nicthegeek

I discovered, late last month, that a jamming studio had opened up in … Boon Lay Shopping Centre, of all places. I dunno, it seems a bit too late to cash in on the Superband rage. And so far, most of the bengs I’ve seen here carry walkman phones rather than guitars, not many Lucify or Milo Bing (the cartoon figures are so adorable!) wannabes around Boon Lay, I guess.

They also prefer to blast their chinese songs (Jay, at the moment) on their tinny walkman phone speakers, and karaoke to it on the bus (while screaming cheebye at each other half a dozen times during a 10-minute bus ride), uncaring as to whether anybody around them actually enjoyed the performance. I doubt if a lot of them actually would want to cram into a tiny studio with loads of instruments, with nobody but themselves to ‘appreciate’ their talents.

kinda sorry i gave up playing the bass though, with a studio so nearby … I’m not advertisting for them, I don’t know their prices, and honestly, I have NEVER seen anybody inside the shop yet.

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Technorati Tags: bass guitar, boon lay, milo bing, lucify, superband

yep, this time round, I was this close to the 3 biggest taike of taike’s, 2nd row baby, read it and weep… weep for the crappy 1.3mp phone cam too

Ah Yue, Wubai and MC Hotdog all in a row, Sept 2nd, Singapore Expo. It’s not the haze la…

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6 days in Taipei, what a rush! Not many pics this time round, coz on the 2nd day, I discovered my Finepix was spoilt!! And my phone’s 32mb MS duo pro doesn’t hold that much (I was also too lazy to BT the pics to my ibook nightly)…if there are photos here, most of them will be “kopped” from SH’s collection hehe, who ask him to leave them in my ibook? Not too many details either, I wanted to blog while I was there, since the ibook was too, but too tired every night (watching FH DVD, that is), so now I’ve forgotten most of what happened…whatever, here goes:

Day 1 –
As usual, kiasu lil’ me decided to head down to the airport early, partially to enjoy breakfast, partially to beat the crowd who would throng around the Jetstar counters. At 9am I was still wandering, yes wandering around my house trying to determine whether I had packed everything necessary, when suddenly my dad, who was about to leave for work, offered to drive me to the airport. *shock* he usually finds that a chore, but I took up his offer partially, asking for a ride to the mrt station instead, and then scurried around grabbing my bag and suitcase so he wouldn’t get pissed off.

Late as I was, I still expected to be the first at the airport, when suddenly Linda msged me to say she was on her way, and we figured out she was probably a train or 2 in front of me. I then met her and QH and Chris, who was at work, at the Macd’s in T2. After a rather hurried b’fast (I think I was hungry), QH and Linda stayed behind in T2 to sneak a peek at Jolin who happened to be arriving at noon, while I went off to meet Flo and SH to check in. We made it in easily since there was no crowd at 11.15 and went off into the transit area to have my 1st coffee of the day (macd’s doesn’t count, their coffee sucks). We sat around at Polar and chatted about our itinerary while waiting for the other 2 to check in.

They finally did after a long while, and then we proceeded to do some last minute shopping in the transit area. Linda and Qh’s style would be the mad rushing around style, so if you ever see 2 girls running around inside the airport, 1 laughing her head off and the other giggling madly, AND especially if they’re clutching a Bengawan Solo cake box, it should be them. Ignore but do make way.

5 uneventful and desperately boring hours later, punctured by restlessness and dozing off, we touched down! I was in the window seat, and I swear we flew over Kenting on the way to TPE. Have yet to confirm with Shirley ‘Miss Frequent-Flyer’ Lim on that. We rushed off to get our 國光客運 tickets, NT125 each and boarded the bus. Another 2 boring and uneventful hours passed, while I got more desperately hungry since the other 2 had decided to polish off most of the 關東煮 while I was on the phone with Wahi *hmph* (I was on the phone a lot this trip, office, personal…I don’t dare to look at next month’s bill).

I didn’t really expect much from the hotel we were staying at this time round, but it gave me a surprise. The Japanese-style room was pretty cozy and quite big, considering it was a 2-pax room. The hotel was pretty relaxed about their rules, and from our 2nd night onwards, they even made up another bed (albeit a rather hard one, sorry SH!) despite the fact the 3 of us only paid for 2 people. More on the hotel later.

After cleaning up and resting for a while, we met up with the other 2 and set off to our first destination, 士林夜市, the mother of all night markets. It was much as I had remembered from last year, even down to the hotpot restaurant and the corner fruit stall which sold the sweetest fruits. The food there was just as delicious, and I was glad I had made the decision to eat only b’fast. Everything tasted good, and we bought and tasted everything that wasn’t in too big portions. that’s the good thing about travelling with a bunch of friends, you get to share lots of food (and saliva) that you normally wouldn’t be able to finish on your own.

The best part this time round must have been the 冰. the Taiwanese seem to have been honing the art, producing that cotton-wool like-ice which is absolutely lovely and since it was summer, they had 冰 everything. We had 3 different kinds that night, all at one time, and the champion was the mango! The mangos there are huge, sweet and juicy, so they hack huge chunks of mango into the ice and it does all sorts of credit to the iced desserts. Well, Flo and I did swear that we wanted to eat 冰 every single of the 6 days and this was our share for probably 2 days worth haha.

After sitting around for a while, having a smoke (you can imagine Linda’s happiness at being able to light up when and where she liked) and iced drinks, we decided to wait for the last train before heading to 誠品. It had to be the last train, you see, since it was the 24-hour Eslite that we were going to…you can’t reach there before midnight, can you? Again, another place which I remember vividly. There were quite a number of people hanging around there, despite being a Wednesday night, somebody was even busking just outside the building. I remember asking myself, don’t Taipei-ers and HK-ers ever sleep? But later, I realised that in Taipei, it’s not so much the not sleeping, but rather the ‘no transport available after midnight’ that was in question.

We hung around Eslite for quite a while, and despite swearing up and down that I wouldn’t buy anything from there this time round, I ended up carting back 4 magazines and a 吼海洋 pictorial. We then headed back to our hotel with our loot and the 3 of us, of course, had to have a pitstop at the 便利店 downstairs. Doesn’t matter which, we just had to buy supper and drinks, yes supper, even after stuffing our faces at Shihlin. Coz even the cup noodles and 便當’s from the convenience stores taste gorgeous, just like real food…unlike the plasticky/cardboardy/MSG tasting stuff you get at the 7-11s here. We ran into the Taiwanese quirk of not supplying plastic bags (unless you purchase them at about NTD10 or so), having forgotten about it, but all was good, we had food.

The better part came after we headed back to our room. Settling down with our food and drinks, SH and I decided to crack open my ibook and so I powered it up, while Flo must have mentally sighed and rolled her eyes at her geek boyfriend hahahahaha. My AirPort is set to connect automatically, but I wasn’t expecting anything, when lo and behold! something happened! my MSN started connecting, and we stared at each other in surprise and laughed madly when we realised, there is broadband. At that time though, we didn’t know if we got charged for it or anything, so SH sneakily connected it to the 8th floor network instead *tsk tsk* The next morning, as we headed out, I casually asked the front desk, do you have any internet connection here? oh yes, we do, you just have to supply your own laptop. What about charges? It’s free! Free??!! After picking our jaws up off the front desk and thanking them, we decided that this would be our home in Taipei from now on. (Of course all this counts for nothing if we ever got an invite to stay at the drumstick…)

Day 2 –
Woke up rather late, so we headed off to have lunch straightaway. Flo and SH took me to eat the wooden box 便當 they had been dreaming about and also to tour around some erm not very touristy places. Only fans need apply for this tour *grin* The wooden box 便當 was really rather fantastic, huge portions packed with veges, pickles and big pieces of juicy chicken or fish and the boxes were really made out of balsa wood. There was even a free flow of soup and herbal tea. Try looking for that in Singapore…

We wandered around the residential area (with a primary school) for a while, then went off to our next destination 阿通伯音樂器材, recommended by Monster as one of their must-visit places for stocking up on instruments, gear and accessories. It took a bit of finding, being located rather far from the MRT station, and we almost missed it due to it’s totally nondescript exterior. Located along a street of bike repair shops, with a tiny unimpressive entrance and an even tinier shop sign, we almost missed it until suddenly somebody spotted the sign.

As we trooped in the front door, the entire 1st floor was covered with drums and drum kits of every shape and size, and we started wondering where the guitars were, was this only the ‘drum branch’? Fortunately a friendly lady apprached us and we enquired where the guitars were, after which she directed us towards the back of the shop and asked us to go upstairs. The place was huge, and the 2nd floor was even more crammed than the 1st. Shelves upon shelves of guitars were contained within the 2nd floor, with only enough space for 1 person to pass through at a time. The whole place was this huge musical warehouse, and Flo found stacks of guitar picks of super designs we hadn’t even imagined of, and she was digging through them for ages while we endured the stares of the sales guys there, who were all dressed up very rocker-style, with their rocker hair all nicely waxed up (very mayday lol) and leather pants and chains jingling while they wandered around the shop. I was tempted to check out the studios and where they carried out lessons, but decided I wasn’t rock enough to carry out any amount of conversation with them

After ATB, unable to stand the heat any longer, we sought refuge in a nearby Barista coffee shop (although we would have preferred IS coffee or Mrbrown coffee) and hung out till it was time to return to the hotel to wash-up and then to meet the other girls for the main event.

Yup, the main event. Photos above are pre-event, mainly courtesy of SH . WitchHouse logo; WitchHouse shopfront, dinner at the small eatery, the queue at 8.30pm (event started at 9.30pm), us waiting in anticipation.

The Main Event: Wonfu at WitchHouse.
And it was just as fun as the 1st time we saw them in Singapore at the youth park. Even though Judy had left, but still, the main draw of Wonfu is 姚小民, the one who tries to squash his body into a small ball while playing guitar and who wears a fluffy swan on his head becuase it’s the theme of the song. Afterwards, like Shir said, the main event of this holiday was over, Final Final Home just didn’t count nyeh nyeh

listening to them puts me in a clubbing, pubbing mood…not those boring techno/house thub-thumping type, but more the old school, retro kinda pub. LP (hey, same initials as Linkin ^_^), well Love Psych has that type of hyponotic music that’s not boring like house or techno, that puts you in the mood to lose yourself in the music and dance your heart out.

I’d love to open a place like that. all jap and chinese music and live bands from taiwan, hong kong, singapore, china, japan and malaysia. it’d be waaaay different from those boring seen-one-seen-’em-all techno clubs that’s losing money in sg now.