Lucky that I jetted to Bali!

One week ago, I had just came back to Singapore, from my 4-day trippin' to Bali, Indonesia. The primary reason for my being there, was to catch one of my longtime favourite musician, Jason Mraz's show oveseas for me for the very first time. There are MANY reasons why I made the trip (which mostly revolve around Mr A-Z of course plus, let's just say it's been a long time coming). And, he just HAD to play these top 2 of my Mraz AD (studio album era) songs- Plane & Butterfly.

Check out the opening song for the BEST Mraz show (out of 3) that I've attended so far, The World As I See It, and Plane (epic, just epic!) vids I filmed below:

Aand, once again, everytime I catch acoustic shows, I come away inspired to pick up my guitar again (nails are growin growin but not hinderin):



PS: If I'm feeling in the groove sometime soon (and you never know 'cause I'm attending a Zee Avi show this month too), I promise I'll do a way more awesome cover of Lucky. :P

Shopping Haul - Johor Bahru's (Malaysia) City Square Shopping Mall

I was shopping there 2 weeks ago (2 November 2011), and had actually kept to my SGD $100 budget! Whoo~ The exchange rate that day was 2.43. So I had gotten close to 250 RM. A few quirky points that we noted of the stores there:

-They have many more (house brands), and different shoe designs than from Singapore.
-Their clothes lean more to the 'trendy' and somewhat fashion-forward side.
-Cute guys (floppy, dyed hair, puppy eyes and all) hustling and selling things from my bag to pirated DVDs :D
-Malaysians LOVE their movies. They weren't exactly thronging the shops per say, but man, they were jamming up the box office allotted queuing space.
-Oh, and their Thai food at the foodcourt is fushion Malaysian :P We had ordered this bee hoon dish which tasted more like Mee Siam.
-One more thing, their cheese tarts (!!) are awe-some. I had bought a dozen at the end of the day (around 8 plus in the evening) and they had sold out all their flavours, except for Chocolate. Still delish nonetheless. I kept them in my home fridge and savoured one every night or two. That's how precious they tasted.

My shopping haul list:

1) Casual Work Dress (burnt orange colour) from Kodebe Fashion- RM 72 [10% discount!]

2) Shaping/Slimming Shorts from Reject Shop- RM 37

3) CMYK Multi-Cloured Bag from pushcart- RM 49.50 [10% discount!]

4) Love Preserved Plum Slice from minimart at side entrance near immigration building :) - RM 4.80

5) Fab Dinner @ Season's Cafe- 36% discount off main courses

*6) Graphic T-shirt (guitar not included ;))- RM 10

Vlog:

August rush for- Augustine!

Oh yeah, one of the ways I used to discover new music/bands was to hear them on MTV's shows I'm watching online, and then google for 'em or scroll down the ep page to see the track listings nicely compiled.

In this case, alright, I'm guilty of googling the cute Hugh Grant lookalike member when I saw him being such a heartthrob AND sweetie to the gurl on My Life As Liz S2. Apparently, he's formed this neat little music act with a girl partner-in-crime & call themselves Augustine.

Two thoughts came to mind while checking out Augustine's showcase in the MTV studios:

1) Why don't Singapore get quality hippy indie bands like that, if any?? (America, she has it good!)

2) Their music is deceivingly simple, but they've obviously been playing music for a long time. Something as effortlessly melodious as a duet like Blackbird most definitely takes two experienced songmakers to take off.

In my undying quest for musical enlightenment, be it aurally inward or kinetically outward, I'm just coming to grips with the cliched but ugly truth- foremost, the Musician is years of hard work in the making dammit! 

 

 

Believe it, or die in frustrated awe from the whitewashed, romanticized light new bands are constantly packaged in.

 

But you know what, I actually woke up from my fitful slumber this morning with an original single-line melody & lyric in my head. My hardworking subconscious was metaphysically inspired, apparently. :D

Rescued, (and you'd thank me for it).

Sometimes, some music which you 'discovered' in your own time, are so precious that you don't really want to pass it on, clutching steadfastly close to your heart.

But hey, whatever's out on Youtube, can and will be seek-ed out eventually.

So, before this song blows up next summer on Jason Mraz's new record, here's Rescue, which him or his record label may or may not choose to be set free to the masses, lalala. In this uncertain period of recording limbo, we can only be grateful to Youtube for filling our void of the charming Mr A-Z:

 

He's all ours (bleached curly hair and all), for now.

PS: I have a sneaky niggling feeling J's new record is going to sound radically different from his previous major label's works. It seems he could be going down the Folksy/World-Musically path maybe?