A good song evokes thoughts and emotions. Stromae's latest song, Santé, certainly does that for me. It makes me thoughtful and it reminds me of a lot of things, such as the fact that is clearly an ode to the blue collar workers, a.k.a. the essential workers, the backbone of the society, low pay but indispensable. The fact that "santé" means cheers and health at the same time, to which I see it as very fitting as the world just walks out of the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. The song is also meant to cheers for the healthcare workers as well, as they were the real heros serving at the frontline during this worldwide crisis.
Stromae disappeared for so long, only to return with this masterpiece. I know Stromae since Alors On Danse, arguably his most famous song. I could still remember when Alors On Danse was first released in year 2009, my second year living in France, it was played non-stop in every club and every dance floor in France. Stromae's songs have always been very danceable hits with a heavy dose of social commentary. This time it is no difference with Santé. I learnt from the video by Adam Neely that there is so-called micro-rhythm that carries the whole song. The slightly-off-beat beat is quite genius. Once you notice it, it becomes an earworm and it somehow just makes you want to move your body, dancing to it. I also like how the actors in the music video dance awkwardly and spontaneously. It is just fitting to such an unconventional beat, a pure expression of emotion.
Very rarely a song can be earworm for me for so long. Since I first heard it in September 2019, I still play it so frequently, almost approaching an unhealthy level. This is an attempt articulate my love for this song, so that I can move on from this earworm. 芒种 (Mángzhòng), created by 音阙诗听 Youtube channel, the title of the song means one of the solar terms in the traditional Chinese calendar. There are 24 of these solar terms in the Chinese calendar, and 芒种 is the ninth one, which is the 2 weeks period in June before summer solstice. As you can expect, they actually created 24 songs that are named after these solar terms. I have listened to the others but I think none can match the quality of 芒种.
The beats is modern, nothing much spectacular about it. However the few verses with Chinese traditional musical instruments never fails to give me goosebumps. What really nails it is really the lyrics, it is just so damn poetic. It is about love, about karma, about the season like what the song is named after. Some netizens even theorize that it is actually about the love story in the famous literature of Dream of the Red Chamber. I guess I always have a soft spot for Chinese songs with a hint of old Literary Chinese poetic lyrics. Songs like Wishing We Last Forever by Faye Wong/Teresa Teng, or River South by JJ Lin have been my all time favorites and now 芒种 joins this exclusive list.
This song cannot easily be sang. The singer has to possess a certain voice quality to perfect the song. Hitting high note is a must, but also he/she must hit the high notes with a certain ease and must not be forced, as a strain in the voice must not be shown. This song is hard to perform, even the original singer may sometimes fails in live performance I saw in some videos. I think may be Teresa Teng or Faye Wong could perfect it to my caliber.
The song was a hit in China when it came out. Naturally, people made cover of it, remix, etc.. The remix that I like the so far is this remix with rap lyrics, adding another western twist to it. The remix version actually leads me to imagine what kind of creative spark if 音阙诗听 could collab with Mura Masa as he is probably my favorite remix artist.
"The Race For Space" by Public Service Broadcasting, it is an album which I highly recommend. I always find the album endlessly hopeful, something that is especially in shortage during this eventful year of 2020.
I first got the know about this musical band from a recommendation by Brady Haran during an episode of the podcast Hello Internet. The band would kinda fall into the category of hipster-ish, because I'm pretty sure that not many has ever heard about them. Although I qualify the band as hipster-ish, I think their musical style is very accessible. I would describe their songs as mostly instrumental, contain almost non-existent lyrics, and heavily on the electronic musics and drums.
"The Race For Space", the idea of the album is to capture one of the most exciting times of scientific progress in the human history - the space race. And dare I say, it succeeds in it. The excitement of that era is condensed into a 40min album. It brings the listeners back to that era surrounded by a sense of unity in humanity in face of the impossible. We may not live during that era. But through this album, we could re-live the Apollo program, Yuri Gagarin first venture into the outer space, the moon landing, etc.. Through this album, we could feel the joy from the success, as well as the angst from the countless failures.
The album is very complete, in the sense that from the start to the end, it is an experience. All the songs follow the chronological order of the actual events. So it only makes sense to listen to this album in that order and that order only. If I have to pick a favorite song, it got to be "The Other Side". Unlike the most famous song in this album - Go!, this one won't get you all pumped up and all motivated for a morning run. "The Other Side" is about taking a leap of faith, going into unknown, and hope for the best. The actual voice recording of the event mixed into the song, the anxiety of waiting in silence, the triumph in the end, and especially the connotation of the going into the other side and might not come back ever again, the thought of it just gives me goosebumps. It is a very atmospheric song, and I just love it.
"When the emotion becomes too strong for speech, you sing; when it becomes too strong for song, you dance."
-- Proverb --
Some songs are just not the same without the dance. This is the case for the current trending song of Sam Smith, "How do you sleep?". I had listened to it many many times through Hitz FM on radio and my reaction was always just "meh". But I accidentally stumbled upon the MV of the song for the first time a few days ago, needless to say I have gained a fresh new appreciation for the song.
The highlight of "How do you sleep?" is the dance choreography in the MV. At first I was intrigued and at the same time, mildly shocked by the strange clothing, the excessive hip swinging, and the stereotypical feminine dance moves performed by all-men dance crew. However on second viewing, it started to grow on me. And before you know it, I have watched the MV a few hundreds times.
All I can feel in the dance of this song is purely unapologetic sincerity, to the point that it is hypnotic to watch. Even though the dance moves are what normally categorized as feminine, by no mean that it is easy to perform. They perfect every motion with such strength and vigor that I just find it so cool. Simply put, I wish I could dance like that. This song is seriously challenging the stereotype!
A song, any song, when played at the right moment can be truly magical. In a previous blog about Memories, I wrote: "Often, the most intense, the most important, emotional memories are not photographed... Some of my memories, ... are captured through songs." Die Fledermaus Overture by Johann Strauss II is one of these songs.
Listening to this piece by Johann is not only able to bring back my memory, instead, just like Auguste Gusteau first tastes the ratatouille by Remy, it instantly teleports me back to the Vienna State Opera where I first heard this song. The grandeur of the opera, the majestic entrance hallway, the live orchestra that was better than any Dolby surround sound, and there I was, at the top storey, miles away from the stage, and worrying how underdress and out of place I was. If you are wondering whether you've known this place, yes of course, Vienna State Opera is where the assassination scene in MI5: Ghost Protocol is shot.
Die Fledermaus, also known as The Bat, by Johann Strauss II is an operetta combining ballet and orchestra. There is no dialogue, just an amalgamation of classical music and body movement. That was the reason why I chose to watch this show among others during the time I was in Vienna. That time I was traveling solo from Bratislava to Prague while stopping by Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich. I knew I wanted to watch a classical show in Vienna just like any tourist would, but I knew nothing on the list of choices. The only one that didn't involve knowing the language was Die Fledermaus.
So I went into the show with no knowledge and no expectation. But once the overture hit, I was stunned, goosebumps to say the least. Time passes, and if you would have asked me about the story now, what is it about, I totally forget already. I don't think I can say that I understand the whole story either. What's left of the show is just a feel, more precisely a Disney feel. To describe the show, it would be wise to compare it to a classic Disney film like Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty. Now I can see where these classic Disney films gets inspiration from.
What else is left in me of the show is the overture song. Probably the setting, or probably I heard it live, the biased me still think this is one of the best classical musics ever. In fact, listening to this song, it not only teleports me back to the Vienna time, it also reminds me of the amusement rides in Genting Highland during those rare times my parents brought me there when I was small. Rare because we were poor. I got older now and I now understand the sacrifice of parenthood. We were poor but they still squeezed out whatever they had to bring my siblings and me there.
Amoi² aims to be the next famous female pop group in the Asia-Pacific area. Started as a small project between RedPeople and Namewee, set up to create a Malaysian version (Amoi² - Little Apple) of the Chinese song "Little Apple" (筷子兄弟 - 小苹果). The Malaysian version has gained quite some popularity and also some criticisms from the internet like "apple is not a local fruit of Malaysia" and "Malaysia is a tropical country and the season spring is nonexistent". Here I just would like to remind Namewee that he himself had also made the same criticism on Malaysian Chinese New Year (CNY) songs which keep cheering for the arrival of spring (2010 CNY song by Namewee). And I quote : "...什么冬天春天，你把我当作 kongkam？! 这里除了下雨，我每天热到 bueh tahan。你还来跟我乱乱唱，我听了西北赌懒!" (...What winter what spring, you think I'm an idiot?! Except some occasional rain, I just can't stand the everyday heat. And here you still sing about this bullshit, it just makes me so furious!).
I know that those criticisms are just some trolls and not constructive. Personally, I like all the songs made and sang by Namewee himself, but I have mixed feelings about the songs he made for RedPeople and Amoi²'s Little Apple is one of them. Perhaps RedPeople to me just seem like a bunch of teenagers looking for fame. At the same time, fame may just be a word so demonized by today's society. May be the search for fame is just a part of human nature as Tessa Violet put it. Anyway, based on the popularity of the song, they decided to add new members into the group through a series of selections of participants from both Malaysia and Taiwan. And now, it has developed into sort of a TV reality show (Amoi² Contest). With a bit of scandal and drama, it is not bad at all as a reality show, I only wish each episode could be longer.
Talking about pop groups, nobody in the world can beat the South Koreans right now. They are producing groups and pumping out songs faster than a factory can produce cars. I already long lost count of the K-pop groups after Super Juniors and Girls' Generation. Before them, I only knew that the Koreans were god-like in StarCraft and they had Samsung. After the K-pop boom since 2009/10, especially after the Gangnam Style, K-pop has become an unstoppable force.
But why it has to be groups and not individuals? And why the groups have to be so large? The first thing that comes into mind is Barney's Cheerleader effect. In the TV series How I Met Your Mother, the character Barney Stinson came up with this term which says we might find the individuals more attractive when they are in a group. What surprises me is that there are actually experts like Walker-Vul 2014 and Yuko Ojiro 2015, doing scientific studies on the subject but so far they show no convincing results. Seriously though, I never take any studies in the field of psychology seriously. The so called the "half life of knowledge" in psychology is only five years. It always seems to me so easy to publish scientific papers in psychology, to a point that it is just unfair. The titles of papers in psychology already have the edge. If I publish a paper entitled "The approximate resolution of the radiative transfer equation in a multi-layered diffusive biological medium", only a selective niche of scientists would be interested. But a paper with a title "Cheerleader effect" and quotes Barney Stinson in the introduction, whoever has watched HIMYM is instantly hooked and already know what the paper is all about.
Of course, it is not only the cheerleader effect that comes into play. On the same line with cheerleader effect, some say that the group also serves to cover up the general lack of talent of its members (Quora : Why are K-pop groups so large?). Some also say every member has his or her own unique personality and beauty that attracts different group of audience and so in a group, they can engross a bigger number of audience. That I tend to agree. When I was the right age as the target audience of female teenage groups, I use to follow the Taiwanese group Hey Girl. The group was the result of the TV show, Blackie's Teenage Club. I can't say I like the group or their songs per se, and honestly, I found some members of the group quite annoying. But still I used to watch the show quite often. The reason got to be to see one of its member - Xiao Xun (小薰) on screen. I used to find myself skipping through most of the runtime of the show but sat down attentively whenever she got the screentime.
Nowadays, I am not even sure whether the argument of uniqueness of each member still applies to the female K-pop groups. Often with the rumour of plastic surgery involved, their looks are as derivative as their songs. Westerners sometimes have problem telling Asian faces apart, just as Asians have problem telling Western faces apart, it is not racist, it is totally normal. But seriously though, even I as an Asian am having trouble telling each member in a K-pop group apart. And finally, of course, there is also the criticism of using not-so-subtle sex appeal among K-pop groups nowadays. But that I guess is just a technique that seems to work so well in any pop music. The most recent examples have to be Kanye West's Famous and Nicki Minaj's Anaconda.
Finally, there is the question why Namewee is interested in creating a female pop group. Even though Namewee can now be considered a pop singer and pop songs producer, his songs still preserve either the sarcastic and humourous quality, or close-to-heart emotions. His songs are considered as pop songs but I would say they are out-of-norm type of popular. That's why I like his songs. But now he wants to create a pop group full of cliché of a pop group? Plus since the market is so saturated by the Koreans, even I have serious doubt on the success of the emerging group, and he is still putting effort into it? My guess is, it is one of his experiments, in order to become a well rounded music producer.
The hipster part of me kinda looks down on his choice to create a typical female pop group. Hipsters have always being known to complain about anything mainstream and popular. The same goes for pop songs. They have been criticized to be too similar to one another. It seems as if music producers are getting lazy and giving up at creating diversity. I especially like how Vsauce in the episode Juvenoia explains why it has becoming the case : "Perhaps pop music producers are simply getting better at scratching the specific itch they are challenged to scratch." It may seem like there is a fixed formula to create pop songs, and may be there is also a fixed formula to create a pop group. I know Namewee can be quirky and defiant in his music, that I have no doubt. But to be well rounded, he needs to prove he can follow the norm too. I think Namewee is doing exact that. He is learning and practicing to scratch the itch.
I think no one should listen to just one genre of music. Especially those who have internet access, we have no excuse to not explore something outside of pop music. Recently, I was so into Slipknot after watching one of the Finebros' reaction video. Heavy metal is often related to violence, noise and devil. Me personally, I find it quite cathartic. I always want to go to crazy heavy metal concert and experience what a mosh pit is like while I am still young. Anyway after a week of heavy listening, I can kinda feel some irreversible damage to my eardrum though.
I do listen to a lot of different genres. But certainly not all of them because there are just too many different genres. I listen to for example, a bit of classical, a bit of electronic, a bit of indie, a bit of emo love songs and many more that I don't really know how to categorize. No matter how much I love to explore and try to understand the appeal of a certain genre, I always find myself back to one genre -- New Age. You can call it my default genre. It had heavily influenced my teenage years. During those years, I listened to a lot of songs of this genre. Kitaro, Yanni, Deep Forest, Enya, especially Enya. Don't watch her music videos though. I find most of them are trying too hard to be poetic.
I once wrote how music can conserve memories. Enya's songs for me, they always brings me back to the days in my secondary school years when I used to wake up super early to contemplate Gunung Jerai at the balcony. While Kitaro, more specifically Koi, always reminds me of the first time listen to Kitaro's performance live. That was during the weekend in the middle of SPM (Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia) and my mom and I went to Genting Highland for his concert anyway. Listening to Koi live was one of those rare moments when good music gives me goosebumps. I still remember vividly that late night after the concert, we were hungry and running low on money. We had to chew on hard cold cup noodles because I misjudged the temperature of the hot water. It sounds terrible but it is one sweet memory.
Ever since I watched Amélie, I have always been a big fan of Yann Tiersen. Amélie always has a special place in my heart. With washout colours, the entire movie seems like a collection of old photos. It is artsy, bizarre, surreal, and lovely at the same time. It sprinkles magic on Paris and makes me want to visit Paris again and again. It doesn't present Paris as a one dimensional romantic place, a place where love is always in the air. Instead, it brings audiences' attention to the seemingly mundane and renders it glamourous.
To match such a peculiar movie, making the soundtrack is a difficult task. Yann Tiersen pull it off very well. The soundtrack of Amélie is what I would say to be perfect. It has all the qualities of the storyline, a slight touch of melancholy is also added into it. This movie and its soundtrack were the drive and the starting point for me to learn piano. They even give me the impulse to buy an accordion and learn it everytime I watch Amélie or listen to the soundtrack.
Now, I have almost learnt every songs in the Amélie soundtrack on piano. From experience, I can say that Yann's music isn't hard to remember all the notes since it is always quite repetitive. But to play those songs well, it demands long practice. For exemple, Comptine d'un aurte été, I learnt it a few years ago but still can't get the final part right. I can play it without omit a note but the emphasis on some notes is always off for me since I tend to slam on the notes when there are many eigth or sixteenth notes in a row.
Besides Amélie soundtrack, my second favorite album from Yann is La Traversée. Actually I have so many favorites songs of his. Rue des Cascades, Le Matin, Atlantique Nord, just to name a few. Recently I just found out a fan-made video for the song Les Deux Pianos. I find it so damn beautiful. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iazYkQmscY4)
Les Claypool is so far the best bassist I know. But beware of Les though, because as well as he can play the bass, he is definitely a weird dude. Weird is his style, and his songs with his band Primus are even weirder. His skill on the bass is off the charts. And this following video with him and Buckethead jamming, just blew my mind.
They both are like the left and right sides of the human brain, or Yin and Yang. Les with a weird mask providing the order, the rhythmic awesome bass line; and Buckethead with a emotionless mask providing the imaginative jamming with his guitar. And the rest of the band provides the playground for both of them to play on.
I knew Les by one of his songs, Tommy The Cat. And I was amazed by the bass line, especially the bass solo at the 3.06 minute mark.
Even though Les is good, but I still prefer Flea from RHCP as my all time favorite bassist. Les is just too weird for me sometimes. Plus Flea's trademark is shirtless while playing bass, and shirtless is something I do very often. My preference doesn't mean who is better than who, because they are equally skillful in my opinion. They are both masters of bass who I look up to. I prefer Flea simply because his playing style matches my personality better. And here is the video of Flea and Chad jamming. Equally insane!
If you don't understand how awesome these musicians are, it is probably because you don't play these instruments. In my opinion, one has to know how to play one instrument or at least learn the basics, in order to understand the difficulty that lies behind. Same goes with sports.
How we remember things is very interesting. "Somehow when we are telling our memories to someone else, we are changing them at the same time", someone told me this, and it is indeed quite true. While telling the stories, sometimes we may create some fake memories, to make the story more interesting to the audiences or to cover the ugly truth. The more we tell the story, eventually we will convince ourselves that the fake one is real, and finally replace the reality.
Not long ago, by chance, I discovered a youtube channel of a blindman via Vsause. He shares his experiences of blindness, and my mind was blown first time watching his videos. A good book is a page-turner, then his channel is a video-turners. And here is one of his videos talking about his dreams.
People say photo is the best way to conserve memories. After watching the video, I guess it works only for sighted-people. Plus people tend to post, to bring out the biggest smile on their faces, or to pretend to be a person they want to be. So it doesn't really represent quite right the moment when the photo is taken. Often, the most intense, the most important, emotional memories are not photographed.
In the world nowadays, we are so bounded by visual-based stuffs, that we often forget the other 4 senses. Here is a Vsauce video about how many photos have been taken.
Then I realized, some of my memories, good or bad, but surely intense, are captured through songs. And hearing these songs can always bring up the corresponding memories.
..........................................
- Children by Robert Miles
Me sitting at the back of my dad's car, my dad is driving, my whole family is on the way to the Penang island. When I was small, we rarely go to the island. Our home is on the mainland Penang, and going to island always means one thing, road trip!
- Hey Ma by Soler
The TV was playing this song, when I was about to leave home to study in France. What a coincidence I thought. It is particularly meaningful to me, beacuse I am quite closed to my mom. She is like a friend to me.
- Stranger by Soler
One of the songs in my phone. This song always takes me back to old days when I was in a TGV from Toulouse to Valence, and the coastline of Montpellier flying pass me. I was reminding myself to appreciate this relationship.
It made me sad, and still make me sad.
- Home by Michael Buble
Two of my friends and I were in the bus from Rome Ciampino airport to Rome Fiumicino airport. There was a 12-hour delay on our flight. In the end we were taken to the Fiumicino for departure because the "problem" in Ciampino airport couldn't be fixed and was closed down. When taking the transiting bus, it was a total chaos, since everybody's flight was delayed. Unluckily, my ex didn't manage to get into the same bus with us.
I was sitting in the bus with two of them behind me. I was so afraid of get lost of sight of her and worrying like hell, while this song was played in the bus. And I had never felt so worried about one person in my life.
- Dandelion's Promise by Jay Chou
It was the summer of 2010. My ex was trying to learn the piano version of the song. She said she was going to finish learning it by the time I came back from the Italy backpacking trip. I took the train to Milan to start my trip but I returned to Toulouse straight away, on that same day. I felt lost and realized I really miss her. In the return train, light-hearted was the feeling. I reached at midnight. When I opened the door, she was just there infront of the keyboard, learning the song.
- Fall for you by Secondhand Grenade
It reminds of London. During the trip to London, this song was the morning alarm of one of my friends. I remember I was really irritated by the alarm because my friend could continue sleeping with the alarm. I can't and I had to wake up and shut it down myself. At the end of the trip, everyone in the group remembered the song as the theme song of the trip.
- Pourquoi tu pleures? by Madame Kay
It reminds me of the brief one month period in Intec, Shah Alam.
- Trois ans et demi d'amour by Patrick Bruel
It reminds me of 3 months stay in Royan.
And last but not least, Coldplay's songs. I can't remember exactly which Coldplay's songs simply because I was not very familiar with Coldplay that time. It was played when me and my friends were in a car, going back to safety after two-day lost in the mountains. We all were exhausted but felt secured and lucky to be able to live through the odds.
...........................................
I notice that smell can do the same too. Too bad I am not good enough in describing smells. But there is an author I know who can, Patrick Süskind, in his novel, "Perfume : The Story of a Murderer". I tried to read the french version once, but didn't finish. For me, he is really good in describing the smells but a bit too elaborated, in a sense that, too hard for me to digest all those details. There is a film adaptation in english also. The ending is simply WTF!!!
So, may be we should start conserving precious memories through other 4 senses, rather than photos or videos.
I heard the french version first in 2008, then the chinese version in 2012. It doesn't matter whether who came out with this melody first. Great song is worth to be sang again and again.
I don't know whether is there any other version of this song in other language. I found only 4 in different language :
The Brothers Four - 500 miles (english)
Richard Anthony - Et j'entends siffler le train (french)
Peter Beil - Und dein zug fahrt durch die nacht (german)
After my uncle's death, only an old guitar and a bass were what he left to us, nothing much. His ex-wife took his guitar and my mom kept the bass. Since nobody in my family was into music, my mom was going to sell it. She found some buyers but no one offered a good price for it. Soon, my father said why don't we keep it since it was the only thing he left after all.
The bass was sitting idly in my house for almost 3 years before i picked it up again last month. It is still in very good condition. Luckily my mom didn't sell it. The guitar was doing the same during this 3 years. Nobody had played them since my uncle's death. So i called his ex-wife, my aunt, for the guitar. When i saw her carrying the guitar to me, i almost cried. The guitar was inside a black rubbish bag, and covered with a thick layer of dust. I am so sad that a musical instrument is treated as such. Well it wasn't the only bad thing, due to its age and lack of maintenance, the guitar is severely damaged and couldn't be repaired anymore. There is only one place left for the guitar - the rubbish bin. I felt so sad, as if the guitar was a patient in deep suffering and had no chance to heal again, and i was the doctor and i had to end his life for good, when i threw the guitar.
Recently, i had a dream. I rarely remember my dreams, and even rarer, i had this dream for 2 times. It was about my uncle. The dream always started like this, i was waiting for something or somebody, obviously waiting for my uncle, because after he appeared, i would follow him. He was wearing a grey turtleneck and a thick grey coat, super smart. After that, i followed him into a building which looked like a shopping mall. On the way, a lot of people were greeting to my uncle, and most of them were dressing strangely, by my guess, i think they are some sort of fashion designers. Then it stopped here and i would wake up from the dream.
My mom said it was a sign, showing my uncle was really willing to let me play the bass. Well, having the same dream twice is quite strange. Hopefully, it is like what my mom said. I feel deeply honored to take on the bass. I will take really good care of it. ^^
In a restaurant on top of Komtar, i was on my stepsister's wedding. A familiar voice was floating in the air. One has to know, on a Chinese wedding, those who are dare enough to go on stage and sing are usually not very good in singing, they always are some old people, drunk and doing some no-senses on the stage. Their voice are always terrible, but nobody would listen to them anyway, while the people below the stage are busy 'yam seng' -ing. Due to social pressure, i always put a smile on my face while i am so damn bored deep inside.
However it was not the case this time. It was a rather a good voice. My attention was immediately drew to the stage. The singer was my uncle! I am amazed, truly amazed. I'd known he was in a band, he was a bassist, but i'd never known he could sing very well. I can't remember anymore what song he was singing, but i really enjoyed the moment.
He died in 2009, while i was in France. He was playing with his band in Langkawi that night. He friends said he went to the resting room, after they finished performing. He was discovered dead in that room the next morning. Doctor said it was a cardiac attack. My mom was so sad when she called me and told me the news. She didn't cry but i could sense her sadness in her voice, which made me feel so guilty, because i was rather indifferent than sad for the lost. So guilty that i felt i must do something to commemorate him. I forced myself to be vegetarian for a week.
My uncle was the only sibling of my mom, it is totally understandable that my mom was particularly sad. Unlike my mom, i wasn't very attached to him. In fact, he used to be a mystery to me. I only knew him from what my mom told me. I was never sure about what he did for living. He sometimes was selling water filters, sometimes selling insurance, sometimes helping his friend taking care of an underground casino with some commission. In the matter of fact, i can say his full time job was a musician. He played in band of four, in various bars and pubs.
He is a very kind and generous person. May be too kind and too generous. Too generous because whenever he got money, he would spend all the money on his entourages and his friends, rather than saving some for his own uses. From what i remember, he always invited me and my family for some decent meals, and he always bought things for us whenever he paid us a visit. Too kind because he believed in people so easily, that he got cheated so many times by his so-called 'friends'.
My mom always complained to me about him. Often my mom scolded him for buying us all those useless stuffs, told him to save the money for his own uses, and find a better job than playing in a band. It was hard to be a full time musician during his time. His job wasn't stable at all. It varied through out the year. Sometimes he would be jobless for quite a long time. Without income and control on expenses, it was a really hard time during the job-drought. Most probably, it was also the main reason of his divorce a few years before his death.
I am so sorry, that i always looked him down when he was alive. I wished i could tell him how much i enjoyed his singing on that wedding night. At midst the noise of glasses clinging each other and people's laugh, i wished i could tell him, i was listening.
My uncle on the left, and Lim Guan Eng on the right. This photo is at least 4 years old, Lim Guan Eng was much thinner that time.
My uncle and his band, the Blue Star band. He had been in a few different bands before.
