Oreddy Oso Can Lah!

The hectic days never seem to end. So the move was done. It all began with Air India Express, who, god willingly, brought me safely back down to earth not once but twice! (Yes, there was a small part of me that wondered whether I had made the right choice going budget!). The three hour stop over in Chennai, where small talk could not be avoided, was not travel-friendly. But it's done. Arrived home at 10:30pm on Sunday night, straight to work first thing Monday morn. And every evening has been a mad rush of buying things for the house to make it a home. So yesterday I had my first session of cricket in 4.5 months and i nearly died! But after cricket, we (the housemates and I) went to check out this couch, which turned out to be awesome, and which is now going to be a housemate of ours come Saturday. Strangely, i'm very excited about the couch! Still need to get bed linen (yes, i've been sleeping on a sarong for days now), which should get done today. Hopefully a relaxing weekend to come.

Home

It was 6 months out in a place I had only ever been to once before, that when I was 3. Now that's done and dusted, and it feels great to be home and on my time where there are no work commitments, deadlines or clients. Less than 24 hours in and I'm already feeling the disorganized chaos that is Colombo, where my brother drives like a maniac, brother 2 is in bed with a cast, everything must stop for politicians and buses, and so on. I liked my stint out there. A lot of people warned me that i'd be bored after 2 weeks. But, as is the case anywhere, you gotta keep your self doing things, and you will love it. It helped that I found myself in the midst of a great bunch of people. My cousin (the one that RD knows in London) once was telling me that, to people living abroad, friends are their family. Now, although that may seem like stating the obvious, it definitely is true. So, for four months i'll be here, soaking up my homeland. Then to a not-so-new family. But first, tonight to Chaar-max's bachelor party!

Forks in the road on a dark knight

The proverbial fork in the road is right in front of me, and although I'd bet my last pair of underwear that it was never there 2 seconds ago, now I can't avoid it much like a driver who wakes up a few feet before a lamp-post. The thing is, I had expected to be cruising along for a long while before I came to the fork, but i must've accidentally stumbled upon the shortest short cut ever and now it's too soon to decide and I can't decide. The surprise shocked; it appeared at first to be a dead end. But it wasn't, though I never really recovered from the initial shock although I kept a deadpan face. Then the two roads at the fork appeared. That too shocked. Too soon. Too soon. But one seems the obvious choice, but it wasn't on the cards. The other was what I was expecting gladly, although I wasn't expecting it to be peppered with pot holes and speed bumps as it is going to be so now I'm not so glad. On another note, for those Batman fans out there, Dark Knight is a great movie. I think the Batman series has made the best superhero movies by far, when compared with spiderman, superman, the fantastic four, hulk, etc, etc. Well, catch it, and enjoy!

Beach Touch!!!

I have just woken up the morning after, my skin is stinging, my legs are like lead and there's sand in my hair! Yesterday was the Singapore Rugby Union's Beach Touch Rugby Tourney. 50 teams in about 6 categories - Mens, Womens, Corporate, Mixed, Boys under 20 and Girls under 20. I've played tap rugger on the beach in Sri Lanka since I was a kid, resulting in many fights after cries of "false alarm!". So I thought this beach touch thing would be a breeze. But, the rules are different and I soon realised that I was wrong. The game is extremely fast, and if your caught napping for even a second the other team can score. Since the attacking team has the benefit of playing 3 on 2, defending can really be a bitch. But it's brilliant! Play is based on 4 touch rules, so the attacking team can make 4 plays before there's a turnover. This was the first time that the Lanka Lions Cricket Club had ventured into touch rugby, and although we didn't win the tourney, we did play really well against teams that play touch competitively regularly. So much so that we were even made a few offers to join a couple of rugby teams out here to play in the Singapore leagues. Thank god i'm going to be outta here!

Catching Up

After weeks of leaving it for later, I finally took the plunge today and had my keyboard replaced. 100 bucks and a couple of hours later, I’ve got a fully functional keyboard (no more start menu pop-ups!) and an extra stick of RAM (it was a long time coming). What prompted me to take action was something that happened last night. Now, for a few weeks I’ve been using an external keyboard and not touching the laptop’s keyboard, which worked fine. But for some reason, while chatting to the missus last night, the damn start menu popped up from nowhere. That was that! No more procrastinating. So it’s done and I’m glad. Enough about that. Over the last month I’ve had quite a few visitors. Firstly Jim (remember him from the band?) and Lindsay arrived. Got to spend some time with them which was good, cause I’m not sure when our paths will cross again. Then the missus herself came, and we had a blast for a whole month. Somewhere during that month my cousin arrived. So all in all May was a good month. May was also the month that the Lanka Lions toured Kuala Lampur. Lanka Lions is a cricket team in Singapore made up of mainly, you guessed it, Lankans. However, the team also has a couple of Indians and even a Chinese guy. The first team is arguably the best in Singapore and features quite a few national players. Now obviously I don’t play for that one. I play for the second team, which plays in a far more relaxed league and the games are fun. So both teams (minus the national players who were playing some ICC tournament) along with Russell Arnold, who incidentally joined us for the tour, set off for KL by coach. We were to play 2 matches in KL against the Royal Selangor teams. We lost both, although the matches were close. In our defence, playing cricket while severely hungover is harder than convincing Hillary to give up her campaign (btw congrats to Obama!). However, Mr Arnold lived up to his name, taking 4 wickets and also scoring 54, which was not enough to pull it off for us unfortunately. Oh well, good times. A couple of weekends on, the missus and I went down to Sentosa island to check it out. Fuck the cable car ride to the island was super, although I must admit I was shitting bricks at first. When we got to the island, I knew that I had to be on the Sentosa Luge. The luge involves going up over trees and a hill in one of em skylifts used by skiers to get to the top of the mountain. You know where you sit with your legs dangling? Now that was some freaky shit too. I was scared my slippers were gonna come off. I was scared to even look back coz we were going up the mountain. But it was quiet the view from up there, well the bit I dared to look anyway. Coming down the hill was more fun I thought. We had to get into these lil motor-less go carts and speed down the hill, much like sledding but with wheels and steering. AwesomeJ Last Friday, went out to Novus, which is the bar at the National Museum in Singapore, with a few colleagues to say bye over drinks to a couple of lawyers. The setting is beautiful, situated in a courtyard which has been done up with flowing water, candles, white canopies and low lighting. Apart from the 1 for 1 drinks offer before 9, the two piece band was super!! They were playing all the hits from the 70s and the 80s and it was great. After that wound up, went and plonked myself at Sex and the City with friends and it was rubbish. However, it was strange to hear the audience oooh-ing and aah-ing each time carrie bradshaw came out in a new outfit. “OMG Look at her shoes. They are gorgeous aren’t they lah?”. Agh. That’s when I decided that it’s time to take a nap. Time in Singapore has gone by super fast. Almost 4 months done, and I’ll be back in the sunny(er) shores of Sri Lanka soon. Too bad I’ll miss the season where all the bloggers will be in town. Don’t drink too muchJ

Can I see some ID please?

Ok, so I have this issue that keeps bugging me now and again, more so out here in Singa-land. See, I'm in my mid-twenties, having turned 18 a little after the y2k season. But people keep thinking I'm around 20 years old, and, while that would've been great if I had been a girl, I'm not sure that's such a great compliment for a guy. Is it? See, while I was in Sri Lanka I was working for this professional services firm and I had to go brief a client on a few internal issues we suspected they were having. Ok, I admit I had unruly hair at the time, but this director I was briefing looked as interested as my grandma's interest in Incubus. Then she chucked some papers at me and said "talk to me when your manager gets here". The fucking nerve! Obviously she thought I was a kid and was not about ready to take advice from such a vicious breed. Now, out here in Singapore on my first night out clubbing I was asked for identification by the bouncers cause apparently I didn't look 18! WTF? The only identification I had on me that had my date of birth was my Sri Lankan ID so I had to pull that out and show the "1984" bit (as everything is in Sinhala) to convince em i'm not as young as they think. Thanks, but not thanks. It's become so bad that it's become a bit of an inside joke amongst my friends here, and whenever I meet someone new my friends ask that person "so how old do you think Confab is?" The answers have ranged from 17 all through 23, but never friggin 24! So tell me ... ...do I not look 24 to you?

Drastic Fantastic - Singapore

(photo by loh_junwei) I had a few issues about going alone for a gig. But I'm new to Singapore, so from the few people I know, I couldn't find any who liked KT Tunstall enough, or knew who she was for that matter, to go for her gig. So it was decided. I'm going solo and it'll still be a blast. And it was! I thought it was going to be a pretty intimate gig with maybe about 500 people. But boy was I wrong. The Suntec City Convention Room 603 had been transformed into a gig-hall complete with seating for 2250 and standing capacity for about 500. However, although the gig was scheduled to get on the way at 8, when I got there at 7:45 the place was almost empty! So I was thinking "poor KT Tunstall, she's never gonna want to come here ever again!" But I was wrong. At 8:30 when the gig actually kicked off, the place was full, and it actually was a room full of KT Tunstall fans...I sure wasn't out of place:) As soon as KT took the stage, the crowd went nuts! She played right into the hands of everyone there that night. The sound was brilliant, the band was tight and not flashy, the back-up singers were hot, the lighting was mood-friendly and KT Tunstall was amazing and lovable! What a combination! Moreover, what a talent she is! She went through the slow acoustic numbers and the fast rocky songs with equal intensity, keeping the crowd focussed on her music more than anything else in such a way that there was pin-drop silence amongst 3000 people. Between songs she'd talk to the crowd and crack jokes, making us all laugh. She'd also explain what her songs are about, for instance "Funny Man" is about a friend of hers that lost his mind, Black Horse & the Cherry Tree is about good and evil, which made the whole thing very personal. KT really won the hearts and minds and, possibly, a few thousand extra CD sales from, the entire audience. She was truly lovable. The highlights for me were firstly, her solo version of Black Horse & the Cherry Tree, which I had been dying to see live ever since I caught it on youtube, Funny Man, her version of Walk Like an Egyptian and Suddenly I see. What a night. 3 Thumbs up! Btw, she did mention that it's a fact that when you take all the people who lived on this planet ever, there's only 9 dead people for every live person. Is that true?

Converse loving ants, and other stories.

For the first time in a few days I decided to come home straight after work, instead of wandering around the City. So I gobbled up a yummy chicken fried rice at the station nearest to home and walked down to the apartment. As I opened the door and took a few steps, I realised I had stepped on water. Now I know it had rained a bit, but the roof couldn't be leaking as there were 12 floors living above me. At first I thought the damn toilet had broken and was gushing water, as it had been giving us a few problems since we moved in, but that wasn't it. I walked towards my room and there was more water. Shit. Panic hit in as I opened the door to discover an inch of water all over my room. My shoes, clothes, guitar, man bag, and suitcase were all in the water! While I was busy at work, some serious rain had obviously pelted down! I immediately knew what the cause was. Attached to my room is a little balcony like bit. The drain pipe had got stuck with branches and some dried seed-ish looking thing, which resulted in the balcony filling up, in turn which resulted in the water flowing into my room. So there I was, an inch of water in my room, 7 inches in the damned balcony. My housemates and I spent an hour and a half cleaning away with one mop, one bathroom mat and a pair of slippers, sweeping the water away, while we used a nail clipper to fix the drain pipe - the cause of this mess. Phew, this was not what I wanted after quite a tiring day. So anyway, since the room was FINALLY clean, I chucked all my wet clothes into the washing machine, and put away my wet shoes to dry. I think I'm going to have to put em in the washing machine. Any tips on washing shoes in a washing machine? Sorry I digress. So anyway, as I was putting my shoes away, I picked up my khaki converse slip-ons. Now this was quite a bargain in India where I picked em up for INR 400-odd. When you're wearing trousers it looks as if you're wearing a normal pair of converse shoes, just without the hassle of wearing the converse shoes. Brilliant. As I pick em up to put em away along with the rest of the banished-but-wet shoes, I notice about 5 ants scramble out of them. Now these weren't your normal ants. Remember when you were in school in year 3 or 4 and you saw these big ass black ants on the trees? Thel Kumbiyo? Well it was em. The sumo wrestler brigade of the black ants, if I may, as they were huge! I hope that's politically correct enough. So in my hastiness, I chuck them into the tub. The shoes, ants and all that is. At this point about 20 more ants jump outta my damned shoes! So I aim the shower head and turn it to maximum with the hot water on and lo and behold a bajillion of em start trooping out to brave the waters! I had shivers running up and down my spine, and if any of those ants were named shivers, I had shivers running everywhere in my bathroom! Here's proof! If only I ate ants, what a great time I would've had!

Belated Greetings from Singapore 2!!!

So I have been meaning to do this for a while now! However, I had net issues. Blogger is blocked at work, which means I can't even read blogspot blogs while working either! Secondly, I thought I was in luck when I found an unsecured network in the apartment complex, yet that turned out to be very very sporadic to the extent that i'd be walking around the house with laptop in hand trying to get connected, and then when connected i'd try and finish as much as possible on the net before I get disconnected, which wasn't very long at all. Sigh. Thirdly, I found out that stealing internet from someone else's unsecured network is a criminal offence in Singapore. Shit. I wasn't planning on stealing forever. I promise! Since we're only in the country for 6 months, we only could get a contract with 1 ISP, M1, whose broadband was over a wireless GSM network using a GSM modem, rather than an ADSL modem. I thought that would be ideal cause we don't have to buy a router or modem, as it came free with the package, and we'd have broadband connectivity at 2Mbps immediately. After having paid a S$200 deposit for being a foreigner with a temporary visa, I took the device to my remotely located condo, only to find out M1 hasn't got great coverage where I live, even though they swore upon their mother's brownies they had me covered. So to cut a long story short, I took it back, argued, got my connection money back although my deposit is going to take a month to get to me! Bummer. Work finally arranged a connection for us through their own ISP, Starhub. Boss gave me a router and a modem, the ISP came to our office to arrange the contract (instead of us having to go queue up at starhub, which is a minimum wait of 30 mins) and there you have it, finally i'm connected legally at home!!! So anyway, I spent most my time while not at work walking around Singapore and exploring. Every corner has a food court/hawker market. Every second corner has a mall. Every third corner has an ice cream vendor who sells ice cream on slices of bread that look like ribbon cake. While exploring, I came across this. Classic. My work place for the next 6 months is in Raffles Place, which is the heart of the business district. It's a great area to be in for many reasons, especially since I'm 2 mins away from Boat Quay and this view. Finally picked up my tickets for Incubus AND KT Tunstall. Next Friday is Incubus, and I've been waiting for this a long time. Should I take half a day off from work and join the queue early? Boy am I excited. Let me do a bit of a Darwin and put a pic of the tickets just so I can brag a lil bit;) More on the Lanka Lions, Lisa Fitzgibbon at a very unfriendly Prince of Wales pub in Little India, soon.

Greetings from Singapore

Hello and welcome to Singapore! It's such a nice place, especially when I find an unsecured wireless network at my apartment, when i wasn't expecting to have internet for a week! The flight was delayed as usual by 45 minutes at BIA, but it eventually arrived at the brand new terminall at Changi airport, which was built especially to accomodate the A380. The terminal is beautiful. The A380, i'm not so sure, as I couldn't get a glimpse of it anywhere on the tarmac! I must say the roti parata meal on the plane certainly lifted me up from my leaving blues, and prepared me for what's to come. What did come? An apartment that needs lots and lots of cleaning. But even that is ok, now that I have internet. So after a meal of Chicken Rice at the local food court and 2 hours of cleaning the kitchen and a bathroom, here I am catching up on what i've missed in the last so many hours since I've been online! Plenty going on at Darwin's, fuelled by a plot by a bunch of bearded buggers' to assassinate the makers of dilbert. (Darwin - my sincere apologies for not being able to reply. As you can see, I was stuck in mid air!) My only gripe about that whole scenario is that I wish people would live and let live when it comes to sensitive issues such as race, religion, sex, sexuality, etc. Anyway, it's bed time, or at least it feels like it even though it's only 8:45pm back home in CMB. There's plenty more cleaning to be done in the morning. p.s. The album has reached 300 downloads!