Why are you still here, then?
Thursday, April 24, 2008 | 0 comments  
It was another week for me. After Poly everything has picked up on my side, career-wise. I can say I'm very happy when i hear news that some of my classmates are indeed getting jobs. Then there are some that can't seem to start working. I don't blame them. If I could I would tell them to enjoy what they have first.

I have been feeling rather upset lately at this whole film industry thing. After Mediacorp, I developed this grudge against a lot of things in this industry in Singapore. I was over for a wrap party for a film I was called in to act at the eleventh hour. It's a film by Zhao Wei called "Invisible Children". I met the crew in Toa Payoh and I was slated to be just another one of those who hangs around in the background. I knew some of the crew there, and some were the first couple of batches from FSV. I had Adeline, my classmate during Poly, working as a Production Assistant and she was the one who called me. Don't you ever get the feeling that this world is too damn small?

I've never been to a wrap party from a production company. Uncle Jimmy never liked the idea of me pursuing an acting career for it's short-lived timeframe. But it's undeniably a good way to gather contacts. The whole night everybody was asking the same question,"So what are you doing now?" You can easily see through that gesture. Most were asking for the sake of conversation. Others were using it as a medium to show off what they're doing now. A minority were hoping for "backdoor entrances". I find the entire thing ridiculous. My mentality that night was to get away from work. I don't want to think of work. But everyone is forcing you to talk about it.

I took and interest with the lead actor for the film. He was good looking and overall very cheerful and open. Boo Jun Feng and friends were also acting for the film. I heard about him first from school lectures on a film he made called "Katong Fuge". I never watched the film but my friends who did came back calling it "Katong Fuck". On the other hand there were my lecturers who would gaggle and foam in the mouths talking about Boo Jun Feng. When I saw him and his friends on set I didn't care about the fact he was a director or whatever. If anything these guys were the funniest bunch of stoned actors. They were overall very nice people as well.

But back to this lead actor. He was preparing for a scene and we got bored and found a guitar nearby. What are the odds? It had its full set of strings and was tuned. He started playing a bit here and there some random chords. I haven't really picked up a guitar yet at that time (It was February this year) so it got my attention. I thought his playing was godly!
It was then he started to hum and sing and that shut the whole room up, mostly. My mind raced back to the time I met Shah in school, before the days he was advertised for Anugerah in 2007 or 2006. Shah would sing out of the blue and sometimes we got into little chats about how to sing, music, and the fact that my fashion sense was all over the place back then.

This actor's voice was pleasant to hear. When it came to the wrap party a few weeks later we met up again. He came in with a load of bracelets and necklaces. He was still in NS and I had no idea what to talk about that night. All I could think of that night was the wine and champagne. We finally decided to talk about the food at the party. It was the weirdest conversation ever.

It went something like:

"The curry is nice..."
"Yea it is isn't it."
"...uh huh..."
"I should get some."
"Oh yes you should."
"Yea maybe later. The desserts look good too."
"Oh yes it is."
"....."

The conversation finally fell short and we kept silent. We knew no one there except for the crew and the other actors there had their own bunch of friends already. Eric Khoo was there too thought I didn't know it was him. Gary, Royston Tan's famous right hand man, was there as well.
Some bad renditions of chinese pop songs were playing over the speakers that time. They basically changed the vocal track to an off-key piano. Lee Hom, Jay Zhou, they were turned into freaking pianos. The worst part was that the tracks looped after about 5 songs. Then this guy started singing again. It was incredibly good to hear. I took out my camera phone and recorded a bit of it. I don't know why.... but after Sly I have this thirst to look for music. I never was interested before. Now I found myself really listening and looking for music. I knew this guy was a part time singer. I asked him how he started out. And that's when I realised that this guy was Leon Lim... one of the S-pop singers... Campus Superstar.. so on and so forth. We talked a bit more and I found him to be very sincere. He had to leave early so we exchanged numbers. When I took out my phone he saw the desktop picture.

"Eh? Isn't that Sylvester?"

Turns out, these two know each other. I've said it once, and I'll say it again. There is no fucking way you can hide in the Singapore Media Industry.

I shook hands with Eric Khoo before I left. That was a particularly disturbing experience. A friend of mine was with me and he wanted to leave. I had to shake Eric's hands. I don't know his movies, I've watched some but never liked any, but my school's a big fan of his. I saw him get out of his chair and walked into the lobby. I followed him. Then I realised he was going for a piss. It got me thinking... here I am... gonna meet Eric Khoo... I'm gonna shake his hand... and he just took a piss.

He came out after a while, I called him, he received us warmly, and I shook his hands. I could just see it in his face. Two teenage guys just waited for him outside the toilet to shake his hand after taking a piss, wtf?

After this show I received a call from Putnam of Tisch Asia. I was going to act as the lead role in his film. Again, it's not a paid job. I've spent this whole week travelling to Kembangan to rehearse at his place. It's hard work and the smoking habit isn't helping at all.

I sat down one night with Jason at the usual 925 kopitiam. I was telling him how shitty a lot of things are in our work. I boldly told him that if any of our friends from secondary school were to join this industry they'll die. This arrogance prompted him to ask me, "Then why are you still doing this?"

I never asked myself this question. I thought about it for a while. I looked back to the school days. All the production I've went through and the war stories we've shared in Poly. The late nights. The smoking. The times we went insane. We've seen a lot. Daryl, Don, Rahman, Kwang Wei, Kang Sheng, etc etc. I find it quite an insane journey. We're not even making money. Some of us aren't ready for adult life. Not everyone of us were on the same page at all. We've walked this road and we've seen those who surprise us and we've seen a couple collapse in exhaustion. After graduation here are some flying high. Some are still with their luggage tucked under their arms, waiting for a ride, not knowing where to go. We're like a half-arsed, half-fucked band of frat boys with big dreams but not knowing what exactly are those dreams.

Then I remembered why I still did this. I looked at him, then up above, thinking. I said,"Have you ever been on stage to perform? Have you ever felt this rush... this rush so great that you start to shiver, your legs become weak, and you're about to faint. But the irony is that everyone likes you and you're doing a great job. This is exactly what you get in this line. Even as a crew or as an actor. One moment you're just sitting at home, smoking, drinking. Nothing is in your mind. You think of nothing. You think of ending it all. The next moment here you are in the middle of the night. Everyone is running around, some are shouting. You suddenly have a brotherhood going along and you have a common goal. You squeeze and twist yourself. You exert yourself both physically and mentally to get things done with the minimal you have. And when it's all said and done, you're sitting here in this coffeeshop, exhausted as hell, you haven't bathed in a week, all you want to do is jack off and sleep. You look at the film the next few weeks and everybody is impressed. You look back and recall. You ask yourself,"Did I really do that?". I dont' think this is something accountancy can give you. Or engineering. Or aeronautics. We're just a bunch of grunts working for another person's idea. The fucking thrill is what keeps me here."

Initially I wanted to talk about something else but it turned to this angle of story. It's okay. I think it's good on itself. See you next post.
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Up a Path.
Saturday, April 19, 2008 | 0 comments  
Things took a sudden turn of events over the past few weeks. I've skipped a lot of it in the previous post.

I don't know how to describe it but i find the sudden climb in luck/fortune/or whathaveyou to be particularly creepy. I'm about to touch on subject many would consider "nuts" or "alternative" but that is that.

I spend a lot of my time over at the Whampoa office, sitting around. After I left for Mediacorp Uncle Jimmy hasn't been doing anything much. It's like suddenly all the jobs stopped. But we both reasoned that it was just that season in the film industry where everything is still being planned and no shoots are happening yet. There was plenty of time for me to sit around cleaning my fingernails.

It's been about a year since I joined Stunt Production and I've known fairly well of Uncle Jimmy's traits. There are times where he suddenly changes his tone and starts talking about things that have no relation whatsoever to whatever we were talking about moments before. Rationally, I think it's just his daddy-talk. I am pretty messed up outside of work... smoking, drinking, and pretty much always alone. But not lonely. I always enjoyed being alone. And I always feared it... because that's the time I will mess things up pretty badly.

It was a few days after my birthday and Uncle Jimmy looked at me. We were having coffee at a coffeeshop in Ang Mo Kio when I told him what I noticed that morning... that my face somewhat changed. I told him he was right that after 20 a lot of things will grow and change. But then he looked again and he told me to work hard for this whole decade. After that, things will fly.

I had this inkling that I've been too lucky my whole life. There will be a point of time things will go down. I believe in karma, yin and yang, and stuff like that. So I was in fact looking out for the time everything will slip. I just didn't know when.

Last month, my sister pulled me to the corner one night. My father was on the phone in the living room. That whole week I noticed that no one was home. I didn't know where my parents where, and my sister was off working. It didn't bother me because I'm always looking for ways to find money and thinking of my next "project". Then she laid the bomb - that my father lost quite a wad of cash in some fucked investments with Sunshine Empire.

I didn't bother much too. Story of my life, isn't it. I estimated it to be about 13k to 50k. Even so, it's not my money, and I was pretty much planning already what to do if things go really bad.

This whole investment thing bothered 3/4 of the family since the start. And my sister is my only sibling. I never understood why the fuck does he want to invest in an MLM. Probably because he just adores my cousin who's working in there driving his fancy BMW and a girlfriend I really didn't like hanging around. Sometimes I think he'd be happy if that was his son, earning tens of thousands, dressed up in shirts and pants instead of earning little to no pay, hanging around with an old man and dressed up like he's going fishing. I think it also had something to do with the racism thing... which I find hypocritical too.

It was only last week did I find out how much was lost. It was close to a half a million dollars. That's a shitload of cash. My sister was the one who asked for the numbers. I sat there, slightly disappointed, and there we were sitting on a table full of food in a restaurant in Eunos and just a fwe minutes ago he was thinking of adding another storey to the terrace house we don't even officially own yet. Needless to say, I was pissed out of my mind.

Uncle Jimmy knew way beforehand that my father was investing a ton of money. He has that intuity. Or life experience. He mentioned about it beginning of the year after I related to him how unhappy I was that cash was being shoveled down to shit.

It's just amazing how things suddenly take a turn. When it comes, it comes. When it goes, it goes. And great timing too. At this point of time I can't wait to go for National Service. It's a source of income, no matter how tiny the pay might be, but I'm fine with crashing at friends' place just to save cost. I also can't wait to get away from my father, no matter how much of a bastard I sound. I've seen since the time he retired to now that his health has gone downhill and he's going a bit nutty in the head. I don't know if he realizes it and I talked to a few people about it and decided it was best if he started working again. But we never had a good conversation-relation so the only time we could confront each other was in the car. I gave him a piece of my mind, trying to be nice in tone but sharp in words.

"You have to start working. Why don't you start working?" I asked.
"Why? Why can't I retire early? I've worked so hard."
"I'm not asking you to work hard. Just enough to keep yourself sane. At this age you're gonna go under menopause. You'll go senile if you sit around doing nothing."

He changed the subject and started talking to my mom. So whatever.

One of the reasons why I'm still over at Stunt Production is because of all the "creepy" things that go around in the Whampoa office. I used to be terrified whenever I start feeling things crawling up my back but at this place it was different. Uncle Jimmy is committed when he prays. Everyday he cleans the altar and I observe the process. When he prays it is deep and concentrated. Until now i still don't understand why my parents say if I don't pray, I'll be like the Chinese, who "don't pray". If anything, I think it takes much more effort for Chinese Buddhists to pray than Muslims.

But religion is another issue and I have a strong objective regarding it. i won't cover that now.

Uncle Jimmy always tells me I am blessed somewhat. Born lucky. And this will always be with me. I guess that's nice to hear. Out of respect, I do burn jossticks to the God of Health, God of Earth and the Thai Buddha whenever I come over to the office. I say again, out of RESPECT. With the amount of religious paranoia hanging around today it's hard to keep them from nagging at your feet.

You could say this has helped a bit in luck. Uncle Jimmy and I have seen our fair share of things happening around the office. Sometimes when we're present together. It's an amazing thing for me. It just reassures me that this world is so big and deep. I may be wrong, but if it helps me keep calm and not fret about so many non-issues in life, why not just let it be? It's just like religion in a way, except for the fact I'm not forcing it down another person's throat.

Throughout this recent times I keep having thoughts that linger around for far longer than they should. Deja Vus happen a fuckload of often lately after I left Mediacorp. I keep thinking of earthquakes and floods in the coming week. Maybe it's the wacky sticks i've been smoking. Or i havent been getting much action lately.

I was practicing my guitar one day after waking up from a weird dream. I hate having those dreams. They call it lucid dreaming.. where you are able to control whatever the hell you do in your dreams. Everytime I wake up from one of this I get this throbbing headache and I feel so tired overall. For a few weeks I could only think of one person: my friend Javis.

He and I have gone through our ups and downs over the years in secondary school. It was mostly up, and I loved him like crazy. We'd drift closer and apart every now and then - closer when he's single and apart once he gets a girlfriend. We'd share in lots of crap together, and very often I find that he understands my jokes far more than anyone else. Everything bonded together rather easily. But our ties were severed one time in Year One when I used him for entirely selfish reasons to gain an advantage. It was not pleasant at all though it was a silent departure. I never heard from him again, even though our blocks were nearby in Poly and the next time I heard of him, he got kicked out of school and was working in part-time jobs. Sad, really. In retrospect, he's the one I'd consider hardworking and intelligent. The ones I hang out with after that were selfish idiots. I'd consider them so selfish that they'd rather fellate themselves rather than have someone do it for them. I'm glad they're gone now.

I'd meet Javis every now and then at his work place at Orchard Rd. A little cafe called Far Coast. He's not working there now. When he left the place I didn't even know. After that I received news that he was in a band as a singer with some old friends from secondary school and shortly after left for National Service. By then I was about to finish Year Two in Poly. Time, really, flies.

I never heard from him anymore for the longest time until just a day ago. Have you ever had that kind of feeling that someone is about to call you, or sms you, or whatever and it really comes? Sometimes I wonder is it because I'm thinking of them first, or that they were thinking of me. It's happen a lot lately. And I was thinking of Javis the whole week for a VERY long time. When things like this start happening I get very careful and sensitive because if anything, it's not right.

I was having a meeting at 12am over at Hoods Inc. in River Valley Road regarding the shoot in May. It was a long meeting. I was spaced out that time... because I've been doing some experiments at home in regards to hypnosis, sound and the brain (binaural beats) so I probably messed something up there. Some might ask "Where the hell do you come up with this stupid ideas?!" The fact is, I'm as clueless as you.

Javis sms-ed me when I was getting restless. It's been a year, and I was really happy. He wanted to meet me "for a smoke". I used this as an excuse to leave the meeting because by the looks of it, it'll be on till 4am in the morning. If anyone from Hoods reads this, I am terribly sorry.

I took a cab down to his place and called him down. We hugged and punched each other in a friendly manner and got to the smoking. If there was some dope and a bottle of Jim Beam I guarantee it will be a fucking awesome night. I knew something was up the moment I saw him and I found out soon after. Apparently someone was after him i was asked to help him on it. Immediately I was thrown back to what Uncle Jimmy mentioned. I won't reveal much since the coal is still pretty hot but let me say it was freaking accurate.

The twist here in the story, that I find extremely weird is that Javis has been to Uncle Jimmy's place when he was just a young boy. Apparently his father and Jimmy had some ties there. Javis told me about it before, back when I first met Uncle Jimmy in 2004, before I even applied for Poly. And I totally forgot.

I agreed to help Vis a bit. And we hung around catching up.

Then he said a few bits of line that creeped the hell out of me.

They were:
"If it's mine, it's mine."
"When the time is right, it will come."
"This kind of money is not meant to be eaten."
"Audi you are very lucky."

These are the exact four lines that Uncle Jimmy always preaches to me. It's like my mantra. It blew my mind off. It could all just be one major coincidence with no meaning at all. But damn, that was fucking cool.

We hung around abit more, i showed him a bit of my kungfu training, and we parted our ways.

Within this few month my life has taken a major turn. I'm more at ease, I spend time for myself and spend more time for work. My savings are growing and I'm fine with staying single. I've reasoned with myself that having a relationship probably is not the best thing for me now.

A lot of the people I meet, and some of my friends, look at me as I tell my war stories, and they always say the same thing - that I am lucky/chose the right course/leeched of someone else and pretty much have settled down.

The fact is, I'm less stable as I seem. I'm constantly rushing for something, that I have no idea what, and it probably is just my excuse to keep myself sane... like a drug. It's exciting. Every corner lays a gem. There will be the ups and downs... some minor.. some major.. some uncomparable. I might just be climbing now, or I'm already at my peak, I don't know. I could go higher, or I could stumble and fall over. And I love the prospect of both.
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Maybe...
Monday, April 14, 2008 | 0 comments  
I don't know. Maybe it's something innate about me. I like telling stories, that's a fact, no matter how mundane and how niche the topics are. But I'm having the urge to fucking blog again.

God-fucking-damn-it.

I'll take the less-traveled path this time round; no fancy pictures. No fancy schedules to keep up to. And best of all, no imagined-commitment to "the fans and readers". Simple, plain, text on text post updated only when i have something nice to tell.

I wont even bother looking back at what I've been up to since the last time. I don't even remember. I've taken a huge miscalculated jump into the "adult world" and let's just say I'm not even sure if I am what I was before. Things changed and moved so fast... too fast. Somewhere along the line I picked up the attitude of living for myself. Friends don't matter much to me like before. I can't be arsed to be nice to everyone on the street. I prefer staying within my own circle of privacy now and I can very well entertain myself easily. I even started keep track of my expenditures with a fucking account book. A fucking account book!

All I ever think about now is "When's the next shoot?", "What am I going to read up on next?", "What's the next thing I can research on?". Work and I share a particularly obsessive-compulsive relationship thus far.

I can say that the only thing keeping me sane now is my spanky new electric guitar. It's an Epiphone Les Paul Special II model and I think it's simply fantastic to play. The itch to play came again sometime around the end of last year, during the New Year's Eve. I think that was when I SMS-ed Henry, an old friend, a cheerful new year wish. I recall it went something like, "Happy New Year, motherfucker."

The bitterness on my side is gone, but I'd gladly get up to see him again if the oppurtunity rises.
After that i pretty much disconnected myself from a lot of things. I felt it was time to leave all the time-wasting crap behind and start making a name for myself. As arrogant as it may sound, I don't consider sitting around waiting for the next movie or hanging out at pool tables as productive. If anything, I only felt it gave more oppurtunities for ties to be broken.

I met up with Sylvester Sim again sometime in February and that inflated my guitar interest by the dozens. It was always inspiring for me to have him play or talk about music. I don't mind hanging around his place, waiting till 3am for him to return. Cause it was always worth it. Granted, he doesn't seem to have a good vibe with a lot of people outside, and I have run into some bad faces when he becomes the topic of conversation, but I don't really give a fuck. Sly has always been real nice to me and a great source of inspiration.

Unfortunately shit happens whenever it damn well pleases and I ran into a bit of problem. I'm in no position to talk about it so I won't.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I met Deehellsix, a bandmate of Sly's and a really entertaining guitarist, and we started our first guitar lesson. I've seen him everytime I sneaked into Dragonfly but never really took the effort to look him up. But I love the energy he was showing off to the pub. We got through a few SMS-es first and then when i finally met him at his home, I took the chance to really study his face since I've never seen him in daylight before. Come to think of it, I forgot how Sly looks like in daylight too.

The "lesson" turned out great and I look forward to the next one. I say "lesson" because it was more of a friendly situation where he shows me examples and writes notes down for us (another of his friend was with us). They'd discuss music and I'd sit there listening, trying to grasp all these funny names and formulas. I remember being so exhausted after that 1 1/2hr session that i got home and fell asleep even though i've been awake for only about four hours.

On the filming side, well, surprise surprise I'm still working with Uncle Jimmy. I had a short stint at Mediacorp a few months ago. It started on my birthday and ended in late March. I was under Uncle Lawrence (Jimmy's younger brother) and I held the so-called honorouble title of Assistant Producer for the show "Ripley's Believe It or Not.". You could say that was my first professional job.... where I had to sign papers and received a monthly income. And all that as an undergraduate.

I guess it's pretty well known that I went nuts after the first month there. There was absolutely nothing to do. Everyday I felt that I'm there only to fill up the void; duplicating DVDs and tapes, transcribing, media logging. Uncle Lawrence, on the other hand, always looked so busy. He probably was... because I probably wasn't doing much work. It took a turn when no one said anything about what time I should report, or what will be coming next, and complaceny reared it's ugly head. I came in office in the early afternoons, I spent most time surfing Digg and there are times at home when I'm all dressed up... and then sit back down at this damn computer and never show up for work. I always felt as if I was waiting for the shoot date... which was about a month apart from each other.

The director loved me on set, to say the least, and Allan Wu made an effort to keep the rest of crew occupied and cheerful whenever I'm trying to find my footsteps. I don't know where this came from, but I received news that they wanted to put me on a 2-year contract for a 100-series drama. In retrospect, I'm glad that it didn't amount to anything... not after my two months there in Mediacorp. I don't see myself able to tolerate the kind of nonsense and air-headedness of a majority of the people there. I only remember sticking only with two guys; Uncle Lawrence and one of his good friend. Other than that, I felt like punching everyone in the face. And I almost did, in fact. Some middle-aged woman needed her precious space and didn't like it when I walked by her. She was sitting in the middle of the aisle, and I wanted to get to the box of candy at the other end. She gave me a "tsk". I was cool with it. I think I might have nudged her knee a bit. When I walked back, she rolled her eyes at me and shifted a bit. When i passed, she called me.

"Hello, next time can you go round that way and don't come through here? I'm trying to do my work." she says.

It's a fucking aisle, and you're blocking it. I think she was watching TV.... about 2 inches from the screen and the TV was on the other wall of the aisle. I almost blew up on her... partly because of the boredom... and I believe me eating a ton of candy within my two months there played a part in it. I was very near to the end of my time there and messing things up there would be an extravagant end to it.

But I walked away.

Things didn't really end on a high-note there. I made a major mistake of crossing-over Uncle Lawrence. It might have not come to such a huge fiasco, what with the one-sided shouting in the office, if it wasn't for the double-cross I got from a friend the week before that. The story is pretty infamous now within the FSV kids so I wont repeat it here. As it turns out, everyone involved "up there" took this chance to shoot Uncle Lawrence and none of it ever came to me, even though I was there one who assured him, and I was the one who made the arrangement. The politics there is just awesome... awesomely fucked up. It's like these skanks on menopause need something to prove the need for their existence in Mediacorp.

But that's all over now and I'm happy to be back with The Stunt Production. Uncle Jimmy has been taking care of me very well and we've progressed from the student-teacher relationship to a more work-partner level.

We've got two shoots coming up; one is a telemovie called "Pulau Hantu" and that will be going on for the whole of May and I've got one next week by the people of Tisch Asia. The last film I acted for them (just a small role) received quite a good response from the school. I watched it, and I whole-heartedly believe that these people are the real deal. This time round, another director decided to cast me as a lead actor for his film. It's my first time as a lead actor, and I'll be lying if I said I was not surprised. I look forward to the coming weeks.

- Audi
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