Dress Rehearsal 1

This will be my affirmation of the day: (borrowed from the Hay House Calender)
I am the perfect age right now. I have been younger and I will be older. I will never be this age again, so I make the most of this time and enjoy myself to the fullest.

This may sound cheesy to some, but somehow I find this line a source of great inspiration.
We need to live in the present.

Last night I was out at a singles event with Emily. This event was organized by dating website rsvp.

We had heaps of fun talking to random strangers, making some new friends and getting the odd number here and there.
There's a strange phenomenon I noticed that I like to call social proofing.
If a guy enters a singles bar by himself and stands in a corner nursing his drink in his hand while checking out the women in there, he does get noticed by the women. By the time he drinks enough dutch courage to approach a girl to say hello, they'll be less responsive as the women would have already noticed creepy fella standing by himself checking them out.

On the flip side. I walked into the venue, arm in arm with Emily in tow, we stood at the bar, got a drink and then proceeded to dance a few moves on the empty dancefloor while everyone else in the room looked on. After leaving the floor, I walked up to a bunch of girls and opened the set; launching into a conversation effortlessly because we've already established a few facts:

1) We were the most fun people in the room having a good time
2) Social dynamics will draw others to hang around fun people because they want to have a good time too
3) I wasn't behaving in a predatory fashion checking out targets from a corner before making my move, I was just there to have fun irregardless.

So there you go, social dynamics!

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In case you're thinking what is a "dress rehearsal" (the title of this post).

Well, sadly I'm at work this fine rainy saturday evening and am typing out this post while nobody's looking over my shoulder.

9 weeks to go on the project and we're having a trial run over the weekend working 24/7 in shifts as we run all our programs to migrate the 800,000 electricity customer and billing details over from Queensland.

Exciting times indeed.... although I'd rather watch paint dry if given a choice

So I'm was on call today and had to go into the office from 3pm till 6pm.
I finished up and just only got home when I got called back again at 8pm because something didn't load properly and had to be fixed.
Lets hope it doesn't pan out into a long night.

Good news is, one of our managers; Sarah is in charge of ordering dinner tonight.
We're having Thai... Yum !

Harder Better Faster Stronger

This is absolutely brilliant stuff !

Just wait till the lyrics start speeding up and realize how ingenious these girls are.

The end of a great holiday

1.30am on a Monday morning / Sunday night (depending on how you're looking at it)

I am dreading having to face waking up for work in a few hours.
I had a fun Wednesday night at this club/bar - Thumper @ the Goodwood Park Hotel.
Kyo was teaching an hour of basic beginner's salsa and there was such a big turnout that I took the lead and led the men's side of the class in the basic moves while he led the ladies.

It was good fun and when the class ended, the social Latin night started with a live Latin band playing some seriously sexy music for everyone to dance to. These people on the floor were amazing! Doing some beautifully executed salsa moves left, right and all over the place. I took a chance with this cute girl, Eugenie but warned her that since I was a beginner, any mistakes made would only be her fault

Lina the air hostess from last week came by as well for a dance and we had an instant group of new friends made there. After the gig, the lot of us went down the road to Emerald Hill for some drinks at an outdoor wine/bar.

Following that we adjourned to Pure, the white side room of Ministry, Singapore. It was a one off party in the middle of the week with local DJs Has and Angela Flame. I've known Angela for a while now since she visited Melbourne in 2006 and it was the first time I've actually heard her play a gig. Damm, not only is she hot looking, she's an awesome techno DJ!

Had an overnight flight on Thursday and arrived in Melbourne bleary eyed and exhausted on Friday morning. Pat & Emily were my official welcoming home committee at the airport. I love my housemates! =)

The Cure and the Cause

I spent Saturday night dancing away at Velvet Underground, the classy house sideroom of Zouk club. Miguel Migs and Julius Papp were at the helm of things, playing a delicious selection of deep house tunes. Happy times indeed, as I caught up with various groups of friends scattered all over the club.
I totally lost the plot when Julius Papp dropped the track "The Cure and the Cause" by Fish Go Deep.
My god!!! I really LOVE this track and it was the first time I heard it out in a club, and no better club than Velvet with its new sound system designed by Gary Stewart himself.

So, I cannot resist but to post up the video of this track to share with you all below....



Kyo was teaching Salsa at the Xenbar on Monday nights. I came along with the intention of getting some lessons and met the lovely bar owner, Emma who let me in for free!
It was a pretty slow night, so I had 2 hours of practice with another girl, followed by an additional hour of private lessons from Kyo to correct the minor flaws that I'll never be able to detect while taking group lessons.

I have much to learn about this dance, the weekly lessons I have been taking with Nic, Lisa and Kylie will never be enough to learn this dance effectively. I'm considering increasing that to twice weekly lessons now if time permits back in Melbourne. =)

2 more days to go in Singapore, I feel like there isn't enough time to do everything I'd like to accomplish here!

5am on the island that never sleeps

I'm back home in Singapore!

Christmas 2007 was brilliant, with me spending the eve with my lovely housemates (a separate post coming up on that with photos)

Much has happened since then, I was trying hard to get home to Singapore for New Years on the 30th December and it was a last minute stroke of luck that I managed to get a seat on Singapore Airlines.

Prog girl came by early on Sunday morning to help me pack (it was more like supervising and then falling asleep on the bed than helping really....) and drove me to the airport.

8hours and many thousand miles later, I'm back in the tropical jungle heat of Singapore and going straight into the crowds and traffic to dinner with the family. It was mum's 60th birthday dinner which officially makes her a senior citizen complete with benefits like cheaper public transport and discount movies during the afternoon.

So far, I've been living the good life. Visiting the gym in the afternoons, eating the cheap and plentiful local food, and catching up with friends in the night.

New Year's eve was spent at Zouk with no other than French marathon DJ extraodinairre Laurent Garnier at the helm of things, bringing us on a 10hour journey of house, techno and everything in between.

Last night, I went to meet up with my buddy Kyo, who was teaching Salsa at the O-Bar. We ended up dancing a few rounds with 2 cute girls there and turned it into an instant mini double-date when we went out for a late dinner at 2am (Nobody seems to sleep in Singapore!). Turns out they were stewardesses with Singapore airlines who were in town for a few days.

So here I am, 5am on a Saturday morning and I just got back from another night out of hanging out with friends at Zouk and its time to get some shut eye to recharge for another big weekend in the Lion City that never sleeps!