I've heard bits of this Hindi song here and there but never really gave it much thought. I just caught Inside Man (Clive Owen = sex) on HBO and this song was the opening song. It's the first time I've really listened to it closely. I don't understand a single word, but damn, it's such a GREAT song! (Apparently Spike Lee thought so too.)

I don't listen to Indian music in general (the language barrier might have something to do with it) but I thought this song is pretty awesome. I IMDB'd and Wiki'd it and found that the song is Chaiyya Chaiyya and it's from a 1998 Bollywood movie called Dil Se. The music video is really cool because it features people dancing atop a moving train. Wiki says 2 dancers died in the process of performing on the train. :(

Anyway, the male protaganist is Shah Rukh Khan, who is, of course, quite famous and quite hot. No idea who the female lead is but she looks really pretty.

1) Following in the footsteps of a million other geeks, I've changed the text message tone on my mobile phone to the famous Transformers transformation sound. TRANSFORMERS FTFW! I caught the movie on the last day of its run because I have been too busy. I practically dropped everything because I promised myself I HAVE to watch it on the big screen. As a huge fan of the original TV series (I cried when Optimus Prime died) with DVD box sets of S1-3, what else can I say but... ILU Michael Bay! Yeah, I said it. I blame childhood nostalgia.

2) I was on leave last week and spent a very fruitful week with Tyler. He's beginning to walk so I'm mostly busy chasing him around the house. On working days I don't get to spend much time with him, and I really cherish the opportunity to do "mummy" things on a daily basis, instead of just for a short spell over the weekend.

3) The whole gay debate that's playing out in the media is so unecessary and tiresome. I know it's terrible but I've learnt to ignore it OR ELSE risk a stroke, what with all the stupidity and ignorance of the conservative "moral right". Before I buried my head in the sand, the dumbest thing I read was how we cannot allow homosexuality because gays can't breed and if we condone teh ghey, it will spread and humankind will be extinct. The stupid. It hurts.

4) Franz fans! Buy this book when it comes out! (The link to the publisher's blurb is not working atm.) Some of you probably know about this already, but for those who don't, it's as close to a definitive book on Franz as you can get. Helen has spent A LOT of time talking to the band for this. It can't be officially official but the band has given lots of input. Of course, the final say lies with the author, so Kapranos can't, um, revise history. PS. I MAY OR MAY NOT BE QUOTED IN IT.

I know it's only July but so far, this is my ~*~*Album of 2007~*~.



Munich is probably the most worn-out track on my iPod, if there is such a thing. And now, I just can't stop listening to this! Second album curse what? Now this is how you do a fantastic follow-up record. *coughI'mlookingatyouFranzcough* Editors has always been a blokes sort of band but I may just start getting fangirly. Ish.

A couple of tracks:
Smokers Outside The Hospital Door
The Racing Rats

How time flies! I've been a parent for a year, imagine that. I now totally appreciate and love MY mum on a whole new level and regret every single harsh word I've thrown at her. Because, seriously, you can not begin to imagine the sacrifices that a woman makes for her child until you've been through it yourself. Especially in these times when a woman not only has to keep house but bring home the bacon as well.

Tyler's birthday was on Sunday. We had a quiet celebration - just family members - at Peach Garden. I picked the place, which is a, um, rather upmarket Chinese restaurant because I wanted to give my in-laws and my parents a fantastic treat for being so super. The meal was excellent and I'm still trying my best not to think about the hefty bill that was toted up at the end of it. Highlights: shark cartilage soup, wasabi prawn, deep-fried perch with plum sauce, pulut hitam (black glutinous rice dessert) served in cocounut. We hardly had space left for Tyler's gorgeous birthday cupcakes from the marvellous Cupcake Momma. ( I wish I had half her cupcake-making skills. )

This morning, I realised that I haven't taken a photo of my little man since Chinese New Year in February. So I became all indulgent-parent-like and began snapping away.

( Here be photos of my bb. )

He's kind of couch-potato-y and not doing anything in the photos. But if I were to take pictures of his real-life activities - and I can assure you, extremely active he is - he'll just appear as a blur in the photos.

My Musical Find of the Day: The Central Band of the Royal British Legion cover Klaxons' Gravity's Rainbow

Yes.

A military marching band does "new rave".



It's pretty awesome, really.

I must be the last person on the planet to know this...

Hugh Laurie plays in a band with Greg Grunberg and James Denton!?

*falls over*

Which is really interesting because while watching Desperate Housewives just a few weeks back, I was thinking that James Denton looked a hell of a lot like Hugh Laurie.

*covets dearly*

One of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the universe: Why do I buy so many shoes but end up wearing more or less the same pair every day?

Muse! Tomorrow!

I'm so excited! Especially since I understand they will be playing more older material than what they've been playing on the recent BH&R tour. Squee!

And no rain please. I'm really not up for a wet and muddy night.

1) I received one of those chain emails from a co-worker today telling me that drinking milk can cause cancer. I can't tell you why because I junked it right away. I don't want to read about yet another food/health scare.

The other day, someone was telling me, in all earnestness, not to eat chicken wings. When I asked for the reason, he said it's because of the hormones injected into chickens to make them grow faster. But don't hormones, like, travel all over in the bloodstream? Yes, but the wing is where they inject the stuff and supposedly leaves a deadly residue. Moreover, he read it in an email, so it must be true!

I love how people can put so much faith in information that came from unknown, anonymous sources propogated through email. And how every other food is cause for concern because it has been linked with a disease. I mean, even good ol' milk has become an evil food! What next? Will the human race even make it to the 22nd century, surrounded by all this carcinogens????? *wrings hands*

2) I dreamt about Muse last night. Strange. I haven't been thinking a lot about them even though I'll see them in less than a month's time! *spazzes* But the dream got me thinking about them in a nostalgic, walk-down-memory-lane kind of way.

I can't remember when I fell in love with Muse. It was the music, obvs. But if memory serves me right (it seldom does) the moment I crossed into fangirl territory was when I watched Matt's skinny fingers dance across the fretboard of his custom-made, aluminium-clad Manson guitar. It was a video of KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas 2004 and the song was New Born. And then I watched more videos and I became obsessed. Primarily with Matt. A man who can: coax his guitar into doing anything + play piano with dramatic effect + move like a madman across the stage + ramble on about conspiracy theories = SEXAY.

Hmm... I was eagerly anticipating their fourth album. There was much excitement when Debase Masons Grog was released on the Muse boards. (The song went on to become Assassin and part of Knights of Cydonia.) Then I heard Supermassive Black Hole and I was like, wtf is this shit? I liked it. A lot. But this was not Muse! And then the single and the album made them super popular and I could not understand it. No, I'm not a music snob who scoffs all things populist. (This is true because I readily admit to liking the Arctic Monekys and have Clay Aiken listed as an interest.) I just could not get why the one work least characteristic of their sound is gaining them recognition. Actually, I can, because BH&R is their most poppish sounding work. I have to admit, it wasn't love at first listen. It took a few tries before I got into it. It currently ranks as a close #3 behind Origin of Symmetry and Absolution. Ehm... I don't really have a point to to all this rambling, so this here is my abrupt ending.

3) *looks out the window* Monsoon season is upon us again. How lovely.

4) I want to watch Curse of the Golden Flower! I love Zhang Yimou and his pretty movies.

My WTF moment of the week.

So I used the word "fucking" as an adjective in my reply to a post.

The OP replied: "Ooh. The f-word. How mature of you."

I was tempted to refer her to Usage of the Word "Fuck". But then I went, nah, fuck it, she probably won't get the humour.



This post was brought to you by the letter F. Obvs.

That's right, ladies and gentleman, it's time again for my monthly update! *fanfare*

Where to begin? Hmmm. When I had the baby, I said my life's turned upside-down, blah blah blah. How was I to know that it gets worse when you go back to work? On the surface, it looks as if I have it easy. I leave Tyler at my mum-in-law's (20-min drive from our place) on weekdays and we have domestic help. BUT! I'm breastfeeding and determined not to give my baby food from a tin, and that takes a lot of time on my part.

My daily schedule on work days: wake up, pump milk, eat breakfast, go to work, eat lunch, pump milk, work, pump milk, go to MIL's to see baby and deliver milk, eat dinner, feed baby, go home.

I work unpredictable hours in a job that uses brainpower (not that I have a lot to begin with), so sometimes I reach MIL's at about 9-10pm, hungry and mentally drained. And when I reach home, I'm too tired to do anything meaningful on the internets. (I do read my Friends page though, as hypermagic can attest.)

My surfing habits have changed. I'm reading up on ways to increase my milk supply and searching for toys instead of reading up on the latest bands and searching for mp3s, photos and videos. My lifestyle has changed. I hang out at Mothercare and Kiddy Palace instead of HMV and Kinokuniya. It's been ages since I stepped into a cinema or bought anything for myself. When my co-worker saw me going to pay the maid levy, she commented how things are so different from when I was so "anti-establishment". Yes, I told her. I've always been indie (for want of a better word) but I feel so fucking bourgeois now.

I miss my old lifestyle terribly, but when Tyler gives me one of his big-ass grins and makes his little coo-ing noises, I know I wouldn't give this one up for the world*.


*Although I'll probably regret saying this when he turns out to be an obnoxious spoilt brat. ;)

UGH. I swear Symantec's online tech support is manned by a bot. I emailed them about an error message caused by Norton Internet Security. They replied and I followed the steps they suggested. Which did NOT work. Then they sent a follow-up email asking if the "issue" (read: really sucky programming) was resolved. I replied that it hasn't, and I just got their reply. It begins promisingly enough.

I understand from your message that you are still receiving following error message,when you try to open Internet Explorer:

AND THEN THE REST OF IT IS THE EXACT EMAIL THEY SENT THE FIRST TIME ROUND. WTF? SRSLY.

I'm going to reply: Are you a bot or just really good at cut and paste?

In other news, the past few days have been a little weird (not in a bad way) because I've never felt so *~*~grown-up~*~* in my life. We employed a domestic worker because when I go back to work in 10 days, we'll be leaving Tyler with my mother-in-law, who wants a maid to help her. So, even though I've always been resistant to the idea of hiring a domestic helper, I guess we don't really have a choice. Infantcare is really expensive and how dare I incur the wrath of my MIL by leaving her first grandson in the care of total strangers. I feel weird instructing someone else to do things. But one good thing has come good out of it. I've always been a control freak who HAS to do things a certain way. But I've learnt to be more tolerant to the fact that everyone does things differently. I do find myself rearranging the hand towels though.

My upstairs neighbours are the most uncivilised lot of people I've ever met. I've only seen some of them, but as far as I can make out, there's a cantankerous old woman, three or four of the most ill-behaved children on the planet, and a couple in their 30s, whom I presume are the old woman's children and parents of said kids.

Good lord. All they do the whole day is talk to each other at the top of their voices and slam things. The old woman, all she does is nag at everyone else in an incredibly loud voice. Sometimes, I hear them arguing in the wee hours of the morning, like at 4am. They don't seem to place much value on personal hygiene. The kids are dressed in wrinkly, un-ironed clothes. I once saw one of them running around in public without any pants. Like, with his pee-pee showing. WTF.

The kids. OMG, the horror. I live on the 18th floor and they're just above me. The kids throw all manner of objects out of their window, including their food. Once, rice landed on my window sills. Often, there would be streaks of dried-up liquids on the windows. And yesterday, they threw water bombs! Bloody hell. Because it was such a sunny day, almost everyone had their laundry hung out to dry. The pests must have been rubbing their hands with glee.

Once, when my mum was over at my place, she went up to scold them because water from their wet clothes were dripping on our laundry. The old woman basically said too fricking bad. And her presumed daughter also said something to the effect of c'est la vie (in a much less elegant way, of course) and that if we didn't like it, we can jolly well move to a house. Yeah, I can see where the kids' lack of social graces came from.

I don't see any way out of this except to grin and bear it. A couple of days after my mum confronted them, they happily washed their windows with soapy water that splashed into my flat. So I suspect that any complaint against them will be met with more heinous deeds. I've thought of pasting a note at the notice board downstairs, but I'll probably be arrested for vandalism. Ugh. I hatehateHATE the inconsiderate SOBs.

My boss phoned and reminded me today to mail in my appraisal form. I've been really tardy in doing it, partly because I don't want to be reminded of work. I go back to work in less than a month. As someone who never wanted children, I can't believe I'm saying this but I will be seriously torn up "leaving" Tyler and going back to work. I still don't like children in general (see: above), but with your own, it's just different.

Anyhoos, here's a ( photo of my bb, age 2 months and 3 weeks )

My life as I knew it has been turned topsy-turvy by the arrival of one Baby Tyler on June 3. Good grief. Has it been almost two weeks already? Long story short. I had baby Tyler via C-section on June 3 after 12 hours of labour brought on by a failed induction attempt. Baby was too big for my pelvis apparently. Which is weird coz I've always complained about my wide hips. But yeah, he's quite big at 3.865 kg (about 8.5 pounds). I was awake throughout the procedure, which was really surreal coz I could feel people touching me and pulling the baby out -- without the pain, thank goodness.

My life now revolves around breastfeeding, diaper changing and doing laundry. It doesn't sound that time-consuming but consider this: He feeds (and thereafter, poops) every two to three hours and has no concept of night or day. Which leads to one very sleep-deprived mama. In fact, I'm pretty much in a zombified state as I type this. When I was in the operating theatre, I was still joking with the medical staff about being able to watch World Cup matches, which come on between 9pm and 3am here. Was I wrong. The boy has no fixed sleeping pattern at all. So I try to catch some ZZZZZ's whenever I can. Except now, when I'm updating my LJ. I don't even know if I'm making sense, hahaha.

( Pictures! )

In other news, I'm shocked... shocked that franzferdinand.org is no more and that ex-fan Graham Searle feels let down by FF. Even the forum is gone, wtf? Geez, I must have been away longer than I thought.

Great. Baby's crying. So long for now, internets. Real life (and hopefully, 40 winks) beckons.

Sup LJ. Less than two weeks to D-day.

Apparently, one percent of pregnant women suffer from this rash known as Pruritic Urticarial Papules and Plaques of Pregnancy, better known by its handier acronym, PUPPP. I think I'd probably be giggling over the actual name IF I wasn't actually suffering from it. It's benign but intensely itchy, erupts all over the body (sparing the face, thankfully) and GUESS WHO HAS IT! Lucky, lucky... There's no cure except the delivery of a baby. Treatment with creams gives minimal relief, and I know I shouldn't scratch but it's so fucking itchy!

Work has been hell for the past month and I've finally decided to slow down and take a one-week break before D-day, ie. May 29. I deserve it many times over, I think. My boss thinks I'm "quite amazing" for being so hardy and lasting as long as I have. Hah.

Anyway. The one interesting thing I've learnt. When you're pregnant, perfect strangers feel it's all right to begin conversations with you anytime, anywhere. I mean, I was having lunch and this woman just stared at me and commented on my excellent relatively good complexion in spite of the fact that I'm preggers and stuffing myself with fried chicken. Usually, in lifts, people just avoid each other's eyes but somehow, strangers now feel it's ok to ask personal questions like if I'm having a boy or girl. Bizarre.

Also, I haven't bought any music in the past few months since all my spending is now diverted to my yet-to-arrive little man. I feel culturally hollow. And I probably will for some time to come. Sigh.

I love getting Royal Mail!

So. I should be insanely jealous of mytulpa because (among many other things) she saw White Rose Movement for the third time. But then, she's such a darling and got Finn to sign her ticket for meeeeeee!

Hee, Erlend so cute.

I can't wait to watch Gospel of Judas. Mmmm, I love controversial ancient religious manuscripts. Especially when they sort of validate my opinions. Thank you, National Geographic Channel.

Also a must-watch next week: American Idol takes on the music of Queen. A trainwreck of epic proportions? Probably!

In other news, I have none. Well, apart from the fact that I'm increasing in size and becoming more ungainly by the day. It's also getting harder to get any sleep. Oh, and the stretchmarks are beginning to appear.

Damn, this song is addictive. According to their Myspace, Poni Hoax's influences include Iron Maiden, Celine Dion, Liberace, Veronique & Davina, John Coltrane and Colonel Fabien. Those crazy French.

Cheesecake makes everything better.

I was never one of the most graceful creatures to have walked the Earth, but my gait has now been reduced to a clumsy waddle. My thighs, not exactly slim to begin with, are now comparable to modest-sized tree trunks. All the better to support my belly, now the size of a basketball. Ah, the joys of pregnancy. And despite being one of the contributing parties, the men don't get it, of course.

Me: My thighs are huge!
Aaron: Ok.
Me: They're like tree trunks!
Aaron: Ok.
Me: Thanks for being sympathetic.
Aaron: You're welcome.

It's terribly expensive to have a child. Even though ours was unplanned, it doesn't mean I don't want the best for him. We've spent lots of money so far, and the little tyke hasn't even been born! Big ticket items like the cot, stroller aside, there's so many things to buy! I just spent more than three hundred bucks on nappies, bottles, steam steriliser for the bottles, clothes, a baby bathtub, blankets and towels. And the shopping's not nearly done yet.

Money aside, I'm stressed out about being a parent. No surprises there, but there's a really silly thing that I keep worrying about. See, I don't swear that much on the internet, but in real life, at home and at work, I drop the f-bomb like nobody's business. I can see myself screaming FUCK! non-stop in the hospital as I bring a new human being into the world. I've always maintained that cuss words are just words for people to express their feelings. I've always felt that people who tsked tsked at cuss words are stick-in-the-muds. But now, for the first time, the whole idea of being a Bad Influence seem real. I don't want to stop cussing coz I don't want to do an about-face on my Principles. But I also don't want my son's first words to be "fuck". Scary shit, parenthood.

I wanted to write about the Jason Mraz gig, which was bloody tops, but I'm too lazy to do a separate entry. I have a love-hate relationship with his record company. While I'm grateful that they discovered Mraz and brought him to my attention, it's criminal how they've buried the essence of his music by churning out overproduced albums filled with radio-friendly tunes. The albums are rubbish. Mraz should always be enjoyed acoustically (preferrably live) with just the supercool Tocca on percussion. He's so spontaneous, witty and entertaining. His voice is pure and clear, ethereal but strong. The best part of the show was when he observed what an elegant theatre it was, then he started speaking in a Brit accent and sang the rest of "The Remedy" in an operatic voice. Awesome. He also said he was being stalked by someone who sent a huge bag of food to his hotel room at 10.30pm and called him at 12.30am to ask if he got it.

( setlist - coz I'm a stickler for these things )

Also, does anyone have any data Panik tracks to share besides "Rulers and the States", "Sense Not Sense", "Cubis (I Love You)" and "Minimum Wage"?