Bren, Danny and I chose to end 2008 at the Boiler, St. James in a countdown party which I didn’t get to really enjoy; I got wasted that night, and Tampinesians Bren+Danny had to send me literally back to my doorstep before heading home.

Was really lazy, and it was hard getting myself in to blog just for the sake of  2009. The year of 2009 has been, and will still be a year of many changes. My plumpish friends went from fat to thin (some even suffer from anorexia nervosa), Rainie Yang replaced Ariel Lin as my favorite female artiste because of [不良笑花], partly due to colleagues’ influence, KTV outings with hyper colleagues who simply love to sing became a reality, and my sickening colleagues now call me 阿宅/宅男.

Ibanez AW15ECE-LG

While waiting for events & happenings to blog about, the idea of getting myself an electric-acoustic guitar was intriguing; my first guitar was only 3 months old; I don’t play the chords well; so why do I even bother.

On the 24th of Jan I went to Swee Lee and got myself an Ibanez AW15ECE-LG as my CNY prezzie.

My beginner guitar class ended shortly before the CNY period, and I’m stuck ever since with the same strumming and picking patterns which I’ve grown to be quite tired of after some time. I had to constantly find new song chords to retain the interest. Barre chords were mentioned and briefly introduced in the last lesson, a topic not so beginner-ish (at least) to me. I learnt that the usual F chord which I’ve practiced since week 2 was not the only F chord. Switching to the F Barre chord was hard; my finger strength was not there yet, but the real horror starts when I tried to do fingerpicking for the songs that I usually play. Not to mention that the strings that came shipped with the Ibanez was of a thicker string gauge then my old guitar. My fingers tire easily, I get muted sounds after few minutes of practicing Barre chords, even now. Still instilling muscle memory to chord shapes for Barre F + Bm.

Mac OS Leopard Dock for Windows

Fascinated by mac machines these days. Surfing aimlessly when I came across this website with a sleek tutorial on emulating the Leopard dock. I’ve been conscientiously using RocketDock for my shortcuts, and so it’s just a minor tweak to my current dock to get the stacking feature. For further reading please click here.

Rainie Adidas Photoshoot

楊丞琳 半熟宣言 (CD+DVD) 幸福新年庆功版

Might be a bit late, but still I got myself a copy of Rainie’s 半熟宣言 (CD+DVD) (幸福新年庆功版) during our short meet with Stan and Bren for breakfast at BK this morning. 加油 陳默默!

Key: C#
Capo 1 – Play C

Intro: |C     |G/B         |Am7    |Am7/G    |
|F      |Em Am7 |Dm7    |G7b9       |

Am7             Em                 F                     G
雨淋濕了天空 毀得很講究 你說你不懂 為何在這時牽手
Am7             Em                 F                        G               Am7
我曬干了沉默 悔得很沖動 就算這是做錯 也只是怕錯過
Em               F                       G                      Am7
在一起叫夢 分開了叫痛 是不是說 沒有做完的夢最痛
Em                      F                     Dm7           G9sus4  G7b9
迷路的后果 我能承受    這最后的出口 在愛過了才有
C                   G/B                 Am7              G
* 能不能給我一首歌的時間 緊緊的把那擁抱變成永遠
F                    Em         Dm7                   G7b9
在我的懷里你不用害怕失眠 如果你想忘記我也能失憶
C                   G/B                 Am7            G
能不能給我一首歌的時間 把故事聽到最后才說再見
F                    Em          Dm7                    G7b9      C
你送我的眼淚 讓它留在雨天 越過你劃的線 我定了勇氣 的終點
Bbsus2       A7   A7/C# Dm7       Dm7/C
你說我不該 不該 不該在這時候    說了我愛你
G/B                    Am7       Am7/G   Fmaj7 Em        Am7
要怎么證明我沒有說謊的力氣 請告訴我暫停算不算放棄
Dm7                Gsus4  G#
我只有一天的回憶 *

(Play * in C#)

Bbsus2 = x-1-2-2-1-1
G9sus4 = 3-3-3-2-x-x
G7b9 = 3-2-0-1-0-0
Gsus4 = 3-2-0-0-1-3

Was looking at some guitar related videos on YouTube when I came across 關懷方式, an evergreen song for a local movie years back. I Googled and printed out the chords. Now there’s always this term “Capo” in some of my collection of song chords. I never really paid attention to it until this particular song that I realize the need for a Capo. When played, the chords were too low for even casual singing.

“A capo tasto s a device used for shortening the strings, and hence raising the pitch, of a stringed instrument such as the guitar”

Got myself a Jim Dunlop 84FN Flat-Nickel Trigger® Capo for acoustic guitars at $21. At least nickel goes well with my guitar, haha.

Not perfect nor smooth, but with practice I hope to get better as to what I’ve posted now.

Silent but funny.

A fast recap of what I’ve watched for the past week.

Resident Evil: Degeneration

The movie stays true to the RE game series, with the timeline set after RE 2 + RE4. Never got the chance to play RE4 on my faulty PS2. Might consider getting RE4 on the PC, but I don’t really like Leon. I used Claire all the way when I played RE2.

我的億萬麵包 Love or Bread

New Taiwanese drama by Ariel lin(林依晨) and Joe Cheng(郑元畅) airing on Sundays, 4 episodes till date.

Heroes Season 2 & 3

I always liked Hayden Panettiere until I saw her Wake up call MV, but then I still liked her look in the wallpaper.

Even after when we bought our guitars I remained a game addict. The latest MMO being Perfect World International. Call me WOLS maybe, the game’s publicity did caught my attention during some of the IT shows, but I did not pay too much attention to it then as it was a Chinese-based and themed game. Along came the EN version that ran on Malaysian servers, and then came PW Intl.

I must say that I was amazed by their level of character customization because we players have the capability to virtually edit every part of the facial features for our avatar. Being a sucker for aesthetics, I spent some 2 hours on customizing my character before entering the game. The addiction lasted slightly more than a week, which I played to like 3.30 a.m. on a daily basis. Effectively saying, my newly-bought guitar sat there untouched for more than a week. The occasional chord practices were short-lived, only taking place while waiting for my notebook to boot up, and then off to Perfect World once the game client is up and running. By then our first guitar lesson was already over, and I’m not really facinated by playing the guitar. After all, the first lesson consisted of nothing but guitar basics and tablatures. That was also the time when me and Danny learned our basic chords G, Em, C and D.

We need to have our tuners ready for the 2nd lesson, and so Danny and I made a trip down Bras Basah Complex to get a better-looking guitar case and my tuner, for Danny already has one chromatic tuner. We both bought Warwick Rockbags from Swee Lee. I couldn’t recall how much the guitar cases were, but they priced at around $40++.

Being a hobby slut, Danny was ranting about how much this new hobby costed him. A quick breakdown for me it would be $130++ for my acoustic guitar+stand+default lousy case, $90 for the pop guitar course, $40++ for the Warwick Rockbag; $260 spent on something intangible at that point of time. IMO, the price to pay for a new hobby was a bit steep, because I have absolutely no idea if I could sustain the interest in it, no music background unlike Danny, plus I never pictured myself playing one before.

For our second guitar lesson, we were taught a basic 2-beat strumming pattern in the hopes that we could strum and sing along the 4-chord song, Apologise by One Republic. I’m constantly irritated by fret buzzes; I have problems with the D chord. At least the lesson was not all about chords. Chords Am and E were mentioned in lesson 2, so I suppose we need to know them by the 3rd lesson? Straight after the lesson I went home and attempted on the strum-and-sing stuff. I guess that was when my interest grew.

I listened to mostly Chinese songs, and so I could only hum along to the tunes to [Apologize]. Did a search on Chinese songs and managed to get the chords for Jay’s 晴天; a simple 4 to 5-chord song. Been practicing on the tabs and chords since then. I uninstalled and deleted Perfect World.

“DON’T COME AND TALK COCK” came the immediate unquestioned reply from Danny in one of our MSN conversations when I told him that I has deleted my games off my notebook. Nobody believed me initially, not even Brendan.

Danny’s guitar strings snapped, and so the next day I went to Yamaha and bought a pack for standby too. I did not feel comfortable with the pick I’ve chosen when I first bought the guitar. It was too rigid, and so I went back to Yamaha the following day to get 2 more different picks for experimental use. I felt more okay with 1 of the Jim Dunlop picks I’ve bought, and so I was happily strumming away even at late at night. From around 11 p.m. I would continue practicing without picks, with echoes and sound kept to minimal. By the way my fingernails are cursed. They will not thrive past 3mm in length, which makes it ideal for late night practices.

T.B.C.

Just finished watching Cyborg She, a 2008 Japanese movie written and directed by Jae-young Kwak, or better known for his Korean romantic comedy My Sassy Girl. The cast includes Haruka Ayase, who bore a very uncanny resemblance to Fukada Kyouko in the movie. Guess what? I did an image search on Google and the results page was full of her gravure pictures. Why do most of the Japanese actresses and singers have to start off their careers from Japanese swimsuit gravure models. Hamasaki Ayumi, Matsushima Nanako, and Fukada Kyouko, just to name a few. This is sad but the truth. It’s not like I’m trying to act decent and express my contempt to Japanese Gravure. Like the many other humans with XY chromosomes out there, I love Japanese Gravure models too. Its just that sometimes it can be dissapointing to see some cute new faces in a movie, and to find out later that she’s a former gravure model. Anyway, here are some of the screencaps from the movie.

During yesterday night’s link-up with FCGKFC committee members at the US Branch, local members were advised to purchase the limited edition club tshirts to keep the FCG spirit going. Made from Adidas’ ClimaCool material, the shirt aids in clocking faster running speeds and guitar learning.

Bought a flat-top (steel-string) acoustic guitar together with Danny at the basement 1 of Paradiz centre last Saturday. With no musical background + experience in playing any musical instrument, I wonder how steep my learning curve will be. Hope that the guitar lessons that we’d soon be signing up for would be of some help.

And from what it seems, the iPhone 3G would be the officially recognized phone for FCGKFC members, those who carry HTC Touch Pro™ with them shall perish.