Hilarious TVC

Rarely does a TVC catch my eye - most have got me reaching for the remote to channel surf, bolting to the washroom for a quick pee break or waltzing to the kitchen in search of something to satisfy my insatiable appetite for the munchies.

The last one that got me to sit up and notice (not to mention make me tear even) was Leo Burnett's TVC for MCYS's 'Beautifully Imperfect' campaign. Other than that, most other ads simply make me cringe:

a. with lousy acting (the Allwell herbal drinks with the couple at a hawker centre)
b. with cheesy, hard sell scripts (the Sinsin Soya Sauce ad with the grandma advising the dude against OD'ing his food with soya sauce and the wife jumps to his defense by saying that it's low salt, blah, blah)
c. just by being downright irritating (the Carlsberg ad with the beer and foosball table delivered to three dudes camping on a ledge of a snowy mountain)
d. all of the above

I happened to catch Heineken's new TVC today. Honestly, it caught me completely off guard and I thought it was going to be another silly TVC advertising some household product or some other contraption you DO NOT need in the home.

Damn funny lah. From a guy's point of view anyway.

Open up the sky

It is good to praise the LORD and make music to your name, O Most High, to proclaim your love in the morning and your faithfulness at night
Psalm 92:1-2

I've played the drums for the longest time. When I offered my talent to the worship ministry, I did it with the intention of offering my best to the Lord knowing that this was one thing I knew I could do well without screwing up too badly. I love music and I have experienced first hand what the power of worship can do. While I take my drumming very seriously, I also love to sing and it was my hope that one day I would be able to lead the congregation in worship. To lead them to that realm of worship in order experience the touch of the Holy Spirit.

I take my drumming very seriously. Really!

Since I had some kucing kurap guitar skills, Daniel thought it'd be a good idea for me to try playing some songs. I'd led a few praise songs over the past few weeks, my signature tune being Tim Hughes' Beautiful One (I chose it for the simple chord structure and crowd 'ra-ra' factor - I'd heard him playing it live at the Planetshaker's concert last year).

Just last Sunday, Daniel decides that I should try leading the whole praise and worship. Praise wasn't going to be a problem, but worship was a totally different matter altogether. I decided to try Deluge's rendition of Open Up The Sky although I wasn't entirely sure if we could pull it off since the original was so heavy.

My benchmark for a good worship song is that it has to make your hair stand the first you hear it and cry the second. I cried the first time I heard this song and I had it on repeat in the car's CD player until the A-E-D-A riff was etched ever so clearly into my head. I have since played it umpteen times in my own worship with the Lord. Somehow the words of the pre chorus and chorus kept resounding in my head.

We won't be satisfied with anything ordinary
We won't be satisfied at all

Open up the sky
Fall down like rain
We don't want blessings we want You
Open up the sky
Fall down like fire
We don't want anything but You

It had been my prayer that our congregation be overwhelmed with the Holy Spirit during worship and the chorus seemed to echo that thought. For the Lord to fall down like rain and fire to completely engulf and surround us.

I just let the Spirit lead me when it was time to play. At one point, everyone just stopped the instruments and we just sang our hearts out. It wasn't even my intention at all but it all flowed so perfectly. Amazing what God can do when you surrender completely to His perfect will.

Can't wait to do it again.

Claying around

After having to do so much from Mondays to Fridays, Saturdays always seem to be a good day to slow down and chill out and basically do silly things. On this particular one, somehow we ended up at Bras Brasah complex after strolling around a flea market that was taking place outside SMU's Arts Faculty.

We wandered into the insanely huge Popular bookshop and ended up in the crafts section on the upper level. Before I could even utter a single word of protest, Penny and Velouria ended up with a pack of white clay, some poster colours and brushes and insisted that we went home to make something out of it.

It was off to work immediately when we stepped into the house. We cleared a table that would serve as our workstation and set our materials on it. Taking out a morsel of clay from the packet (these were air dried so we had to be extra careful), I proceeded to make the simplest thing that came to my mind first - a worm.

With furrowed brows, I began to scuplt my masterpiece despite Penny's incessant reminders to strengthen the sculpture with toothpicks. I ignored her, my argument being that I wasn't making a complicated sculpture and there was no need for internal skeletons of any kind. She proceeded to do hers with a toothpick within regardless. And ended up with a sausage. With grill marks, no less.

The worm looked kinda freaky when I was done. It looked more like some creature out of Dune than Sesame Street. What I intended to be the mouth added to the seemingly malevolent guise of the poor catepillar.

I went on to apply the colours anyway, choosing a green for the body and filling in the lines with brown later. It was a lot tougher than I thought! It was an intricate matter trying to paint something so tiny. My hands were so tired after having to make such precise, controlled movements.

Not bad for a first try! My next sculpture - a tortoise. Stay tuned.

Silly Singaporeans

Despite the seemingly high levels of education and affluence of the people in Singapore, I am repeatedly appalled by how many of us still have not seemed to grasp the necessary aptitude to fill up entry forms in its entirety. In my course of work, I am required to compile customer information into our company databse and this somewhat mundane task is made increasingly frustrating with incomplete fields, illegible handwriting or even nonsensical answers. Honestly, is it too much to ask to draw a dash or pen the alphabets NA on fields that are not applicable to you?

Other idiosyncarcies of nonchalant Singaporeans:
- 28 Dover Court: no postal code, either this person does not care or is totally oblivious.
- 28 Dover Court #02-02: do I assume this is an apartment block? Or is the person trying to make his address pass off as one in a condominium?
- #02-02 28 Dover Court Dover Road S'123456: don't they know there is a specific order in which addresses are written in?

There is no end to the sheer level of inanity which continues to baffle and annoy me. Graaaaah!!

House visiting

Penny and I have been dreaming of getting our very own brand new home for the longest time. We have sort of given up on that hope after being unsuccessful in HDB's countless balloting exercises for new flats. In the meantime, we just satiate our appetites for our new abode by visiting other people's and convincing ourselves with the 'it's not God's time for us to have a new home' mentality.

Our latest foray was to Jarrod's and Fiona's. After several invitations, we finally made time to drop by at their newly acquired property of a semi-detached house. It was a lazy Saturday and since I had to work, it was a good opportunity for Penny and Velouria to have breakfast and chill there.

It was not hard to find despite them telling us that numerous people got lost looking for their place before. I mean, seriously, how hard is it to get lost in our tiny island nation?

From the outside, the edifice looked simple and straightforward, nothing elaborate like some of the houses we passed on the way in. Upon stepping in, we were greeted by a wide and spacious living room, with a TV area and a sofa accompanied by two armchairs. They had opted for an open concept kitchen so we could see through to the back of the house just standing at the door. The kitchen, like the living room, was uncluttered and practical with all the necessities and nothing more.

Surrounding the kitchen and dining area were floor-to-ceiling glass doors swathed with roller blinds, which allowed natural light on fair days and providing the option to keep the light on days when the sun blazes mercilessly.

Just beyond those glass doors was a tiny little garden big enough to lay a mat to have a picnic on. Fiona was also attemtping to grow some herbs which were placed in a huge pot that was used to conceal a sewerage cover.

We decided to explore the upper level next and the first thing that caught my eyes was the light bulbs dangling from the ceiling. Again, nothing fancy and very practical but yet tastefully done. It was just one of those things that make you go ‘Damn, why didn’t I think of that?’.

The upper level was equally cool. They kept elements of the retro fixtures that came with the original house which was built in the 70s like the staircase railings, the mosaic tiles of the guest room and even salvaged the old window grilles from the master bedroom into a trellis-like fixture to hang their plasma TV from.

In short, the whole place was groovy without being too ostentatious. Just practical and uncluttered, just the way we like it.

A-roi krub... again!

After the excellent (in spite of it being expired for more than six months) tom yum soup we had a couple of weeks earlier, we went back to Giant and bought ourselves more of the similar range of Thai food from Thai Kitchen. Apparently, Giant Hypermart brings this brand of products in by themselves so it explains why we could not find it anywhere else.

We decided to buy the tom yum kung again, and also purchased a tom kah khai, which is basically a tom yum stew of chicken with a creamy coconut milk base. It's been ages since I had a good one and thinking about it now brings me back 20 years to our Telok Blangah flat where this dish was normal fare whipped out by the Thai domestic helper we had back then.

It had been a crazy week and I was too lazy to cook, so I guess the tom kah khai came in really handy. The recipe called for chicken slices, but I was too lazy to debone the chicken parts we had in the freezer. Instead, I used the chicken pieces, with bones intact, and it still turned out wonderful. As with the tom yum kung before, all the ingredients were individually packed into several numbered packets, so all I had to do was boil some water and add the chicken pieces.

The final product was nothing short of wonderful. Penny was too stuffed to eat much, but I sipped up every last drop of soup.

Excellent!

Fearfully and wonderfully made

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:14-16

The above Psalm describes how well God knows us, perhaps even better than we know ourselves. I've always thought this to be a tad hard to swallow - can it be remotely possible that someone knows me better than I know myself?

God answered that question when He blessed us with Velouria. Seeing how Velouria has idiosyncracies and physical behaviour that is a combination of both Penny and myself has convinced me and very possibly a reminder from God to tell me that He indeed knows me and can even create a 'mini me'.

The year Star Wars Ep. IV was released, I was lying on the floor of an apartment in Outram Park having my favourite drink of the moment.

Some 28 years later, Velouria does likewise on our bed. In the exact same pose.


I would have excused it if it was the left leg over the right, but noooo... it had to the EXACT SAME POSE! Albert Einstein once said 'Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous'. Couldn't have put it better myself.