"Modern society is anti-love. We've taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work - the only kind of work that I find palatable."

Address at NTU Convocation 2008 by Adrian Tan (author of Teenage Textbook)

Steph visits Singapore!

The Last Temptation of Stamford Raffles

1826. Sir Stamford Raffles lies on his deathbed, delirious with dreams and hallucinations, whilst his wife Sophia frantically records his biography. A giant Rafflesia blossom invaeds his bedroom; he meets his deceased first wife Olivia, and encounteres a talking statue who bears prophecies of greatness. As his life flashes pastbefore him, we witness his birth at sea, his early voyages, his triumphant founding of Singapore, and his eventual tragic downfall - with his children dead of tropical diseases, his research destroyed in a burning ship, and himself bankrupted and diagnosed with syphilis.

Wild Rice's new play, The Last Temptation of Stamford Raffles, would have led one to spur his imagination into the extraordinary, with the concise 75min act teethering on the brink of confusing the audience (or at least, me) into oblivion, and boosting their history lesson in a different light. My particular favourite segment was when the white Raffles statue rallies the support of his Eurasian counterpart, calling him "black", and how confusing it was if they stood not far from each other near the Singapore River (If you are familiar with this, you'd know that the White Raffles statue is located outside The Arts House, whereas the bronze or black Raffles statue is in front of the Victoria Theatre).

Death Cab for Cutie

Indie rockers Death Cab for Cutie – a Seattle-based quartet whose music is more coffee shop than stadium rock – graced the stage of acoustic-friendly Esplanade Concert Hall for the very first time, making their Singapore debut (between stops in Osaka and Seoul) behind critically acclaimed new album Narrow Stairs. Now on its sixth disc, which guitarist Chris Walla describes as a record that ‘has teeth’, the band whose music featured on the US teenage soap series The OC has gone all grown-up on us. The album is richly creative, featuring songs like slow-burning opener ‘Bixby Canyon Bridge’, uptempo ‘Long Division’ and eight-minute first single ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’. Expect to hear these at the show, along with perennial favourites from Grammy-nominated, platinum-certified Plans (2005) such as ‘Crooked Teeth’, acoustic anthem ‘I Will Follow You into the Dark’ and international hit ‘Soul Meets Body’.

City Space @ Swissotel

Thanks for celebrating my belated and introducing this "new" place guys! (Note: "new" in this definition refered to the idea that I never visited this place before and not that it hadn't existed before, since my kind friend pointed it out to me.) I look forward to returning to the cosy ambience with a breathtaking view, and the bare-backed waitresses in their high slit dresses. I wasn't serious about the latter!

The Swordfish, then The Concubine

The Swordfish, then The Concubine was truly engaging and seemed to draw an uncanny parallelism with Singapore's "the Kingdom thrives, life goes on" attitude we all adopt.

Swordfish attack Singapura, terrorising its citizens. A boy saves the kingdom by lining the beach with banana stems. But the Sultan, at his ministers’ advice, has the boy executed.

A generation later, the Sultan’s successor, his son, breaks the covenant between subject and ruler when he has his concubine publicly executed on trumped-up charges, bringing untold shame to her family. Sure enough, an armada of ships from the Majapahit empire soon appears on the horizon, and threatens Singapura’s supremacy.

Acclaimed Malaysian playwright Kee Thuan Chye’s (1984 Here and Now, We Could **** You Mr Birch) first play in more than a decade is a bitingly comic satire that blends ancient myth with contemporary politics. Directed by Ivan Heng (Animal Farm, Happy Endings: Asian Boys Vol. 3), and accompanied with live orchestration by Gamelan Asmaradana, this theatrical epic promises to be a dazzling exploration of the senselessness of war, religious conservatism and hypocrisy, and the ruinous abuse of power.

SingFest 08

L-R: Stacie Orrico, One Republic, Panic at the Disco

L-R: One Republic, Jason Mraz

L-R: Pussycat Dolls, Alicia Keys

National Day Parade Preview 2008