England Soccer Team

England are out. What to do? I was very disappointed. I didn't think it would happen.

Sven Goran Eriksson is definitely one of the top 5 managers of England. Alf Ramsey was the greatest, and there are other names like Bobby Robson and Terry Venables. England reached the quarter finals of every major tournament under Eriksson, but I would say that the World Cup 06 was the low point of his reign.

People questioned his decision to stick with David Beckham, but I don't understand that. It contradicts other things that have been said about England's World Cup, like how he was playing badly and yet had a hand in most of the goals England scored. Most you can say was that he was not up to the standards that was set 5 years ago.

It is true that Beckham should not have been the England captain. The armband should have been given to John Terry or Steven Gerrard.

When Eriksson came in, he had "the left side problem". I don't really remember how he solved that problem but it was a good England side.

The manner of England's exit left much to be desired in WC 2002. If they had beaten Brazil, who knows what might have happened? But of course beating Brazil is always a big big "if", evne though Brazil was down to 10 men. But they would have faced Turkey in the semi finals, England would have beaten them, and got into the finals vs Germany.

(You could say the same thing at Euro 96, where they lost to Germany on penalties after a very close match. I can still remember Gasgoigne, playing the best tournament of his life, making a lunge for the ball at the goalmouth - and failing to connect. After Germany, it would have been the Czechs, and it would have been a real prospect to beat them and claim their first Euro title.)

That team deserved to go to the finals. It was extremely fortunate that so many of the big powers - France, Argentina, Italy, Portugal, Spain, fell by the wayside so early. But they had to get out of their group of death, with Nigeria, Sweden and Argentina, and they did well to do so.

In the 2006 world cup, England had an easier trip. They had an easier group (it was Trinidad, Sweden and Paraguay). They then faced Ecuador which was not to be underestimated. And then went out to Portugal.

Eriksson had been criticised for his unimaginativeness. Perhaps, or perhaps his options were really limited. At the club level, players like Gerrard, Lampard, Rooney and Terry are the equal of Beckham. The defence of Cole, Terry, Ferdinand and Neville was solid. But outside of this small first team there were few pickings. Aaron Lennon and Stewart Downing are not Ryan Giggs and Cristiano Ronaldo. Theo Walcott was a big mistake. His strikers were all unfit.

McLaren's big problem was the Gerrard and Lampard axis. Eriksson couldn't solve that, and apparently the solution was Barry and Gerrard. Heskey and Owen are still a great pair, but he lost them.

Gerrard did speak up for the coach, but when players have to speak up for the coach, it's always suspect.

I'm wondering why nobody blames anything on Venables. The 3-5-2 that was against Croatia was probably Venables' idea, and it didn't succeed. It is possible that he had a hand in the Owen -Heskey pairing, as well as the Barry - Gerrard pairing. Not so sure about the Richards - Phillips pairing on the right.

I don't know enough about the England team to be criticising his selections for the Croatia match. But I'll have to ask questions about why Wayne Bridge was played instead of Ashley Cole. As for having Scott Carson in goal, it was a mistake. In crunch matches, you want experienced hands for the job. On one hand you could say this vindicates his standing by Robinson all along, but there could have been 2 other solutions. One was to have replaced Robinson with Carson earlier on, so that he would have had more experience going into the Croatia match. Maybe against smaller teams. The other solution was David James.

Of course when people talk about matches, there is only team selection. They wouldn't talk about training and tactics. How you organise your team, and how you plan things. Teams who are good at passing have a good understanding about how their team mates are going to make runs. Teams that are good at defending understand their opponents well.

McLaren should go. (ed: this was written just before he got sacked). It doesn't matter how people plead for him to stay. After Keegan left, Eriksson was able to make a great impression almost immediately. It isn't really disruptive when you change a coach after 2 years. His selections were even criticised in public by his opponent coaches, like Slaven Bilic turned into salivating Bilic after hearing about the 3-5-2 formation which nobody uses anymore. Or how Guus Hiddink was talking about how he focused Russia's attacks on England's weak flank.

But the prerequisite for him to go is that you have to have a good coach waiting in the wings. Somebody who is willing to coach England. Now England's personal problems are not merely about players, they are also about coaches.

Sure, Sven Goran Eriksson is a top coach, and he won the Serie A with Lazio, for the first time in eons. But he was bankrolled by an exceptionally generous chairman, the most generous one until Abramovich came along. He made some small Swedish and Portugese sides play above themselves in Europe. But he's not in the same class as Hiddink, Wenger, Scolari, Ferguson, Lippi, Rechagel. The press against him was so bad that it took him 1 year to get another job with Man City, where he is currently enjoying a rehabilitation of his reputation.

Who are the good English coaches? None of the big 4 in the premiership are coached by Englishmen. Sam Allardyce has yet to prove himself at Newcastle, but he's a contender if he does. Martin O'Neill is Northern Irish. Mark Hughes is Welsh. David Moyes is Scottish. Alan Curbishley did well with Charlton, and avoided relgation with West Ham, but I don't see him being a top manager. In any case, both Curbishley and Allardyce are better than McLaren.

As for why Harry Redknapp has never been considered is something I don't completely understand. After all, he spotted and developed a lot of people who are in the England squad, like Joe Cole, Ferdinand, Defoe, Lampard. And Michael Carrick, what's happened to him now?

Steve Coppell had a wonderful last 2 seasons, but England would be a big big step up for him. Paul Jewell is a real prospect for the future, but we have to see what he's capable of achieving with a top club.

As for foreigners, maybe the renumeration is generous, a few million pounds a year. But let's face it, the England job is fairly unattractive. You have people with massive expectations. You have rich and spoilt players who won't necessarily do their best for you. You have the media watching your every move. You have a really small talent pool to work with. If you're foreigner there will be people who will be willing to see you trip and fall. I think Eriksson did pretty OK under the circumstances.

After seeing what happened to Eriksson, which foreigner is going to want the England job? Scolari backed out. Hiddink made some excuse about the FA not giving him sufficient respect. Mourinho ruled himself out of the job in the near future. Can you imagine a Carlos Ancelotti? An Otto Rechaghel?

That's why the job attracts people like Kevin Keegan, Graham Taylor and Steve McLaren who are otherwise mediocre managers, but would gladly do the England job because it's a job above their station, something that normally people of their capability would not be able to touch.

As for talent, maybe England does have young talent. Just because people do well in the U 21s it doesn't mean that they'll always shine. I can name you Peter Taylor, Stuart Pearce and David Platt as coaches who did well for U21s but were rubbish elsewhere. You have youngsters like Gabriel Agbonlahor, Theo Walcott and James Milner coming through, but it remains to be seen whether they will blossom at a more senior level, and in any case they aren't ready now.

Edit: since this long spiel was written, Fabio Capello, Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho have declared themselves in the running (even if van Gaal quickly clarified that he would only available in 2 years' time - duh. Probably his chairman told him to shut up.) That's encouraging, even though none of them are synonymous with attractive football. (Capello, after delivering Real Madrid's first trophies in 3-4 years, was sacked for playing ugly football.) Van Gaal is abrasive and not successful at the national level. Mourinho for all his achievements is unproven because, like Eriksson who won the Serie A with a blank check, he won his EPL titles with a blank check. Benitez is trying to get into a war of words with the Liverpool owners so that he can get fired? I think that of the big 4 clubs in EPL, Liverpool is the most stressful because they have never won the EPL. Next comes Chelsea because Avram Grant has to fill in Mourinho's shoes. Ferguson and Wenger have to screw it up really big time in order to be fired.

So maybe what I said about the England manager being an unwanted job is wrong.

Projects part 1

Around the time when I was pri 6 I decided that I would engineer a series of pranks that would be the crowning achievement of my then young life. I can remember 3 of them.

You may not laugh a lot about them now but I have to honestly tell you that they were downright hilarious in the day. The first prank came about when I noticed that some of the magazines I came across had advertisements for a new (this was almost 20 years ago) product called tampons. Then they had this cut out which said, "send me a free sample!"

So I usually took my friends' names and feminised them, then put in their addresses. Justin would become Justina. Paul would become Pauline. Lincoln would become Lynn. Then I mailed them out and watched the fun pile up.

Didn't get a reaction, and so I tried again. Until I got a call from Justin who told me, "I have here on the table in front of me 3 packages wrapped in pink. Now my older sister thinks that this is great that she has something to use but I am hopping mad. If this happens again I'm reporting you to the principal."

Well guess it had to end but I had great fun.

Lying in bed at night I had to think about my next plan. This involved sending fake radio dedications to other people. It got boring after a while. Some people told me they heard the radio dedications on the air but I never managed to catch something that I sent out. It was time for my third and crowning achievement which would be discussed in a blog post coming your way soon.

Crouch and Owen

Yesterday was talking to water tap and I passed a remark that certain operations are like Michael Owen and others are like Peter Crouch and when you play or analyse them you got to do it differently. Which is a motherhood statement of course but that remark gave him an idea. When we joined the football game one of us had to join one side each, and then he decided I would be Owen and he, Crouch. I knew it was a joke, of course, since I was taller and he, shorter. So one team thought they knew what they were getting and they asked for Owen (because water tap is a much better footie player than myself) and har har har they got me instead.

I wonder why they went for Owen because that side was already stronger. Well crap for them, then.

Eight

1. I was born on the 8th day of the month.

2. I feel like I was born on the 8th day. If you think that God made the world in 7 days, then I arrived after all the action is done. By the mid 70s, Singapore was firmly on the path to being an Asian "tiger". It had completed the transition from post-war, post colonial third world country to Highly Regimented And Anal Retentive Economic Power.

3. I thought of myself as an octopus. I nicknamed myself octopus once.

4. I used to stay in Lorong 8. (Toa Payoh, not Geylang.)

5. I had another nickname with the number 8 in it.

6. I have 8 uncles and aunts*.

7. On my mother's side of the family there are 8 grandchildren. On my father's side of the family there are 8 grandchildren, of whom I am the eldest.*

8. 8 is considered a lucky number because it sounds like "fa". "Fa" is in my father's name.



* My grandmother, finding herself unable to raise all her children, gave 2 away. They're not counted here. I have met 1 of them, "the missing aunt", before.

Crouching Tiger Fucking Rabbit

I'm referring of course to "Lust, Caution", directed by Lee Ang who also did Wo Hu Cang Long.

They cut the motherfucking film. It's 9 mins out of almost 3 hours. But your penis is also a few grams out of a 60-70 kg. does it mean that it's alright to cut it off?

http://book.sina.com.cn/books/2006-07-20/1423203180.shtml

Apparently Edward Yang (RIP) wanted to make the film and asked Zhang Ailing (RIP) about it. He was thinking of casting Leslie Cheung (RIP) in it. Well we know it's not ever going to happen, everyone's dead now.

Well there's been a fair amount of bad press about the censorship. And it was just as well that they released the R(A) version last week. The ST reviewer even wrote in the papers that the movie isn't worth half of what it would have been without the sex scenes. Then later on I read this newspaper article about some distributor or cinema manager saying "I'm surprised at the overwhelming response for this movie." I think that watching "Lust Caution" with cuts is like watching a porn movie acted by eunuchs. Only a small part is cut off but it makes all the difference.

It was of course sold out by the time I got to the box office half an hour before the start of the show. However I never panic when these things happen, especially when I'm alone. It just so happened that the cinema I went to has all the theatres in the same place, so I could just buy a ticket for another movie and go watch "Lust Caution" anyway. So this may be possible for places like Vivocity and Marina, whereas in places like Plaza sing or Cathay Orchard you will have to know in advance whether the show you want to watch or the one you will sneak into are in the same half of the theatre complex. And impossible for other places like Shaw where there is an usher for every theatre.

So I bought a ticket for "Lions for Lambs" and went and watched "Lust Caution" instead.

A great part of the reason for me to watch this movie is that Tang Wei is such a babe. And it's a shame that she's wearing a cheongsam so much of the time that obscures the view of what I'm sure are a pair of shapely long legs but of course there's the story as well.

The story doesn't drag. I think there are a few reviews who say so but I think that most of the parts were necessary.

Spoilers from now on.

There was this part where she almost lured Tony Leung into the apartment and the students were about to pounce on him. Then they told her, after discussing it in her absence, that she had to seduce and fuck Tony Leung as part of their plan to lure him out and assassinate him. That night, one of the comrades, the only one not a virgin, teaches her how to fuck. Then in the morning, she finds out that Tony Leung and his family are moving out of town. What a bummer - lost her virginity for nothing. I had to laugh.

There was also a murder committed by the "comrades" that was terrifying precisely because these guys didn't quite know how to kill a person properly. Leave you to imagine the gory details yourself.

There was this part where Tan Wei complains to her resistance commanders about how she was opening her hole to him and graphically describing the details of the sexual encounters to him, because he had always been coy about talking about what she was supposed to do. He was pissed off and left in a huff but when the thought came to my mind that he just went somewhere convenient to jack off immediately I burst out laughing. Then there was this rape scene cum (no pun intended) body cavity search when they were having sex for the first time. Then at the end, she is splayed out on the bed, and there's a quaint smile on her face: is she happy that he's taking the bait, or does she actually enjoy being roughed up like that? There was also the perversity of him inviting her to the geisha quarters, only to have her sing a Chinese folk song for him in there.

Why did he buy her the ring? Was it a trap to make her reveal her real intentions, or was he really falling in love? (If you ask me I'd say it was the latter.) Then why was she so touched by the ring that she gave him a chance to escape his assassination? When she could have just kept the ring and run away? Why didn't she swallow the poison pill when she was cornered by the roadblock?

And the guy who was the ringleader, why is he so wooden? Compared to the wizened and tortured Tony Leung, he seems almost like a spoilt brat who's in this for his abstract ideals. Why are the Japs drinking their lives away every night? Because the Americans are going to fuck them upside down and they know it.

There she was, wandering around on stage, only to be called up to join her comrades on the circle seats. The thing that deserves to be emphasised is this: yes, some of her happiest times were mingling with her comrades while they were freshmen in the U. Yes, she accepted this mission because of the loyalty she felt towards them. But after Hong Kong she was never again shown in the same room as them, even though her cell leader had told her that they would meet up again. And their positions in that scene depict that: her, lost on the stage, in the spotlight in them middle of the action wondering what the fuck she was going to do next, and her comrades in the back, plotting her next move, and sometimes even treating her like a pawn. And that's the basic situation: the only person she's really intimate with is Tony Leung.

Well, good film. Maybe even excellent. Not great though. Or maybe I'm just jaded.

Gangrene

A short update on my wound. I had been treating it with dettol and wrapping it with cotton wool for the first few days. (I didn’t have gauze bandages). And I knew that the cotton wool was sticking to the wound, and I knew that I had to cut it when I took it off. So when after a few days, when the wound seemed to dry up, I stopped putting on the dressing. However something wasn’t right: why is my wound yellow?

I went exercising this week, shortened my run to 5km, although I think I would eventually manage my normal 10k. Then I went for my first swim in months, which means that I would have been soaking that wound there for 1 hour. I thought, I guess there’s a bit of cotton wool there from 1 week ago, so let’s see about that. To my surprise, I managed to rip off a whole layer of cotton wool. It wasn’t pure cotton wool, but it had fused with the clotted blood. And I guess the cotton wool was choking the whole thing, and responsible for there being a small quantity of sticky pus around that area. Underneath was some fresh pinkish flesh which fortunately grew underneath that muck. But no wonder there's so much pus. No wonder it hurt when I try to move my leg. (cotton wool impeding the motion of the knee and scraping the wound.)

Well not too bad. But imagine – I could have been fostering the growth of gangrene all tha time. Yuck.

Next day at work, I make the colossal mistake of not protecting the wound while wearing long pants over it. By the evening the constant abrasion of cotton / polyester pants over raw newly grown flesh has become a sensation somewhat akin to fingernails on the chalkboard. I was forced to walk home with 1 leg of my pants rolled up, inviting stares from all the people I pass. (Note to self: it seems very difficult for people to stare at a person without that person noticing. I will keep this in mind next time a lady with big breasts walks by.) What a pain it was.

Aftershave

Now you ladies wouldn't know what a bloody pain in the ass it is to have to shave every day. But even then I cheat and shave every other day, allowing myself a 5 o'clock shadow every 2 days, maybe a beard on the weekends. Then there are the fortunate people who can get away with shaving every other week... they don't know how lucky they are. In fact I was complaining about this to my grandmother. I've never seen my grandfather because he died before I was born, and I'm curious to know why both my father and I have fast growing beards. So I asked her if she had an affair with an Indian, but I never got a straight answer from her about that, funny thing.

Once you get a cut, it's crap for you, because you know that in 24 hours (or 48, depending on which schedule you're using) you're going to run the razor over that cut again, and it's going to be a stupid wound for the rest of your life: open, close, open, close. Which is why I'm glad they have aftershave. That bottom of your face has to be well moisturised, well taken care of. And it's good because it just washes away those small cuts that you get.

In fact I always think about this disaster movie filmed by those cute little bacteria colonies that grow on my neck, how they would found the colony, grow, multiply, become civilised, start walking on, if not 2 feet, then 2 blobs. There would be the stratification of society, discovery of agriculture, religion, formation of great cities, great irrigation projects, masterpieces of bacteria art. The bacterian Renaissance. The bacteria religion, where they worship the Great Germ in the sky. The Reformation. The Enlightenment. The Industrial revolution.

Then one dab of my aftershave, and they're all screaming bloody murder, their cell walls bursting in horrified bacterial agony, their mitochrondria exploding. The apocalypse, armageddon. Death, destruction, pestilence.

Gilette, the best a man can get.

Cross Cultural communication

This is most interesting.

Here is a video clip that caused a great big furore on the internet.



You can see the reactions of the Singaporeans from the comments, enough said. We're all very upset that these guys ran away without paying, and sat 3 people on trishaws that were only designed for 2. Singaporeans were upset because:

1. These people were rowdy, drunk and by sitting 3 to a trishaw, were bullying a helpless old man who couldn't keep up with them.

2. They called it a taxi when it was clear to us that trishaws are never used as transportation in Singapore, but novelty rides for tourists.

3. They didn't pay up for the trishaw ride.

The comments got so vociferous that it even made it to the newspapers, like the front page of the New Paper. And I personally wanted them to die of AIDS.

Then there was a big discussion on the internet, and much to my surprise, many of the British posters argued that:

1. The trishaw driver was providing a service. If the trishaw drivers in UK are too slow, they could opt not to pay up.

2. The old man was looking at the tourist's wallets and was being an asshole.

3. The old man shouldn't have agreed to take on the 3 people.

Well I thought at first that it was a deliberate ploy on their part to treat the trishaw as a form of transportation, a totally false argument in Singapore's context. But some of their arguments were so consistent with each other that I begun wondering if there wasn't some big misunderstanding at work. And I remember one of the 3 guys saying that he didn't really think it was that big a deal, and that the comments were an "eye opener". (He didn't say he was upset at the comments but it was an "eye opener"). What's going on?

I came to realise that:

1. Trishaws are actually used in London, and are used for transportation!
Now this is surprising because you couldn't imagine that happening here with our wide boulevards. But London is full of nooks and crannies because it's an ancient city, imagine that the whole city looked like our Arab St - a bit like what London is like. This makes it more ideal for trishaws to be used. They can also weave around traffic and are actually faster than cars in a traffic jam.

2. In London, trishaws are driven by fit young people. Because they are a form of transportation, the value of the ride is in getting from point A to point B.

3. Trishaws in London can seat 3 passengers. And therefore they weren't completely wrong in thinking that it was the same here.

Whereas in Singapore:

1. Trishaws are a symbol of our national past. The old man represents the coolie, a potent symbol of Singapore's early days. They are very closely associated with the suffering of our forefathers.

2. Ang mohs are always the bad guys in movies.

3. You treat old people with respect.

4. The only reason why old people drive trishaws is that they're meant to be joyrides, and that there is absolutely no time pressure on them to get your tourist around from point A to B. It is hard work, but not backbreaking work, and may not even be as bad as being a hawker's assistant.

Now if you saw it from our point of view, these 3 factors are explosive. There is racism, xenophobia, lack of respect for the elderly, nationalism, all sorts of emotions involved. The rage at the inequality in the world.

But if you see it from the other perspective, it could be a genuine misunderstanding. Sure, those guys were very obnoxious, and made a lot of snide remarks about how crappy and slow the trishaw was. But if you're drunk and loaded you could make the mistake of thinking that the trishaw is a form of transport. We treat the old with respect but why are so many old people still working and not on welfare?

And if you see the end of the video, they hopped onto a cab. This doesn't forgive them for not paying, but it supports the view that what they really wanted was to get to another place. What was the distance? They started at the junction of River Valley and Hill St, which is where the trishaw riders wait. Then they got off where? Before Funan centre. They had travelled the length of the MICA building. The brits were right. It was barely 100m. $10 is a little expensive for 100m. Would you be reluctant to pay up? I know I would. When they took out the wallet, were they taunting him, or were they seriously considering how much to pay?

The old man was upset. He said that his average takings are $30 a night and he probably had a right to feel robbed. But he didn't think that much about it later on and he was probably puzzled about why this video clip raised so much media attention. And when you know the facts, the only real thing he had to complain about was not being paid.

They were laughing, sure. But when you're drunk, anything is funny. And if you know all the facts, maybe it's a little funny.

That guy Bo Davis wanted to say was that a big misunderstanding had taken place. It's much less sinful if it was a misunderstanding.

I don't want to defend them too much because they're plainly assholes. But I think that the legions of Singaporeans who flamed them on the net did so based on first impressions and disregarding a lot of plausible alternative explanations for some of the things they said.

There's this other thing you have to consider. What is the vocation of a man? Why would an old and weak person drive a trishaw around when there are taxis and buses which do the job better? There are only 3 reasons: transport, entertainment (as in the novelty of the experience of riding an old quaint method of transport) and begging (as in the old woman selling you overpriced tissues is not really retail, but it's more respectable than begging). Let's not contemplate the transportation (because that's ridiculous) or the begging (because that's disrespectful). Therefore his real job is to be an entertainer and a tour guide.

And what's an entertainer and a tour guide to do but make tourists happy? If a tourist out for a good time and comes across a beggar, what's he to do? If he keeps on making merry he's insensitive. If he wants to be respectful, he's just spoilt his mood. Now laughing and being merry is of course different from mocking a person in his face, but the line is very fuzzy. In that video, I couldn't definitely say it was the latter and not the former. And with the old man casting a disapproving eye on the rowdy youngsters and grouchily intoning "very happy, very happy ah..." I'm sorry but there is something genuinely funny about it.

What is a guy like that doing at Clarke Quay? But he has every right to be at Clarke Quay. In physical resemblance, he looks perfectly the part of those coolies who used to carry rice sacks at Clarke Quay 50 years ago. But now it's a watering hole. Big big difference. I think this encounter has to be seen in its big context, which is the clash of cultures between the rice sack Clarke Quay and the watering hole Clarke Quay.

I've seen boorish behaviour as bad as this, in the old town square of Prague, where a gang of yobs were shouting out "USA! USA!" I was embarrassed to have been living in the United aSSholes of America for 4 years. Then this other time when some yankees were taunting some old busker, asking him if he knew how to play Charlie Parker (for non-Jazz folks, Charlie Parker was an immature fool who make a total mess of his life, died young, and was also the greatest jazz musician of all time.) In the end, they didn't pay up, and the busker angrily launched into an impromptu rendition of ABBA's "Money Money Money".

Shit like that happens all over the world, I guess.

Bulletin

I'm motherfucking pissed off because while running around McRitchie (in preparation for the half marathon) I fell. It was near the SICC golf course, on the reservoir bank, I stepped too near the edge of the jogging path, my right foot went through, and my left leg hit the floor but not before my knees scraping the gravel. Now I got this bloody patch roughly the size of your palm (not including the fingers). Blood everywhere. Grazes on my left hand. Mostly shallow grazes but 1 place where a itsy bitsy chunk of flesh was ripped out. Kept on running, I guess. Had it cleaned at the Ranger station. Ran the rest of the way back to make it 1 lap, but I forgoed the extra 5km. (Was supposed to increase the mileage but I guess I didn't.)

How the fuck am I supposed to train this one last month with a grazed knee? How am I going to make it in time for the fucking marathon? Goddamn.

There's this bottle of dettol in my house. I looked at the date: manufactured Feb 98, expired Feb 01. What the hell I'll use it. Got to go around hopping these few days.

Have discovered, over the last few days, that the pus from a wound and the pus from your pee sai smell very similar.

(Sorry about the language. I'm trying to make this an R rated blog instead of a sissy NC17 it is right now.)

Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

I heard another super watered down funk tune and after a bit of straining I recognised it as "Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)". Fair enough, since it was performed by the Shrek guys, can't expect too much of an ass like Eddie Murphy. Then the radio DJ says that the thing is James Brown. What a dickhead.

I picked up a copy of August 2007's "Vanity Fair" and in it was a story that almost made my eyes pop out. It was an interview with Sly Stone. "The first in 25 years!"

It was. Anybody who wants to read Sly Stone's sad story can refer to any of these links. He was a great original, a trailblazer who managed to fuse soul, rock, funk and jazz and make it sound like they were all meant to be together. A great songwriter, whose tunes are still being covered today. A musical inspiration to many, like Kool + the Gang, Parliament / Funkadelic, Earth Wind and Fire. He practically invented 70s soul and funk. Almost everybody in that extraordinarily rich period of black music copied him. Many rappers sampled his music.

The reason why he's never been made a hero is simply because he isn't one. Yes, his early records were utopian. He put his band, Sly + the Family Stone together as one of the first multi- racial bands which featured both men and women.

And guess what - at the grand old age of 64, he's planning a comeback. A comeback! He had been making comebacks since the mid-70s, when the drug habit got the better of him. By then he had lost a great deal of his stature because of his erratic behaviour. His music, while still competent, was not as brilliant as before. In the 80s, he was arrested for a few drug offences, and made a few attempts at comebacks that were best described as shambolic.

But now he's back! And guess what, for the first time, we heard that he'd been off drugs for 10 years! Nobody saw him much between 1993, when he turned up to be inducted into the rock and Roll hall of fame, and 2006, when he performed at the Grammys for a short while.

Brian Wilson, as the head Beach Boy made "Pet Sounds" in 1966. Paul McCartney acknowledged later that "Sergeant Pepper" was an attempt to match up to its lofty standards. Elsewhere it was acknowledged as one of the great masterpieces of pop music. Unfortunately, he went mad trying to make the follow-up, "Smile" in 1967. He remained productive, and some of the songs that were supposed to be on "Smile" surfaced on other Beach Boys albums. Incredibly, "Smile" was finished in 2004, when he decided, as an old man, to go back into the studio after 37 (!) years and finish the job. Equally incredibly, it seems to be more or less what he envisioned in 1967, and everywhere it was lauded as another great album, although not quite the equal of "Pet Sounds".

There are other great recluses of music. There is Kevin Shields, who as member of My Bloody Valentine created "Isn't Anything" at a cost of 250K pounds, almost bankrupting his record company in the process. But it was worth it: it was a masterpiece. But that was in 1991, we waited for a follow up that never came.

There is Syd Barrett, who was the founding leader of Pink Floyd, made an exceptional album. (He's now dead.)

There is Lee Mavers, who as the leader of La's, made a pop album as good as anything that came out during the 60s.

There is Cat Stevens, who became an Islamic fundamentalist.

Well let's hope the Sly Stone album comes out and we'll see what happens.

Heaven can wait

I bought this book on a whim. But I didn't think much of it. It was a slim volume, looking fairly unsubstantial. An exchange of letters between Bonny Hicks and some unknown academic called Tal Ben-Shahar.

Now I'm not one of those shallow idiots from the Straits Times who would diss her writing based on her modelling career and her lack of academic qualifications. The fact is that she did write a best seller about her life. How many best sellers are there in Singapore? Now you only have "True Singapore Ghost Stories, vol 21". We think of models as bimbos, but at the level of a supermodel, you need a lot of brains to survive, especially if you're drinking yourself half to death partying with coke in your nose all the time. I managed to get my hands on "Excuse Me, Are you a Model?" which I will read.

There has been an attempt to cash in on the book. "Excuse Me, Are you an Actress?" was written by Eileen Wee. Now I got my reservations about that. Met her in person, when she was hosting an event, she was standing 1m in front of me. Nice ass but she's got one of the most piercing voices I've ever heard. Maybe I'll stick to the model model.

This "Heaven Can Wait" book, though, is when she starts talking about philosophy and stuff, a little straining on the credibility. Until I listed it for sale and somebody snapped it up, telling me that this Tal Ben Shahar is the same guy who's now conducting the most popular undergraduate course at Harvard, one that teaches you how to look for happiness. He's also written another book based on the course that's become a worldwide bestseller. I'll be damned. Well not much for me to do but to speed read the whole book in between now and when I have to mail the damned book out.

She was replying to a reporter who criticised her for wanting to live life to the fullest and do everything when young. Her attitude is heaven can wait, I want to live my life now. And it proved to be a very wise decision in the light of her early death. And for all that she's done with her life, I've done something she hasn't, which was to celebrate my 30th birthday earlier this year. One of her last letters is especially poignant, written just before that air crash, where she finally decides that she has found her peace of mind and decides that life is wonderful.

And you know, that air crash was one of the worst because people til today aren't able to give good answers about why a perfectly good plane went into the Palembang river.

It wasn't hard to read. Finished it in about a day. There's this constant impression that Tal Ben Shahar has a crush on Bonny Hicks. It's all very nice and pleasant exchanging emails with nice girls that you have a crush on and I've done that before but this is not the time for such pleasant distractions.

Death of the father

Went to the wake for the father of a friend. This is the 4th person I know who's lost a father, and the 3rd one who was 30 or younger when the father died.

This last person who has lost a father was a good friend of mine during secondary school. Let's call him CEO. Funnily enough he has the same name as a high ranking executive from my company who left under a cloud recently. He is one of the rare people I have met who is even weirder than me. We used to be really good friends, although mostly we talked on the phone: the calls lasted around 4 hours on certain occasions*. It's not really unusual for 15 year olds to have plenty to talk about, it was the period that I was also very close to my sister. People of that age will have plenty to find out about life, and plenty to figure out. (Think: Anne Frank's diary is compelling reading not only because it took place under the Nazis wanting to wipe her out, but because it is a document of a life in full flower in spite of the circumstances.) We drifted apart: at 15 it is easy to make a lot of friends, because the ideas that you can discuss are really general. Young people are much more like each other than old people are.

CEO gave me a lot of unconventional ideas, introduced me to unconventional music. Was proud of being an Aquarius (who are known to be unconventional people). Later on we drifted apart: maybe we knew a little too much about each other. He wasn't that comfortable. There are 2 sorts of friends: the sort where you have social activities ("having social activities" is the adult version of "play") with. And the sort that you confide in. Understandably people typically want to keep the 2 separate. Also, we are very different people. He was an artsy fellow. I'm a science-y fellow who managed to cross over to the artsy side once in a while, and I've come to realise that those guys completely do not understand the scientist and engineer culture, but I digress.

Still it was nice to be meeting him again. And a bit of a shock to realise that I was the only guy from sec school he invited. He thought that he was a little embarrassed that he wasn't attending the other peoples' weddings, so he couldn't possibly ask them to the funeral.

Fitzgerald's novel, "Tender is the Night" hinged on the father figure. The difference between the Dick Diver who was a successful psychologist and the one who was an alcoholic wreck was the death of the father, even though not very much was made of it. My sister who is better than me at reading literature spotted that. She was also perceptive enough to say that he's laying all the blame on Nicole, Dick's wife. Something that has resonance because Dick is modelled after F Scott Fitzgerald, whereas Nicole was modelled after Zelda.

I think for most of our lives we are preparing for this moment. There is this saying that you really only grow up when you lose a parent. Well maybe, I've seen people lose a father and still act like a kid but probably that's the exception. Interestingly 2 of the deaths took place very near the weddings, and both after the engagement. The father maybe holding on until you see the kid happily married. The death of a parent ends a process created by the birth of the child. The child takes the baton that the father passes over when the father uh passes on.

And it's interesting to know that you are just a link in a chain that passes back to antiquity. That human civilisation is only around 10000 years old and you are only around 300- 400 links away from a caveman. Somewhere along the line there was a coolie who went around with a manchu queue, or some minor magistrate or some farmer in Swatow. All very interesting.

And you know, I had a near brush because my father was in London on 7/7/05.

* was there anything unusual about our friendship? I don't know, but probably not. I now know that he's gay. He had a few girlfriends, and he is a lady's man, but you know, the people who are best at having female friends are the gay ones.