last name

I love Carrie Underwood. Any woman that can sing about slashing her boyfriend’s tires in one breath and getting married in Vegas piss drunk the next…lady, where do you find the energy?!

woo i get a week off!

In three months. Yes. I'll take what I can get, ok. So the question is, what do I do? The obvious answer is sleep, but honestly, one week isn't enough to make up for all the late nights anyway, so why bother right?

It'd be nice to center a trip around some big event like snowboarding :: film festival :: music festival :: concert :: what-ever-not. I'm rather bent on seeing Radiohead live. I had a minor panic attack when I realized their last tour date this month is in Chile. If they start shipping stuff to the east, they'd hit New Zealand pretty soon right? So if I wanted to see Radiohead in New Zealand in July, that might be too late right? I hope they chill out in Fiji. At least until the end of May. Yeah. Then I could combine snow and Radiohead. Man...I'm hyperventilating just thinking about.

Well yeah I know about being realistic, but one can dream, na?

It'd be nice to take a break. A real one. If anyone knows whether these exist, I'd be truly obliged if you told me where I could find one.

umbrellas my ass

Out of morbid curiosity the other day, I went to YouTube to watch the video of Rihanna's latest single, "Umbrella". I just really wanted to know if the video had any umbrellas in it, while wondering (stupidly) if possibly some form of intelligence had taken over Jay-Z's method to video-making and there was some metaphorical meaning to umbrellas.

I think I already knew this, but it ended up being a waste of time (as things amounting from morbid curiosity tend to be). There were umbrellas but they didn't show up until about half way through the video, which meant that in a song about umbrellas, the first minute didn't have any. And given that the song is mainly about friendship and/or sheltering one another from the cruelties of this crazy MTV-ridden world, it was a bit odd that Rihanna appeared dancing partner-less throughout the whole video. Ok, fine, she had the umbrella as a companion. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into a Rihanna song, and she really is just singing about umbrellas, and how they really are the only friends she has.

Which is sad, along with the fact that hip-hop and R&B videos haven't really grown much in 15 years. It's still about half-naked women. Strange, yes. I am also wondering why I'm psychoanalyzing a Rihanna song.

Obviously I'm stressed.

More Cow

It sucks when I get inspiration for stuff to write on my blog when I’m away from my computer. It really sucks because this happens at least twice a day. But it sucks the most when I forget about what I wanted to blog five minutes after I think about it.

So anyway, here is the inspiring quote I had today:

“That’s a lot of cows.” – Mr. Hatcher [Christopher Walken], The Rundown

It’s like more cowbell, but not really.

[I love Christopher Walken. He is deadpan-ism personified.]

frazzled but for john mayer

Man, this week sucks. It's a Thursday night (well, it's Friday morning at 2:31 am but it really doesn't make a difference at this point) but it feels like I've been up since Sunday (which, at an average of 2 hours sleep a night, is essentially true). We're drawing near to the live date of my mini-project and there's all these little things that need doing and monitoring and all that jazz, and there's only one of me. It's like deja vu...it's like deja vu...it's like deja vu...

So in this five minute slot I'm giving myself to rant in my delirious sleepless state before I continue working, I'd like to say a warm thank you to John Mayer for writing such an awesome record, Continuum. I will say this in a Dear John letter.

Dear John,

Dude, I have always loved your writing and your melodies (and your tall hot bod but that's another story). Your music has always been simple but colorful, and I've always appreciated the fact that I can totally relate to your music even if I've never been through half the stuff you write about.

Continuum is the best, I think. I love Belief and its imagery, and Slow Dancing in a Burning Room reminds me of how things could have been, and I can't help that Stop this Train makes me cry. I've listened to this album while I'm working, while I'm running, I've sung half of it in the shower. I've been so frazzled these past two weeks and this morning sucks ass but I turned you and Continuum on and let the rhythm wash over me and...hey, life isn't so bad after all. You help me focus for a bit.

Mr. Mayer, thanks man. Your record rocks.

However, this only slightly makes up for the fact that you're dating Jessica Simpson. I wish you the best for the material you'll get out of that. I'm sure it'll be inspiring, and also about chickens and tuna.

Yours sincerely,
Rahayu @ 2:41 am

Of Mice & Muse

Man, what a weekend. Being back at work seems a bit of a farce since I spend 75% of my Sunday on my feet (which is saying loads because I'm typically sleeping throughout most of the weekend). I'm so pooped.

Sunday saw me running in the early a.m. - yes I'm still at it! Funny, I'm not sure I've ever been this determined to be able to do something since I started playing Guitar Hero II and was bent on playing Monkey Wrench on Hard without getting kicked off stage (I still can't, by the way, which shows you how far my determination goes). But it feels good to be able to want to do it, even if little seven year-olds race past me on the track and gray-haired men trot faster than I would on speed. I managed to run two full 1.3 km laps - a slow start but getting there!

Less than two hours after that, I was at the zoo. I didn't plan this, mind you, but I borrowed Rashid's camera to see what I could make of it. Surprisingly, the animals were having a good day and some of them actually posed for the camera. It turned out to be pretty entertaining, and I learned quite a number of interesting facts about the zoo on the way:

• Our elephants are sponsored by Carlsberg
• Our camels are sponsored by Ambank
• Our white rhinos are sponsored by Tractors Malaysia
• We only have three penguins, and they look depressed
• We have a very old, very big, very hairy orangutan
• Squirrels, regardless of whether they are from Johns Hopkins or not, are crazy

You can see some pics on my Flickr site here.

Then I went back and dragged my poor legs to the Muse concert in Stadium Negara. I'm glad I did - it was a great show, albeit a bit short. The guys rocked for a full hour before taking a break, and went on for another half an hour, covering most of their songs from Absolution and Black Holes and Revelations. Their live sound is amazing - frontman Matthew Bellamy's voice is hypnotising and lost nothing in live translation, but I always think the drummers have the most fun (although I hesitate to categorise Muse as 'fun', it's just not that kind of music). I've found that Muse isn't the easiest music to mosh to though, but that didn't stop me - I've got a big blister on one of my toes to prove it. When they did Stockholm Syndrome, I went nuts. Then I couldn't walk anymore.

So high on Muse, I went home and watched the Carling Cup final between Arsenal and Chelsea. It was a damn good game - I've always thought Cesc Fabregas and Theo Walcott were two to watch and I'm glad to see I was right - but the fight that broke out towards the end was so anti-climactic. Yeah, okay, so it was kind of exciting as it typically is when hot-headed men start beating each other up, but football-wise it was a disappointing way to end a final. Of course the score didn't help either, but I take consolation in the fact that Walcott scored a beautiful goal only 12 minutes into the game. Touché.

I want it to be the weekend again!