cool vids

hat-tip to reg for these awesome vids.

Botanical gardens

I went running with Claud at the Botanical Gardens this morning. I knew people were going to give strange looks at me in shorts on a regular workday at the bus interchange. You just don't see a lot of leisurely people 8am when everyone else is heading for work.
The Gardens was beautiful, tranquil, and there were some photographers. It was the first time I jogged there, and it felt like the next best thing after Central Park, which was a lot more scenic and the morning air chill and dry. But I gotta learn to love what I have, at least here at the Gardens there's a swan lake.
Claud was late 15 minutes so I had some time to visit the clean public toilet (a pleasant surprise!) There's a UN Summit at the main building, and a lot of VIPs. They're probably handing out the UN public service award mentioned in yesterday's papers to our civil servants or something.
When she finally arrived we started to run. I didn't how fit she was then, she had been with the NJ dragonboat and they win every freakin' year and the year-end marathon idea was hers, so I flippantly suggested an hour's run for starters. It didn't take long for me to regret not restraining my ego and suggest 30min instead. The place was hilly and we kept running until we kinda got lost and ended up at Farrer Rd. Phwah..

be different

I just finished marketing guru Jack Trout's Differentiate or Die, a random book I borrowed. The core of it is companies must stay different in people's minds and he furnishes his case with many real world examples. His idea seems so obvious though; everyday the media is telling me to be different/original/unique/etc until it sounds like a cliche.
But the point Trout makes is that you just have to position yourself in a unique spot in the mind, and once you're there it takes a lot to dislodge your place. Any attribute can be differentiated. Like if you're no.1/low-cost/luxury/etc and people know it, you just keep working on that special attribute of yours.
To see brands how brands are exploiting this idea, I paid closer attention to the ads on the streets over the past few days. True enough, Nescafe is positioning itself as the fat-free coffee, pre-empting other coffeemakers the fact coffee powder doesn't contain fat. Going by Trout's analysis, if the "fat-free" campaign is successful, any other coffeemaker trying to use the "fat-free" attribute would be seen as copycats.
I wonder how many of my consumption choices are influenced by these marketing tactics.

Alice: "I amuse you but I bore you."

I just watched the movie Closer on DVD a second time. I'm not big on love stories but the first time I watched it when Grette was halfway through it. Aside from Queen Amidala's outstanding role as a stripper, what really struck me was the wrenching scene when her character Alice realized her love for Dan is over:

Dan: I love you.
Alice: Where?
Dan: What?
Alice: Show me. Where is this 'love'? I can't see it. I can't touch it. I can't feel it. I can hear some words but I can't do anything with your easy words.

Lady Luck is smiling at me; I managed to borrow the screenplay by Patrick Marber from the library!

ONE campaign

Recently BBC admitted in a report they carry a leftist bias to issues like world poverty and global warming. Personally, I share the same bias, taking for granted the persuasion from the Left. There're not a lot of counter-argument to these issues as far as I'm aware.
So here's a little poll to see what you guys think about a nice ONE campaign ad supported by American celebrities to end poverty.

For more info, go to www.ONE.org

Wondering what the hell to do with your life?

You might be able to get an idea or two from 43things.com. This site has over a million posts about the things people want to do. I find it refreshing to see the simple and down-to-earth aspirations like 'improve my handwriting' and 'design my own tattoo' from around the world. It's a lot more real than the 'live your life with purpose' literature that's topping bestseller lists, and you can even talk to those who are doing what you want to. The quirkiest thing I came across was 'learn to strip' so I'm sure there's something for everyone. As for me, I want to paint my room but I'm better off tidying it up first. ;p

link: www.43things.com

manhattan

Can you spot the Statue of Liberty?

This was taken 2 years ago from Brooklyn Heights at sunset. Probably the skyline at night would've been more fantastic but I didn't really know my way around the neighbourhood, and didn't want to risk getting lost there. I don't think the view is as pretty as what Lonely Planet says; I had more fun finding the view though. It was something of an adventure.

Over the past month my friends have gone places like Hokkaido, Copacabana, Prague, London, Cyprus, Philippines, Siem Reap and Australia. Lucky buggers.. =) I'm planning Mt. Kinabalu. Anyone interested?

zerodaybug

It was zerodaybug's first jam session after a three-month hiatus. I felt a little bad for not keeping up with practice because I have no motivation except when we have jam sessions. I like to keep up the rock star poseur once in a while.

By the way, Leonard put up the vid of us practicing soul asylum's 'runaway train' for the Science Club's bandcomp (yes, haha..) four months back. That's me on the left contributing the mind-numbing guitar noise backup. He's the one playing the ripping cool guitar solo.

To be sure, zerodaybug is Leonard's band, even though he didn't come up with the geeky band name inspired by a virus. He's the only one consistently learning new songs and making sure the rest of us turns up.

In fact, we wouldn't know what to play today had Leonard not prepared the songs and chords. That always works. Besides, our lead singer, Leon, couldn't make it today so Leonard wrote the chord progression to Hotel California and we played instrumental. It is a really good guitar song, although I got sick listening to Eagle's demo music video when I was selling Sony's hifi at IMM some time back.

Leonard wrote another progression: 1 measure of B minor, followed by F#, D, E and F#. Interesting. It's Britney's Baby Hit Me One More Time. He even brought the lyrics and the band took turns singing it since one guitarist sufficed and Leonard could play the bass guitar and drums. When it was my turn to sing, I remembered thengz who's such a big fan of Britney. I dialed his number and continued with the song. "How excited he would be if he heard the song over the phone?"

My day ended with good music at the Blue Jazz bar though. Lulu called up our bunch of old friends and I didn't want to miss it. I said 'haji lane' but the taxi unkle heard 'chai chee lane', which is in Bedok and not where the bar is. I made a big detour back to town, met the guys, talked cock, had beer with Eric Clapton's music in the background before calling it a day.

SNL - a special x'mas box

If you guys haven't seen this already. It's hilarious!

Alan's bar fight

Just watched an episode of Boston Legal. Great show. Witty and humourous. Almost every episode is a treatise on some important theme: love, death, religion and so on. =)

The most emo song of all time

It's been 15 years since its release and it still sounds poignant every time I hear it.

iGoogle

If you're like my friend thengz, who wonders about the ubiquitous and frivolous i-prefix to every new product, you won't be surprised by Google's homepage service, iGoogle, which iThink is pretty cool. i especially like the customisable idyllic landscape that changes according to the time of the day. uCan add rss feeds of your favourite websites and your gmail account to it so there's no wasting unnecessary time waiting for those websites to load. Here's a quote from the quote-of-the-day service on my homepage i kinda agree with:

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
US novelist (1922 - 2007)

I used to pretend to be crazy like Van Gogh hoping I'll be as talented as he was. However I remained ku-ku with no talent forthcoming. :(


Gantz fanart, Copyright Kobacabana

thengz, pear and i

"You know, there are some cheena people who pass themselves off as kantangs but still appear extremely conservative and homophobic?"

"Sounds like me.."

"Really meh? But you are going home now what."