Latest Impulse buy...

Ok, admittedly not strictly an impulse buy as I've been coveting them for months... but having recently become solvent again I decided a small treat was in order... soooo I now have possibly the strangest sports shoes yet. Which is saying something as my current Arnis shoes are of the 'if Nike made shoes for ninjas' style.

So I found a place in Chinatown Point which sells them (and another in Velocity in Novena).


The shoes are FiveFingers made by Vibram (who make excellent soles for walking boots). The design principle is that you're essentially going bare foot, which I'm pretty much used to after two years of wearing nothing but flip-flops. So they have a protective sole then a pretty thin breathable/anti-bacterial fabric top. I opted for the KSO variety (keep stuff out) which are a bit less minimalist, but less likely to fill with sand etc. The colours vary between mildly benign and fugly... so I chose a relatively calm pair.

My first impression was 'damn, I feel like a frickin' ninja, I want to run up walls'. (remembered gravity, resisted the temptation).

I spend the afternoon wandering around exploring the railway track near my house (its ok to play on the railway tracks when there are only 2 trains a day). Took some pictures and generally explored.

Apart from the odd strange (crazy Ang-moh) look from people I really like them. They are amazingly comfortable as you are essentially walking around barefoot. I found I was much more aware of the ground and noticed the gravel I was walking on more (but not unpleasantly). Like Nike free and other minimalist shoes the company recommend you only wear them for a few hours at a time to start with, to allow your feet to strengthen. But I didn't have any great problem/discomfort/pain after.

At some point, when I'm feeling a bit braver I'm going to start trying to learn to run bare-foot, which takes a bit more time but is much better for knees and joints etc.... will see how it goes. Will also try them for Arnis at some point, as they have an excellent feeling of control and grip.

Happy Happy Joy Joy!

A whole box of monks...

Just been to see 'Sutra' at the Esplenade theatre. It featured dance and martial arts by Shaolin Monks, who where stunningly athletic and graceful. The choreography by Belgian dancer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui was incredibly imaginative. What made it for me (and part of the reason I went) was the design by Antony Gormley, who I really like. The stage was completely empty except for 20 plain wooden boxes (about monk size, open on one side). During the show the monks, moved, flipped stacked and stood on these (often with a monk inside). The sheer number of combinations they produced with this was stunning and made it a beautiful show.... I really hope they make a DVD of this....

Along came the cleaning ninjas

This looks like sooo much fun.... if they'd told me about this at school, I'd be a window cleaner now.

It's kind of funny because they weren't just cleaning the windows, they were trying to do the whole building (or the bits they could reach), so we now have clean stripes down the walls....

on my 'to read' list....

No, you probably won't appreciate it, but what the hell.... looks like a fun book, it is apparently the original with a few insertions to the text to add zombie fun....

Departures...

Saw a great movie just before I left Sing Sing. Okuribito (Departures) won an Oscar for best foreign film this year. Its a really beautiful film about a guy who moves back to his home town and answers a misprinted job advert and lands a job as a Nokanshi, someone who prepares the body and puts it into a coffin (in front of the family). The beauty of the film is just how elegantly and sensitively they convey the profession. I was entranced by the elaborate ritual every time it was performed. The acting is superb and the observations on how the younger generation of Japanese are moving away from the country and its traditions is well done.

Whole bunch-a-movies...

13.5 hour flight, video on demand, desire not to sleep, limited tolerance for serious films. Watched:
1. Shin ge jeon (Divine Weapon)- Korean historical film, armies, gunpowder, romance
2. Body of Lies - not bad spy/war on terror movie
3. Max Payne - half baked action movie based on a much better (old) computer game
4. Yojimbo (The Bodyguard) - Fun Kurosawa movie, all swords and samuris...
5. City of Ember - Beautiful kids movie, full of cool machienry and design
6. Pilot episode of 'Burn Notice' - Excellent comedy tv series. Kind of like Nip/Tuck but with a spy stuck in Miami...

Think I've exhausted most of the trivial films on the way here, might have to watch some serious ones on the way back... damn

Working class colonialism...

Finally managed to haul my ass to Colbar this weekend. Its kind of an English bar... kind of. Its stuck completely in the middle of nowhere, off Portsdown Road. The whole road is full of black and white houses and feels very colonial and sleepy. The 'bar' is more of a shed serving English Ales and simple food, mainly English (fish and chips, bangers and mash) but also some chinese and india food. V.cheap food. An impressive array of Fullers beers (I'd never heard of Old Bob until now). Kind of cool to be sitting around rickety tables drinking ale on a tropical evening...

clocking in...

This is sooo sooo cool...
(its a clock)
(from here)

Places I'd love to inhabit...

This place looks wonderful, would probably make a great secret headquarters.....
(more pictures here)

The tedious case of Benjamin Button...

Against my better judgement I went to see The Curious case of Benjamin Button last night. My initial feeling was 'that's 3 hours of my life I'm not getting back'....

ok, I'm sure that technically it was very very clever... Brad looks very old, Brad looks a bit younger, Brad looks like Brad, Brad looks like a teenager etc....

I'm assuming that the fools who reviewed the movie were so amazed by what can be done with makeup and computers that they forgot that the movie was tedious and THREE HOURS LONG.

Ok, so Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swindon were both pretty good. But the whole film still felt like Forrest Gump... a 3 hour long Forrest Gump....which occasionally wanted to be Amelie. (and failed pretty badly).

It didn't help that while Brad did try acting pretty well, the writers had decided that not only did Benjamin curiosuly get younger instead of older but that he was also dumber than Forrest... leaving Brad alternating between looking at people charmingly and slowly drawling a line of romantic pseudo-philosophy.

And seriously, it was three hours long, and felt like four.... By the time BB was a teenager I just wanted him to dye. Especially as the story was intercut with his wife+daughter many years later (tragically being hit by huricane Katrina). I guess this kind of hit a nerve because the need to have flashbacks to the present was what really pissed me off about 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Schnindlers List'. Admitidly this time it added a whole extra (if very predictably) layer to the movie (he is, unsurprisingly, her father).

Movie critics should be drowned in their own popcorn and I want my money back....

Had a geeky macho moment at the Cu Chi tunnels. So many different guns, so much fun to be had...
(come on... when do you ever get to do this in real life)

M60 machine gun (Weapon of the American oppressor)












AK47 (weapon of the righteous freedom fighters)














The aftermath (no I didn't shoot all of these)

Wow...

(thanks Owen)

Obamaday

I like this tribute to the obama-mantra..... (via BB)

Impulse

I decided (a while ago now) to try and do something kind of creative in my spare time. As I can't paint or draw for shit, I figured I'd have a go at sculpture. Its something which I find more appealing (something about the hammers and chisels). So I took a naive approach and poured myself a big block of plaster in an old milk carton, got a cheap set of woodworking chisels and started hacking.
This is the abridged set of photos, a slightly more expansive set are here.

Micromachines

Japanese engineers are damn damn cool