Ode To Taxi Drivers

Taxi drivers, they're all one and the same breed in every different country you visit. Perhaps it's the quota they have to meet or perhaps they push themselves too hard or perhaps there competition between taxi companies, the need to get the passengers, the need to get them to where they want fast.

In this country, taxi drivers seem to be able to choose where to bring you and not the other way around. Take for example, if you live in a remote residential area where everybody owns a car or some means of transportation, taxi drivers actually get to choose whether or not to ferry you back home. Why? Because they want to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. How? If they ferry you home, and don't get another passenger in return, that's diesel wasted travelling the extra distance, and diesel means money.

However, if you live in a popular district, where the taxi driver is certain to get a fare, then it's to and fro, double the income. It's sort of a way to maximise the amount of diesel with the number of passengers ferried. But is this any way to treat passengers? As it is, if we book a taxi through the phone, we have to pay a booking fee. Then there are peak hour charges, midnight charges, location charges etc, etc, etc the list just goes on and on and on and on.

Then there's the way they drive. Have you ever seen how taxi drivers drive? They will stop at absolutely nothing, cut in front of you no matter how small the space is, swerve in and out of lanes, just to cut the queue to get their passengers to their destinations on time. We who drive cars tend to think that this is an utterly despicable habit, but if you were the passenger in the taxi, you would thank the driver dearly for doing all those things to get you to work on time.

However, not all people take kindly to taxi drivers. Recently here a van driver got angry with a taxi driver for cutting into his lane that they had a heated discussion which ended up with him driving him running the taxi driver down and dragging his body for over 800 meters on a crowded street to try to dislodge him from his van. This sounds so much like what Achilles did to Hector in the Trojan war. Achilles killed Hector and dragged his body behind his chariot before the walls of Troy 3 times. Should we thus be turning to savages to take care of savages? Sounds a bit far-fetched, it's more likely an eye for an eye, but does it make it right?

Taxi drivers don't realise that driving dangerously and compromising safety gives them more problems than they realise. Look at it this way, if the taxi itself is involved in an accident due to reckless driving, then they can't pick up any more passengers. In this country, it's called a broken rice bowl. No passenger equates to no income, and at least a week's of regret.

However, not all taxi drivers are like savages. A handful of them have been known to be extra careful and very, very chatty and friendly when they pick you up. They go the extra mile to make your journey as a passenger enjoyable and it helps to make your day. I guess all it takes is 1 rotten apple in the basket to spoil the whole bunch. And at the same time, it is a mundane life they make chauffeuring passengers from point A to B to C, but it still doesn't give us the right to turn savage, after all, we're all making a living in different ways, aren't we?

Run them over? I think not, it's better to live and let live to fight another day.

Fantastic Four Review

The Fantastic Four have been one of the flagship titles in Marvels, together with Spiderman, Iron Man, Captain America, Avengers and The Uncanny X-Men. Now, all the superheroes are coming out of the woodworks from paperback books to onscreen movies! Some comic to screen adaptations are great, for example the Spiderman and X-Men movies. However, movies like the Incredible Hulk leave us wondering if directors are bringing comics to screen adaptations in the right direction.

Fantastic Four (FF) is truly and inspiration from which unlikely everyday characters who encounter an incredible cosmic accident, have their genes mutated to develop superpowers. Take note the distinction between superheroes and mutants. The latter are born with the x-factor gene that gives them natural superpowers whereas the former encounter an event that gives them superpowers. Spiderman is a superhero, he was bitten by a radioactive spider that gave him superpowers. In the beginning the heroes do not know what to do with their power, but it becomes clear that being in the right place at the right time helps to paint them as heroes in a world without one.

FF are Marvel Comics dysfunctional family. To set the records straight, Doctor Victor von Doom experimented with alchemy and science which led to a laboratory explosion leaving him scarred for life. He did not go up to space and get himself exposed to comic radiations that gave him organo-metallic skin and lightning powers! Victor was always in love with Susan Storm, however Reed Richards was the more humane character and shared her many ideals.

This movie is a great introduction to the FF characters and how they develop into their hero status in Manhanttan, New York. However, the storyline, like most first movies, leaves more to be desired as it was sketchy and linear at best. Don't fret however, the movie has loads of banter between Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm which adds to the antics which livens up everything. I draw parallels to the X-Men's first movie, because it was also aimed at introducing the characters and their powers to us. I certainly await FF's second movie and hope that it was follow some of its Marvel cousins to be as successful as ever at the box office.

I give this movie 7.5 out of 10.

4400

I've watched many, many alien abduction movies, but none is more exciting and interesting as The 4400. I first heard about this movie when I was in America last year. The trailers were good and the ideas and concepts behind the storyline were interesting.

The first season only comprises of 5 episodes, call it a trial season if you wish to test the waters. Sometimes, if they think that the cast and props and whatever else will become too expensive to make into a full-blown 24 episode season, they

test the show on a network and let the viewers decide if the show is good. Basically to see if the show would survive the wolves. If they get good ratings, then the second season will probably consist of more episodes.

The 4400 starts off by showing you how throughout the course of history, people get abducted by this bright light. Flash to present day, a comet is on a direct course for the Earth, which worries everyone when it starts fo change course towards a huge lake in Seattle, where 4400 people who were abducted are returned exactly the way they look from when they were taken. For example, an 8 year old girl taken in the 1950s returns exactly the way she was and not the older woman she should have grown up to be. It's like time never changed for any of them. And surprise! Each of them returns with a special gift. They've been slightly altered for a greater purpose. And as you follow the course of the episodes, there's a reason behind this higher purpose that gets revealed in the season finale.

My favourite episode is Becoming, which is the third episode in the season. It centres around how an MO (Modus Operandi) used in a present day homicide is the same MO used by a serial killer who vanished 25 years ago. In the course of the episode, they try to link the killer, who's a returnee from the 4400, but can't seem to pin the murders on him because he has used his new gift with a new results.

The most interesting theme is the ripple effect and how it affects everyone. It's like throwing a stone into a calm lake and watching the ripples radiate out from the centre. This show has exactly the same effect. The 4400's return was the stone in the lake and the people who were returned are the ripples that affect everyone else's lives, some in a good way, some in a bad and others in ways we haven't seen yet. Well, they have 4400 possibilites to tell the story from.

Overall, the show is almost like X-files meets X-men on a tone-down level not overly bombastic for viewers to appreciate good story-telling. It is also completely different from how Steven Spielberg series Taken was told, which was a generational story and it was complicated to understand.

I highly recommend this show to anyone who loves to watch a good movie and has been hoping that X-files was something more than it should have been and should not have ended the way it did! The show doesn't insult your intelligence as a viewer and leaves you wanting more after the season finale. I really don't know when and if the show will come to this country, but if it doesn't, go out there and purchase it online, trust me, you won't regret it!

The 4400 gets 9 out of 10 from me.

P/S: I gave up trying to figure out why the paragraphs do not come out when I publish the Blog in some sections, although they were perfectly fine when I was composing the post. UGH!

P/P/S: I've solved the problem with the paragraphing. All I've to do is to add a "br /" enclosed in a pair of <> to the end of the paragraphs in under the HTML edit, let's hope it doesn't have to be done on all ocassions!

Lifehouse Reviewed

My very first music CD review at long last! The reason why I couldn't do this earlier was because I couldn't find a good way to upload a picture of the album cover for reivew. Blogger was giving me this strange option to download a huge programme instead. Oh well.

Lifehouse, this is their third venture, their first two albums were equally good and generated a huge fan base with their highly popular songs Hanging By A Moment and Spin.

With Lifehouse, these guys did justice to their music. Their music now sounds a little bit like the group The Calling. They have definitely left their Creed identity behind and have turned down the amps from their first two albums. With lyrics written by Jason Wade, the lead vocals for the band, everything seems to be going right! The album has a mellow and sombre mood to it that definitely tugs are the heart. But there are songs reminding us or who we are and the journey is ongoing through life. Jason Wade is an excellent songwriter, I think he might even give Rob Thomas a run for his money!

I highly recommend this album to first time listeners of the group Lifehouse (do NOT confuse with Lighthouse Family!), and also anyone with strong affinity for The Calling and the likes of their music. It grows on you and you'll be hungry for more by the time you finish listening to it.

9 out of 10 - Excellent! Highly Recommended, A Must-buy!

My personal reference Scale Ratings out of 10:

0-3 : Hideous! It must be used as a frisbee!
4-6 : Average! Sitting on the fence, needs work, to buy or not to buy.
7-8 : Good! Worth listening to and buying. Recommended.
9-10 : Excellent! Highly Recommended, a must-buy!

Control Is An Illusion...

When it comes to movies, there just no control here in this country. There's an illusion of control, or rather, there's the talk only, but no action done. Well, when you can talk, the promise of doing things aren't followed through enough to be justified to the public. In other words, satisfaction isn't guaranteed. It's just semantics to assure you that it won't happen, a delay if you must, but it will eventually happen anyway. The need of the many, outweigh the need of the one. Let's start at the beginning shall we?

A new movie comes in, the first thing we do is to find out when it's going to be released. These days, it's not difficult to find out on the Internet, especially when the movie has a homepage of its own and a release schedule in the individual countries it'll be screening.

Sometimes, to our horror, the movie comes in 3 months to 6 months and sometimes to 1 year later from when it was released. Take for example, the movie Identity. It was released in the USA on 25 April 2003, the trailer only screened here some time in December 2003. It's release was delayed till February 2004, by that time, the DVD had already been released. You could easily purchase the DVD on any overseas Internet site that market it. Take another example, Sin City. The movie was released in the USA 1 April 2005. It will be screened here on 14 July 2005, over 3 months of waiting. Why is this? conflict of interest? The movie's too controversial to be screened here? Money problems in obtaining the movie? Is it a B-grade movie? Censorship problems?

It's no wonder patrons of the movie will turn towards bootleg (piracy) copies of the movie, which is cheap and disposable. They'd rather watch the movie first, in whatever form, be it bootleg or Internet uploaded, than wait 3 months for the movie to come to the cinemas here. But really, can you blame them for wanting to watch a movie?

A movie distributor said that there's lost of patrons because of the parallel imports of DVDs which will lead to lost of revenue in obtaining new movies to be screened here. What total, complete and utter rubbish! If anything, this movie distributor is obviously not trying hard enough to obtain the new movies from overseas for our screening pleasure and to maintain his control over his other competition. He must ask himself, is his bureaucratic red tape preventing work from being done in his company, or is there a censorship problem when deciding to bring the movie here. I guess it's neither, owing that he's the CEO of the movie company - like I said, all talk and no action, it's all complain, complain, complain when competition outwits, outclasses and outplays his company - sour grapes!

The harder you tighten your grip, the easier it is for your goals to slip right through your fingers. Whatever happened to showbiz? I say, give the patrons what they want. A freedom to do what they want free from a control that doesn't work, a half-past six stop-guard or is an illusion anyway.

In the end, the patrons are not the ones who suffer, no matter the outcome of the decision to impose a period of time to ban parallel import of DVDs, because they have their own little circles to obtain and circulate the movies, be it original parallel imports, or bootleg copies. And like I mentioned in an earlier post: the more you restrict someone from doing something legal, the more he/she will do it out of defiance, even if it's illegal, to show everyone that it's do-able. And believe me, everyone will start following their example. The reign of cinema movies will be over, the reign of piracy will return, just wait and see, I don't want to have to be standing here and quipping out "I told you so."

If movie distributors do nothing but raise ticket prices for the movies they screen here, then perhaps it's time that movies go straight to DVDs than waste space being screened at overpriced cinemas with censored material.

Ultimately, it is an insult to the patrons, and it's an insult to the actors, directors and everyone who put in their hard work to produce the movie. Period.

All comments are welcomed. HBTM

Gamelan Music 101

I've been waiting for the past few years to listen to someone else perform Colin McPhee's Balinese Ceremonial Music for 2 pianos. I've personally gone all out to search, find and collect 4 recordings of the piece, one of which was a CD recording performed by the composer Colin McPhee himself together with his friend Benjamin Britten in 1941. The wait was finally over at last night's Piano Festival 2005. However, excitement turned to great disappointment in the following manner:

1. It was a Premiere for the piece to be played here in this country. What total, complete and utter rubbish! My 2 piano partner and I performed the piece at a University sponsored concert held in 1998 at the same venue using the same 2 pianos (both Steinways if I remember correctly) with our former President as the guest-of-honour. I guess being amateur pianists doesn't count when it comes to premiering completely new pieces for this country. This is so sad, it's almost pathetic!

2. The professional pianists, I shan't name them, it's obvious why, performed it without much research or coordinated effort going into playing the piece. It was ploughed through, with so much rubato and romantic forte that it would have made Horowitz weep and be completely mistaken for a Rachmaninoff piece!

3. The lack of power or rather the balance of power in terms of sound while performing the Balinese piece was confounding, as one of the pianist managed to bring out the ending notes of Ravel's Ma Mere l'Oye with so much power that it only could have been a backstage tonic drink that did the trick, Red Bull perhaps?

Balinese Gamelan music, (or BGM as tribute to the growing number of nonsensical acronyms here) has a greater metallic ring to it as compared to it's counterpart Javanese Gamelan music, (or JGM) which is mellow, sombre and has deep resonance. BGM is fast, joyful and celebratory, as compared to JGM, which is slow, relaxing and sometimes dreamy.

Colin McPhee's stay in Bali from 1934 onwards had him contributing to transcribing most, if not all of Bali's cultural music, including it's rhythms and intonations. He even managed to transcribe the notes from the individual gamelan instruments with the closest sound to the key played on the modern piano. These can all be read from his book Music In Bali, which is a fantastic publication on ethnomusicology.

When the Balinese Ceremonial Music piece is performed on the piano, little or hardly any graduations for loud and soft should be heard at all. It should be performed like you're playing it on one of the gamelan instruments, and struck with precision and equal weight like a percussion instrument. The ability to control the speed is very important in gamelan music. I'd have to have recorded the last few bars of the 2nd movement Gambangan for you to have sampled a taste of Romanticism in 20th century Balinese music. Tempo changes for the piece must be sudden and surprising, therefore, the speed for the 2nd movement should have been sustained till the very last note and stopped, not rubato-ed (if there's such a word) for the last 3 bars till the last note!

Finally, there are over 65 instruments in a gamelan [orchestra]. All of them are important and none of them should take importance over any of the others, in other words, there are no solo performances for any of the instruments. Similarly with the performance, piano 1 and 2 should have been so seamlessly integrated that the listener could not tell one from the other, an amalgam of sound if you wish, that would have been worthy of a performance. Anything less would have been just uncoordinated play of dissonance. Sad, considering the calibre of the 2 pianists performing last night, it could have been done right.

I welcome any comments, especially from those who attended last nights concert who agrees or disagrees with me.

Cheers.


Our critics are our friends, they show us our faults.
- Benjamin Franklin