch U2. U2 watched masamania says:
ya i can imagine
masamania didn't watch U2. U2 watched masamania says:
"u mean he doesnt use dd-3?"
masamania didn't watch U2. U2 watched masamania says:
HHAHAHAHAHAHHAA
f e e l i n g l o b o t o m i s e d says:
HAHAHAHAHA

milestones


it's been ten years since beyond performed this song, and eight years since i first saw it with thomas and we all tried desperately to play it on our guitars. the song was in F and we didn't know how to play barre chords then, but we learnt.. at least i learnt to play barre chords because i wanted to be able to play this song. i never learnt the solo though. this is the song which thomas told me the sad story of wong ka-kui because i was wondering why the man playing the bass was crying. in the end, i would become a bass player as well.

i can't explain it, but this song is so emotional on so many levels, in a time where i'm so cynical about the market forces that drive the music industry, i'm just glad that a performance like this was captured, that an imperfect singer could sing a song his brother wrote but died before he could perform it, cry midway during the performance and have his band members and fans back him up. because this was not perfect makes it one of the most important moments in my music history. it's also the reason why it's one of the best guitar solos out there, because it's one that i can actually hear some sort of emotion in the playing. and if they can do this for a dead guy, what more can we do for a King above all kings?

worse for wear and hard to stare
well, getting shingles has sort of made me re-examine the way i take care of myself. because one of the causes of shingles is stress, i suppose i was very stressed the week before completing all my procrastinated work. and now i'm supposed to be studying for a paper tomorrow. and then i have insurance woes and mission trip responsibilities, wedding videos to edit and a future uncertain, it's easy to see there's a lot on my plate. funny thing is, i don't even know where it all came from.

im being medicated by famvir and drinking a vitamin c supplement daily just to boost my immune system up. you can have everything but good health and it wouldn't be worth it. or you could have health but nothing, and maybe life wouldn't be worth living. i think only God fits in that equation where he makes everything worth it. cool huh?

i've been listening to copeland lately because there's something about the timbre of his voice that soothes my soul, and the music isn't as heavny as the other bands, even benton falls is a little to heavy for me at this point in time.

lists help to organise our lives
1. visit nurse/doctor
2. get prescription
3. settle flight itinenary
4. call up insurance claims
5. call up about job vacancy in murdoch

forgotten but not gone
shingles is not funny. i reccomend you don't get it, but it really is unavoidable when you've already had chicken pox. the school nurse tells you that once you've had chicken pox, you'll never get it again, but the flip side is that the relapse known as chicken pox is known as shingles. and while its localised, and you don't normally get fevers, the rash is not just itchy, but can feel like lacerations on your skin that no matter how you treat, just seem to be a nagging pain on your body.

it's a funny ailment where it's viral, so the root in within your body, but the symptons manifest on the surface, but you feel fine on the inside. if you treat the symptoms through topical solutions you feel better, but when you ingest the treatment it takes about one week for any results to take effect. and the treatment is a financial drain, one weeks treatment of famvir cost me $195, and my insurance policy conveniently does not cover treatment of the shingles sort. i feel rather cheated that the policy i spent $150 - $300 on is useless when i need it.

but in the good news section of brian-land, today are the birthdays of two of my closest pals, who are the brothers i never had, and we're all the youngest in our families.. so, do the math.. haha


napkin man god-brother, beer buddy, emotional confidant, travelling companion, lets me copy homework partner, brekkie lunch dinner friend, bros before hoes pal..


funk soul thom - spiritual emotional confidant, melody maker, fanatic collaborator, jurong hokkien mee buddy, leeson leet guitarist, teach me wrong chinese words friend, hai guo tien kong friend, love-solo partner, bio sciencer going to international relations, concert dvd to music appreciation club founder

hello from the past


i think ive got shingles, but before you think its some weird topical sexually transmitted disease.. look here

anyhow, had a play with photoshop and was being narccissistic. so sue me, i'm tired, and i don't know what to do next. except perhaps, shower, study and/or sleep.

too many bright ideas, don't get any


that was beck's reworking of his odelay! classic, where it's at. there's this other version where it sounds more 80's hip hop synth fever, but this version sounds like the mutant spawn of country blues, and hip hop from the 80s. the samples he uses at the end coupled with his bad scratching and out of tune harmonies.. easily make this a clear favourite in my books.

but yeah, ive got so many ideas swimming in my head now, about the sort of music i wanna do. there's the noise experimentation side, the country-acoustic side, the organic electronic side, and now.. the whole beck side. not many people in perth appreciate the kinda music that i'm talkin about down here, i sorta miss thomas my guitarist from spore, whom i know is on the same wavelength as i am most of the time. but i have faith that good things will come from here.. i'm sort of trusting God to open a door for me to stay here for another 6-12 months with a job i'm gonna apply with the university down here.. we'll see what happens.. if so, i can finally concentrate on something without needing to study.. well, hopefully.. haha -)

sitting around waiting for the air to change
i was in fremantle with my mum this afternoon, and it was a majestic feeling to have finally completed all my assignments! but while we were sitting at gloria jeans complaining about the bad flavoured coffee, i know i'll never have a place like fremantle in singapore. places like fremantle are reserved for people in perth. which is why i hope i'll find my own little magical place in singapore, to help take me away from singapore when singapore becomes too much for me every once in awhile. perth's always a plane ride away, but i think singapore's home for now, and home's where i wanna be. but perth's sorta an adopted home too, and i hope never to forget it. well, not unless it's cutting me too deep.. but then again, that's for everything else init?

brian's dark side
i love sniggering to myself when yuppie-wannabes think that the image quality of a camera is dependent on the mega-pixel count. no you dolts, all the mega-pixel count does is that it increases the resolution of what you can work with in post-production, and how big you can blow an image up before it starts to distort. 3.2 mega-pixels is enough to blow a print up to A4 size. While having a higher mega-pixel count is of course good, and more is still more, as a consumer, you need to ask yourself, do you need that much resolution if you don't do much image manipulation or blow-up pictures?

if you're looking for a consumer camera, its the sensor and the lens that make up the beauty of the image. and chances are, in a consumer camera, both are just pretty bad. but at least you know what you should be looking for in the first place for good pictures. but then again, yuppie-wannabes just want the prettiest looking camera they can find. am i right or am i right? *evil cackle*

sort of silent rejection
the funny thing about emo kids (whether you deny yourself or not), is that they wear their hearts on their sleeves. i go to someone's myspace page, and the new blurb read, "i hate liars." and at that instant i just knew she had broken up with her boyfriend. and true enough, i scroll down and her status has been changed to single. are we so easy to decipher? well, depends on how much we wear on our sleeve i suppose. she always professed her love for her then boyfriend, that when the slightest change of heart happens, the air changes. or maybe i'm just too damned good when it comes to reading people. but i still suck at texas hold'em.. or maybe i just think i suck.

my electric dreams


i know its almost four in the morning, but i can't seem to get to sleep nor do i want to. but trust me, once i get this out of the way, i'll plonk myself on a couch and go right to bed.

i've been rather intrigued with the work of guy sigsworth of late. some of you may recognise him from being the other half of froufrou, but i never knew that. i only became when i saw him play a pipe organ with bjork, and then i realised he was also a composer, producer and arranger. i've always tried to stay clear of froufrou, because i've tried to stay clear of garden state. don't ask me why, i can only give you a stupid excuse where it's one of those movies that everybody seems to go on and on about which makes me naturally averse to it. and yes, "let go" by froufrou, beautiful song as it is falls under my bigoted taste for the arts.

anyway, more on mr sigsworth. i think its amazing he's embraced technology and yet arranges and sequences some of the most organic and sparse sounds at a live bjork show. i'm inspired save the least, about how much work gets done on the computer and it may well be an avenue worth looking into if i wanna do more performance art. i think sequencing is definitely one of the ideas worth exploring because it gives you more autonomy to be an artist without bothering too many of your friends. unfortunately i've been investing alot of my time and money on things that aren't geared toward digital recording. i do have a bunch of guitar pedals though.. haha but i'm glad technology is getting better. i'm looking at either an old powerbook G4 or the newer macbooks (ibook replacements) to be more main digital workstation. i'm rather tempted to get the G4 even though its obsolete, but if it was working fine for so many people and i'm only an amateur in the music production gig, i think i can get a cheap G4 and start my sequencing dreams.

broken down houses
maybe i should just type in here to get it out of the way. my little electronic message to you, just like a regular pulse so that you know i'm still alive. i wonder if i'll keep this same blog to chronicle my entire life's story.. so that maybe when i'm 75 on my death bed, people can still read about me as i slowly fade away from this reality. and did you ever stop to wonder, that perhaps if everyone's collective blogging memories could somehow be understood by an artificial intelligence, would it gain a sort of sentiency because it experiences so much more than all of us? what we experience in a lifetime, is multiplied a billion-fold for the AI capable of sampling every memory and experience on this earth. it wouldn't just be sentiency.. it would almost be omnipotency..

knowledge is power, but it also comes with sadness


i was a cafe today where i was doing abit of reading with a gourmet travel magazine. i remember reading an article about a three star chef (apparently that's a very good rank) who is known to be a paradox because he is the chef that is a businessman, and a businessman who is a chef. he says he doesn't work, but that he walks, travelling around the globe to taste, experience, observe, to make sure that all his restraunts are up to standard. he doesn't sleep because he does all his sleeping on the plane.

wow, that does seem rather impressive, to be able to exist as a concept and be at the top of society, having your food eaten by the elites of modern life. it was rather enlightening to read about how some high society people conduct their lives, in the glossy magazines that tell us about the secret lives of others. we're all magazine articles, because we consume the information they tell us, sometimes we just wanna be like what we read.

sometimes i think we take too much pride in what we know, that we forget that there's a whole lot we don't know, and then we don't become teachable. i mean, success is probably the hallmark of past methods that somehow worked and we turned out alright. but sometimes, just sometimes, i think it causes us to turn a blind eye to the realith of mistakes, that they have equal value in teaching us what we don't know. plus, sometimes, the more i think i know, the sadder that knowledge brings to my being.

the chunk is not in the steak
don't you just hate buying chunky steak pies, but there aren't any chunks in there and just chewy bits of some synthetic rubber tyre? anyway, the purpose of this post isn't to talk about the sad state of australian frozen food. it's about

videos!

i scour the ends of youtube for great song and dance so that you don't have to! i've been on a bit of bjork fever lately, but i absolutely love the massive attack video that's coming up. hypnotic bassline and sub-par video quality work but maximised to make an interesting video than the rest of the polished shite floating around MTV.



this is bjork performing big time sensuality with talvin singh on tablas and guy sigsworth on a pipe organ. if you've heard the original, this will blow your fragile little mind.



finally, this is an awesome live version of bjork's pagan poetry. it's rather long, but it seduces you into her performance, which all i can say is nothing short of mindblowing.



so instead of stills, i offer you moving pictures on my blog!

clubs and cattleprods
we're herding all the sheep into the pen, just listen to the pain and the sack over your heads. don't ask why, don't ask how, don't ask when. you're mine now and we'll bring you over just one last time.

man, it's been a full on weekend for me. cell group on friday night, i spent the whole day shooting my friends' wedding and enjoying a dinner on saturday, and then by sunday i had already spent the whole day in church and just came back home after missions training. at 8, i'm gonna on set to finish up a scene for swifty's production and then hopefully back home at 930pm to have a cuppa coffee and then finish up my report with a thousand two hundred words to go.

caffinated and ready to take on the suburbs
i wanted to write take on the world, but i don't feel that ready yet. i wonder if i'll ever feel that way.. but today seems like a good day. another thousand words on my report, a shoot for a project that is hopefully my last, cell group in the evening and basically the sun is just up and it is a lovely lovely looking day. plus mom's here, and it's great we're bonding and talking, praying and just well, doing life. it's a great comfort that she's here, and i can't wait to go back to singapore as well. just to see how everyone's doing and also to rekindle old music flames.

with marionettes we'll take the world over
increasingly, i think i'm losing my way, but then i have faith that the light i see will be the end of the tunnel. keep following the light, don't look back, there's nothing to see behind, and let's hope we find the world the right side up when we come back out.

i wished i had copies of myself to do the things i needed to do.

i learn a new word
mahai

doing it with fire
wah shite, i feel damn emo because i'm procrastinating so much. but how much more can i run the race when the finish line seems like an eternity away?

farewell all you sinners and saints
i'm roused from my slumber with worship practice in 25 minutes but i'm still nursing a lazy saturday afternoon. i slept at 330 the night before, and got up at 930 and then 1015 again today before heading down to fremantle to do a bit of shopping.

bought an awesome rec checked shirt from an opshop for 17 dollars, three classical records by various orchestras at 50 cents for the lot and the snowman self-titled debut.

and now, i'm finishing a cup of coffee as i blog this, before practice and a farewell bbq where i bought some ultra cheap rolls of film to take pictures at.

flamethrowers try their best to burn
they say a good idea goes on the long way, but when it's the main currency in the creative field, over-inflated egos and undue praise and rewards on purely abstract notions just seems a tad contrived to the somewhat practical me. and i don't think its about sour grapes, there's a reason why most powerful people think that they're better than everybody else.

monsters
do we become students to do great things or to learn how to do great things?

myspace girls are the prettiest
but they're also too young.

coping with distress
"what has love become?
it's not like we used to hear in those old songs."
- love is a fast song, copeland

such a poetic image. it reminds me of love is my velocity. just the pictures in connotes and suggests.. love, something so fleeting, let it take you up into the whirlwind of imagination. i'll tell you things you never knew.

i've always wanted to love someone, to tell them things, to share life. so while i may not have a romantic love for anyone, anyone whom i love as a brother, sister, friend gets to hear me talk on end about the beautiful things in life and why it's worth living. you'll hear about the heartache and the pains and what makes this life real, and how we're all struggling to find our place within.

there's a breaking point when soon, everything will come bursting out.