Journal Entries
Lost & Found
Posted Dec 5, 2004
An update on my life:
I was relieved of my briefcase containing my laptop and my international passport at the lobby of a well-known hotel on 13 November, while my parents and I were awaiting Mo and Stephanie to pick us up for our journey up north (we were scheduled to perform on the 14th; my parents, who'd come over for a vacation decided to tag along and see me toot my horn). The perpetrator must have seized the opportunity when one of the hotel security staff alerted my dad to a bag that had toppled over (or was it a staged diversion maybe?). We'd noticed nothing until I'd gone to Coffee Bean to pick up a frappe for Mo and my mum came rushing up to see if I'd brought my briefcase with me. I probably broke all sprint records when my feet pounded their way into the lobby - to find a gap between my trombone case and my chair.
My losses? One international passport, expiring early next year. One Toshiba Satellite A 1800 series laptop with accessories, containing my Sims, Mafia and Hitman 1 & 2 saved games (oh the pain!). Disc 1 of my Mafia game (I'd been playing the You Lucky Bastard level the night before). One Lightning Seeds CD, which I'd bought only the night before. One pair of yellow socks. And my Samsonite briefcase. Oh joy. 
To cut a long story short, instead of getting an early start on our journey, we wound up spending more than an hour at the special branch of the police station, reporting the loss of a travel document that's probably worth USD 5,000 in the black market. Needless to say, we weren't in the best of moods when we finally hit the road. Nevertheless we arrived at our destination without event and met up with Jeffrey, who said he'd bring us to this famous joint for lunch, whereupon on the journey there our car got violently sideswiped by a minibus whose bloody-minded driver didn't even slow down, much less stop, to see if he'd left our mangled carcasses strewn all over the sidewalk. Needless to say, this caused an infuriated Mo to chase the bus down and confront the driver - which of course resulted in litle more than a lot of steam and the loss of some brain cells for him since the guy blantantly refused to admit that he'd hit our car. This put Mo in the sourest of sour moods, since he was inconsolably convinced that his Xeno trumpet in the boot Was Done For.
However, despite all these omens that we weren't welcome up north, we had a rather jolly time there (the people up there are Hobbits - eating seems to be a favourite pasttime), and we put up a creditable performance, I think, save for the small boo-boo at the beginning of the Entertainer, and I think I handled my solos in Seventeen Come Sunday rather decently in spite of the pressure applied upon me by Jeffrey, who told the audience that the piece featured some very difficult trombone passages, so Would You Please Pay Attention to Them. We left after an early dinner, and got back in town at ten.
The very next day I went out scouring the computer mall for a new laptop, since it was obvious that I would not survive long without one. Fell in love with one, but as luck would have it all the shop were out since it wasn't exactly a popular model (being a little too high-end for the typical consumer). I decided that we should just check out IT World at the mall next to the hotel, and was leading my parents through StarHill to the taxi stand when I remembered there was a computer mall upstairs as well. And what do you know.... the laptop was available there. The specs (after I was done upgrading it):
*Intel Pentium IV 530 processor with Hyper Threading technology (3.0 GHz, 1 MB L2 cache, 800 MHz FSB)
*768 MB DDR RAM
*60 GB HDD
*ATI Mobility Radeon X600 graphics card with PCI Express, *64 MB VRAM
*17" WXGA wide TFT LCD screen
*Built-in subwoofer
*Bluetooth and Infrared
*802.11b/g wireless LAN
*5-in-1 card reader
*DVD-Super Multi (CD/CD-RW/DVD/DVD-RW)
*One remote control that fits into the card slot
Of course, with specs like that, I could finally play The Sims 2 and Hitman:Contracts (which has been sitting on my shelf since April), so the first thing I did after dinner was buy The Sims 2 on DVD (as advised by Elton). Excellent stuff!
Anyway, we played our very first *official* gig just one week later on 21 November - at our quintet member Mr. Otomura's wedding reception. The do was held at Carcosa, once the home of a British Resident and, during the Second World War, the headquarters for the Japanese. Once an exclusive club for the upper class, the place is now open to debbies who can afford their astronomically priced high teas (which I hear are dead good). Given that, I'm sure you can imagine what sort of place it is. Think sprawling British Colonial building with grand stairways and gorgeous architecture, patios and balconies (also, gorgeous Steinway pianos -- which happened to be badly out of tune). Think gourmet decadence - more than ten types of hors d'oeuvres (including caviar), God knows how many main dishes (including smoked lamb and salmon; it's a buffet lunch do), at least ten types of dessert ranging from Creme Brulee to rich cheesecake and mousse. Think luxurious suites that cost $1,500 per night. Boy, the Japanese really know how to do it with style. 
Anyway, we had a pretty fun time - Mr. Otomura played three pieces with us for the first half, and then he and his brother joined us for the second half (his brother took Jeffrey's place on French Horn, and Mr. Otomura himself played the flugelhorn), and I think they enjoyed themselves - Mr. Otomura said as much during his speech, that he'd never before had the opportunity to play for social functions before, and that he had the time of his life playing with us. Hell, if I ever get married, I'll want to play the trombone at *my* own reception. 
So anyway, yeah... I've been fairly busy, and haven't been around much. I expect that to change soon though.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Dec 5, 2004
Shoppers' Plague
Posted Oct 17, 2004
I went grocery shopping yesterday. While at the supermarket, I saw something that made my blood boil. It had to do with an army of middle-aged Chinese women who were taking forever with their groceries at the counter.
Now, understand this, people: I am a reasonably patient person. I can tolerate somebody taking forever digging through her purse for nine one-cent coins so that the cashier won't have to give her change, never mind that the thing is some dollars and ten cents. I can even grit my teeth and bear with it if somebody gets to the counter and discovers - horror of horrors! - that one of their mineral water bottles is dented, or she's forgotten the soap, and sends somebody back to get/exchange the item (not to worry, the rest of the world is perfectly happy to fritter away their time waiting in line behind you. And we don't care about the jam on the way home).
What I cannot stand, however, are shoppers who reach the counter and decide that they've got one item too many in their cart, or that they don't really need the butter after all --- and off-load them on the candy shelf or under the counter, OR someplace other than where they took it. Which is exactly what these women were doing - stuffing their extra bottles of mineral water and sauce and cans into the candy bar shelves, behind all the boxes - doubtlessly so that the cashier wouldn't see them.
This is shoppers' selfishness and irresponsibility taken to the extreme - and something that I've observed with exponentially increasing frequency. If you don't really need ten cans of spam, why take so many in the first place? Okay, fine, you may need them all, but upon reaching the counter you discover that you don't have enough money - I'll allow for that. But what does it hurt you to return the item to where you took it, instead of junking it someplace it doesn't belong, or maybe just asking a supermarket attendant to help you out? Two minutes of your life? Your place in the line? Well, tough luck, buster - you take something off the shelves, you're responsible for it. You should've planned your freaking shopping list before you started emptying the shelves onto your cart.
It's bad enough that consumers are taking things off shelves, and then putting them where they belong - I've been bars of soap being left on food shelves, and plush toys right on top of candy bars. But when you take something that is temperature-sensitive like butter or ice-cream, decide you don't want it, and leave it someplace to rot --- that's an action that deserves the mandatory death sentence.
Listen up, people. You may not think there's anything to leaving your yoghurt on the bread shelf - and for all I know, you probably don't care - but there's a reason why the freaking yoghurt is kept in the freaking cold section, and not on bloody open shelves. Why do you think some items are kept refrigerated? - to arrest or retard the microbes inside.
Letting a box of ice-cream defrost entirely, and then sticking it back in the freezer section not only causes ice crystals to form, thus ruining the taste of the ice cream, BUT also allows microorganisms that are dormant inside (what, did you think ice-cream was sterile?) to flourish - even to dangerous proportions. Cheeses and yoghurt are made with bacterial cultures (you know all those ads promoting Lactobacilli? yeah, your blue cheese and your Nestle yoghurt are alive), and sometime in their production the temperature of these things are brought down to arrest further growth of these microbes, because the right amount of fermented chemicals has been achieved in the product. What happens if you bring the temperature back up to the temperature for optimal growth? They start reproducing and metabolising again --- and whoosh, there goes the carefully measured taste, there goes your product.
And meat! They can't very well shoot up your side of beef with preservatives the way they do things in cans. And guess what, the meat is raw - which means that it's made up of blood and other microbe food resources. And if there's anything microbes love, it's blood. So unless you're the sort to eat charred corpse of cow, you're going to be eating a hunk of meat that has living creatures inside of it - and you're not going to want to buy a side of beef that was left standing in a corner before being returned.
Okay, so maybe a couple minutes of exposure won't really harm these products. But have you seen the way shoppers hide these items? as though they're some sort of secret treasure. You know what I mean - on the bottom shelf, behind other items. By the time the supermarket attendants have found them, who knows how long they've been out of the open? The product is no longer marketable!
(Yes, I'm sure that there are unscrupulous attendants who just put them back on the shelves, but I'm also sure that these are few and far between... especially if the store is to maintain a good reputation. And in the event they do actually do that.... well, you'd better think twice the next time you put a pat of butter in your basket, just in case it's a returned object!)
Of course, this is just a long-winded way of saying that leaving temperature-sensitive products out in the open will ruin them!!! In fact, you shouldn't even return these things back to their freezers once you've taken them and walked around for half an hour. As a shopper, you should be responsible for taking these items - that, once you've removed them, you don't return them. (Unless of course, you were just taking them down for a few seconds to read the label and stuff. I'm not entirely unreasonable). Responsibility, people, responsibility! Plan your shopping properly - get all your dry and canned goods first, and THEN when you're about to leave, go get your ice-cream, your cheeses, your butter. That way you won't be damaging any goods, and you won't be harming yourself. Surely it doesn't take all that much effort to organise your shopping?
Let's show a little more consideration for our fellow shoppers, people. There may be supermarket employees all over the place, but there's only so much they can do, so much they can monitor. What do you think would happen if everybody behaved the same way and randomly left their things about? Being a little more responsible in a public place won't exactly kill you - and it would save the rest of us a lot of grief.
Oh, and to those of you selfish enough to bring ten items to the five-item express counter - GO SOD OFF!
-- Farlander the irate.
(NOTE: To everybody reading this - I'm not necessarily targetting you guys. 
I was just so angry about this I had to write it down, and share it with others, who are probably bothered by this plague as well)
Discuss this Journal entry [31]
Latest reply: Oct 17, 2004
Two revolutions
Posted Oct 15, 2004
Wow... has it really been two years since I first signed up here? How time flies. 
Was timing an article so that I'd post it in time to celebrate my second year; I guess it's not going to happen after all.... I still have far too much to work on. 
Ah well.
Discuss this Journal entry [2]
Latest reply: Oct 15, 2004
Questions that you don't have answers to...
Posted Aug 29, 2004
I had somebody say the strangest thing to me the other day. I was walking to our hostel cafeteria, see, when I ran into the lady who operates the grocery store. She gave me a beaming smile and said, 'Your hair has grown longer, hasn't it?' 
I was utterly stumped. What was I to say in response to that? 'You must be imagining things; I just had it cut yesterday?' 'Yes, my hair has grown longer - just like everybody else's, who isn't dead'? Or maybe, 'Actually, I wear a wig'?
All I wound up doing was mumble a semi-coherent, 'Um... yeah.' Boy, did I feel stupid.
Discuss this Journal entry [7]
Latest reply: Aug 29, 2004
Wax Hands
Posted Jun 7, 2004
I had my parents hands waxed over the weekend. 
Seriously though, there's this fad going around Peking? Beijing - creating wax models of people's hands. The fad just hit our shores; I'm not sure if it's reached the Western world. I was walking around the mall a couple of weeks ago when we stumbled upon this booth selling these wax figurines of hands. Out of curiosity, I approached the booth and asked about the thing. The chirpy guy manning the booth showed me how it was done with my finger - by first dipping my finger into a tub of ice water, and then into a vat of hot wax, then dipping it into the ice water again to solidify the thin layer of wax, and then applying another layer, and another. When the layer was thick enough, the 'shell' could be slipped off with a bit of wiggling. And voila! You have the wax model of... er, my finger.
Anyway, I had the bright idea of getting a wax model of my hand done, and sending it to my dad for Fathers' Day; however, somewhere along the line, the devil in me got the better of the saint, and I found myself thinking how cool - and hilarious! - it would be to drag my parents to the place when they came over on vacation, and have a model done of their hands. Seeing as I'd missed their wedding anniversary back in May and all.
To cut a long story short, my parents came over last week, and I made sure that that mall was on our list of 'places to go'. Told them I wanted to get them a wedding anniversary present, but that it would require their FULL CO-OPERATION, and no, I couldn't tell them beforehand (and certainly not before extracting a promise from them that they'd be sporting!!!) what it would all be about. After something like five minutes of wheedling, cajoling and emotional blackmail, my parents hesitantly acquiesced -- all the while convinced that I was going to subject them to some horrendous form of public humiliation.
Imagine the look on their faces when I dragged them to the booth and declared, with an insanely perverse grin on my face, that they were going to spend the next ten minutes holding hands and have them waxed together!!!
Well... it took more than that, really. It took them something like five minutes to decide on the positioning of their hands, and two more for the booth guy to position the hands properly. The first cast went badly; dad moved, thus breaking the wax layer. By then they'd attracted a rather large crowd of very curious, very interested shoppers, and were on their way from being merely pink to turning bright beet red in embarrassment. It probably didn't help that by that time, I was laughing hysterically at the sidelines. If dirty looks were laser beams...
Thankfully for them, the second cast went well, and they were finally separated after having been forced to hold hands for the last fifteen minutes or so. I decided to have the thing filled with wax so that it would be more durable, and to have it mounted. My parents were rather delighted with the end result (and are probably going to display it proudly in the living room).... but something tells me that they're not likely to trust me with unconditional promises again anytime soon!
Obviously I can't post the picture here, but here's a link to my page: http://www.geocities.com/farlander_central/photos_strange.htm
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Latest reply: Jun 7, 2004
Farlander
Researcher U206300
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