good boy gone bad

ok this is kinda a backlog. so much have been going on, i felt like i'm consistently playing catching-up with my life and then finding time to report it.

and me being a bad, lazy, uninspired reporter obviously doesn't help :)

ok first i want to write about rihanna.

in case you live in a cave, or in some felda estate off the country-side (read: batu pahat), rihanna is one of the most consistent hitmakers in current pop music. she had like 8 top 10 hits in the US in just over 3-year period (ok i read that from some websites but i do know she have lots of hit songs).

and i saw her live and raw last week in her singapore indoor stadium gig! woohoo!!

i just wanted to say..

oh.

my.

god.

i love her. this might sound superficial but i really do. as a fan i mean.

just because that was one of the best concert i have been, and i had been to some of the big concerts before.

ed's list of concerts that he had been to

janet jackson
alanis morissette
deen (a japanese band, i've seen them twice!)
madonna
christina aguilera

and rihanna topped them all!

ok here's what happened.

i picked up this friend from aljunied mrt at about 6.30pm and headed to singapore indoor stadium, which is a short drive away. did i mentioned i took half day afternoon off from work that day? yeah i just wanted to play safe hehe..

we arrived at the venue at about 7pm. there were few cars around the parking lots, which was a bit puzzling because rihanna's concert was about to start in an hour time, and the parking lot was only half full? i took out the ticket and confirmed, yeah we did get the correct date.

so we went in. ok so where are our seats? we walked down the aisle closer and closer to the main stage and oh gosh.. there are our seats, a short distance away from main stage.

o man, that $225 dollars looked to be so worth it.

then we patiently waited. the crowd slowly filled in but was it me or the crowd was much less compared to christina aguilera's? well maybe rihanna was too new to the scene.

my million dollar ticket

me + friend ready for a good time

close to 8.30pm, half an hour late from the original schedule, suddenly the stereos blasted britney's womanizer. it was.. very very loud but i liked it! my heart started beating in rhythm, all the more because, ok this might be superficial part-2, i do love this britney's song. have you seen the video clip?

right after i finished mouthing 'womanizer womanizer u're womanizer babeh..' and got my foot back on earth (and sincerely hoped nobody was watching me), the familiar bum bum be-dum bum bum be-dum bum.. got off the air.

disturbia!!

my eyes quickly scanned the stage through the black transparent veil and there she was perched atop a tower, started to sing the first lines to her latest hit as she descended onto the stage amidst screaming audiance. it was so cool.

rihanna made the entrace with 'disturbia'

but that’s as far as she got, because her microphone decided to quit on her, leaving her rather inaudible for the remainder of the song.

i looked at her in disbelief. how could this have happened? yeah her microphone really f**cked up. damn! that was one of my favourite song. ok it's official at that moment i was really in disturbia. she appeared agitated but what could she do? there she was trying to make a grand entrance but straight away spoiled by technical glitch.

good work rihanna! what a way to make a memorable entrance.

she walked to the backstage towards the end of the song (i guessed to kick some sorry asses) and by the time she reappeared on stage to start the second song (breaking dishes), she got her sound back. o thank god!

and so the concert began...

the rest of the show was like an express joyride. maybe more like a rollercoaster ride without the ascending parts. she sang hit songs after hit songs without any break, it was like a prolonged orgasm without foreplay.

she had this big deep voice that she used to sing upper registers, so she tend to sometimes mute lower notes when she interchanged them but as her songs were all familliar to us, we got the missing half words in our heads anyway.

her concert team was pretty small. only her bands, 2 backup singers and 4 dancers. that was all. and she changed outfit only once for the encore. the rest was just her strutting through her songs.

me with rihanna backdrop hehe..

all hail the good girl gone bad

my favourite part? when she sang 'unfaithful'. man, i was so inspired by that. 'please don't stop the music' got the loudest cheer but i felt that she could have stayed on that song longer since that's one hell of a song on the dancefloor. after all, she did sing to not stopping the music, right?

she surprised us when she sang 'paper plane' originally by MIA. i don't know what's the significance of this song for her, except maybe when she sang the line, 'all i wanna do (gunshots).. is take your money..' she really meant it.

because when she completed her final song (what else, her monster umbrella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh hit), the clock just hit 9.30pm. so the whole gig was just over an hour long, which means i paid $3.80 per minute for that show! eeeekk!!!

but again, you cannot put a price on this kind of joyous experience. i don't wanna be all old and grumpy in the future watching rihanna on a tv that hasn't been even invented yet, and thinking, man i should've gone and see her.

and i was glad i did. ok the show was a bit short and there was that microphone glitch at the beginning but the rest of the show was compact with fun moments, when the audience sang or waved throughout the hour. i guess rihanna's songs are just plain fun to sing along and move the body to. i mean, there must be a reason why her songs topped the chart one after another. that was what made the concert very special and enjoyable.

plus, i gotta see her up close :)

as she says it herself..

Just live your life (Oh!), ay ay ay.
You got no time for no hata's
Just live your life (Oh!), ay ay ay.
No telling where it'll take ya

how 'bout a round of applause?




...ed

under my microscope

ok i'm just going to try to put things in perspective here.

nothing's been confirmed yet. my boss seems to have a funny way dealing with this. i thought it was a pure technical matter but during our tea-break chat today, my colleagues made me realized it might not.

upon that enlightenment, you know i actually stormed right away into my boss office but found out all the bosses were in team building outings already. apparently they went for bowling. team building? yeah right.

hmm that just showed that i'm so bad at reading people. my boss said that he's discussing the matter with his supervisor so i should believe him right? not. i read somewhere before about the rules of life, and one of the key point is that when people speak, do not only hear what they say, but also why they say it.

mind you, it's not that easy to do. every now and then we have visitors from our HQ in the states. these caucasians always get the first class treatment here, the local bosses would stand beside them and blow fans, while the project leads would prepare red carpets on the pathway. we had to do speial presentation for them and when they shoot questions in between their sips of coca-cola in their thick american accent, i have problem understanding.

you see, i couldn't even hear people properly, let alone listening the motif or anything else.

maybe i just need to learn how to read people properly. one fella that i met for 2 seconds ended up being a stalker. seriously now i'm not taking any phone call that shows private or unknown numbers. the insurance agent that i politely refused but enganged in some casual conversation ended up shoving me bunch of personal messages that i did not appreciate.

i just don't know how i got myself entangled with these morons. did i read the wrong signals? even my friends could give me few hell-of-a-lifetime surprises too. i thought i know them much while we stayed at boys hostel during high school but after so long being lost contact, i met them again in facebook but this time they donned night gowns and low cut dresses spotting international supermodels names.

i was like, what on earth had happened during all these years? it was like i've crossed over to my parallel universe or something. more over, this another friend, who was a lawyer the last time i met him shortly after i started working, literally went short in the head because of ecstacy overdose and i heard last people saw him he wandering around unbathed and all smelly in town.

see, i did not at all see these turned-up-of-events coming.

one other thing that i did not see coming, was my dear friend's answer when i asked him what should we do this coming weekend. i was actually thinking of a visit to singapore omni theater or a short escapade to nearby kusu island but he said that his company will hold this green earth movement day programme this saturday, so they will be going to the east coast and collect rubbish.

excuse me, but collect rubbish? i'm sorry, i'm all for mother earth oriented activities but surely there are other things we can do other than collecting rubbish on the much-awaited weekend? i am so not gonna buy this idea. besides, i cannot even see what his company ST marines has to do with rubbish-free beaches. unless the rubbish starts to entangle their submarines or something.

but of course, as always, what do i know?



...ed

please don't stop the music

i'm getting my umbrella-ella-ella ready, not because it's rainy season, but because i'm going to the good girl gone bad rihanna's concert at singapore indoor's stadium on nov 13th. woooohooooooo!!!

i like rihanna. she's like the hottest singer nowadays with everything she touches turns gold. ok everything she sings actually turns gold, even platinum certified. with hit songs like unfaithful, umbrella, take a bow, don't stop the music, disturbia etc etc she's the queen on the dancefloor.

and i'm gonna see her from the front row with my popcorn on nov-13th!!

hmm. my sister wedding is on the 14th. i guess i must not party till too late that night since i plan to drive home to kl the next morning. well worst case, i can just depart a bit later 'coz as rihanna says, i'm 0 to 60 in three point five, baby i got the keys....

the concert is just called rihanna! .. which if u asked me, is a bit too-simplistic. i mean, she sang about not wanting to be her ex's murderer! the least she could do is name her tour something.

i wonder why she didn't retain 'good girl gone bad tour' she used in the north america and europe legs. maybe she thought asians with all the goody-goody cultures couldn't handle the thought of a girl gone bad. i bet that must be the reason she skipped malaysia too.

anyway, here's where i will be that night, if you plan to stalk me that is.

i paid $225 for that seat. pretty unear the front huh? i haven't been this close to a big celebrity since janet jackson's velvet rope tour when i could see her non-stop flowing sweat trying to give her water-proof mascara run for the money.

for rihanna, i guess i'll just be aware if the sprinklers come on (come on).

i'm so excited. don't tell anybody but i got my twice-a-year performance bonus this month and it's almost half a month's salary! which means, lots of party money. ok with the recession and stuff, maybe just this once because god knows my mind is in disturbia (..am i scaring you tonight?).

now i'll just sit and wait. hmm seems like that's all that i do nowadays. sit and wait. everything's got me tossin' and turnin' but i still can sleep at night. i just can't wait the point when i could say..

how 'bout a round of applause?







...adie @ good boy gone bad

black and white halloween

it's saturday noon and i'm at the office.

this is so not normal for me. in fact this is the kind of weird stuff people could say you did before you got into some fatal disaster. or if in court, this could so become the kind of behaviour that raises suspicion and spells guilty all over the place among the juries.

there was this tiny lil' work that i had to do this morning. it was not that bad actually, i didn't feel particularly crushed having to do so. i even thought i should do this more often if that what it takes to show my boss that i'm all content and dedicated.

even though since last tuesday night, this does not matter anymore

that brings me to the point i've been pondering about over the last few days. remember the work offer that i got on tuesday night? i never saw any follow up on that yet, no black and white or even coloured details, no papers to sign, no nothing, nada and it's been what?.... 96 hrs.

gosh is it time for me to freak out yet?

when i asked, my soon-to-be-boss said he expects me to be there by end december. which is just nice because i heard there will be a massive forced vacation / plant shutdown for my current office from christmas until the new year. even if i have to pick up toys from the north pole factory and distribute it through the chimneys all over the world, i should be able to just about make it.

the problem is, without black and white transfer details, i must consistently pinch and convince myself that this is not a mere dream. i had a conversation with my favourite property agent yesterday and he suggested that i rent my house instead of selling. he said the property price is lower now and expected to pick up in 2,3 years time when singapore's integrated resorts are up and running. what's more, he said i could get >2000 dollars rent from my unit! woohooo!!

renting out makes sense to me too since i just refinanced my home loan last july, so i need to hold the contract for the next 3 years. but you see, i had to stop short from telling him to market my place because i don't have that damn black and white details yet.

urghh.. i don't know. it was halloween last night and i swear i felt like bitting someone's neck so badly. if i had my way, some city or some HR department is gonna be seriously bitten and haunted.

anyway, the trick and treats are all over now. i'm just gonna go home and do something that is my norm and won't raise any suspicion. which is to have a long undisturbed nap in my vampire coffin.. i mean, bed.



...ed