At Random

Another night shift, pretty quiet, crossing my fingers nothing major happens for the next 2.5 hours.

This week's American Idol performances were surprisingly good. Obviously, the Michael Jackson theme was a bad choice. Country fared much, much better.

Top 3 for this round - Adam Lambert, Danny Gokey and a tie between Alexis Grace and Kris Allen.
I know Adam got mixed reactions from the judges, but the song he did, no matter how "weird" it turned out, was great for me 'cos I've never heard it before, and the Middle Eastern flavour sounded just fine. That vocal range of his continues to boggle the mind! :)

A funny coincidence: seconds after I commented to my mom that Matt Giraud ( the piano-playing soul / jazz singer ) reminds me of Michael Buble, Simon Cowell uttered the exact same words! I poked my mom so hard she wasn't happy. :)


Tropic Thunder: I FINALLY watched it on DVD. Again, high expectations may have ruined it for me, but there were a few laugh-out-loud moments, the most memorable of which involves a conversation about "Viet Congs" and "Chineses". Maybe I wasn't in the right mood, since I can't imagine why I didn't love this as much as I love Zoolander. But then, I watched the latter while on vacation in New Zealand, after an awesome day trekking around the Fox Glacier region, without a care in the world.
Yeah, that's probably an important contributing factor. :)


Something to thank L for: Geekin' Out Across The Galaxy, an MP3 album I didn't even know existed, until now. Thank you for sending the files to me, I can't wait to download them into my iPod!
Reading my 2006 review of his terrific Esplanade acoustic show, I suspect the song Galaxy is the one that caused me to tear up ( opening lyrics include something about travelling to space? ). Anyway, I'll know once I listen to the piece.

Also, another 2 albums I'm eyeing -- if I can't get them in Singapore, I'm going through Amazon for sure: Taylor Hicks' follow-up release, The Distance ( after breaking away from the American Idol leash ), and Chris Botti's Boston concert CD / DVD ( featuring Sting, Josh Groban, John Mayer and Ma Yo-Yo, among others ).

I desperately want to purchase Jason Mraz's expanded edition of We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. which is available locally, but haven't found the time to go shopping just yet, argh!

And the meet-and-greet photos are still in limbo -- they were taken by an official photog, so I have to wait for them to be released to us. Double argh!


A couple of shows to look forward to over the next week: Kumar ( whom I'll be seeing tonight ), and The Winter's Tale, which I'll be watching next Thursday.

I like to prepare before attending Shakespearean plays that I'm unfamiliar with, so I'm currently poring over a copy of The Winter's Tale, the same way I read King Lear when the RSC production came here in 2007.
So far, Winter is proving to be considerably more difficult to digest than Lear. I'm ping-pong-ing between Leontes, Hermione and Polixenes in Act I. Wonder if it'll get easier once Autolycus makes an appearance later on?


Also, I've resumed a previously abandoned search for penpals, after reactivating a dormant account on a certain website. This is where I made an American friend back in 2002, and we're still corresponding to this day. In the past fortnight, I've already met an American physicist, an English medieval historian, and a German kindergarten teacher who lived in Singapore for 12 years as a teenager. It's a great hobby, I tell you. :)


Before I sign off and go do the morning round, I'd like to post lyrics from another favourite Jason Mraz song, titled On Love, In Sadness.

"Sing about that oh love it's a brittle madness
I sing about it in all my sadness
It's not falsified to say that I found God so
Inevitably, well it still exists so pale and fine I can't dismiss
And I won't resist and if I die well at least I tried

And we just lay awake in lust and rust in the rain
And pore over everything we say we trust
Well it happened again, I listened in through hallways and thin doors
Where the rivers unwind and the rust and the rain endure
The rust and the rain endure, I'm sure."

It helps to listen to the melody and hum along. But it ain't easy. :)

Till next time...