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31 August 2010

Abandonment?

Hello!
As some of you may know, I'm heading to the States for six months... tomorrow! I will most likely have fairly limited access to the internet (which may be an excellent thing) so I will be leaving this blog for a little while and posting at Touring the Light. If you go to that page while I'm traveling, you will probably be able to keep track easier.

Cool! Okay! Take care!

-S

21 August 2010

A Photo of Someone You Love

I couldn't choose between my mama and papa so I'm cheating and uploading photos of both of them. I'm also going to elaborate rather than just post photos that wouldn't mean much to anybody else.

Mama was always a fighter. She took care of seven younger siblings, dropped out of law school, rode dirt bikes all over Indonesia and listened to so much classic rock it'd make your ears bleed. She traveled around for most of her early twenties years, all over Europe and the Middle East. She raised four children and gave them everything they wanted but always taught them how to speak politely and appreciate and return every single kind gesture. She adopted a sick baby a few years after she moved back to Indonesia in 2002 who is now a healthy, hyperactive three-year-old. She still travels constantly around South-East Asia. To this day, she pushes boundaries and stands up against the greedy and is envied for her patience and strength wherever she goes.

Papa dropped out of university when he was studying psychology on the grounds that he was "bored". Now you know where I got my restlessness from. He moved to Australia to study aeronautics and became a pilot in his early twenties. After a few years back in Indonesia, he came back to Australia and brought his family over in hopes to raise his kids in an opportunity-filled country. He won a fight that lasted more than a decade against immigration scumbags. He ignored the criticisms of the hypocritical and big-mouthed Indo-Muslim community. He worked sixteen-hour days/seven days a week in order to raise four kids almost single-handedly when ma left for Indonesia. He is the embodiment of perseverance.

-S

12 August 2010

Faint Heart

I was engineering at a youth forum in a council building. Unnoticed, I carried on with my work which involved panicking when some dickhead stands in front of the drivers with a microphone and gaffa-taping leads down. The usual. Nothing flash. I'd been up since 4am for sahur and caught a train at 6:30am so obviously I was quite braindead. I overhear some words that make me wake up: "There's meant to be fifty kids but five dropped out" and "It's 8:30am but there are only thirty people here".

What is with young people and our bullshit unreliability?!

I am sick to death of my very own generation with our smartphones that let us cancel on people with ease, our lack of a sense of urgency and our super-fast internet that breeds procrastination. I don't understand why we think it's fine to string people along and allow ourselves to be strung along. We click attending on Facebook events but never really show up. Do we know how goddamn hard that makes life for the person organising the event? It's bad enough without unreliable people screwing it up for them.

Here's the thing - I'm nineteen and I grew up with new technology and new media. I am no vintage enthusiast and I can safely say that the advancement of technology has opened new doors for me, as an audio-engineer-in-the-making, a future traveller and as a human being in general trying to find my identity. But the thing that provokes my animosity towards this high-speed evolution is the fact that some people are already unreliable and this is simply perpetuated by the world of social networking and text messaging.
Nowadays, you don't have to confront someone (and in turn, witness their emotional reaction) personally to tell them something that is generally hard to address and/or discuss. Where is the fucking courage in that?! Grow up, Gen Y. I don't want to hear about misunderstandings and break-ups and cancellations over email and text. I don't want that type of cowardice - which I'm so very guilty of - in my life anymore.

We load Youtube videos to listen to music and never really experience, let alone understand, the high quality of CDs and vinyl nor the compelling art that often comes with it. We are lazy and I admit it but I certainly do not want it.

I want endless, barren roads and open bushlands. I need to see lakes and rivers and the generosity that Mother Nature offers. In fact, I feel like such a fucking cop-out going to Chicago - an English-speaking, tech-savvy, easily-accessible city. I guess I just feel the need to get out of here but it certainly ain't bravery running through my veins. It's probably just the fear of staying in the same place for far too long. That is what we are. We are agitated and we always want to be on the move. Though that could be a good thing, it's also shit in that we expect everything to move with us and everything to be fine when we want change.

You might wonder why I'm posting this on my blog considering I'm trash-talking new media but it seems to be the only way that people will read it. And even then, I can't seem to hold anyone's attention if my posts exceed 140 characters.

In the words of my crazy generation: epic fail.

-S

10 August 2010

Sonny, Stop the Car by Corpus


Jack Bruun-Hammond and Keiron Steel (aka Corpus) are two of the coolest cats I know, hailing from the North-West suburbs of Sydney. They tear up every stage they embrace and create artistic explosions with every song they compose.

On June 5, they released their unreal album "Sonny, Stop the Car" at SFX, Space Bar and like previously stated, they tore that stage to shreds with hearty vocals and furious notes pushing out of Keirons' vocal cords and guitar strings and an unmatched furiousness that Jack drove into his drumsticks and onto the skins of his drums.


The album is simply wild. Knowing that Keiron has always been interested in Middle Eastern scales, it's no surprise when the album opens with quite an Arabic sounding guitar riff. But of course, there's more to it than just one type of influence. When the second track "Grassy Knoll" begins, the listener is taken straight into their punk and grunge roots. My favourite bit of the whole song is when Jack sings with utmost passion "So I'm standing at the edge of the bridge/I couldn't help but to watch you fall/But I had, I had places to be/And people to see".
These boys are real, genuine songwriters and genius composers. Their lyrics are cryptic yet so realistic and it's so easy to get lost in this album and be fine with doing so. It's fun, it's insane and it is actually quite carefully engineered and written. My personal favourite tracks would be "You'll Hate This" - even though Jack says it's too poppy - and the title track which leaves only one word to describe it: epic.

You can find Corpus here and you should definitely hit up their next show which is this Friday (August 13) at World Bar in Kings Cross.


My favourite pair of talented little cookies have made me so fucking proud, once again.

-S