To Be Or Not To Be

Being in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" has been such a wonderful learning experience for me. I auditioned for the show not thinking I was right for the Prince at all. I have Hossan Leong (our director and great friend) to thank for believing in me. It did take me a long while to be comfortable with this character through the rehearsal process. And sometimes "not getting it" can be very frustrating because I expect a lot from myself. Nonetheless, I believe I found him before the show opened. Is there room for improvement? Of course! There always is.

A week before the show opened, I fell ill and lost my voice. Having to use it every day didn't help the recovery. Up till this point, my voice hasn't fully recovered. It's not like I'm doing a terrible job but just that I hadn't been forgiving myself for not being in top form. But then I finally realised it was unhealthy thinking and past a certain point I chose to let it go and focus more on giving meaning to the songs than to sing it beautifully. After all, what's a show without heart?

The whole process from rehearsals to the stage has been so enriching. And the many hands that have gone into making the production possible have to be thanked, including Wild Rice founder, Ivan Heng, who's created such a wonderful and nurturing platform for local artists. Not forgetting the audience because without them and the energy they bring to the theatre, there would be no show.

A Different Sort of Farming

As of April 2008, there were about 16 million active massively multiplayer online game subscriptions according to www.mmogchart.com. (Trivia: 10 million of those subscriptions were for World of Warcraft alone. With less than 1.5 million players, RuneScape was a distant second). With such a growing population of online gamers, it's no wonder farming gold has become huge thing. A recent article in a Singaporean newspaper featured this recent trend but did a poor job at it. Not only had they failed to define the term, they cast it in negative light.

Every online community has an economy that, like in the real world, has a currency - usually in-game gold. For obvious reasons, acquiring gold is necessary for in-game survival (the more the merrier) but it's not necessarily wrong. What's wrong is if the player acquires gold through unethical means like hacking into another account, duplicating items, etc. What's wrong in addition to that, is selling the unethically acquired items for a profit.

This is where people get confused or misunderstand. I think it's perfectly okay to sell items acquired ethically for a profit. But because of these no-good doers, the term gold farming (now intrinsically associated with exploitation) was coined and among other repercussions, eBay now doesn't allow ANY virtual property auctions to be listed. Another case of greed in human nature destroying a perfectly great way to transact.

Cos really what's the harm in paying real money for some in-game gold to improve virtual game play, especially if one doesn't have the time to hunt for gold? Likewise, if a player has more time on his hands and acquires in-game gold fairly, why can't he be allowed to sell some of it to make a real profit? The time he's put in for the hard earned gold should be worth something shouldn't it? In shaping new law to govern online behaviour, let's not forget that there's more to internet crime than "farming gold". It comes in forms of bullying, harassment and discrimation just to name a few. Perhaps an equal emphasis should be placed on solving these problems as well. 

Respect For Ants

Most of what I've seen on the screen about ants have been in animated features. It started with the 1984 movie, "Gallavants". It's so ancient, I couldn't even find a clip of it on YouTube. To date, there are about four ant movies I can think of - and all in the animated form. There is no shortage of documentaries about them either. After all, ants are easy to personify and are certainly not strangers to us. Then again, how well do we know them?

A recent viewing of "Ant Bully" got me thinking about these insects. As pesky as it may be, it is no mean feat for a species to find their way into our homes and adapt to living in a new environment (this concrete jungle we've created). How many other species can claim to have done that? And they are so selfless. Despite the perils attached to scouting for food, forager ants work really hard at keeping the colony fed. They use their long thin antennae to pick up on pheromone trails left by other ants and to detect food scents, which explains why they tend to follow a certain path (often times the shortest route possible). Pheromones are also used for warning purposes. That's why other ants seem to know when one ant gets crushed. An alarm pheromone is sent out.

In many ways, ants set good examples for us. Here are some clips from documentaries about ants:

So the next time you see an ant, think twice about saying goodbye to it. Say hello. If it's on my table, I usually just blow it to the ground. And don't worry about it falling to its death. Beyond a few centimeters, ants stop accelerating. This means to say, they can fall at any height and survive. Besides, they have their skeletons on the outside of their bodies. Are you an ant convert now?

F1 Singapore Grand Prix

I can't help but be excited about the Grand Prix in Singapore even though my kind of sport involves playing at the video arcade, dancing in a club or lying by the pool (is that even physical?). It's hard not to feel the fever anyway with car models on display all over town and pictures of the competing drivers splashed all over the media. The funny thing about it being in Singapore is that speeding on the road is against the law. The rule is enforced strictly as with other rules. Remember Michael Fay or Flor Contemplacion? But here we are hosting an event that allows the fastest drivers in the world to burn our tar and occasionally even go against road markings.

Am I contradicting how I feel about the F1? No. I'm amused but I think it's really good for the country. It puts our name out there, brings in revenue for the country and lets the world see how beautiful and clean Singapore is while causing traffic congestion from all the roadblocks but still earning revenue from charging already inconvenienced commuters at ERP gantries. Okay, so there's good and bad. But if you think of it this way, it's really quite amusing no?

I was at Suntec City on the first day of the race and took pictures of the model route on display there. My friends and I also climbed to the roof (where there were trees?) and even though we couldn't see the action, we definitely heard it. Check out my first video embedded on my blog to hear the whizzing.



I rushed home and caught some more images off what was showing on television. I guess I can add race car driving to my list of favourite sport after all. Hey, I did learn something from it. If they can fix up a car in less than 5 seconds, there's no excuse for slow quick changes backstage anymore is there?

Too Many Faces

Introducing Brian d'Arcy James. Unless you are a Broadway geek like myself you probably don't know him. But you might recognise the next picture. It's Shrek! But what if I told you that's Brian as well? It's Brian as Shrek in an upcoming musical. In order for Brian to become Shrek, he has to undergo a three hour long transformation. Luckily, work is being done to shorten that timeframe. I still don't envy him though. The results are amazing but the process is tedious! Not to mention eight shows a week.

There hasn't been a transformation in Singapore theatre that has come close, but close enough to be equally impressive. Introducing Snow White, the musical pantomime (I'm the Prince with the bunny by the way). But check out the Evil Queen. She's quite gorgeous isn't she? Or should I say, isn't HE? The next picture features an upcoming Singaporean play. One of the three actors in the poster plays the Queen. Any guesses? (Click on the picture for a closer look).

Yearbookyourself.com is taking the internet by storm as profile pictures all over Facebook slowly change from colour to black and white. I visited the website and managed to produce the picture to the left - me with an afro! I'm still recognisable though. The real question is, "Can you recognise me on the right?"

If that's not confusing enough, the restaurant I had lunch at recently sure fooled me. I was thinking I'd be in for some French cuisine as I walked into "Ma Maison" at Bugis Junction. Then, as I approached, a loud resounding voice bellowed, "Konichiwa!" If I had dog ears, they would have folded instantaneously. Alas, all I could do was think to myself, "Where the heck am I?" I looked around and realised the set up was neither French nor Japanese. Luckily the food and company were great. But what I didn't get was why they wouldn't serve my ice lemon tea beverage till after my main course. It was a drink, not dessert!

All this while, I've been discussing the many faces that aren't always what they seem. To conclude, here's a face that's less misleading - the face of the moon. I caught a beautiful shot of it at Holland Village. It didn't stay unconcealed between the clouds for long, but I caught it nonetheless. The picture doesn't do the actual view justice, but unlike the other pictures, it can be taken at face value.

Candy Travels (Nothing To Do With Madonna's Tour)

I'm not one to dash to openings of new places. I have yet to visit the Southern Ridges, the 9 kilometre chain connecting four national parks in Singapore. I was also slow to visit Changi Airport's Terminal 3, but my kind secondary school friend drove me there recently. It almost felt like a new mall - clean, pretty and spacious. There was even a station where you could place paper over wooden artwork and shade the image through with a crayon. As you can see, I used more than one crayon.

I enjoyed my time there exploring shops like Candy Empire and Popeye's (first one I've seen in Singapore). I like how much more you can look into the transit area.

There were two recent McDonald's scares. One about maggots in their Curry Sauce and another about baby rats falling from the ceiling of an outlet. I thought the timing was quite uncanny because I also had my own scare with a 100 plus bottle I purchased. It's not very clear in the picture but there are black spots fused to the bottle on the inside. A series of calls led me to the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore. I didn't even know we had a division like this! Well done Singapore! (except for the fact that some people who worked there couldn't pronounce "veterinary"... tsk!)

While on the subject of food, here's introducing my Portable Show Candy Snack "Bar". It's never empty even though I share it with everyone around me when I'm in a production. And the best part is, none of the stuff in it is anything I've bought. Everything was a gift from someone else. How sweet isn't it? I feel so loved!

Joblessness Rocks!

With "The Write Stuff" being over, I'm finally having my first taste of a break in 4 months! I have slightly more than a month of a holiday and I spent the first week catching up with friends. I even had a day I proclaimed "Random Day" where I tried to do the opposite of every impulse I got. I quite enjoyed myself ending up in different places, consuming food or drink I had never tasted before and also randomly collected a group of friends along the way.

I recently rediscovered my love for the arcade. It was nice to see that some familiar favourites were still there but also great to know that I could easily pick up the new games as well. Some of these games require a lot more physical strength, like the one in the picture to the left, "Manic Panic Ghost". It's extremely fun especially when you play with a partner. With your wand in hand, you smash the screen when ghosts appear. It's a lot trickier than one would think, but after the easy-to-understand-2-minute-instructional-portion, any one can play the game. I do worry for the screen though. There's another game where you also have to hit the screen but at a distance and with balls. Up to four players can play! How fun!

My ex-school mate from New York is in town, so we've been hanging out some. We went to "Thomas and Friends Live!" because I auditioned for it once and didn't get cast and wanted to see what the actors that did get cast could do, that I couldn't. Most actors are curious this way. In any case, the actors were probably more talented than what the show demanded for. The sets were lovely! But in terms of story, I didn't find it too engaging, but perhaps it was because it was a kids' show and it does gets hard to concentrate with the kiddies running about and screaming out loud most of the time. My friend and I were mostly interested in talking to the actors to ask if they were treated well. But we didn't get to.

Then, we headed down to the launch of the Mercedes Benz CLC Sports Coupe and schmoozed with the who's who. I don't think we ended up meeting any big guns. Everyone else was just like us... poor struggling artist. We all stood around the car and could only imagine what life would be like to own it. Okay, okay, we did take it one step further. When no one was looking, we got into the car and pretended we did own it! Poor struggling artists? Who? Us?... Nah!

The World of "The Write Stuff"

The current show I'm in, "The Write Stuff" is loads of fun! We're performing 12 scripts written by 12-year-olds that are competing for the top three places. We perform a different set of plays each week but can't forget any of them because any one could end up a winner. The top three winners will be performed at the end of the show's run. It makes the whole process very exciting for us. And what's even more exciting is watching the young playwrights light up when they see their stories come to life. How many people ever get that chance anyway? The picture to the left is of Mark Wei watching "The Halloween Birthday" performed for the first time in rehearsals. (Yeah, we snack a lot while we work!)

The next cool thing I'm on to was introduced to me by my cast mates. I haven't played a role playing game (RPG) online for a long time but was recently introduced to the new table-top RPG of Dungeons and Dragons (4th edition). This is the stuff computer games are based on! I've always wanted to try my hand at this and even bought a whole set of dice but never had enough people to play with. 15 years later, the time has come! My dice can finally be initiated and I don't have to be a fake-o player anymore. I created a Tiefling character (shown in the picture) who is a Paladin. The people I play with are a lovely couple and a 9-year-old boy!

Okay! Now comes a new milestone in my life... appearing naked on national TV!! Well, I would have been completely naked if not for the pixelation. It was something I was trying to hide from everyone but there were trailers and soon the word got around. Now that I've seen the episode, where I play a scum of the earth toy boy, I guess I should take some pride in being, I think, the first naked man on local tv. This is probably the closest anyone will get to being naked on Singapore television for some time at least. For the record, I was wearing skin coloured undies!

Is Life One Big Fight?

Sometimes I wish I could use magic in life's battles. My recent battles include fraudulent charges to my US bank account (and also the telecommuter who fell asleep on me while I was reporting my case - not kidding!), an unrepaired Averatec laptop I've been trying to get the lousy company to fix for over a year (and now the warranty has expired which has caused more problems!), inaccurate changes made by an unreasonable user to the content of the Wikipedia page about me (he even managed to block me, ME, from correcting his mistakes!) and a show that had standards measured up against a very different and questionable set of principles.

I'm not sure I see it in a totally negative light even though all of it combined does get me down at times. I see it as a difference I can make in the world, for myself and for others. I guess life is never free from problems whether it comes in the form of injustice, prejudice, racism or corruption. These issues have been around throughout history and will continue to be around through different circumstances in our ever-changing world. If there aren't fighters for the right causes, the world would truly be an unpleasant place to live in. Reason has many shades. Learn to look at all of them before you choose your battles! And it's fine if you don't. The world will also benefit from peace lovers =)