diary of a madman

One of the few poems that I really like…

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash’d all their sabres bare,
Flash’d as they turn’d in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder’d.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke
Shatter’d and sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not,
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder’d.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

Okay let’s start with the pleasant stuff - the 3rd floor STEAMboat. Really quite steam… a lot of dodgy talk and a lot of jiaowei around (literally, penis talk, aka rubbish).

I’ll not bore you with my uber l33t literary abilities, but I’ll let the photos do the talking.

The pre-STEAMboat preparations:

Ivan and Khairul hard at work to get the boat to steam:

More food:

Laremy’s feast:

Dodgy-ly:

KumsungmalongCORN:

Overall it was amazing, thanks to Laremy for organising this very steamy steamboat, and to everybody who came! (Especially the konfused korean who called me a cheebye, cheebye to you too HAHA)

Ok to the more kaopeh stuff - the NUS cultural activities club did a gig at Holland Village on Sunday as part of some program organised by the RCs there, and I was amazed at the turn out, more so at the number of annoying people who complained about the “noise level”. All of the kaopeh people were residents of a condo situated just behind our stage, and all of them were Chinese.

I wonder what happened to tolerence within the community. Nobody complains when there’s a Chinese funeral, and we all know how noisy and loud it can get at unearthly hours of the night. Nobody complains when its Chinese New Year and bazaars blast cheesy chinese music daily. So why complain about a 2 hour performance?

What amazed the most was the fact that the police actually responded to the complains. I’ve made numerous police calls regarding dodgy characters loitering at my block’s void deck, delinquents playing with sparklers and vandalising public property, and the fastest response time I’ve had to date was 1 hour +.

That’s two police officers, defenders of peace and public safety, talking to Rosli, our band director. I do not condemn the police for taking their jobs seriously because we were obviously a public nuisance and making old people in the condo suicidal. Oh maybe we made some little kids pee in their pants and interrupted some adults’ love-making session. This is why our parents are required by law to pay taxes in order to pay for their salary.

But anyway, I’m going for breakfast and I’ll end my kaopeh session here. More photos:

The gear I had to lug from KR all the way to YIH where the band room/bus pickup was at:

And this is the drumset that we used. A yamaha stage custom with the older lugs (resembles a recording custom), my yamaha maple custom absolute snare (14x5.5, 6ply maple), 14″ k light hats, 15″ k dark thin crash, 17″ a custom crash, 22″ a custom ride, 10″ k splash and my yamaha dfp9310 double pedals.

Okbye.