our puppet master
i'm getting rather scared, i almost feel irritated by so many things and people around me. in general. like a nervous twitch, i find myself being over sensitive to even the slightest attacks against my ego, or even when people ask me 'dumb' question, i get affected as if "do i look dumb for you to ask me stupid questions?"

this has got to stop, i mean, what good could possibly come out of this, its almost as if i were to keep this up, i could wind up in a mental institution.

the symptomns of something deeper? perhaps, i don't mind hearing a diagnosis of sorts. and its funny how we put our faith in people who are specifically trained to do a certain thing, but not God. i have to admit, i'm guilty of this so many times. countless times, i never go to God first in anything i need to know or do or just some new thing that crops up.

and when you scream out against the wrong mechanics of society, people look at you weirdly like there's nothing wrong. but isn't it scary when you know there's something so wrong, but no one seems to believe you and nobody wants to change anything? if people don't believe you, how do you go on living?

rewind the day and find easter eggs
had a pretty full on day, it distracts you from any other going ons with your life. let's just say that i am constantly thinking about my ever-expanding pedal board. not a very healthy habit considering that i need to remember to put food on my table or at least remember to feed myself.

but you see, if i do get a microphone, i will finally start recording some demos that i've been itching to lay down. coupled with the feedback loop, i hope to make some unbridled downtempo avant noise grooves. palatable and earsplitting all at once.. don't be skeptical, you'll see.

who has thunder and who has lightning?
a high handed moral lifestyle? are we at risk of being more holy, respectable, law-abiding, respectable, responsible only because we have more in life, or are good morals also cultivated in the presence of having nothing.

this is probably a very flawed question to be asking and i probably shouldn't even be asking it in the first place if i don't know first hand what it's like to be growing up with nothing.

but i've had some things, and i wonder whether those opportunities were what gave me a chance to make decisions to not steal, or cheat others of their money, being satisfied or content because you have the luxury to know that material success can't buy you happiness, only because you've had some sort of material substance you've never needed to crave for even the basics.

being there and here
i think maybe i lead two lives. or rather, i'm trying to lead one life, but being in perth and singapore evokes a sense of duality. you see, in perth, i spend a good portion of my time serving in church because quite honestly, i have nothing else better to do, and also, God has blessed me with good friends from church who come alongside, share similar passions and also work dilligently to serve in the church. so much so, that doing the church seems so 'natural' it's almost 'right'.

when i come back to singapore, i don't have so much of a ministry or very 'church-filled' activities to be responsible to. it's a good break, but it also forces me to think very deeply and hard just how much of my service actually comes from me. already, after being back for two weeks, several people know of my plans to return to singapore after finishing my studies in perth, and i suppose the invitations have been sent out to me as to where exactly i would like to serve.

to put it conveniently, i could just walk into the first door that opens, to just go back into the machine of doing church. but actually spending time 'away' from church, has revealed slightly as to whether or not i have the passion to serve in youth ministry. do i want to sacrifice the time i can spend with my counterparts to help nurture younger blood, come alongside young people who i prematurely judge as being immature much more often than not?

these are difficult questions, and im glad they get raised now, also knowing that i can't go into a ministry without the jurisdiction of God. i need God to show me his favour in the decision, because if i'm serving without God's help, what is the point of serving anyway?

we're no heroes, but we seem to be trying. let's not try too much.

delusions of grandeur
zines are pretty cool publications. they seem to be created by the non-conformist, to inform the general public about the many happenings and un-happenings of our contemporary culture. produced anywhere from a low cost to full fledged graphics and printing, the zine ultimately has the status of cool attached to it. the question that gets begged is, what exactly can one publication focus on, and how many articles can actually be written?

i'm already having problems finding a daily topic to type about, this blog might slowly be losing its identity to the pressing issues of life. like a vicious cycle, i don't seem to be writing for an audience, and there's only a small audience that reads this.

it's the same old argument again isn't it? writing for the mysterious audience.. but then, real writers write out of a passion don't they? regardless of the readership, if you got something to say, then say it. maybe producing a zine would be too much work, but harmless?bananas! ain't too difficult to update. the thing is that our purple haven has a bad case of multiplicity.

and also that there seems to be nothing worth reporting about, or stuff that interests me, but i don't know if they interest any of you.

tomorrow i'm going to see the blue ark to discuss the schematics of what will hopefully become a customised feedback loop for my pedalboard. my pedalboard seems to be gearing toward a more experimental approach, with yh's orange amp in my house, if i borrow a mic, program some beats on fruity loops, i could maybe write some demos or experiment with some down or up tempo grooves. the possibilities are endless, i just need to find 'time' to sit down and figure my shite out.

where did all the chasers go?
i still exist, but with life shifting gears i come home later to not blog about the daily happenings. it might not interest you that i'm not particularly interested in treating my life like a diary so you won't find any sort of juicy gossip here, which to the best of my knowledge makes this world a much better place to live in.

i also now know what all the fuss about linda liao is.

space fairing englishmen over new york city
our title today is an idea for a band name whilst i was commuting on the MRT this afternoon. it might refer to the shoegaze flavour that seems to be biting me, the englishmen alludes to our country's fascination with western cultures being superior and well, i suppose new york city's somewhat stylish and pops up frequently on search engines. which might spread the new name around a bit. hey.. you never know.

snuggle, nuzzle and snog
im back in the company of youth. today was the first day of sonicfest, and i suppose i never envisioned myself to be amongst the young people of this generation as an older person.

it's funny how i find myself in the cross fire, i suppose growing up i always fitted in by not really fitting in. i wonder how this generation's youth cope and all. i'm still wrestling with the notion that God's putting a burden for the youth in my heart, i mean, i was never too concerned about growing up or what adults thought of me in my younger days, but hmmmm.. why the fixation? also, the idea of having a heart for my home. i think today's speaker had a really good challenge, that if we're not gonna raise our generation up for Jesus, who is? we shouldn't always be waiting for the next bandwagon to come along and ra-ra our youth into a spiritual fervor, but perhaps the onus is on the more experienced to just be there when necessary for when the younger ones rise up. not get in their way, but support them in the direction that God guides us all.

to boldly go where the spiritual highs don't bring us, but since God tells us, we do it anyway, out of the joy in our hearts that comes from God. back to you.

medicinal save the least
i was just having a write in my journal this afternoon, and since it's something i havent completed due to interuptions and it's not particularly embaressing, i just thought i might carry on slightly more on this space.

well, i suppose lately, with me graduating in a semester's time, it's got me thinking about where i stand amidst all this. and the failure of mediocrity is creeping its way into my system, which in fact i find filling my idle thoughts..

i'm an average bass player, average student, average production whatever, average writer, average son, average friend, average christian and so on and so forth. even if i'm not, that's how i feel.. like nothing just seems quite perfect. i don't know if it's possible to feel that way though, totally right as rain?

i'm struggling to remember the time i've ever felt that way, if in fact it is possible, or whether its something my imagination romanced upon.

something is telling me to not look in the direction of what i can and cannot do, but rather, just what God can do, and how he's the reason why the things i do and can amount to aren't just anything but mediocre.

but of course the difficult thing would be to actually stick your head out of the sand, because it's a big bad world out there, and ever so often we feel safe in our little wor.lds. mediocre as they may be.

don't try the same trick twice
a glass of milk, a bottle of wine, one touch to make us all go blind. i don't really have any of the right words to say at the moment, but i don't think we should just be waiting for the time when everything's perfect, we should just go out there and do something about it. so today i woke up late, about 1030 late.. and then i bummed out but had lunch with Thomas in the afternoon. i've been staring at this blogging screen for days with nothing to type about. i have however been using the guitar a lot more now and i just hope i can remember the tunes in time for when the inspiration strikes. and now for song writing, for i just don't know what to write about anymore. i've been a bassplayer for too long, ive forgotten how to express myself in words and song.

signal loss
the bane of any pedal board. i've been having a play with my pedal board of late, and i'm starting to like the sound of it.. it's a bit crisp and hi-fi sounding but its not as if i have exceptional gear or anything. still i would like to get a bit of that shoe gaze pop rock going. it's actually quite exhilirating to get a pedal board going, if you're interested, mine looks something like this

pro co vintage rat => ne-1/mxr 6-band eq => boss dd-5 digital delay => arion sch-z chorus => boss ph-2 phaser => line 6 echo park delay



in the works are a blue ark tremolo, kwerty's feedback and an mxr bass distortion. all dumped on the wonderful misse pedalboard. it'll hopefully grow into a pedalboard worthy of both guitar and bass.. and capable of making enough noise to destroy small cities.

honour among thieves
online life is moving at snail's pace now, not just with my home's 56k dialup modem, but the fact that i seem to be getting electric shocks from my laptop every once in awhile which dissuades me from resting my wrists on my keyboard. you can imagine it's a tad difficult to type at times. no?

and so.. life in singapore.. what do we do now? im not watching soccer tonight so that means i get some sleep tonight. maybe i'll head down to the library and also start looking at potential camera deals. everyone should have some sort of a hobby..

bouncing up and down left to the right
i was reading a tad about how west african cultures survived over the generations. basically, for the west africans, they have no method of collating their experiences or writing them down, so cultural things are always passed down by word and action. for western schools of thought though, with our books and our literature and archives upon archives of information and culture, we simply store down in our vaults and banks.

now here comes the clincher:

we preserve our cultures by storing them up, but how are they relevant to us if we're not accessing them? whereas in the case of the west africans, after they were enslaved by the european nations, and they had no method of 'preserving' their culture, integrated and melded the cultures with western cultures and one of the children of this dynamic form of preservation is our modern jazz.

so culture for the west african is much more meaningful, relevant and current than it is for the cultures we can only read of in our vaults.