Hooray for Molecular Genetics!

So whats the Dominant Gene? Bull or Shitz?

Too much BIE is bad for your health.

On a more serious note, theres lots of things to pray for now. The swine flu endemic, the cliffhanging situation in Sri Lanka, things happening to friends.... seems like studies isn't the worst of my problems. Come on people, stop studying so hard. Let me catch up abit.

At least the situation in Thailand seems to be simmering down.

On a less serious note, I wish I could go canoeing tommorrow!!!! auuugh. I'll be cooking lagsana instead. I need to learn other stuff to cook, like fried rice.

L4D + THE EPIC STORY OF MY GUITAR

Who knew mindlessly killing hordes of running zombies could be so addictive? I have been spending my last week of freedom with fellow undead hunting buddies Ken, Leon, Liang Zhi and KW. (Notice that all our names have either L or K in them? I'm a Leong.)


My computer cannot handle the specs of L4D, so i can't play it right now even if I wanted to :(. But it's a good thing actually. I might get bored of the game if I have it. Its one of those games that's incredibly addictive initially, but since there isn't much variety of what you can do in the game, it can get ennui-inducing after killing zombies one after another.


Let's blog about something else.

Because of the zombie infestation, I havn't been spending time doing more important things, like playing guitar. I havn't touch it since Tuesday, and I only played it for half an hour. Fine, after posting this I'm gonna play it. Guitar, not L4D.

This was my guitar when I bought it:




Obviously I have to screw it up. This is my guitar now.





See how badly I treat my guitar? The jack keeps coming off. Only tape can keep it there.






Here's the story of my guitar. X-Guitar Origins: Fat Telecaster. Also known as Mr. TV or Ugly Shit Guitar.

December 2006, a few weeks before Christmas, they day TOFU was being held in my church. I left early to go with my family to the Swee Lee warehouse. They were having a 50% off sale.

I already knew I wanted a Telecaster. Why? I dunno. I guess Telecasters look weird. They were unique in the sense that they were not Stratocaster-shaped, but they didn't look so different like a Flying V or a Moderne. I wanted something different from the ubiquitous Stratocaster, which just about everyone has. Les Pauls are expensive, and I don't like them anyway. They seem a little... proud. No metalhead guitars for me either lol, although I wouldn't mind a Flying V. But with a Flying V, how can you sit and play? If there were no telecasters available I wanted a cheap Ibanez superstrat, an Ibanez semi-hollow or, what the heck, a Squire Stratocaster.

I specifically wanted a Fat Telecaster. That means instead of a single-coil at the neck position, there would be a humbucker.

Why? Again, I don't know. I always assumed humbuckers can give a nice warm sound (apparently I kind of correct).

You can see that my requirements were very specific. I wanted a Squire Telecaster with a humbucker at the neck position. And Swee Lee actually sells them!

And Lo and Behold, a guitar that I fell in love with at first sight.



Look at that. Beautiful. Sexy. Curvy. Ebony. Hawt.

I found one beautiful Squire Fat Tele, a brown sunburst one. I took it and tested it out. It felt right! It just did. I don't know why.

I was playing around with it for about 20 minutes, when the bombshell dropped.

A stall assistant came towards us, and ask where I found that guitar from. We(my family) pointed out the stand where we found it.

"I'm sorry, the guitars in that area are already sold."

WTF?

It's the guitar I want! It's on display! There's no "SOLD!" sticker on it anywhere!

"The buyer is some Indonesian dude who is downstairs looking for a drum set."

From then on, I hated Indonesian drummers who buys Squire Fat Telecasters.

My mum, being the protective mother who spoils her kid, was a little angry and kind of scolded the poor assitant. She said that there should be at least a sign saying that the guitars were already sold or something. She also asked if there were any other guitars of the same model. The assistant just said, "I don't think so"

I nearly cried. I'm not exagerrating about this part. After all, this is a specific guitar we are talking about.

Then another stall assistant, a female who looked more like at aunty at a market than a guitar expert, came to the rescue. She saw me, a little boy, sitting on the floor (I was testing the guitar after all), with bloodshot eyes (ok this time I probably exagerrating) and a sad sad frown, found a solution to diffuse the crisis.

"Ah boy, don't cry! I think downstairs got another one!"

Ok, she didn't say that, but she did say something like that.

Quicker than the speed of sound (from a guitar) she rushed to the storeroom, and came back with a white box which looked like a guitar coffin. She opened it up, revealing a Squire Candy Apple Red Fat Telecaster Standard Series.


Not actual one. Probably a Fender. Pickguard is beautiful.

I heaved a heavy sigh of relief. Its a thousand times uglier that the brown one (hence its nickname, the Ugly Shit), but a least its what I'm looking for. It feels the same. Buy it lor.

It was 15 minutes to closing time, and the assitant told us to quickly make our purchase. Then we realised, "Oh shit, we don't have an amplifier!"

We were looking at amplifiers earlier, but didn't put much thought to it. My brother, the expert and advisor, quickly glanced around. There was this Randall RX20R which we were trying earlier, and since it wasn't too expensive, he just said "That one!". And that one was it.

Both the guitar and amp cost about $550, making a nett total of $1100. That's alot.
But if you remembered, it was 50% OFF EVERYTHING DAY!!!!

Thats $550 for a semi-decent amp and guitar combo pack, or an equilivant of a "Buy one guitar get an amp free" coupon.



And thats the story of my guitar. Rescued from a claustrophobic box in a storeroom (it wasn't even out of the box, let alone on display), to the even worse fate of the hands of a crappy excuse of a guitarist. The end

This post is dedicated to the Swee Lee Warehouse Aunty, who is the true hero of the story and saved the day for everyone involved. If I see you again in Swee Lee (I think I can remember how you look like), I will shake your hand like a crazed Korean drama fangirl and thank you profusely for securing my first guitar for me.

If it wasn't for you, I would have brought a $1400 Fender Stratocaster 1960s reissue which will probably sound alot nicer that the crap guitar I have now. But I would have spent alot more.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone! Will post soon

TGIGF!

TGIGF (The Great Indian Gonads Fellowship) was yesterday!!! Kinda disappointed that I couldn't get anyone to go with me (you guys were too busy lol). It was pretty fun. Kinda like a scaled-down version of Solid Rock Cafe. We should have another SRC! Then we can get the Hard Apple Fan-Choy Reunion World Tour on the road!

I wanted to go with "TGIGF Junior Band", but these guys chose "Ben's Band" instead.




With heavenly voices of angels, and killer looks of pop idols too, are the singers Marie, Cheng Yi and Ken




The string ensemble of the band is the strummin' Kyle, the telecastin' Ben and the strattin' Leon


Our very own rhythm section is Daniel "Ba-da-bum" Chia, hiding behind him is the shy Daniel "Sticks Of Fury" Ng, and pretty in pink boy bassis Loo Liang Zhi. I wanted to give him "Bass-0-licious" as his middle name, but unfortunately he already has one.




Sadly, without any pictures of him playing live, you only get to see a picture of Bryan taking a picture of me. He's on bass and vocals. (Yes he sings too.)


I think these guys put in alot of effort to practice come for rehearsals, especially those who have school and probably didn't do their homework on wednesday nights because of this. However, the eternal glory of playing for one day beats punishment from teachers.

This is the "lao" band, Mecury One. Have no idea what that name implies though.




Whats TGIGF about? Its basically an outreach event where we get to play board games and have live bands to entertain us on the side. One game i find really irritating is Uno Stacko because when they are played by a big group of girls, they will scream (those bloody high-pitched ones) everytime to tower collapses. And lots of girls were playing it. (ergo mutiply volume of a high-pitched scream with the number of girls playing)



Notice how slanted the tower is?



Obviously Rachel has to spoil things for everyone.

Thats why i prefer to play the more peaceful game of Uno Stackthecards



But the irritating things keep collapsing.

We also watched a movie, i forgot what its called. I call it The Fast and Religous, because its involves Ben, an illegal drag racer, finding God and stuff. Like most Christian movies, it was very corny. And not enough racing scenes. And no Japanese cars. All old-school American muscle cars which you'll never see in Singapore. Xian.

But the best part is when the dramatic "sad" scene where Ben was dying in the hospital emergency room, saying his last words to his family. Then the subtitles went: (Ben Dies).

The whole chapel burst out laughing. Super anti-climatic.

Then a speaker, I think his name was Rev. Lawrence Koh, gave us a 20 minute crash course speech on what Good Friday is all about and why Jesus died for us. He speaking style was a little too aggressive for my liking, but he's ok i guess. Hopefully some of us were truly inspired by his mini-sermon.

After TGIGF, a whole bunch of us played about 3 hours of bridge.
Normally I don't like to gloat about my card game skills, but because i won purely on luck, i HAVE to show this picture off to everyone:



The sickest hand ever. Notice that there is no clubs?

I bidded 4 Diamonds, and won all 10 sets myself. Its crazy. But then again, its only luck.


Hopefully we can have another event like this in time to come. Then YOU can join in on the fun too!

Thank God we have Good Friday. Happy Easter (soon) everyone!

Egg Shakers!

Egg shakers are sexy

Sh-sh-sh shake it baby

Can't think of a title

Havn't been updating... has been busy. Been practicing for TGIGF, attending Shaun's belated birthday party and going for Tracker 09' graduation... kinda brought back memories.

And I saw uBlues in Timbre! Woohoo. Blues for the win. Felt abit extra sitting with this year's Trackers but the music was worth it. Its gonna be their last few performances. Wonder why they're retiring. Damn i need to learn how to play blues properly.

Need people to chill out with me on friday, play board games and watch me screw up on stage. Come for TGIGF!

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Was watching the news about the killer rojak incident. Its so sad. A lady actually died and one had a miscarriage. The news team interviewed her. She was distraught. She said it was to be her first child with her second husband. Being 39, she's afraid that she might be too old to have another child. Who knew food poisoning could be so bad? I really feel sorry for the rest who are affected. I was thinking about the family with 5 kids aged 7-16 where the entire family fell sick, and got hospitalized i think. Must be hell for them.

Theres much needed comedy relief though. They interviewed this Malay storeowner from a neighbouring food stall, and she was something like, "Aiyoh, last week, my husband brought the rojak you know, the $5 round big big round one, he got eat, but never berak berak one!" Haha so cute.