Air, Love & Vitamins

With Vienna Art Orchestra

For Baden

Thanks Sebastian for the encouragement and kind comment! I’ll try to keep the blog going as far as I can and try my best to devote some time to this blog. Knowing that there people out there who enjoy my content motivates me greatly!

Johnny Hartman

The above video and another here here.

It’s been a while.

So many things to update. So little time and energy. But here goes before they get lost:

Buddy Guy concert in Singapore on 16 March 2007

First, Buddy Guy concert. Chloe was the luckiest person in the concert. Buddy Guy approached her and offered his guitar for her to play while he fretted it. We both got a shock when this big black man approached us and said “Put down the camera! Put down the camera!”. For a while, we thought he was offended by us taking pictures of him and was going to grab our camera. So, we froze.

Only later, then it became apparent what he wanted. Chloe relaxed after Buddy Guy grabbed her hand and placed them onto the guitar strings so that she could pick or strum the strings. She managed to look deep into his eyes and told me that she could tell he was an extremely warm and earnest person, full of sincerity, humility and good will. There you go, and Chloe is not even a fan of the blues and didn’t even know much about Buddy Guy’s status. Check out the posts on Buddy Guy’s concert here.

By the way, she also told me that his hands felt very rough and that she could tell by those hands of his, that he went through lots of hardships. Yup, that right according to this portrait of Buddy Guy. She also mentioned that his strings were special and didn’t hurt her hands unlike my strings.

Anyway, I recounted this story to the owner of Memphis Music, who told me it’s usually like that. Those who don’t know are usually the lucky ones. He cited an example of how it’s always the non-guitarists who catch the picks thrown by a guitarists. And I could add my own experience when I went to Mulu, Sarawak with YY and we apparently took a picture of the biggest snail in the world, which was found only in Borneo and had never been captured by film before. We were told this by a pair of envious brothers who had went to Mulu to specifically take a photo of those snails but didn’t manage to do so before us. I remember YY telling me something to this effect about our experience “Dumb Luck”. I’ll try to post the picture of the snail below.

Back to Buddy Guy. Sadly, I lost the moment and could not record it in film. Neither did I manage to take a good clear look at his face even though he was so near me. All because I was distracted and let the moment go pass by fiddling with the camera. I wasn’t ready for the moment when it came. I didn’t even have any good shots of what was described above because I was so unfamiliar with Chloe’s camera. Also, I gave Chloe the camera earlier because she’s much better at pictures than me. My pictures have no focus. Reminded me of so many times when I lost both the experience of the moment and yet didn’t get a good picture to record the moment despite fumbling to do so.

Muser’s Birthday

Second, muser’s birthday at Oosh. Check out the precious pictures below, which I intend to post soon. It’s been quite a while since this group of guys gathered together. What a lousy friend I was. I didn’t even know it was his birthday but boy was I glad I turned up with Chloe when he invited us without telling us it was his birthday because he didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. And all the wonderful presents his new friends gave him put me to shame, when I turned up without any presents or knowledge of his birthday despite being his friend of more than a decade. I’m happy for him to know new friends who take the effort to get him special gifts.

Christopher's Birthday @ Oosh

Crime & Punishment

Third, I’m almost finishing Dostoyevesky’s Crime and Punishment. I’m two thirds through and only have about 200 more pages to go. The most difficult and cruel passage I have read is found in this novel. The description of cruelty was highly disturbing to me. Read what I’m talking about here.

New Cds
Fourth, my new cds below. I love the Andrew Hill album Dance with Death. See review here.

Fifth, check out this video of Keith Jarrett playing I Loves You Porgy, which I wrote about here.

New Visitors

Sixth, I realised I have people continuing to visit my blog and link to me despite my lack of updates for the past month! Very honoured for Governor Silver to link to me, Mr. Dante Fontana Visual Guidance Ltd to credit me here and for Raul Barcelo to leave a comment on my blog and post one of my posts on his blog! Thank you, all of you for dropping by and linking to me! Oh and thanks too to Jurgen Groiner for leaving a comment here too.

New Books

Seventh, my new books.

Chloe bought me Pascal’s Pensees today.

I also bought Paulo Coelho’s Like the Flowing River one or two weeks ago. The first book of his I read was his The Alchemist, a gift from my friend Yen.

Raymond Smullyan Puzzle

Eighth, I worked through two chapters of Smullyan’s puzzle book “The Lady or the Tiger”. This is the second time I’ve done so, with the intention of working through the whole book. Hopefully I can at least finish Chapter 3 this time round. Even though it was the second time I came across this puzzle, it still stumped me. Give the puzzle a shot, especially you puzzle lovers out there!

Three subjects – A, B, and C – were all perfect logicians. Each could instantly deduce all consequences of any set of premises. Also, each was aware that each of the others was a perfect logician. The three were shown seven stamps: two red ones, two yellow ones, and three green ones. They were then blindfolded, and a stamp was pasted on each of their foreheads; the remaining four stamps were placed in a drawer. When the blindfolds were removed, A was asked, “Do you know one color that you definitely do not have?” A replied, “No.” Then B was asked the same question and replied, “No.”

Is it possible, from this information, to deduce the color of A’s stamp, or of B’s, or of C’s?

I Can Finally Play the F#m11 Chord

Ninth, I finally managed to fret the F#m11 (From low E to high E: 2nd fret, 4th fret, 2nd fret, 2nd fret, open string, open string) chord in Tommy Emmanuel’s Stay Close to Me after my MCC suggested a fingering for me that involved barring the low F# and low E with my index finger. I wasted 6 months and almost gave up attempting to play this song!

Tea Spoon Slide Guitar Master

Tenth, last but not least, here’s a great guitar video for those who continued to drop by this site while no new content was uploaded.

Via Governor Silver.