the worst day sailing still beats the best day at work

i've got my supplementary nano1001 exam tomorrow. possibly the most disorganized course i've ever done. as such i'm missing the sail melbourne regatta this week.

i have, however, made it onto one of the banners. sin 185328, to leeward and ahead. haha! getting swept up in the action.

for now, erwin schrodinger, louis de broglie, werner heisenberg... lend me your genius for the next 24 hours. cheers.

sin.

heading out to the race course.

photo credit: chung pei ming

(i think. might have been serena.)

photo credit: shane hayes our sports physio.

hydrofoiling lasers!

this one by brett.

racing pictures by mr. john heng of ssc.

there

time flies and i'm back in sydney revising for next week's exams, with the first one in only 3 day's time. summer courses have started - a semester's work condensed into 8 weeks with a 2 week christmas break.

it's taken a while but i've fallen in love with the slow-burning high violet. on the first few listens it hardly grabbed attention as it didn't seem to have very much going for it, just another collection of dour rock songs with little spark, nothing spectacular. now it seems as if they've captured the essence of each song, with an ebb and flow that transports you from start to finish. the drum riffs especially strike me, simple yet sophisticated.

so it's a shame that i decided not to pick up the national tickets while they were still up for grabs. but of course. both january sydney shows are sold out.

some of the saddest lines i've come across there.

terrible love:

but i

won't follow you 

into the rabbit hole

i said i would but then i saw

your shiver bones

they didn't want

me to

i am however going to see the wonderful violin looping virtuoso owen pallett on 19 jan as part of the sydney festival. there's just the one song that i NEED to hear him play.

many lives ->49 mp (for superb audio quality)

many lives ->49 mp (interspersed with bach partita)

and some radiohead, just to brighten up your day, you know?

there there:

in pitch dark

i go walking in your landscape

broken branches

trip me as i speak

just cause you feel it

doesn't mean it's there

slow down to speed up

that's the big aim for the next 2 weeks. in my short time in the laser standard i seem to have accumulated quite a record of untimely and silly mistakes that i don't recall making even in my early optimist days. it will be a challenge in the smaller fleets but that's only good for me.

in perth we had a whale of a time in winds frequently upwards of 18 knots. had initial misgivings sailing the ol' lumbering free willie (pictured) but in the end i quite enjoyed myself. i made 5 of the 7 weekend races look exceptionally hard for reasons already mentioned above, after which i didn't think i was in the top 3. but when the sea breeze finally came in i took 2 bullets which felt good.

10,000 hours before anyone can become seriously good, according to malcolm gladwell. which paraphrases edison when he said genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. by a very generous estimate, i can complete those hours in another 2 years, according to brett and i. hmm what's happening in 2 years time?

but for now... clean, clean racing. no mistakes.

keep it simple, stupid. keep it honest. 

(can't get any more honest than that.)

laura marling!

hope in the air

alas, i cannot swim (live)

elliott smith!

georgia, georgia

first timer

angel in the snow

chronic ills

ok so i am feeling a little down now.

at least i have badminton to look forward to in shanwei, or so i am told. just don't mention that to the press.

why is it not worth it to reveal the hand you've been dealt too early on in the game. we talk and yet we hide in silence. we are honest and yet we do not speak the truth. we are 'close' and yet..

we think, and we read into our actions and words, and we think even more, and... and?

black refuge

josé gonzález's revived project junip play the metro theatre on jan 8 (on the same night as the national, which has sold out). 

i'd see the national but not for more than a 100 aud. and junip is pretty special too.

"Je suis un être humain, bon sang!! Ma vie a de la valeur!!"

so things are looking up. 

last monday brett towed eliz and i out past the heads hoping to get some quality downwind time. just like the previous day, the wind was a let-down, but in return;

i got my first ever humpback sighting!

it was extraordinary - a pair of inquisitive whales came along while we had stopped for a break. they circled us for about 15 minutes, popping up right alongside us, sticking its tail and flipper out of the water, even poking its nose out at one point. wow!

at some point during the week i found out that the nonsense-lyric song in my head was not from an old motorola razr ad as i had first thought, but rather from an old heineken ad. it's a fun song (from fifa 06 too) and a good ad. thanks sara.

i also learned to play that stevie wonder clavinet riff in 'superstition'.

i also learned that thelonious monk played ping pong!

and finally, came across peter finch's 'mad as hell' diatribe which was sampled in a maybeshewill song. what a powerful piece of acting.

i leave on 21st nov for an ag training camp in perth with the rest of the singapore team. a few days to refresh in sg, and then its off to shanwei for the big games. 

after that finishes its straight back to sydney for summer courses!

drill powered bike

i was doing research on motor windings in electric drills when i came across this gem.

how wonderful!

dream sketch, spoilt

music is music as devices are kisses is everything.

not too shabby

if you raise your expectations too high you are bound to be disappointed.

careful there. steady...

unpoetic

in a way, in poetry, you try and convey lots of meaning using just a few words. 

rollercoaster -

1. to go up and down like a roller coaster; rise and fall: a narrow road roller-coastering around the mountain; a lightboat roller-coastering over the waves.

2. to experience a period of prosperity, happiness, security, or the like, followed by a contrasting period of economic depression, despair, or the like; the economy was roller-coastering throughout most of the decade. 

which i thought was apt for my last post.

you find the opposite in maths definitions. whole paragraphs of words to describe so little!

Theorem: If S is a finite, non-empty set of vectors in a vector space V, then span(S) is a subspace of V. Further, span(S) is the smallest subspace containing S (in the sense that span(S) is a subspace of every subspace which contains S).

SOS.

rollercoaster ride

the world is a complicated place, hobbes

i've been guitar-less for a month and a week. finally back in singapore...

whenever i sit down with a guitar for the first time in a long while i start out with some old radiohead love songs, those released before they ditched their guitars from kid a onwards.

you. true love waits. love the keyboard line in that one. 

street spirit, which isn't a love song.

once again, had a tough worlds regatta. placing 72nd, 19th in silver fleet is respectable, and an improvement over last year's result, but still chalking up too many costly mistakes, many of them easily avoidable. 

on the plus side, my first ever youtube video reached a 1,000 hits before the end of the regatta, quite an achievement if i may say so myself. 

65daysofstatic have released a new album that i'm not a fan of. disappointed. i think they were around their peak playing primer. such a great variety of sounds in the opening 3-4 minutes.

whenever it seems that way, i take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner.

never let go of your mainsheet

still can't fathom how this actually happened. like a helicopter just dropped a laser into the sea.



clay johnson sailing footage.

laser sailing downwind

had a week of stiff breezes here in hayling island! 20 knots and an outgoing tide meant the sea really built up on some of the days. hard work both upwind and downwind but an exhilarating ride downhill! lots of capsizes, lost a bit of hearing in the left ear so i went to see a gp earlier today to get it cleared out...

i think i would really really hate to lose my sense of hearing. then i wouldn't get to appreciate nikolai lugansky's piano flourishes in rachmaninoff's paganini rhapsody, like i did at the royal albert hall in london last week. bbc prom 44. which was absolutely magnificent.

now take some time to appreciate this. thanks brett!

psych

i'm now spending a few days to do a bit of exploring in london before heading to hayling island on the 19th to start a week's worth of training before my laser standard worlds begin. 

i've got mixed feelings about how i sailed my skandia sail for gold regatta. placed pretty much middle of a strong fleet. thought i sailed well in patches, but when i lost places it was always costly and i couldn't limit the damage.

in particular 3 races could be considered good - an 11th on the first day when i sailed 2 patient beats, a 30th on the 4th day when i was caught out on the wrong side on the 1st beat but sailed positively to make boats on the remaining legs, and a 2nd on the last day where i sailed a perfect first beat to lead at the top mark.

i also thought i sailed well on both my first beats on the fresh 2nd day, before my inability to keep the rig the right way up downwind cancelled my efforts out. 

however i also felt i had quite some bad luck along the way. i felt i was doing well in the first 10 minutes of the race, and would find myself in the top bunch on either the left or the right of the course, only to see boats from the opposite side of the course cross me at the top mark. at least i can be happy with my starts.

also need many more hours in 15 knots+ downhill.

on my last race day i made the painful decision to not fly into germany to see vienna teng live. the costs were simply looking in excess of 600 sgd for train, plane, concert tickets and accommodation expenses. disappointed. 

as sort of a substitute i'm going to see the psychedelic sleepy sun play tonight, a band i'd never heard of before yesterday. i like what i hear though. psyched!

on my stroll through the city today i happened across a) church of scientology london b) st. paul's cathedral c) tate modern art museum. 

i'll upgrade to two wheels tomorrow.

race day -1

i saw an old beaten up reliant robin parked near the weymouth central library the other day. quite COOL. it had a fire extinguisher in it. i wonder if it gets used often.

we start racing tomorrow, on national day.

Blues Run The Game

Catch a boat to England, baby,
Maybe to Spain.
Wherever I have been,
Wherever I've been and gone,
Wherever I have gone,
The blues are just the same.

Living is a gamble, baby,
Loving's much the same.
Wherever I have played,
Wherever I've thrown them dice,
Wherever I have played,
The blues have run the game.

weymouth

i am now in top-gear country. where it rains, where there are road works, where people take trains, and there are train stations with more that 20 platforms!

weird and wonderful

gee my life is so damn complicated right now. i wish i could press a button and have everything arranged nicely for me. 

it's complicated because 2 august i fly for london via singapore and dubai, train in to weymouth. sail the skandia sail for gold regatta.

then sail laser world championships in hayling island, along the coast east of weymouth. 

all in all 5 weeks, by the time i'm back in aussie (12 sep) mid-sem break will have just finished and i will be 21.

on top of that this frequent flying is likely to become a regular feature of my uni life, with more trips to come, including asian games possibly clashing with exams all over again.

so i'm applying for reduced study load and trying to arrange with coordinators and lecturers for me to have some degree of flexibility with my assessments and assignments etc. i might have to do summer courses it seems.

i'm glad i went skiing last weekend. it was a blast. now i have to deal with what is to happen next. things are complicated enough.

centennial park playlist

menomena - weird

rachael yamagata - even so

canon blue - ennui

ray lamontagne - winter birds

no, really - molten

steve grossman - inner circle

m. ward - fisher of men

exams finished today. had a 4 hour long holiday, then back to classes.

professional kite flyer

trivia

'new zealand could feasibly finish as the only unbeaten side at the 2010 world cup, should the winner of this clash between netherlands and uruguay go on to lose the final.'

haha!

series

of words that get me excited:

buckminsterfullerene
the sea and cake
jabulani
snow
my manic and i
nicolas mahut and john isner
mahjong
thelonious monk
lunch
skandia sail for gold
good will hunting
ivan basso
verdi requiem

so many sports coinciding with my exams.

maths is easy.

green n' gold

earlier this month, naph went down to darling harbour to support germany, even with all the aussies there.

here i am, in kiel, germany, cheering on the socceroos in their unlikely bid to qualify through the group stages. talk about being deep in enemy territory. 

brett (holman) scored a screamer but it was not enough to see them through. comes back to that opening, painful 4-0 defeat in the end.

don't rely on anyone.

new news

hello.

been back in sydney for a week. heading off for kiel week on tuesday. sail for 10 days... back to sydney for winter vacation. likely to sit for my supplementary exams in mid july. 

had my first paper yesterday, which i expectedly struggled through. i'll be happy to pass i think.

i'll probably go for a skiing trip end of july. should be fun.

14 june - tom o'halloran trio

25 july - grizzly bear

31 july - midlake

2 august - two door cinema club

15 august - vienna teng

14 october - rufus wainwright

schiavone became the first italian to win at roland garros. ivan basso won the giro. 

singapore won the table tennis world championships, overthrowing china.

south africa scored the first goal of the 2010 world cup against mexico but conceded an equaliser 10 minutes before the end.

i'm going to take a nap.

lift

because you don't ever want to take headers. sail lifts!

some of brett's pictures from the wombeyan cycling adventure with the ssf gang. great views.

i don't talk much about cycling on this site, but it is one of my greater joys. whether it's a leisurely cruise along the countryside, or the adrenaline rush going round a steep bend. very satisfying.

. . .

i'm tentatively doing sail for gold regatta in weymouth from 6-14 august. found out a couple of days ago that vienna teng is playing in germany on the night of 15th august. very tempted to pop over to and see her play, especially seeing that she won't be doing much touring next year. now that's exciting news.

tortoise was magnificent last night. masterclass drumming from brian chase (of yeah yeah yeahs) to open proceedings, yet tortoise themselves have like 3 drummers, all of them stellar. 

usyd's manning bar's a good venue too. and they're attracting better gigs than the roundhouse @unsw. man.

did anybody realise what's wrong with this comic?

i understand the feeling.

never one to reside within the confines of a musical box

this opening groove has been swirling about my musical box lately.

you've got to dig it to dig it, you dig?

momentum

when there's nothing to blog about, i don't blog. when there's too many things to blog about... i don't know where to start and i end up not blogging either. it's probably good for my time management anyway.

vic and sl are in town for a 2 week training camp. 4-day cycling trip coming up next weekend.

and then i'll be flying back to sg on 19 may to join the team flying to holland for the delta lloyd regatta. back to sg for the s'pore laser trophy from 2-6 june, qualification event for asian games later this year. by the time i return to sydney classes will have ended and study break will have just begun.

in other words, now is the time to start doing proper work. force times distance in the direction of the force.

how to give a good lecture 1011

1. keep your students awake. this can be accomplished in a number of ways - audience participation, engaging slides, doing a dance...

2. be confident. appear as if you know what you're doing. would be a lot easier if you did indeed know what you were doing.

3. be clear and concise. don't spend 5 minutes meandering about before getting to the point. 

4. raise thought provoking questions. make students look beyond the 5-mark exam question and see the bigger picture.

5. be passionate, have a good sense of humour, have fun!

this was written sort of in admiration for my physics lecturer for the first 6 weeks, joe wolfe, who was the most animated lecturer i have yet seen. although it was hard to learn from his lectures because of the speed with which he went through examples, he taught with such great energy and passion, conducting 2 minute experiments and putting on a delightful show for us students. sadly the lecturer for the following weeks is as dull as ditchwater. he's not the only one either.

sailing at forster's

travelled 4 hours north of sydney to wallis lake to sail a university fleet racing/social regatta from 8-10 april. photos courtesy of brett goodall.

liz and i also sailed this formula 16 'viper' catamaran with double trapeze, capsized it without knowing how to upright it... had to be rescued by kingsley, pretty unbecoming of us laser sailors!

cheers!

shiok

Originally a Malay exclamation, but now a universal Singaporean expression denoting extreme pleasure or the highest quality.

1. “This char kway teow is damn shiok, man!”

2. “I ate the char kway teow until damn shiok.”

taken from the coxford singlish dictionary. but doesn't that make it seem like the only thing that deserves to be labelled as shiok is char kway teow?

awesome

it's a strange feeling to be among people of extraordinary creative talent and/or who possess extraordinary vision. not the same feeling as when you stand among people of authority, people of supreme intelligence or great athletes even. among the latter you feel appreciation, admiration perhaps, and maybe you'd go wow, this guy is amazing. but when you're sharing the same space as creative geniuses, somehow the atmosphere in the room is transformed, and you get the feeling that something very special is happening right here, right now, and you're there to experience it first hand, and you don't really want it to end any time soon. priceless.

thoughts, 3 days after attending jan utzon's speech about his dad, Jørn, at the unsw scientia building. thanks kwong for calling me along.

songs on repeat

beirut - after the curtain

brad mehldau trio - dream sketch

jimi hendrix - little wing

beirut - scenic world (lon gisland ep)

clann zú - there will be no morning copy

simon & garfunkel - anji

so much for going to sleep early tonight

craziest day ever. 

"new monster avenue".

shadows on the broad lawn,

canopy of trees.

sometime after midnight,

the ground is gonna freeze.

birds in the frosty air,

what are they doing there?

greenhouse full of butcher's broom,

breezes at my back

some time before the sun comes up,

the earth is gonna crack.

I look down at my hands,

like they were mirrors.

fresh coffee at sunrise,

warm my lips against the cup.

been waiting such a long time now,

my number's finally coming up.

all the neighbors come on out

to their front porches,

waving torches.

find this song seems to hint at something much more.

moving into a strange new and delightful world. 

but not everyone is welcome.

not everything is welcome.

 the mountain goats are playing at the manning bar on april 13th.

meanwhile i'm catching the dirty projectors tomorrow. should be fun. acapella indie rock.

the best is yet to be.

i meant to speak about this sooner, but been a bit worn out from being my sporty, competitive self. in the last week i've played table tennis, lawn bowling, cricket, volleyball, soccer, gone kayaking, running and cycling, and even a little bit of frisbee. everything but sailing it would seem.

but today is a big day. been thinking about this day for a long time. for the last two years i've been venturing out and actively finding things to do, to fill my time. i found new ways to distract myself. two years of zero studying... do i still have it in me to sit in a lecture theatre, listen, take notes, understand what's going on, not fall asleep - in short, learn? is there still that classically chinese singaporean mugger hiding somewhere inside me.

so i've just returned to my college from my first 2 lectures, on algebra and calculus respectively. confidence booster for me... i followed pretty easily, the concepts came back to memory... somehow maths is just comforting to me. complex, imaginary numbers, absolute values... i've been away for a while, but it wasn't long before i was right at home.

so the next concern is whether i am in the right course - whether i need this to refresh my memory or whether i could perhaps proceed to the next level or something. do i need this, um, revision?

chemistry lecture at 1pm.

today is acs founder's day.

in days of yore, from western shores, oldham dauntless hero came...

change is disturbing.

damn you, nostalgia.



this song will be in my head as i look out the a380 window.

are you excited about sydney?

carpe diem.

good people

i've seen a variety of personalities in the last two weeks. this sort of thing does interest me, how people change with time, how people don't change with time, how people interact with each other, seeing who gets along with who, even how people can connect despite differences in backgrounds and huge age gaps. 

at the ssr i met many old familiar faces, several new ones, and on the one night i saw images that disturbed me.

on friday morning i cycled down changi coastal road and popped in to csc to have a look at juno, and surprise, saw uncle edwin perched on his red sailboat. it was nice talking dreams. in the evening i dined with ssf people. saturday was dawn's birthday with more sailors. 

and then interestingly enough following that i drove over to fernhill to see my primary 6 classmates. funny that i should attend a p6 reunion before any sec 4 or an ib class reunion (what's up with that?). 9 years ago that i've seen these guys, and one realises that people haven't changed much at all, that the characters lounging about in that living room are still warmly familiar. in fact of the guys in the room i think i have perhaps changed the most. 

last night was the first time that the unlikeliest quartet met up together for tennis and dinner. i don't know what sort of hidden forces bring these people together, but hey its great.

here's a sugary cheesy pop song full of innocence, with a skewed beat.

stars - 14 forever

Ten thousand drunken kids in a field can't be wrong

The song must be beautiful or they wouldn't sing along

And if sometimes the kids all seem a little sad, 

it's 'cause they're saying goodbye to the youth they think they had

I see it in your eyes, you're sick of me lying

I want to tell the truth but I'm afraid that you'll leave

I sing like a child, to keep me from dying

I'm 14 forever, if I make you believe

I'm 14 forever, if I make you believe

I'm 14 forever, if I make you believe

tomorrow it's back to the usual acyc kakis. wednesday it's sunset way. 

I hear it in your voice, you're tired of the song now

and deep inside your mind you hear a song of your own

But keep me beside you 'cause it's been too long now

I'm 14 forever, so don't leave me alone

I'm 14 forever, so don't leave me alone

I'm 14 forever, so don't leave me alone

I'm 14 forever

fantasies

i can't get over the girl i like, so get up and make me a cup of tea

i know.

i'll say, "hullo, i don't know what to say, so i asked dylan, and he said to say something normal, like HAVE A BLESSED WEEK TOO, and i was like that's so lame, i should say something interesting, so yeah, i just don't want it to be awkward."

how did some guy in the recital studio audience come up with the perfect title for this post?

cat power and patrick watson and juno and all these thoughts that have been swirling about in my head.

i was blown away by patrick watson's gig tonight. awesome. i don't possess enough superlatives. i can, however, try to describe it.

first time i've heard a gig at the recital studio, it was sublime. delicate, intimate, beautiful, hushed, haunting, heavenly, utterly mesmerising story telling at times... then descending into chaos, crashing, devastating.

sweet ballads interspersed with wacky sounds (e-bowing a cymbal, a musical saw, a vocoder, a megaphone, loops, cowbells... the banjo seemed perfectly ordinary in comparison). 

outstanding musicianship all round, on piano, percussion, bass and lead guitar. the guitarist didn't have me convinced at first but then he started using the whammy bar and jamming and i was awestruck. 

and then they performed an impromptu song using lyrics thrown in by the audience, 'who's line is it anyway' style, sang an extended 'man under the sea', signed my shirt and left me a happy fanboy sad that kwong ming didn't make it yet glad to have shufen to share my joy with instead.

cat power put on an impressive performance in their own right, and i still can't believe they managed to sell out the esplanade concert hall so easily. chan marshall has a voice unlike any other i've heard, enchanting in its own way. she has her own eccentric, idiosyncratic style of delivery, her meandering vocals matching her feline postures as she limbered across the stage. 

her blues band was solid as well. restrained and minimal when called for, letting chan take centrestage, full of oomph when their turn came to bring the house down. thoroughly enjoyable.

next week we are gonna do something stupid and sail juno 20+km down to nongsa point in batam and race the singapore straits regatta with a hastily pieced together crew ill-prepared for 20 knots of monsoon breeze. sounds like good fun already.

last week i did something stupid and stayed behind to try my luck. awkward is a wonderful word to describe how it went. if the reward i get for my efforts is a lovely smile and a twinkle of the eye, well... it could have been better, but i think i can live with that.

it was amazingly easy to organise a surprise 21st birthday for my best bud over the weekend. a few messages exchanged, an event page put up on facebook, and several invites later everything is more or less settled. disconcertingly simple.

one flew over the cuckoo's nest

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,

Apple seed and apple thorn,

Wire, briar, limber lock,

Three geese in a flock,

One flew East

One flew West

And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

 

unacceptable: coming into the last downwind of the day in 9th place, pretty good shape, capsizing 200m out from the bottom mark, capsizing whilst gybing trying to get back to the mark, capsizing while gybing round the mark because i didn't commit fully. 13 boats, countless boatlengths, and ultimately a wasted race.

 

somehow, in the heat of the moment, i was raging and screaming, but an hour later i mellowed. people come by and ask 'so how'd you go' and i can't put on my 'pissed off' facade forever, so i smile weakly and converse. which sort of cheered me up. even when i want to be angry at myself.

 

lastly i feel daunted by how far i have to go. how many more hours i need in a decent weight of breeze. i sailed more than a hundred days in 2009 - imagine how many days i have to go out there and suffer the pain through the wind and waves before i can be competitive. 

 

it's more my downwind that needs work than my upwind, i feel. i can sort of see the way forward for my upwind speed - get heavier, stronger, fitter, coordinate weight, sheet and steering through the waves. that i can picture, that i can comprehend. downwind i feel so out of sorts, dictated by my overloaded rig, unsteady, rolling uncontrollably. i can't really see what it is that i should be doing differently. that scares me.

 

one time too many - phoenix.