Lady GaGa… and the ugly Singapore scalpers

Lady GaGa is performing in Singapore on the 28th and 29th of May ! Me, being the out of touch loser, had completely no idea she was coming ! That is until one of my colleagues mentioned that his friends have already purchased their tickets. Apparently the initial release was completely snapped up and the added show on the 29th of May was selling fast.

So I hurriedly logged into the Sistic website. For non-Singaporeanized-individuals, Sistic is the (only?) place to buy tickets for all kinds of shows and concerts in Singapore. While it’s existence is open to much controversy (think monopolistic), the purpose of this post is not to discuss this issue. Nor is it to discuss how after years and years and years of experiencing technical glitches whenever hot shows are in town due to overwhelming traffic to their servers, no real solutions have been implemented to date.

Ticket sales started at 10 am, and I logged in at 1130 am… and all the tickets were GONE !! I was so upset, and bitched left, right, center, to everyone and anyone who would listen. Then, one of my colleagues noticed that the occasional odd ticket for sale pops up on the website every now and then for whatever reason, maybe because some dude cancelled their purchase, or some glitch in their system, whatever, I managed to buy the ticket I wanted and the world was at peace again 🙂

This was when I heard a story from one of my colleagues about the time when she landed 2 free tickets to some k-pop concert (ie. Korean pop… if you’re not from Asia, you will never comprehend the kind of fanatical fan following some of these bubble gum music belching 20 somethings can attract). Apparently, she managed to sell the tickets for 2.5x their original price !

This got me a little curious and so I did a little research and checked out eBay Singapore. Lo and behold there were plenty of Lady GaGa concert tickets on sale… just hours after their release online ! They were asking for nearly 2x the original prices already.  Don’t believe me ? Check this out. The link should work till… I dunno… 28th of May ?

Scalping is illegal in Singapore. It is reasonable to expect some ticket resale to occur because of changes in plans etc… But this is just too blatant and rampant in my opinion. It’s funny how clean and ‘corrupt’ free Singapore has allowed this activity to flourish for what I can only assume to be a very very very long time.

No matter. I managed to get my tickets at ORIGINAL price. I would never have paid those scalpers for her tickets. I am a fan. But I have principles too. Stay tuned for my 2 cents on the concert at a later date ! 🙂

Evolve MMA : Post No. 2

As promised, though I wonder who cares, this is a follow-up to my recent post on Evolve MMA Singapore. This is not an advertorial. I’m a paying customer at Evolve and the views expressed here are entirely my own.

I’ve been attending the Muay Thai classes there for a few weeks now. As I’m completely new to Muay Thai, I’m only allowed to attend the beginners class. As previously stated, they have many classes scattered throughout the day, and I have no difficulty fitting the classes into my erratic work schedule at all. Depending on the time of the day you attend, the classes can get quite big (as many as 30 students sometimes). However, I view this as a plus point rather than a negative. There is sufficient space and equipment for everyone to get a good workout. There are usually 3-4 instructors at hand. Also, working out in a group actually gives you the motivation to push that little bit harder.

Classes are an hour long and typically follow the following structure – warm up, group combination drills, bag and pad work, strength and anaerobic conditioning at the end. When the classes are big, you might not get all the attention so your technique may go uncorrected. A little effort and independence is required on your part to make sure you get it right I guess. Even so, the basic techniques are repeated almost every class, so it’s just a matter of doing it over and over again until it becomes second nature.

Attendance is tracked via punch cards. I have no idea what the symbols they put into the punch cards mean. I guess you get promoted after you have attended xxx number of classes… I dunno… it doesn’t really matter. The promotion and grading system in Muay Thai is informal anyway, there are not international standards… what matters is the training and frequent practice.

At the end of the class… if you really give it your all… you would be really really exhausted… There is always the option of conserving some energy and attending a follow-up Muay Thai class, that occurs on some days… or BJJ class (which often involves a short wait). I have yet to build up my endurance level to train beyond the one hour class, but eventually, I plan to attend the BJJ classes. They look just as interesting 🙂

P/s : photography is forbidden in the premises, otherwise I would have loved to put up some pictures of the classes.

Evolve MMA

I seem to be posting about nothing but martial arts these days… oh who cares… it’s what’s consuming most of my time right now. I’ve known about this MMA gym called Evolve for quite some time. Some would call them the Fitness First of MMA gyms in Singapore. That’s the reason why it took me awhile to actually take an active interest in them. I was looking for somewhere to train in a more traditional manner… in a less commercial manner… and in a less narcissistic manner (the gyms are glassed all around and situated in high traffic areas).

Alas all the martial arts centers in Singapore I’ve checked out have disappointed me to certain degrees. Without naming names… here are some of the major flaws that irk me…

1. Inconvenient location. The COE has hit 70k ! I don’t have a car… so I rely on public transport.

2. Fixed class schedule. Due to the nature of my work, missing classes would be inevitable if the class schedule is not flexible.

3. Poor hygiene. I once checked out an MMA gym in the Central Business District that actually stank of sweat… it permeated the entire 2 floors the gym occupied… GROSS !

4. Disinterested instructors. No real Kung Fu thought here !

5. Too many students ! The training floor is too small to accommodate everyone, if we can’t execute our moves properly, then we are just moving our bodies.. It’s not that I want the class size to be small, I just want enough space to train. As a child I attended TKD classes with more than 100 students… but we trained in an open field… so it was fine.

6. Inadequate equipment / Facilities. Proper training equipment is a must. Unfortunately, they are also expensive, which may be out of the affordability of smaller outfits. Of course things like a nice locker and shower facilities would be great… but not a must… oh who the hell am I kidding… lockers and showers are important ! I slave all day at work and when I’m done working out… i wanna feel pampered ! Gone are the days when I need to feel bad ass cos I trained in the field / rooftop / concrete floor of some run down gym where the paint is peeling. All those don’t make me a better martial artist… they just increase my injury and infection risk. I can’t afford days off work. I’M IMPORTANT.

Please pardon my long winded-ness. Well, now that I’ve gotten the above grouses out of my system, let me continue on with my experience at Evolve MMA Singapore. Do note that I’m a paying customer, and I’ve not received any encouragement, or incentives to write this review. Views expressed are entirely my own… and may change with time as I spend more time at Evolve and get to know the people there.

At present there are only 2 Evolve gyms in Singapore. Before you sign up, it is compulsory that you ‘experience’ a 30 minute complimentary class. I was instructed by a dude that didn’t speak much English. But he was friendly, and thought me some moves here and there. It was more like an overview of a typical 1 hour class. Honestly, the complimentary class made no difference in my decision to sign up or not. But I guess it will for those who have never trained in martial arts before.

You are also shown their facilities, such as their nice and clean washrooms with the ‘rainwater’ showers. The entire place is clean, bright, and stocked with quality equipment. In fact, the mats are cleaned after every class !

After all that you are sat down at the lounge area. A juice bar operates here during office hours… sorta… and there is WiFi and internet access via an iMac as well. One of their staff will then go over the various payment plans with you. There is a 1 year minimum contract… and it works out to around 4000 SGD a year, depending on your payment plan. I won’t disclose the full details of their pricing schedule here. It’s obviously a closely guarded secret by them since they do not disclose it until you have taken the 30 minute trial class.

The classes are buffet style. You can attend as many as you want… but don’t be late ! Upon scrutinizing the schedule a little deeper, I noticed that classes have been cleverly spaced such that it’s not easy to take one class after another, there is always a significant wait in between. I wonder if this is intentional, or a fluke. Anyway, since I’m new, I don’t think I’ll have the stamina to attend that many classes in a row. I’m sure I’ll be able to work my way around the system eventually :p

There is no need to pre-book for the classes. You can just walk in ! This is excellent for someone who has odd working schedules like me 🙂 The instructors keep track of you via little punch cards that you have to dig out and present to them before every lesson. They can then make little notes after the class to track your progress… and determine if you’re ready to take things to the next level. I’m not sure if this system works… but I’ll have an entire year to find out I guess…

My my I’ve written for an entire hour ! OK. I’m tired now. Maybe I’ll provide more details about their classes in my next post. Stay tuned ! 😛

Is Kung Fu Dead ?

It’s been almost a year since I started taking Shaolin Wushu classes regularly. In this one year, I’ve also read extensively on the subject whenever I am able to squeeze in some leisure time here and there. The disparity between Chinese martial arts training and contemporary Asia ex-China martial arts is so huge I do not know where to begin !

After an entire year dedicated to learning more on the subject matter, I have no choice but to admit that I’m somewhat disillusioned. I have concluded that Wushu is truly nothing more that a performance art and has no real world application whatsoever ! I was originally drawn to it as I was under the impression that the artistic aspect was part of the heritage of the art form that was passed down from our ancestors. Little did I know, the artistic twirls and cartwheels were nothing but products of communist propaganda, planted into the Franken-techniques that are currently being spread to the masses, diluting away hundreds if not thousands of years worth of fighting evolution.

The pollution that is Wushu has also seeped into almost every Chinese martial art that once flourished during the closed doors policy of China. Sifu’s obviously have to embellish their art to make them look impressive enough to attract prospective students. Nevermind that many sifu’s of today never actually engaged in actual combat, and thus do not know the true value of the techniques they are teaching. How can I make such a statement you ask ? wellllll…. Wushu / Kung Fu has no contact / combat competitive event whatsoever ! But there is Sanda / Sanshou you might argue. Well, if you’ve ever seen a Sanda fighter in action, you would realise that it’s nothing but a rip-off of any contemporary fighting technique out there. Considering that Sanda is younger than most modern martial arts, yes, it’s nothing but a knock-off. It is still evolving… and is still quite far from being a complete street-fighting system. At present, it seems that the only place where it can excel is in the ring, where it’s designed to be.

Like many traditional martial artist, I too poo poo-ed MMA in the beginning. I thought it was a little arrogant to sell to the entire world that Muay Thai + Jujitsu will make you the most all round bad ass fighter out there. I thought MMA was nothing more than marketing crap ! Now however, I’ve seen the light. Muay Thai fighters frequently engage in full contact fights. The art evolves ! It does not stagnate ! It moves on with the times…. Same with Jujitsu… it’s a derivation of the Japanese art of grappling from bygone years… which was the derivation of Chinese chin-na from bygone bygone years and so on so forth. So, while Muay Thai and Jujitsu are really kick-ass arts now… there is no guarantee that they will stay so… especially when more and more Mc-Dojo’s pop up and claim to teach ‘authentic’ Muay Thai. It’s the ‘authentic’ part of any martial art that causes us to stagnate and not move on with the times.

So… in my quest to continue to better myself in the art of fighting… I have come up with a set of rules to ensure I continue to improve as a martial artist :

1. Move on to the next martial art when I think I have extracted all that I can from my current art. Bruce Lee teaches us to adopt what works for us… and discard the rest ! There is no need to ensure that I reach black belt level and stuff like that… it’s the basics that are the most important and most instinctive in combats that last seconds to minutes.

2. Learn with an open mind. Never keep comparing it with what I’ve already learned beforehand. If I keep falling back on my Taekwondo basics, I may not be able to adopt and assimilate the strengths of the current art I am learning.

3. Be patient. Sure it’s nice to accelerate your learning so that you can boast your mastery of an art as quickly as you can (I’m not getting any younger !). But repetition of the basics is what we need to build muscle memory… and the basics are probably all we need in real life combat.

4. Reflect on what I have learned… assimilate it into yourself… make the techniques your own.

SMRT and the ‘Gahmen’ sucks…. let’s sing about it !

The wifey has told me repeatedly that the SMRT service quality dips ACUTELY after every election campaign. I’ve always told her that she’s just paranoid and it’s completely coincidental. However, in light of the recent events, I don’t think I can stick to my stand any longer. The recent cock-ups by SMRT are likely to cause reverberations that will last until the next electoral campaign. Young Singaporeans seem to have moved from their tweens to their teens 🙂 and, with their newly discovered powers of higher cognitive function, they are no longer letting their ‘parents’ get away with the same old lame excuses that they used to be fed.

Also, you can always trust some young dude to immortalise their anti-establishment sentiments in song for their 2 minutes of fame…

Enjoy ! 🙂

ROXETTE !

Roxette released a new album this year ! They’ve been out of the news in this part of the world for so long I didn’t even know about it. I’ve been a Roxette fan for almost 20 years and, IMHO, they are much better than ABBA (well, it’s a completely different generation I guess)

I was also thrilled to learn that they will be performing in Singapore on the 6th of March 2012. In fact, I’ve even bought my ticket already !

Below is the music video of my favorite song from the album. Enjoy 🙂

 

vPost, worse than SMRT 1000x !

The recent breakdowns of the underground rails operated by SMRT have been the talk of the nation. Their CEO has shamelessly made clear that she will not be stepping down anytime soon. As with all Asian societies, it is obvious that her head will eventually roll, it’s just a matter of doing it in a ‘face saving’ way. The entire incident has caused thousands of commuters much grief over the last few weeks. Although I was fortunate enough to not be one of them, this entire incident has reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to write about awhile back but eventually procrastinated and forgot.

I purchased a set of rather expensive home gym equipment recently from the USA. As the company does not ship internationally, I had to use a freight forwarding service. A friend of mine had recommended Comgateway, a USA based company. He had used them previously and did not encounter any problems with his shipment. However, considering the value of my shipment, I decided to play it safe and use a locally incorporated company instead, namely, vPost (the international freight forwarding company of SingPost, Singapore’s postal service). My argument was :

1. SingPost is a Singaporean company, born of a country that prides itself on its service and efficiency.

2. If anything goes wrong, the support staff are Singapore based, much easier to get in contact with to resolve the issue.

3. vPost was competitively priced. A little cheaper, but not to say a deal breaker. Being cheap was not high on my agenda. This was expensive stuff I was buying !

When shit happens

Things basically went wrong from the get go. I think it’s much easier to organize my thoughts and to demonstrate how shitty they are by presenting the rest of this article in point form :

1. The acknowledgement from vPost that they have received my invoice and are awaiting the shipment of my item took days ! Even after my item has shipped out, vPost has yet to acknowledge my invoice. When there were some amendments to my shipped item, I tried to inform vPost, but there was no acknowledgement from them at all ! in the end, when my items arrived, they were confused and did not know how to sort my items out properly. I am VERY sure that they received my emails, and that I had sent the emails to the CORRECT address / department.

2. They had mistakenly measured one of my items as 20 meters long. Seriously, 20 meters long ??!! As a result, they proceeded to charge me 4 thousand dollars for shipping the item over. I wrote numerous emails to vPost but received no reply. Finally I relented and called them up personally and they claimed that they will get back to me within the next few days.

3. Days passed, and still no news. I finally called again and the staff I spoke to had no idea what I was talking about. So I repeated the process of lodging a complaint and was reassured that they will resolve the matter in the next few days.

4. Days passed, and guess what ? still no news !! Pissed off I called and called daily to get updates on the situation. Each time I ended up speaking to a different person at the call center and each time I was told the same old news. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore, I asked to speak to the most senior manager / supervisor and took down her name. After that, I called personally and requested for the same person everyday to get updates on what was happening.

5. One would think that after going to such an extent the matter would get resolved ? I’m sure you’ve guessed what I’m getting at by now. I was told the same old shit from the manager. ie. to wait a few days. Well an entire month has passed since I was told ‘to wait a few days’. I finally lost it and yelled over the phone. I demanded that they get in touch with their counterparts in the USA and resolved it immediately, and that the manager was to call me back PERSONALLY, even AFTER OFFICE HOURS with DAILY updates. I made it clear that I will not rest until this matter is resolved ! Days after instilling such demands, the matter was finally resolved, and my expensive paraphernalia was finally shipped to Singapore.

6. Ahhh… but my pain does not end there. I was contacted by the delivery personal when the item arrived. I told them that nobody was home and arranged a new delivery date. This is a common service, provided by all the big shippers I’ve used (FedEx, DHL…). On the agreed upon date, I waited, and waited… and waited… surprise surprise nobody turned up ! So it was back to the painful cycle of screaming over the phone again until I could speak to someone who could meet my demands, and finally after a good month and a half, my precious cargo arrived.

 

Final words….

From recent events I’ve came to the conclusion that Singapore is at a tipping point. The reputation they’ve built over decades is at risk of an unexpected and acute deterioration. The society has become complacent, lazy… arrogant. They are blind to the competition that is emerging from all directions. Young Singaporeans may soon face the harsh realization that they are no longer the cream of South East Asia, something they were brought up to take for granted.

Singtel AMPed : An Update

It’s been awhile since I last wrote about the AMPed service from Singtel. The last few times I wrote about it was actually to vent my frustration at this ‘half baked’ service. For those who are not from Singapore, think of Singtel as the AT&T equivalent in the USA.

However, I do need to give some credit where credit is due. Singtel has recently launched the AMPed 2.0 app for the iPhone. It’s much slicker and more intuitive than the original app. I found it much easier to search and discover songs, as well as to organize them into playlists. Sound quality was reasonable as well, although the download speeds were frustrating at times. Don’t assume that you will be able to stream the songs in while you listen to them.

The song selection is still limited. Many albums are incomplete (for whatever reasons I do not know). New songs generally lag behind their iTunes debut. There is still no Mac support (despite having an iPhone app) and songs are still downloaded in the Windows Media file format, necessitating some tech know how to convert them to the more widely used MP3 format.

On the whole, I do find myself using the service more and more frequently. Simply because it was bundled free with my data package when I purchased my iPhone. I get whatever songs I can from the AMPed service for free to save me some mulah, even then, I have trouble using up my monthly quota. I have no idea what I’m going to do with all the ‘unused credits’ that I’ve carried forward for the last 1 year !

So that wraps up this part of the blog for now… I have not written for awhile. Not for the lack of inspiration, but rather, due to the abundance of joyful distraction life has to offer 🙂

Getting back in shape is tough….

In my last post I rambled on a little about starting martial arts training. Well, it’s been about 3 months since I started training regularly again. I have also supplemented my classes with some ‘self directed learning’ sessions.  Basically I’m trying to regain all my lost abilities, in particular, those fancy kicks that Taekwondo practitioners are so famous for.

The entire experience was an eye opener for me. I didn’t really comprehend the consequence of hitting the big 3-0 until now. There are a few things that I’m particularly disappointed with and I resolve to work on them one step at a time :

1. Cardiovascular fitness – at least last an entire hour long training session without feeling like I’m sucking in air so hard that I’m collapsing my windpipes. I must say in the last 3 months it has improved quite a bit though… Now I’m trying to push it to the next level.

2. Flexibility – OMG this has deteriorated even more than point no. 1. In spite my best efforts at stretching regularly for more than a month, I still went nowhere. That was when I decided to do a little research. Apparently I’ve been stretching wrongly. Yups… when one is young one takes flexibility for granted. So now I’m working on a range of dynamic flexibility and passive stretching exercises with some passive active sprinkled here and there. I hope to be able to do the splits eventually… though I think it’s a near impossibility… considering I’ve never been able to do it anyway.

3. Kicking technique – I was foolish to think that I could still kick like I used to. Nope. No more hitting those impressive high kicks… especially when you lack flexibility. To add insult to injury, I also realized that my balance while executing my kicks have deteriorated significantly as well. Sigh… so it’s back to basics for me. I have decided to break them down… to perfect one or two kicks at a time… before tackling the more difficult kicks and combinations.

So there you have it, those things above should keep me busy for a few months. Till we meet again. Ciao ! 🙂

Does neglecting your blog mean you have a life out there ?

Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not insulting the zillions of bloggers out there who diligently update their blogs with useful… or useless (like me) information on a regular basis. The truth is I started this blog out of boredom. I was basically trying to procrastinate my duties at work, at home, and all things responsible in general. However, as I’ve recently stated, I’ve passed a major exam which earned me a small promotion.

Suddenly work has meaning again. I no longer have to spend all my precious hours studying ! I’ve been spending more social time with the wifey… and with my own interests. It’s actually quite sad that, over the last 4 years, whenever anyone asks me what I do with my spare time, it’s usually met with a period of silence. I cannot even recall having a hobby… other than stoning in front of the telly in between studying and daydreaming.

Well, what do I do with my free time now ? I’ve started exercising again. I thought of going to they gym, and join the millions of people who like to mimic hamsters and pound the threadmill for hours on end… but I think that’s boring… Forget about running or cycling outdoors… I can feel my lungs getting choked with smog with every breath. So… I’m going back to my childhood passion… martial arts.

I’ve always loved martial arts. Back when I was a child I looked forward to my weekly martial arts training with excitement. It then became a twice weekly affair for awhile… until track and field events took up most of my time during my teenage years. So martial arts was put in deep freeze for awhile… I always promised myself that I’ll revisit it again someday… well, I guess that day has come ! 🙂

I thought of going back to my original training, namely Taekwondo. But it’s been so long… sure the basics will always be ingrained into my subconscious… but what else is there to do besides going through the drill over and over again ? I don’t see myself being motivated to progress any higher than the 1st dan (poom) that I already have. After all, the whole idea of me learning martial arts is to learn how to fight… and to be fighting fit.

I thought of MMA. You know… those ‘rojak’ fighters. There is no heritage. They borrow from all arts… basically they use the ‘flavour’ of the time to achieve victory in the ring. Funny thought, when UFC first started, there was so much more diversity in the fighters compared to today. Now, every UFC fighter uses muay thai for kickboxing, jujitsu for ground fighting etc… the diversity of the art is lost ! Once that happens… they start concentrating of being bigger and stronger than the other dude to win. So in the end all you get are flighters that are more and more pumped up on all kinds of paralegal supplements and hormones… it no longer reflects fighting in real life… which was what UFC intended to mimic in the first place. So no, MMA was not for me…

So what did I learn in the end ? I spent a great deal doing some research. I wanted to find an art I can relate to… so Chinese Kung Fu naturally came to mind. It is believed that Shao Lin Kung Fu is the grand daddy of all Asian martial arts. Take the horse stance for example… you find it everywhere ! Taekwondo, Karate… and of course, Wu Shu (The PRC’s sanctioned version of Chinese Kung Fu). Seeing that the world of Chinese martial arts is so fragmented and disorganised compared to Taekwondo and Karate (each martial art school actually grades their own students according to their own standard), the reputation of the school and it’s lineage is actually important.

I didn’t really wanna train the old fashioned way. You know, like on a roof top or parking lot etc… That was how I trained during my student days when I learned Taekwondo. But I must say, it somehow builds a certain discipline, dedication… and gives one some sort of personal satisfaction (training in poverty, sacrificing for the art 🙂 ). But I’m old now (in fact my wife thinks I’m crazy, to her this is akin to some form of life crisis). I cannot afford to be plagued with blisters and bruises all over my body… nor can I afford to get injured (gotta work to pay the bills you know !). So after some searching, I found somewhere that actually meets my needs…

My my my… I’ve actually rambled on for so many paragraphs ! I think I’ll sign off now… more to follow on my subsequent posts 😛