Thursday, November 27, 2008

Oh See The...Album Artwork

When Cover Flow was first introduced on iTunes, we were already on our way to collect album art for our collection of music. 'Course we knew that it's not something we would be able to complete that quickly, since we don't really have the time to sit down and hunt for album art all night (admittedly when we do sit down to search for album art we'll be at it till past 3am).

We're rather happy that, in our case, a rough glance on Cover Flow on our iPod Touch shows that album art there is nearly complete save a number of songs.

The thing about album art, and how Apple made it more prominent...it makes ya notice things you lack. So of course we'll notice missing album art whenever we're playing our music, or when we have iTunes on and the list shows a song with no album details etc. Never did we need to bother about these details in the past!

Thankfully, we don't need lyrics for all our songs.

Now, when we do get to sit down and check Amazon UK for album art, it's not always that easy too. The easiest is when we rip off a CD we own, all the details are there (most of the time). If we rip off some lesser-heard of CD like the Death Note soundtrack, or say Tracy's and Ian's He Says/She Says album, we can scan in the artwork (or try and search for it online). Then there's the mainstream music too, those are easy to get album art. We like using the album art where the song first appeared in most of the time.

Trouble begins slightly when we look for album art for the genre oldies/evergreen. Some are so old that they don't have album art. Some are one hit wonders that disappeared. Some will be so popular that we're spoilt for choice deciding which album art to use. We have 'Best of...', 'The Definite Collection of...', '...Gold', 'The Essential Collection of...' and lots more. If we have a few songs, then we've to check to see if the album we're referring to has all the songs rather than use two or three different albums.

Tough ones are the classicals. Since there be some we've gotten from elsewhere, the details of those songs aren't always complete. Which orchestra performed this variation of Canon in D? Who sang that version of Nessun Dorma? And even if we do have the details, it doesn't mean that we know which album it came from.

And then we come to the few Chinese songs we have (we think there's five, excluding our Teresa Tengs). There's one song by Richie Ren (or is it Jen?) and three by Sammi Cheng that we have no idea what the title is. As far as we know it the mp3 file is called 'SAMMI CHENG - Some Catchy Song'. Yes well the Chief could probably tell us the song names and all but we'll solve that when we get to it next time.

We thinks we ought to follow Amiable Aix's suggestion of making our own album art for songs we don't have details for!

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

CLEAN ME

We have to admit that it's been quite a long while since we've given Aidan a bath. We're talking months here. The last time he had anything close to a shower (and not by rainfall) was the two times we had to park him under the trees in Taman Tun when we went for choir rehearsal. Seriously, that stretch of parking along Burhanuddin Helmi is not one place you'd want to park at in the evening, as the birds continuously squawk their warning cries that no car will be left untouched.

So well even with that knowledge on hand we were forced to park there one time and thus, after choir we rushed back home (thank goodness the handles were still clean!) and had Aidan hosed down. The Chief assisted by driving Aidan around so we could effectively hose both sides of the car and clear off the still-wet droppings.

Still, that was only a hosing, not a proper bath that Aidan deserves. And Aidan knows this, and he makes it known to us.

Not that he can talk like Kit from Knight Rider or act up like Bumblebee, but rather we get the vibes. Dusty doors and hood become rather obvious. We keep getting mental notes to get the car washed. Any longer and Aidan will up the vibe to the point where some stranger will write CLEAN ME on his rear window or something like that.

Usually, we've always some excuse to miss out on getting him clean. We're home late la, or busy with practises la, or why is there is no car wash around the Curve/Cineleisure/Ikano la, forgot la...

We guess Aidan decided enough was enough and made sure we did something about getting him clean - throughout the day Aidan left dusty streak marks on our grey Dockers. While the dust streaks didn't read CLEAN ME NOW we definitely got the message.

So when we got home past 11pm from work, after a quick break we got Aidan his much-needed bath. Imagine: start by hosing him thoroughly, then we started applying the wash & wax solution, the moment we immerse the brush back in the pail the water turned pitch-black. In the end we washed him twice.

Now, he's clean and shiny once more!

Except...

Based on our past experiece when giving Aidan a bath, we can expect it to rain later on in the wee hours of the morning...

Monday, November 24, 2008

Video Games Of Our Lives: Populous

LIFE:\blog:

Just recently Populous DS was released for the, duh, Nintendo DS, and being the nostalgic feller that we are, we tried out the game to see how the portable version fared.

BLOG:\cd POPULOUS
BLOG:\POPULOUS>pop.exe


First time we ever played Populous we were only really interested in one aspect of the game. No, not winning the stage. Rather, we wanted to use all our godly powers available and watch our enemies' followers perish.

See, Populous is a game that belongs in the 'god game' genre. Be a god, nourish your followers to gain mana to smite others, sending your followers to raze enemy lands and finally bring about Armageddon. Gameplay is rather simple - you mainly go about landscaping, creating flat terrain for your followers to settle and populate. The more they populate the more mana you'll generate from their faith.

Back then we were satisfied to just play about long enough to gain enough mana, look for the most populated piece of enemy land and cast whatever natural disaster we had at our disposal, whether it be an earthquake or swamps or even a volcano. Never really had the patience long enough to win a game.

The game pretty much ran on 2 diskettes. And we remember discovering that POpulous Disk 2 actually had different themes, so rather than watching blue/red-robed men walking about some monotonous landscape, you could have lego characters walking about some lego landscape!

BLOG:\POPULOUS>cd..
BLOG:\cd POP2
BLOG:\POP2>pop2.exe




Then came the sequel - Populous II. Vast improvment from the first, this time the story being that you're one of Zeus' offspring, and you're fighting for a place as one of the gods on Mount Olympus. This time there were more spells, leaders could become Heroes, and of course, the graphics improved immensely.

There was a Greek theme to the game, men and women ambled along, fights were shown as a large cloud that resulted in either the Good follower uppercutting the Bad follower to the heavens, or with the Bad feller bopping the Good into the depths of the earth. No more Lego followers, tho'.

What we enjoyed about Populous 2 was the numerous spells there were. Now there were thunderstorms to fry people.

And rain of fire.

And volcanoes. And tidal waves. And plague. And summoning Helen Of Troy to drown enemies. And earthquakes. And Achilles to burn everyone. And once we have the upper hand, bring about Armageddon.

Hooo joy.

BLOG:\POP2>life:
LIFE:\life.exe

Friday, November 21, 2008

Lazyman's Wrapping 107

When all we have at hand was just a paperbag, some craft kit and no wrapping paper, we've to make do with what's at hand.

Requires:
Paperbag (we used our Starbucks paperbag)
Ribbon

Simply put the present in, fold down the bag, punch hole and tie ribbon.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

A Wedding Dinner In Paris

On Saturday we managed to make it for the Tosh's and Tropicanan's wedding dinner. Even that was pretty much touch-go because initially when the Tosh called to invite us, we'd told him that we may be having rehearsals (based on a projection of our rehearsal schedule then) and could only attend for a while.

And here's us telling him that we could make it again after all.

In case you're wondering how we have to put rehearsals before our friend's weddings, it's because we'd to sign a contract in order to perform for the Lord Of The Rings Symphony. Must attend 90% rehearsals, must perform in all shows, et cetera. So given that there were other occasions where we would have been missing rehearsals already, there was only so many rehearsals we could miss.

Then so happened that on Saturday the rehearsal was still on, but from 10am - 4pm. So we could attend after all!

There was a bit of a hiccup when we arrived (late, of course). Seeing that we told the Tosh that we would only show up a while, we were taken off the guest list. Of course, by the time we arrived, the couple was going through their second dress change and everyone, ushers included, were already inside. So we thought to just go in and say hi to everyone and hope to catch the couple before leaving.

Turns out that there was a place for us to sit after all, because someone else was missing. So that landed us on the table 'Paris'. Every table was named after a country or city we thinks, with the couple's table being Glasgow.

Coursemate group pic, with the Tosh's brother inadvertently drawn in as well.

Should be a sort of warning that there's gonna be a trip down Memory Lane of our uni years then. Then again the two did get together then, during the final year thesis.

Didn't recognize Lil' Nicky (our ex-roommate) because he was in a suit. The poor bugger - throughout the whole time he emceed, no one realized that his mike wasn't tuned clearly. It was only when the Tosh took his mike to give his speech that the sound technicians finally fixed it.

As usual, once dressed up sometimes it may be difficult to identify some people, especially the girls. The emcees, for one. Ms Check-In we didn't recognize at first - 'cause we only had a glimpse of her as she snatched Lil' Nicky up on stage for some speech some time just after our arrival. That, plus her clear Mandarin accent made us thought she was a family friend initially. Only once she sat back down and we had a closer scrutiny did we recognize her.

As for Tropicanan, she looked very different. No glasses and we still think she somehow opened her eyes bigger. The Tosh still looked like he's never aged a day.

One thing we found a tad...disrespectful about the entire thing was that, regardless of whether the groom is giving a speech or something else going on, cries of YAAAAAAAAAAMSEEEEENG!!! could be heard continually at the back of the hall. And this, we gather, would probably be the friends of the couple's parents who'd come for the drinks. And this before the couple even gone around to drink with each table.

And well speaking of yamsengs - our alcohol tolerance has been on the decline, that after a few drinks we were tipsy and when we received a thank you text from the Tosh for making it for the wedding dinner, we'd replied (and we totally forgot about this text until we checked our Sent Messages folder, it's still there) "Congrats ya [Tosh] :) Morphine". No. We don't understand either.

And congratulations once more to the Tosh and Tropicanan. Here's to more memories down the road.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Singing Can Be Tiring

So for the past two days it was getting back into the swing of rehearsals, this time more towards brushing up for the Lord Of The Rings Symphony (which we were informed is now sold out! On all three days!) that's coming up in December. Only, instead of our usual place at the YCA, the lot of us were to rehearse 'at the MPO' as we were told.

Did that mean we were gonna be rehearsing with the orchestra? Or on stage? We'd no idea but what we did know was that we'd have rehearsals from 10am till 4pm, Saturday and Sunday.

While that sounds fine at first, it does mean that we've to be there early. There goes the opportunity for sleeping in the weekend (or staying up late as well!). But at least it finishes at 4pm, and being around KLCC meant we could always go walking about before anything else. And the weekend did see quite a fair bit of things happening.

On Saturday after rehearsals we somehow managed to make our way about to find Amiable Aix's place to have a threesome. That and to get some of his songs (hurrah more of Einaudi's music for us!). Then there was dinner, before we headed off for our ex-coursemates' wedding. Met up with uni coursemates, had a bit of alcohol only - we gather that our tolerance has dropped a lot, because after a few glasses we were already more than tipsy.

Then again it's been a tiring day. After the wedding dinner, it was off to lad's place for some Guitar Hero and catching up, but in our state we didn't last long. Next thing we knew, lad was waking us up from the sofa, wondering if we were gonna sleep over or go home. Good thing he did, if he'd let us sleep in we were in no way going to be able to wake up in time for rehearsal the following day.

So Sunday came in too soon, and after a wake-up call and our alarm going off, we were off to have breakfast with the Chief before heading for rehearsal (lesson learned after Saturday's heading for rehearsal without breakfast!). Headed to Kinokuniya after our lunch break, saw Gaiman's Graveyard Book paperback at 20% but ended up we'd walked away empty-handed because we thought of getting both Graveyard Book and Pratchett's Nation at the same time if possible. And after rehearsal we ended up mooching about in Marks & Sparks before walking away with this bit of what the Chief calls 'Indulgence'.

Honey Roasted Wiltshire Ham Flavoured Crisps. Oh goodness it was so good - crisps were thick enough not to fragilely crumble upon holding, each one of them bursting with flavour. Made us think of Walker's Sensations and Tesco Temptations. It certainly help pass the time while we made our way to Pavilion for the Epicentre's Mac + iPod Discovery Week at the concourse area.

Now if only we were rich enough to off-handedly just buy a Mac. And get whatever freebies that comes with it. But no, we weren't rich, and there weren't any discounts for Macs or iPods. But we still went away with a couple of these.

Breakaway earphone jack protectors. Because we tend to have our earphones yanked from the iPod's jack sometimes. Spent a fair bit of time there but couldn't find anything else that we would get on impulse. So we left for Madam Kwan's for dinner before heading back. It's been a long time since we ever eaten there and we'd forgotten that their sambal has quite a kick. Even our curry laksa wasn't an easy affair to finish. Thankfully, their cendol comes generously in a large bowl - we'd no qualms about pouring the entire small jug of gula melaka in - and eased the spiciness.

By the time we got home we were asleep the moment we were in bed. Gods it's been a tiring weekend!

Friday, November 14, 2008

Back-To-Back(breaking) Classes

Last week we'd promised Strawberry Swee that we'd attend her Pump class on the following Monday.

And last week, after months of having to forgo Monday's Jam with Riyo due to rehearsals, we returned to Jam only to find out that it's her second last class as she's not going to teach BodyJam any more. Imagine, the main thing we look forwards to every Monday, gone forever. Welcome home, Monday Blues.

So just last Monday we had to attend Riyo's final BodyJam class ever, and then Pump after that. We'd asked otousan to come along for Pump, only for him to ask us to join Combat before that. Now Fitness First Curve's Monday timetable goes as follows: Jam > Combat > Pump.

When we arrived, we were already late for Jam. Got in at track 4, danced the class away, then joined Combat with Peggy till track 5 before heading out a while to check on phone calls. Got back in after Muay Thai, stayed till the end, then prepped for Pump. So, well, technically we'd only did about one and a half classes in total so far.

It's been many many months since we last been in a Pump class. Thankfully we still remember which weights we'd use and what each track is about, and still thickskinned enough to ignore otousan's chiding look when we just lunked on the wee 1.0 weights for biceps/triceps. The killer tracks this time turned out to be lunges and shoulders. We think the squats track song was the same one as when we first experienced hell on squats (only, after that first time, we knew what to expect), "Bottom half! 8 times!"

With that much adrenaline rush on Monday, we didnt' feel the tiredness that came with having a long weekend.

It was only on Tuesday that hell hit in.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

We Live On Avenue Q

Now when it comes to musicals there are a couple of ways to approach it.

Go with knowledge of the songs, storyline and/or other details. So that you'd be able to sing along and pay attention to other details like the acting, stage setup, stuff you don't get from just listening to the soundtrack alone. Like appreciating the 'rotating platform' in Les Miserables. Or the differences between the cartoon version and the musical version of Beauty And The Beast.

Did we mention singing along? You'll also be able to tell when parts are sung differently from what you've been listening to on the soundtrack.

Then there is the 'surprise us' method - watching a musical with no idea as to how the songs and/or synopsis go, or having only a rough idea of it. Sort of like going for a YKLS performance. Such an approach always brings back 3-Seconder's comment when she, NJAPF and friends went to watch Les Miserables - she couldn't follow the story (and lyrics) and so just enjoyed the scenes and singing (then again, Les Mis was never easy to follow especially if you can't make out what they are singing).

But well, imagine the surprise you'd get if you'd gone for a musical you'd no idea what it was about, only to have one of the characters sing, "Fuck! It sucks to be me!"

Yep, we went for Avenue Q over the weekend.

Took the early 6am Aeroline bus down to Sporeland, walked about Vivo City until noon, then we checked into Grand Park Plaza Hotel. A quick walk around Bugis, lunch at Ma Maison (French take on Japanese food), then it was back to the hotel to sleep a while before the performance.

Reaching Esplanade we were surprised to see some folks dressed in familiar clothes - and it turns out that New Urban Male were in charge of t-shirt sales. Um, it's still a NUM shirt and not the original tees tho'. So we settled for the CD (SGD25) and the programme (a donation of any amount).



How was it? Spectacular. There's bits that'll remind you of Sesame Street indeed, asides from the characters. The telly on the side of the stage will show clips, like suddenly counting from 1 till 20, and while everyone wonders and follows, it reaches 20 and states, "20 minute intermission!" Or how the word Schadenfreude appears on the telly, along with a pronunciation guide.

Bits to remember:
Carla Guevara-Laforteza's pouty lips and hip-swinging as Lucy The Slut.
Intermission count ("1! 2! 3! 4! 5!...")
The shocking intensity in which Felix Rivera uses Princeton to plow Kate Monster.
5 nightstands.
The vertical bed and five disco balls in 'Fantasies Come True'.
Lucy The Slut and Carla being knocked unconscious, and her ECG meter boob readings.
'The Money Song' being cut short.

Pic taken from Our Awesome Planet
.

Truth be told, we were expecting an angmoh cast, heh. When we heard that it was a Filipino cast we were a tad apprehensive, but the cast did a spectactular job. Expressions were spot-on, the muppeteers did a great job acting different roles, and there was never a dull moment. Oh yes and the muppets and muppeteers were cute.

After the performance we'd dinner before heading to Equinox. Spent a while there taking photos, had some slightly-drunk angmoh lady hug the beads deco where the lifts were and saying how nice they felt and encouraging us to do the same, then we head back.

Next morning Chief brought us to Redhill for breakfast, where we had this wonderful porridge with raw fish in sesame oil, sliced ginger and lime. Utterly delish. Then it was back for a swim before packing up to check out.

Shopped a bit along Orchard before meeting sis and her housemate for dinner, where we had the Sporeland version of bahkutteh - in white pepper soup. Different, and well, it ain't herbal bahkutteh and will never replace it. Then it was the long journey.

We've always complained about Sporeland being hot. Without fail, within a couple of minutes of stepping out into the open air we would be sweating already, and the Chief knows this. That we had to lug our knapsacks from City Hall to Tanjung Pagar...well, all we could think of was reaching our destination and to stop sweating. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.

The Chief took our silence and concentration to be being bloody pissed for having to go the distance. The poor dear.

By the time we got on board the overnight train back to KL we were dead tired, but not before a quick bout of camwhoring. See? We are angelic.

How was the overnight train? Our first time, and the bunk was actually quite comfy and relatively clean (read: to tired to nitpick). Our only warning sign was to use the toilets before boarding, and thankfully we managed to use the Woodlands Immigration checkpoint toilets...the toilet on our coach looked like something out of a horror movie - you know, the kind that you find in old, abandoned derelict houses with no sense of hygiene...

Even with a kid on the bunk above us hacking phelgm like he was choking on it, sniffling and crying at the same time, we soon fell asleep and wouldn't have woke up at KL Sentral if the Chief didn't wake us up. Then it was back home for a bath then onwards to work!

And to think that after a long weekend we'd take Monday off to recuperate? No...we'll tell more later.

Friday, November 07, 2008

Organized Chaos

Now just recently we'd gone and upload photos on Facebook. And one of these photo albums include scans of all the ambigrams we'd ever did.

Until sis messaged us asking, "where's mine? why you no showcase?"

When we gave sis her Christmas present last year, we'd not only made three pages to start her off, but we also did manage to do her a neat ambigram too! Only, due to rushing to get the present ready, we never did scan that particular ambigram into our pc.

And like how we stored our earlier sketched ambigrams, they all went into the book we were currently reading at that time. It was only sometime later on that we started storing certain sketches and ambigrams in a particular place (within a pack of graph papers). So when sis messaged us, our first thought was that her ambigram was filed somewhere in there.

Until we looked in, and failed to find it. Then we realized oshit it's somewhere in one of these books we don't know which. So the hunt began with the books that were stacked on our table first. If it wasn't there then it's probably in one of the books in the bookshelf. If it's not there, goodness knows where it is.

Our only clue was that, this was done by Christmas last year, it should be in one of the books we bought before 2008. Still not an easy task, since we'd no effing idea which book it can be in, and we'll have to sift through numerous bookmarks to find it too.

The process was a sort of walk down memory lane.

In our hardback Thud!, we thought we'd read it quite recently yet the bookmarks in there show that it's not been touch in quite a long while.
The Wit & Wisdom Of Discworld, that followed us to Sporeland last Christmas, when we had our first alcoholic eggnog and risked going through customs with three bottles of Baileys.
Cash rebate vouchers for Equatorial Cameron Highlands, expired since September 2007. We found ourself thinking that it was unused because we haven't anyone to go with (plus there were those terrible terms and conditions as to when the vouchers were valid etc).
Train Man, the book we brought along when we first met up with Sam, Adrien, Bunny and the rest of the bloggers.
Guns, Germs And Steel, that we bought from the Borders Book Sale held in Curve's concourse, together with Alex and Jin before heading for chocolate fondue.

Goodness knows how many other ambigrams and sketches we found in the books. It was in Guns, Germs And Steel where we found sis' ambigrams. Which was interesting. We bought the book last year because Rob recommended it back then, and when we found it in the Border's Sale we snapped it up. Just that, it being a more...factual nonfiction book, we never got started on it (we're still stuck on God Delusion!). So imagine our wonder when we found the ambigrams there. The general feeling was, "We never read you. We'd yet to pick you up, bring you about to read. What's this doing in here?"

Well, finally scanned it in, Photoshopped it, and posted it up.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Shoes Everlasting

The thing about this year's YKLS performance was that there was more showmanship compared to the one we watched last year. Michael's choreography had us moving lots especially for In The Mood and Mack The Knife. But choreography wasn't the only thing - there was the attire to take into account.

Now while we understand the importance of attire (and uniformity of everybody's attire), it was a bit of a sticking point where we needed to buy new pants and shoes. Would have thought that we would be able to find something that would match whatever criteria in our wardrobe, but when we were told white pants and light-coloured shoes...

We've only one pair of white pants, a linen pair from Giordano that we wear for casual use (and thankfully it was suitable enough) but knowing that it might not be able to withstand five sweaty performances we knew we had to get a spare pair of white pants. And as for our shoes, well, we were told that our Reebok cross-trainers were too dark (due to plenty of black areas).

OK, so our shoe collection is rather limited. One pair Crocs, two pairs of leathers, our Reebok cross-trainers, these be all we own and wear. Yes yes our gym shoes also be our casual shoes. Thankfully for all that we sweat we don't suffer sweaty feet and so our shoes never give us any problems. The main reason we've never bought any more shoes?

The shoe cupboards were all full. Serious. Oh well there weren't any nice cheap shoes that caught our eye as a 'must get' too.

Still. For the sake of the production, we'd to get new togs. And for getting new togs to match the production attire, comes the question: do we get something cheap that will do just for the production, or do we pay more for something that we would wear even after the production? You know how it is.

So we began searching at The Curve. Manage to get ourselves a pair of white pants from Orlando after walking around Curve, Cineleisure and Ikano about three times. The pants were comfortable and suitable for work or casual wear. The cheap, single-use alternative? A pair of white jeans we saw in FOS, which looked suitable until we tried them on. Low rise, skinny jeans are not us.

Shoes, however, weren't so easy. Seeing that we needed light-coloured shoes, we decided to go canvas. And asides from Bata and Crocs, all we ever found within those three malls were sports shoes. We were seriously contemplating the Bata school shoes at one point. But then we were suggested to try Sungei Wang for shoes, as some other members were also getting their shoes there.

We were a tad apprehensive. Sungei Wang is okay so long as we hide in the arcades or stay for a short while just to search for video games. But over four hours, having to hunt for shoes? Luckily we think all the lalas and ahbengs either have left to haunt Times Square, or maybe we were too concentrated on finding that perfect pair of canvas shoes, but we didn't have too much of an overdose of lalabengness. Mild rash maybe, no anaphylaxis.

And we found our shoes. Yay us.

Oh well there was that bit of undecisiveness between this pair and another slightly cheaper Converse ones (which didn't have the size for the colour we found suitable), and the Chief had to tolerate our running back and forth between the two different stores while we decide. And the Chief already knows us well enough that, from the first time we set our eyes on the Everlasts those will be the shoes we were getting. The rest of the day spent walking to different shoe shops was just filler.

Amazing that the Chief, accurate on the prediction, could still be so patient as to follow us as we browsed shop after shop for hours. Then again, we're talking about someone who made 56 missed calls in order to wake us up (shy and still dare bring up this topic). Don't think that would ever happen again tho', that amount of missed calls.

So anyways, now we'll have to make sure that new pants and shoes see a fair bit of use now that the production is done!

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Ambiguous Ambigrams 15

Right, it's been some time now since we've done much on our ambigrams, and like we've said, we needed inspiration before we can come up with an idea of how to draw the ambigrams. The interesting thing this time is that all three are scribbled with a graph paper as the background (to help with gridlines), and we only did half of the ambigram, and we tried using Photoshop to overlay the other half.

Onwards to the story behind each ambigrams featured this time.

This one was requested, and suggested that as repayment for making the ambigram she'd draw us something. So we left that in our KIV list. Then we figured out how the S-N works, and scribbled it out.

Then we lost that piece of scribble, although we remember how it was suppose to go (thankfully!). We still think a little bit of refining is required, and probably will get to it one day. Oh, and we won't collect any form of repayment back yet. Not till we have something to request.

This one, we thinks was requested because she saw some of our other ambigram sketches during a meeting. Because out of the blue, she asks us to make an ambigram for her so she can make a tattoo of it. So this is considered MkI, because we still would like to make some adjustments (and see if we can make some musical motif with the thing too).

Finally, this one was really sort of spur-of-the-moment. Starts out with us thinking what could be done with the name, then suddenly we've our pen out and we're scribbling all over the KLM sick bag, much to the amusement of Netherland Noah beside us.

The only problem we face with this font is the ink pen we use - the edges aren't smooth enough unless we draw it bigger, which we're too lazy to. But maybe one day we will work on it again. This one also happens to be the only ambigram here not requested by anyone!

Gotta love Photoshop for making it much more easier to make symmetrical ambigrams and cutting half our work!

Monday, November 03, 2008

And That Is Jazz

And over the weekend, we did five shows.

Previous choir performances that we took part in during our uni days were the traditional kind, where we walked in, lined up, sing, walk off. Oh, there was that plainsong canty bit we did where there was singing during our procession in and out of the churches where we performed too. This time, it's singing, moving, dancing and even a wee skit.

From Thursday night's performance we learned a few things.

There's showers in the dressing rooms.
Which is a very good thing. Our sweat glands have taken a turn for the worse, especially now that the weather has been getting warmer with no rain. That the moment we step out of our front door and make our way to the car our back's slick with sweat is not a good sign, whatmore prior to performance where we would have more rehearsals. Stepping out on stage only to look all sweaty from the start is a big no-no.

We don't scan the crowds.
Or rather, we can't. On the first night we had our contacts on and we still couldn't make out faces in the crowd. Plus after the first night our eyes were so dry we'd to do without the following nights. That would help when it comes to performing because we won't be distracted and made to laugh. Only one bit nearly broke us down was on our last performance, where just as we were beginning 'Yesterday', we heard a girl gave a moan of ecstasy. Almost cracked, we did.

It's bloody sweaty work.
For us. After each show, photo-taking is terrible as we seem to be the only one with a sweat-stained shirt showing in the photos. And we've to send our clothes to the laundry every single day. We rather envy those who could easily reuse their clothes for the following performance.

Mealtimes are haywire.
Because you'll have call time in at 5pm, rehearsals till 7ish, then you've gotta be ready by 8pm for performance, there's only a short span of time for us to mooch down our food. Otherwise dinner begins at 11pm onwards. The poor dim sum store that had to drag some 6 tables together to accomodate the lot of us never looked more harried.

Then there was our Saturday performances, where after the matinee show and director's notes, a lot of us rushed like mad starving people to stampede the nearby bahkutteh store for dinner. The car wasn't even parked when the rest of us actually flew out of the car and ordered while the driver parked. Midway through the meal the bill was called for, and once we were all done, the stampede left the store to head back to KLPac.

Once on stage, it's all good.
Just gotta get out there and then everything falls into place. Have fun, sing out, move about and try to please the crowd. And each show can only get better.

And it seems that we'll be staying on, to see how next year goes!