The weekend was another sleepy affair, with me managing to catch some serious z’s. Sleeping is just such a blissful experience. The falling to sleep bit is particularly satisfying, where you just snuggle under your duvet and let the silence lull you to pure, soundless somnolence. It’s like all the negativity from your body just melts away and your bed becomes a pagoda of peace and bliss. Hm thinking about it just makes me wanna sleep some more.

Anyway, last Thursday went to catch Justice and it was pretty damn awesome. Pitchfork once described their music, at least their first album, as ‘unsubtle’. And well I think I kinda like unsubtle. It works for them anyway with their form of headlong, full-force aural bombardment – think badass slap-bass riffs, bombastic strings and rock drums. The lighting for their gig was – true to their music – grandiloquent, badass and awesome as well. Genesis was the very apt opening song and when the opening brass refrains sounded out the crowd went mental. Yisan, after going mental for a bit, managed to record some of the song:

For a taste of the awesome lighting work, check out Stress, courtesy of yisan and her camera:

The camera, being a mere camera, doesn’t really capture the head-rattling sound of the gig but you get an idea.

I’m not really sure of the set list but the night ended with Audio, Video, Disco, before an encore performance of On’n'On and a ramped-up version of We Are Your Friends with everyone singing along. Great great gig. Here are my two thumbs up: (Y) (Y)

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On Friday we were playing Ring of Fire and I swear I don’t get high I just get sick. Yup, alcohol just makes me sick. Gone are the days where my virgin stomach would happily absorb the alcohol and make me a happy person. Now it just makes me feel extremely uncomfortable every time I ingest alcohol. Why must my body be so adaptable sigh. Well at least other people still get high which is amusing to watch.

Right before I end this, I feel obliged to give my two pennies worth on Jeremy Lin. In this case, I am very much on the bandwagon. Sure, some of his Chinese-ness is exaggerated and his game is far from perfect (with very very poor 3-point shooting, particularly for a guard) but there really is a lot to like about him. If he goes on to play as he is playing for the rest of the season I see a movie adaptation in the works. If not well I think the thrill of seeing a Chinese person (who is not a monstrosity e.g. Yao Ming) play in the NBA will keep me happy for a long time.

Till next time then.

To start off, I am proud to announce that I’ve unlocked a new sleeping Achievement. In the last two days I’ve averaged sleeping 14 hours a day. This is just slightly off the 15-18 hours/day a sloth clocks so with due support and diligence, I am hopeful that I can surpass myself and break into the vaunted ranks of the sloths.

Because thoughtcatalog.com says its important to look forward to something every week to get through the week, I have my eyes planted firmly on French duo Justice’s gig on Thursday. And while I’ve been spending slightly more than a week trying to come up with a law-related joke, the best that I can muster is “Justice – the only justice I’m interested in” which is frankly not even a joke but reads more like a rubbish B-grade movie tagline. Any ideas?

What do you know, it’s 10pm already so disciplined me has to get off and start studying. This is quite a short, lousy one so to make up for it, the next post will be up soon and be much longer. Oh and hurray for Arsenal.

Last week went to catch Sister Act with the bro and I would rate it an E, or Exceeding Expectations (“And I’ve always thought Fred and I should’ve got E in everything, because we exceeded expectations just by turning up for the exams” – George Weasley), because it was definitely way better than what I thought it’d be. The sight of singing nuns in glittery habits (that’s what they call a nun’s dress, I kid you not) and breaking out the moves is just soo amusing and funny. Plus, the tunes were all infectiously catchy.

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Bought a ukulele today to up my indie cred. Actually that doesn’t really work – if I wanted to boost my indie cred I probably should’ve bought synths instead. A ukulele just screams cutesy, airy, poppy, quirky, Zooey Deschanel-y, -ness. Don’t think there’s a word for it but I tried my best. I learned Somewhere Over the Rainbow and yup, that should probably be the extent of my ukulele repertoire. Now it’s gonna sit in some corner and get caked in dust.

And of course, not forgetting that today is 初一 of Chinese New Year which means… nothing really. CNY kinda lost it’s appeal for me some time back when a cost-benefit analysis of the holiday brought about some negative results. Even the infinite amount of Yeo’s soyabean and winter melon drink couldn’t save it for me. I’m getting old. Yup but Happy New Year all the same!

It seems that every time I tell people (the heathens and non-believers) that poker is a game of skill, I get very skeptical and incredulous looks, or painfully sarcastic comments like “Pffffft yeah of course”. They immediately assume that I’m some inveterate gambler, who’s so delusional to think that there’s actually skill involved in a game of luck, like those aunties at the roulette table frantically jotting down ‘patterns’ and ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ numbers.

So when I continue to try to explain how poker is a game of skill, they just nod politely and smile blankly, at their back of heads probably thinking: “Yup yup there he goes prattling away again, thinking he somehow has skill in a game of luck. What a delusional creature.” So exasperating.

So what I’m asking for, just for the duration of reading this post, is to put aside all negative stereotypes about gambling, and be open-minded to a little education on poker. You can decide on your own whether it is pure dumb luck or a game of skill.

Firstly, I would like to address the issue of why people think gambling is a game of pure chance from which you will lose money in the long run. The thing is, that is absolutely correct. When you play games like roulette, the house (the casino) always has an edge. A simple illustration can demonstrate this: There are 37 numbers (0 to 36) on the roulette table, and say you put 1 dollar on one number. If the little white ball falls on your number, your pay out is 1 to 36, meaning you get 36 dollars. Assuming that you always bet a dollar on one number, if you bet 37 times in a row you will lose 37 dollars. But one time of those 36 times you will win, thereby earning you 36 dollars, and a net loss of 1 dollar. (This is a mathematically unsound explanation but it explains the point accurately enough) Yes, sometimes you get extremely lucky and you win 6 times for every 36 bets, but in the long-run, when the statistical data becomes large enough, you will only win once for every 36 bets. And essentially in the long-run, what you win will not cover what you’ve spent. 

The house has an edge in all its games. Blackjack, a seemingly innocuous game where you get two cards and the dealer gets two cards seems fair enough. But the house gets its edge from the fact that you (the customers) have to act first before the dealer.

As for poker, very importantly, you don’t play against the house, but against other fellow poker players. So you sit down at a poker table at a casino, you play, money changes hands, and what the casino does is charge a commission of sorts – called rake – on the money that changes hands. That’s how they earn money from poker. This commission is basically a charge for providing the cards, and providing the table where like-minded poker players can meet up and play.

So there you go. You do not suffer a mathematical disadvantage when playing poker, unlike other casino games, which means you would not lose money in the long-run as a certainty (but only if you’re a bad, or shall I say, unskilled player. But more on that soon).

Secondly, I want to talk about the term ‘gambling’. Dictionary.com defines ‘gamble’ as ‘to play at any game of chance for money or other stakes’. What is important to distinguish here is a game of chance and a game of pure chance.

Every game has an element of luck. In Monopoly you need to be lucky to land on the right properties at the rights times. In Scrabble if you’re lucky enough to keep getting the right letters at the right times you will probably cruise through the game. Or even in Tetris Battle sometimes when you’re lucky you just keep getting the correctly shaped pieces. Nobody is disputing that these games are games of skill as well, but it should be acknowledged that there is an element of chance involved too. And if you play these games for money, it would be ludicrous to call it gambling. And that is why it is far more accurate to define ‘gambling’ as playing a game of pure chance.

What is a game of pure chance? Roulette is. How the little white ball falls is absolute down to the powers that be. People who say they can discern patterns and whatnot are frankly slightly insane (yes junyit, you are slightly insane). In Blackjack there is a huge slab of chance involved, but skill is required as well.

This table (though not the most comprehensive. There are far more comprehensive tables available online) shows the most mathematically profitable way to play Blackjack. But note: by following this strategy table you will not be a profitable blackjack player and you will still lose money in the long-run. What it merely does is reduce the house advantage, say from 53% if you play blackjack absolutely randomly, to 51% if you follow this table. The only way to reduce the house advantage to below 50% is if you count cards, like what Jim Sturgess et al. did in the movie 21.

As for poker, yes it involves an element of luck as well, arguably more so than games like Scrabble or Tetris, but it irrefutably involves a huge element of skill (among other things) as well.

Okay how exactly does poker involve skill? There are many variants of poker, but the most popular form of poker, the one which 90% of poker players (including myself) play is No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em (NLHE). It has been acknowledged as the poker variant which requires the most amount of skill.

It is immensely difficult to give an illustration on how NLHE involves skill because it really is ‘an infinitely complex game’. But I’ll try anyway so bear with me. If you know how NLHE is played you can skip the next couple of paragraphs.

Okay in NLHE everybody is dealt 2 cards and there will (eventually) be 5 ‘common’ cards laid face-up in the middle of the table. I say ‘common’ because these cards can be used by all the players at the table, to form the best 5 card combination, which would decide who wins. Confused? Let me try an example:

Say you are dealt two Aces, and the 5 common cards on the table are A, K, 9, K, 3. Your best 5 card combination is AAAKK. Your opponent was dealt a K and a 9, so his best 5 card combination is KKK99. In this case you win because your 5 card combination is ‘bigger’ than your opponent’s. The rankings of such 5 card combinations can be found online and is quite intuitive if you know how to play chor dai di.

Now it would appear that this does seem like a game of pure chance, since it depends on what cards you are dealt. The key factor is, in poker, you can bluff people. That means even if you have totally shit cards, you can bluff your opponent by betting a large amount of money, compelling him to think that you have awesome cards and making him fold (meaning you automatically win the money without having to show your best 5 card combination). This video is a demonstration of bluffing at work:

When Isaac raised all-in (bet all his remaining chips) at the end, Ryan thought that no way his cards (very mediocre cards) could beat Isaac’s so he folded, allowing Isaac to win the chips. But as it turns out Isaac had the worse cards so essentially it was a good bluff by Isaac.

Another example of a bluff:

This is quite an astounding play because both players here had crappy cards, and they were both attempting to bluff each other off, with Phil Ivey (aka Tiger Woods of poker) coming out tops.

Other aspects of poker is extracting the maximum amount of money when you know you have the best hand, or knowing when to fold (and not bluff) when your opponent has the best hand etc. And you do all of this by piecing together information. I will now try to illustrate the thought process of a poker player. A lot of it will sound totally alien to some but to explain every single term would take ages…

So this guy (villain) raises to 4 big blinds from MP (middle position), I’m one position to his left and having played the villain for quite some time, I can deduce his range quite accurately. In this case it’d probably be pocket pairs, A-K to A-J, and maybe K-Q or K-J. I look at my hand and see two 10s. Pre-flop two 10s is ahead of his range – i.e. against pockets pairs from 22 to 99 I’m an overwhelming favourite to win (roughly 80%) and against hands like A-K to A-J and K-Q, K-J I’m a slight favourite to win (roughly 55%). Only against AA, KK, QQ and JJ am I an underdog (20%).

So as I am mathematically more likely to win in 13 out of his 17 possible hands, it would be prudent for me to raise him and put more money in the pot, so as to maximize my winnings.

And this is just touching the tip of the iceberg. Other things that need to be consider is the villain’s stack size (the amount of money he has) and whether anybody else had raised in front of him. And after all that’s been said, this only covers pre-flop strategy, at post-flop things get much more complicated.

But if you didn’t get anything from what I’ve said above, I like to compare poker to trading, be it stocks or forex or options etc. In trading you try to piece together as much information as you can, using fundamental and technical analysis, so as to make the correct buys or sales. But in a world of infinite complexity, your information will always be imperfect. There is always the erratic nature of crowd mentality, or maybe Angela Merkel introduced some swanky Euro policy that impacts market sentiment in unpredictable ways, and basically a truckload of other factors, some subtle others not, that could possibly influence the way the value of a stock/currency changes. Essentially, there is an element of luck as well.

Since nobody has perfect information (unless you do insider trading), everybody would lose money at some point. The difference between the average trader and the successful one is that the latter would make more than he loses. The latter would have come up with a strategy that maximises the times and amount that he makes money and minimises the times and amount that he loses. And that’s how star traders like Warren Buffet are so filthy rich.

In poker there are star players as well. Phil Ivey is the most vaunted one. There are others as well: Daniel Negreanu, Erik Seidel, Jason Mercier, and there are the online poker pros Daniel Cates, Viktor Blom, Phil Galfond etc. A simple google search can tell you how successful these people are. And these people are so good at what they do that the element of luck in poker becomes peripheral and they consistently make good money year after year.

And there you go. This has been a longgg post, much longer than I originally intended it to be. Hopefully some of you are convinced now that poker is a game of skill. Right now all I want to is to watch an episode of 30 Rock after all that typing phew. And maybe, just maybe, continue my CJS essay. Until next time.

I just came off a long and painful session on 888poker. Running very very bad. Or maybe it’s just me. Or is it variance. No matter. A little self-reflection is due.

So Christmas came and went, and New Year’s came in pretty inclement weather which allowed me to indulge for a moment that maybe the Mayans were right (after some googling it turns out the world will only end on the 21^st December pffft). Christmas was spent hanging with bro, obsessing over Arkham City, and reading Image comics, which is pretty much indicative of a great Christmas. Oh and we watched The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which, other than its sacrilegious ending, was quite the edge-of-the-seat-thriller. Not to mention it boasts a kickass theme song: Led Zep classic covered by badass Trent Reznor and Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O –

Reznor’s ‘industrial’ sound really works here, and Karen O’s scratchy (some say orgasmic) drawling/yelping is as sexy as always.

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The past few days I have also been strangely enthralled by the Iowa caucuses, or in fact the Republican race for presidential nominee in general. American politics is just so dynamic and interesting, and not without its fair share of colorful individuals. The New Hampshire GOP debate, available in full on Youtube, though not the most enlightening and incisive, presents quite a good representation of the various candidates: In the ‘evangelist’ ultra-conservative corner you’ve got Michelle Bachmann and her incendiary rhetoric, Rick Perry and his perfunctory arguments and Rick Sartorium, who probably dresses up his far-right sentiments the best. And of course there’s Mitt Romney, everybody’s favorite choice for the nomination.

Personally I like Jon Huntsman best because of his foursquare acceptance and acknowledgement of global warming and evolution, which, can you believe it, a reasonably large proportion of Republicans still refuse to believe, citing a ‘lack of evidence’. Also, Huntsman speaks Mandarin after his stint at China as Ambassador which earns him extra marks.

Not a bad level of competency for two years-worth of learning.

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A few weeks ago I came across this video entitled Meme Proposal, which I’m sure most of the people reading this would have already watched.

Not that I dislike the proposal or find it in any way negative, it’s just that I find the unbridled favorable reaction to it is quite puzzling. Was it that great a proposal? I honestly was quite underwhelmed. It doesn’t exactly score very highly on the preparation part – other than installing cameras and getting friends to come all he had to do was prepare some placards and try to fit in as many memes as possible into his proposal “speech”, which wasn’t quite as heartfelt or inspiring or funny as I thought it could be. Plus, you have to imagine the whole thing being done without music, that is, without Christina Perri serenading away as the video suggests. Imagine throughout the process of Tim going through his placards, all you hear is the buzz and susurrus of people mumbling and giggling to themselves. Just take two seconds to imagine that.

I’m not taking anything away from his proposal. I think Audrey mentioned that she’s very into memes so his meme element was, I guess, quite felicitous. And maybe, I’m just speculating here, that she prefers a low-key proposal with just her friends around at a meaningful place (it was done at a restaurant that the couple frequent, or so I’ve heard). So for them it was probably meaningful. But as neutral viewers like you and me, I would assume that a proposal should be judged by its originality, its grandeur, its humor, the effort put in etc., things that would put a smile on your face. And frankly to a neutral outsider like me (and everybody else not there) who is unaware of the nuanced significance of the memes or the place, the proposal just doesn’t cut it. Seriously just take away the music and the good video editing you’re left with something that looks pretty underwhelming and, dare I say it, lame proposal (to a neutral outsider. I can’t stress how much that the proposal probably means a lot to the couple due to their understanding of memes and the significance of the place etc.). Yup, so really, why all those Facebook comments saying how great the proposal is???

Okay I have definitely overstayed my sojourn here. Time to hit the sack. Goodnight.

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Unsurprisingly, it has taken me so so long to post anything new. The reason is simple. It is because ‘tis the Christmas holidays, and that leaves me with way too much free time. As already mentioned earlier I only blog when I am swamped with things to fret about and do. It appears very contradictory and seems to defy conventional sense. But that’s me. I’m avant-garde like that.

Went to Oxford (surprise surprise!) with yisan on Sunday and it was so languorous and sleepy, probably because the students have all returned home for Christmas. Nothing worth mentioning about the place really, just the usual cool-looking buildings and churches that seriously look all the same across Europe, but maybe that’s just me being an architectural philistine.

Random questions: How much do we truly appreciate beauty (architecture, paintings, literature and assorted artsy paraphernalia)? How much do we appreciate it simply because it has a label of being an art piece – therefore compelling us to ‘appreciate’ it just to portray a degree of cultural sophistry? Or maybe we appreciate certain ‘art pieces’ simply because people (both dead and alive, but mostly dead) have extolled its merit?

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For all my talk previously about winter coming, it has well and truly not come. The temperature today was 11 degrees. Far from the wintry chill that I was expecting. And the snow? Non-existent. I know I gave snow a lot of flak previously, even describing it as “deadly cesspool of cold, cold, freezing mush“, but it’s been a year since, and you know how you always want something that you cannot get? Same principle. The moment it starts snowing I’m probably gonna whinge away though.

Okay I shall stop my annoying incoherence. Seems like so far each paragraph of this post talks about something totally different heh. Can imagine how annoying that must be. I shall return to my Storm of Swords, which is proving so far to be as good as ever. Merry Christmas.

1. There’s nothing else to do. Going through the same shampoo-soap-rinse process can be such a dour, repetitive affair. Why not make things more interesting by pretending you’re Matt Bellamy? The wry ones would probably point out there is something else to do which involves a fair amount of pretending as well. But in the interest of not clogging up the shower drains, it should probably not be undertaken.
2. The acoustics in the bathroom are excellent. The closed, confined spaces of the bathroom makes it perfect for letting loose that inner songstress. An elevator would be great as well, as Arcade Fire have demonstrated:  But an elevator just wouldn’t confer on you the same amount of privacy a bathroom would.
3. The shower head can be used as ‘microphone’. Granted, I’ve outgrew this contrivance (preferring to pretend that my voice is naturally amplified) but it used to be really fun singing into the shower head, tossing it from hand to hand like one would with a microphone, and executing all sorts of frontman moves.

And there you go.

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I came across this really funny article today concerning the bad sex fiction award, awarded to the author with the most cringe-worthy depiction of sex, and it’s definitely worth a read: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/06/david-guterson-bad-sex-award

“Front parlour”? “Family jewels”? And Murakami is susceptible to making bizarre epigrams but “A freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike” has definitely crossed some rubicon into plain wtf weirdness.

Also, Zack Wahls, the eloquent dude who spoke up for legalizing gay marriages in Iowa, talks about what he is doing with his newfound fame: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/06/a-tale-of-two-moms-a-teenage-son-and-a-video-that-wouldn-t-die.html

If you haven’t seen the video, here it is:

For those who are curious, the bill still got passed in Iowa, effectively making gay marriages illegal there. But hopefully with the exposure that Zack has been receiving, things would eventually work for the better for the gay community in Iowa and maybe even bring positive tidings for gay communities abroad. Can’t believe he’s only 20 this year though. That’s… my age. And he’s already a youtube star (for the right reasons) and he will soon have a book under his name.  Respect, I say. (what am i doing with my life?????????)

So it is December already and I can’t help but to look back at December last year and do a bit of self-comparative analysis. How am I different now from how I was exactly one year ago. I have become more focused (or more boring) for one. My grand plans for penning the quintessential Malaysian novel have been shelved, or more like relegated to the dusty fringes of my mind, a familiar presence but duly ignored.

It was supposed to be the next great bildungsroman, featuring an unassuming, middle-class, averagely average Chinese Malaysian who is coasting indifferently through life. He was supposed to be a purveyor of prog-rock, have an emotionless relationship with his parents and a love interest who runs an online lingerie shop. If you’re thinking this sounds uncannily similar to a Haruki Murakami novel… well maybe it was a good idea I didn’t write it, at least not until I pass my Intellectual Property module next year.

Exactly one year ago I was also in the process of relinquishing my Computer Science inclinations. Being the unreasonable me I attempted to pick up the subject through MIT OpenCourseWare and my discipline, unsurprisingly, failed me as I soon lost the motivation to sit through hour-long online lectures. I finished the first tutorial – writing some rudimentary programme that combined your first name and last name lol – and got stuck at the next tutorial (which required a programme which could churn out prime numbers) and that was that. Thinking about it now is actually making me feel a bit wistful sigh.

I also had Wing Chun last year, but not now. I certainly enjoyed my time learning it, and fantasized frequently about taking down a group of baddies all at once à la the magnificently sexy Ip Man, but the effort to result ratio of learning Wing Chun was just insufficiently productive to keep me interested and motivated. I guess my fantasies will never be realized :(

So there. There are many more relatively more minor pursuits that I dabbled in but are not really worth a mention.

There are some things that have stuck with me though. I still enjoy writing, whether they be short stories or articles or blog posts, and I am still keen on poker, which is something I really should write a blog post about because it is so often misunderstood to be gambling. It is not, and it is actually quite an intellectually stimulating activity, but more on that next time when I find the time.

I probably should have saved a retrospective post like this one for New Year’s or something but meh I felt like doing it now. Oh and before I forget I am finally on twitter haha so follow me! Twitter is basically blogging for people with micro-sized attention spans so no surprise that it is so popular in this day and age.

I like to end posts with a video soo here you go, an amazing live performance by Daft Punk.

Oh the things I would do to watch a show like that.

Just to let spill a thought that’s been, to quote the ever amusing Herman Cain, “twirling around in my head”: Where do you strike the balance between being ambitious and being contented? Being ambitious entails always striving to be better, to achieve more, while being contented involves a sense of blissful resignation. Being content means looking below you, at others worse off than you, and thinking to yourself “I’m not so bad after all.”. Being ambitious enjoins one to look above, at those who are more accomplished, and use that to galvanize ourselves to better ourselves.

Of course they are not mutually exclusive. One can say that he looks both upwards and downwards and harnesses some magical hybrid of ambition and contentment. But it can be pretty difficult to find that middling ground between self-flagellating ambition and self-praising contentment. What you need, is perspective. Tonnes and kilotons of perspective from the myriad of books and people around you to alter and tweak and ultimately mold your sui generis worldview. And hopefully this worldview is robust enough to get you through the most crucial moments in life.

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Last Saturday managed to catch Wild Beasts with yisan. Really really enjoyed it.

Hayden Thorpe and Tom Fleming doing one of their spine-tingling harmonies

They played a bulk of the songs from their most recent album Smother including Bed of Nails and Albatross and also went through some of their old hits like The Devil’s Crayon, Hooting & Howling and All the King’s Men. I must say Hayden and Tom’s voices were as good as I thought they would sound live and Hayden was quite the sycophant charmer by continually praising the Bristolian crowd. All in all a deeply satisfying gig (Y)

In an attempt to be more cultured and distingué, I am going to watch the Warsaw Philharmonic play this Wednesday. I am quite excited about it actually because the last time I saw a full orchestra play was eons ago, and I slept through that one because I was, well, an uncultured brute. But this time it shall be different, and I am fairly certain I will be awake for the entirety of this Wednesday’s performance! *confident

No more gigs lined up for me for the rest of the year unfortunately. But… I can look forward to Justice’s show next show, and not forgetting of course, the monumental, Brobdingnagian Coldfkingplay. Yes, them. Their songs were built for life-changing, tear-jerking epic U2-esque stadium performances so it should be good. But between now and then is 6 months of solemn, sober seriousness SIGH.

Okay now it is far too late to do my tutorial. I guess I’ll just wake up early tomorrow to do it (hahaha). Now for a great article, on the unfair criticism leveled at the Twilight saga, to end this post: http://ideas.time.com/2011/11/21/the-harsh-bigotry-of-twilight-haters/

Goodnight!

Last Saturday, because some dude tried to blow up the House of Lords centuries ago, I got to watch some pretty neat fireworks. A bunch of us stood on wet, icky grass, amongst thousands of others, and ooh-ed and aah-ed unabashedly for the 10-15 minutes of fireworks. It made me wonder, for the umpteenth time, how fireworks work. http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/everyday-innovations/fireworks.htm and there you go. Very handy website (Y)

On Wednesday went to watch The Naked and Famous with yisan. A picture speaks a thousand words:

"Yeahhh yeahh yeahh yeahhhh" - Punching in a Dream

Unless it is picture of a gig, then the picture is utterly useless and gratuitous. All fan-taken gig pictures look the same, yes?

They played through their debut album Passive Me, Aggressive You and they were pretty good. My only peeve would be how Alisa’s hair is perpetually masking her face, depriving me the chance to check out her Kiwi-Chinese-Thai features. The gig, unsurprisingly, ended with Young Blood and a segment of the audience went bonkers and started moshing like monkeys. I didn’t want to let yisan see my monkey side so I stood solemnly aside and maintained my air of gentlemanly decorum and excellence. Like this guy:

On Friday night, there was a Beer and Cider Festival going on at the Anson Rooms so Joshua, yisan and I thought: why not? So we went and drank a couple of pints of exotic-sounding beers and ciders like Black Dragon and Two Trees Perry. Best part of the night has to be the descriptions of the beers and ciders on the menu: Hallertauer Aroma – “Expect a pale golden beer with a floral aroma, a crisp refreshing taste with citrusy notes and a hoppy aftertaste.” Or my personal favourite: Jaipur IPA – “A citrus dominated India Pale Ale, its immediate impression is soft and smooth yet builds to a crescendo of massive hoppiness accentuated by honey. An enduring, bitter finish.” Poetic much.

And there you go a short post. Now it is 11 and the duties of a busy man beckons. Hopefully the next few weeks zip by. Can’t wait to see Bristol Narnia-fied again.