New York on my mind

Here's a little secret. Nothing important, but it was just a fleeting aspect of my life. More than 10 years ago, I almost ended up with an opportunity to work in New York. This chance came at a time when my working life was at a major crossroad.

My employment at that time was in transition. The company was being swallowed by another in what was being touted as a “friendly merger” but as we all came to realise eventually, mergers are anything but friendly.

So there I was, being transferred from the Head Office of a bank in Penang to one of its branch offices in Kedah. I remained there for about a year before deciding that enough was enough with looking after other people’s money.

So how did this opportunity arrive? Somehow, a friend hinted to me that there was a company that was looking for people who was willing to work in New York. Of course, my ears pricked up. Won’t yours? All sorts of ideas popped out of my head. But soon later, reality set in. Did I really have to go work in a strange land when my family is comfortable here and it was not impossible to get another job? After some hard thinking, the decision was rather easy to make: no, this adventure would not be suitable for me. Despite the turmoil, I was still contented here. Penang was, is and will be my home.

So holidaying in New York, yes, but not to work there on a long term.

You know, when I was much younger, I used to imagine how it would be like to be even there for a holiday. All those vivid images of New York’s attractions that had been playing in my mind, thanks of course to the countless movies which were set there, such as Saturday Night Fever, King Kong and many others. And memorable songs such as Frank Sinatra's New York, New York. That city is a place where excitement never ends.

I would presume that getting to New York would be easy enough although flying halfway around the world – and possibly changing flights as well – is a daunting thought and is not exactly something that I especially look forward to.

Then there are so many questions to ask. For example, after arriving there, where can you stay at a reasonable price? Where can you dine without blowing your budget? How would you get around New York when you are on holiday? What are the time-honoured tourist attractions for first-time visitors to this grand city? What is the best itinerary when time is at a premium. When is the best season to be there? Of course in this time and age, it only takes several clicks on a computer to find all the answers.

With information so very easy to obtain nowadays, perhaps one day I will still be able to find the opportunity to visit this remarkable city called New York. Provided, of course, I have a fairy godmother to take care of my expenses. Ha ha!

The day that changed the world

Time has really flown. It's hard to believe that it's already 25 years since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City on 11 September 2001. What was I doing that day? Well, I was still working, although by then I was no longer in the banking industry but with JobStreet.com, based in the Hotel Equatorial building in Bukit Jambul, Penang.

Because of the 12-hour time difference, the attacks happened in New York during our evening on 11 September 2001. By the time I went to the office the following morning, the 12th of September, the full horror of what had happened was already becoming clearer. Word had come in that there had been a terrorist attack on US soil, and as more details emerged, we slowly realised that this was something on a scale none of us had known before. For the rest of the day, very little work was getting done in our office. My colleagues and I were glued to our computer terminals, reading the news, looking at the images and trying to figure out what was happening thousands of kilometres away in New York. We had no idea then that we were watching an event that would change the world, or that among the nearly 3,000 people who died would be three Malaysians who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was one of those days when the news seemed almost too unbelievable. Although we had become accustomed to seeing disasters and wars on television, this was different. The images coming out of New York were being shown again and again, and each time they looked unbelievable. First came the report of a plane crashing into the World Trade Centre, then another plane hitting the second tower. Before long, we knew that this was a coordinated terrorist attack.

There were four hijacked aircraft that morning. Two were flown into the Twin Towers, another crashed into the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93 came down in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to take control of the aircraft. Nearly 3,000 people were killed, not counting the 19 hijackers. The Twin Towers collapsed within hours, taking with them office workers, visitors, firefighters, police officers and other first responders who had rushed towards the buildings when everyone else was trying to get away.

For those of us sitting in an office in Penang, we continued watching the events on our computers. Although the Internet was nowhere near what it is today, JobStreet.com by our very nature was very much connected through it to the outside world despite there being no smartphones delivering videos and notifications into our hands. So we sat at our computers, refreshing news websites and talking among ourselves as more details emerged.

I remember the feeling in the office. We were physically so far away from New York, yet somehow the events felt very close. Work continued, technically, but nobody was really concentrating on it. Every new piece of information seemed more shocking than the previous one. By the time we had spent hours following the unfolding events, we were not only distracted from work but mentally tired. And when the Twin Towers eventually collapsed, it was difficult to comprehend that the New York skyline had changed forever.

Twenty-five years later, the world has moved on in ways that would have been difficult to imagine that day. Airport security became much tighter, governments introduced new counter-terrorism measures and the United States went to war in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida, was eventually killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011. But the consequences of 9/11 went far beyond the immediate response to the attacks and continue to influence the world today.

A whole generation has grown up since 9/11. In 2001, I was sitting in the office at Hotel Equatorial Bukit Jambul with my colleagues, staring at computer screens. This blog didn't even exist then, so there was no post for me to look back on and remind myself what I was thinking that day. Today, there are young people who were not even born when it happened. For them, 9/11 is not something they personally remember. It is something they learn about from history books, documentaries, photographs and the stories told by their parents and grandparents. So perhaps this is my belated 9/11 blog story, coming 25 years late.

The New York Times' top 44 places to go in 2009

Thanks to a friend's alert, I visited this online page of The New York Times and saw their recommendations for the top 44 places to go in 2009. I couldn't believe that listed somewhere amidst all the thumbnails was a picture of Penang.


Yes, Penang is recommended by The New York Times as one of the most compelling destinations. The NY Times also allows readers to cast their votes; so it may be worth your while to do your bit for Penang and see how the readers' recommendations turn out to be.

According to The New York Times, "Adventurous foodies are turning to Penang, the culinary capital of Malaysia, where they are eating their way through one of southeast Asia's liveliest street food scenes."

Don't wait .... just click here and go vote for Penang now!

Also from Frommers: "Penang is unique in Malaysia because, for all intents and purposes, Penang has it all. Tioman Island may have beaches and forests, but it has no shopping or historical sights to speak of. And although Malacca has historical sights and museums, it hasn't a grain of decent sand. Penang has all of it: fun beaches, beautiful resorts, rich history, diverse culture, and delicious food. If you only have a short time to visit Malaysia but want to take in as wide an experience as you can, Penang is a good choice."

20 years ago today

At 8.46am on the 11th of September in 2001, an aeroplane hijacked by Al-Qaeda terrorists slammed into the first tower of the World Trade Centre in New York. About 17 minutes late at 9.03am, a second hijacked aeroplane completed the humiliation and symbolic destruction of America's invincibility by crashing into the second tower. The terrorist attack had severe ramifications around the world. Life was never the same again as security was beefed up everywhere in the world. Every action caused everyone to look over the shoulder to ensure one's personal safety.

But where were you on that fateful day in September? When the two aeroplanes crashed into the twin towers, it was night time in Malaysia. For me, the first I learnt about the attack was while surfing the Internet from my house in Seberang Jaya. Immediately after that, went to turn on the TV to watch the events unfolding on CNN and CNBC. And the next morning while driving to work, the radio stations reported on nothing but the destruction in New York.

Once at the office, it became clear that all my colleagues at JobStreet.com had already heard the news. Our computers were surfing the CNN website for the latest news. Time and time again, we saw the video of the planes crashing into the towers. Time and time again, we saw the destruction on the ground. Throughout the day, the reports came in thick and thin of the casualties. For the rest of the day, there was very little work done. Then, gradually by the second and third days, while we still followed the news from the websites, work life returned to normal. But we knew that nothing could ever be the same again.

Only yesterday, a former colleague told me that he was flying between Houston and Las Vegas when the attack happened. The pilot came on the intercom and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to make an announcement and I want you all to listen VERY carefully...." The news almost scared the living daylight from him as the pilot continued that there had been a series of attacks on the east coast of America and they had been ordered to clear the skies. They landed at the nearest available runway in El Paso, Texas, and everyone were stuck on the ground for three days before some of the passengers pooled together to rent a van and drove 12 hours back to Houston.

I asked him what went through his mind in those three days. "Mostly that we were at war, and I had no idea how we were going to get home to Malaysia in about a week's time. As it turned out," he recollected, "we were on one of the first flights out of the United States."

 

Online chess revisited

Back in 1995, I found myself stumbling upon a fascinating new world of online chess. It was still the early days of Malaysia’s Internet connectivity, and the idea that you could play someone halfway across the world in real time was nothing short of thrilling. I wrote a story about this in one of my chess columns in December that year. A month later, in February 1996, I followed up with another story, this time about the Internet Chess Club (ICC) which had already captivated me to the point where I was logging in almost every day.

There was something almost magical about it. I was in Penang and find myself matched against someone in New York or Paris or Singapore, playing a real-time game on a text-based interface powered by Telnet. The chessboard was clunky, rendered in ASCII, but it worked. And for the time, it was revolutionary.

Blitz chess was already wildly popular then, but what really caught my imagination was the Fischer time control. You’d play with something like "3 15"—three minutes per player, plus 15 seconds added after every move. It was a strange new rhythm compared to our old-school five-minute blitzes. And since I’d registered as a member, my games were rated by the system. Every result tweaked your rating, right there and then. That little jolt of satisfaction (or disappointment) was addictive.

Handles, nicknames, anonymous opponents—it was a wild west of chess pseudonyms. My own handle was ssquah, naturally, while others used more cryptic tags. I even ran into an old friend from Singapore, FIDE Master Chia Chee Seng, who was an ICC administrator and helped ease me into the environment. By then, ICC had introduced paid memberships—US$49 a year, or half that for students—and while it might have seemed steep, the platform delivered. Even computers were showing up as opponents, ready to play you anytime.

The biggest usability leap came with the slics22f interface. Unlike Telnet, it gave you a graphical board and mouse-click functionality. I even demonstrated it at a local Internet Society meeting in USM. It felt like we were peeking into the future, and we were.

Fast forward nearly 30 years, and that future has well and truly arrived. Platforms like Chess.com and Lichess now host millions of users round the clock with sleek, polished interfaces, live broadcasts, integrated engines and on-demand lessons. I’m still amazed that I can log on today and watch grandmasters battle it out live while the system evaluates their every move and annotates in real time, often faster than I can process what's happening.

But perhaps what’s most striking isn’t just the playing. It’s how chess tournaments have caught up with the Internet too. These days, most over-the-board events are run using pairing software like Swiss Manager, which automates round-by-round matchups with mathematical precision. And once the pairings and results are generated, they’re seamlessly uploaded to Chess-Results.com, a global repository where you can track tournaments live from anywhere in the world. Whether it's a school-level event in Kuala Lumpur or an open in Reykjavik, results, pairings and standings are just a click away. The transparency and efficiency it offers are remarkable, and a far cry from handwritten pairing cards.

Of course, with progress comes new concerns. Online cheating has cast a shadow on the digital scene, and platforms now employ sophisticated anti-cheating tools: everything from statistical pattern detection to AI-based behavioural analysis. Some tournaments even require players to set up multiple webcams to ensure fair play. It’s a cat-and-mouse game, but the platforms are taking it seriously.

Even the way we consume chess has changed. In the past, if you missed a great game, that was that. Today, you have commentators like Daniel Naroditsky or Levy Rozman (aka GothamChess) explaining the key moments in colourful, engaging streams. YouTube have turned grandmasters into influencers. Hikaru Nakamura, once the enfant terrible of American chess, is now a global streaming star, toggling between bullet games and stock tips. It’s entertainment, education and sport all rolled into one.

And yet, as I look back at those old stories of mine, I realise that the core thrill hasn’t changed: that moment when you make your move and wait for your opponent’s reply, wherever they might be. Back then, it was ASCII boards and FTP downloads. Today, it’s touchscreen apps and cloud servers. But the chess is still eternal.

It’s tempting to feel nostalgic for the simplicity of those early Internet days. The dial-up sounds, the tiny online communities, the excitement of discovering something entirely new. But I also marvel at how far we’ve come. From ICC to Swiss Manager, from slics22f to Stockfish-assisted prep, from Telnet logins to mobile alerts saying, “Your opponent has made a move.” The game has grown in ways I never imagined.

Thirty years from now, someone else might look back and say, “Remember Chess.com? Remember Lichess? That was when online chess really took off.” And maybe, somewhere in their memory or search engine, they’ll find a trace of that curious Malaysian player who once logged in as ssquah and couldn’t believe his luck.

Antonin Dvorak's Ninth Symphony

I never realised that I owned six versions of Antonin Dvorak's Ninth Symphony in E Minor until I was looking through my compact disc and vinyl record collection this afternoon. But this is a piece of music that I can never get tired of listening to.

The first compact disc was from The Classical Collection which I was subscribing to in the early 1990s. Every week, a new compact disc featuring works by different classical composers would be released with a magazine. I was collecting diligently but never knew how many compact discs would be there in the series. I only stopped when the numbers proved too many for me. (I stopped at No.45 but should have continued till No.50.) Anyway, this version of the Ninth Symphony was played by the Philharmonia Slavonica with Henry Adolph conducting.

The second compact disc featured the modern American composer, Leonard Bernstein, who was the musical director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. I remember watching Bernstein on black-and-white television in the 1970s. Young People's Concert, I think his programme was called and through his explanations, he made classical music so interesting. Anyway in this compact disc, he took his New York Philharmonic Orchestra through their paces.

The renowned Herbert von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker were featured in the third compact disc. A check through the Amazon website revealed that Karajan recorded this work many times; once a decade throughout his long career, so I'm told. I don't know how this 1977 version I possess would rank among the rest of them but it is impressive.

Then there was this version by the Minnesota Orchestra with Sir Neville Marriner conducting. A serious enough recording BUT with a difference. At the start or end of each movement, sonic paintings of nature were inserted, inspired by the Song of Hiawatha. So instead of the silence between movements, there would be soothing sounds of nature like water running through a stream or a thunderstorm or birds chirping. A much welcomed change but purists would certainly baulk at this compact disc. Who cares? 

And the two final versions of the Ninth Symphony were on vinyl records.From The New World was performed by the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra with Karel Ancerl conducting at a time when there was still a state called Czechoslovakia, while the New World Symphony was played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the baton of their musical director, Arthur Fiedler.

 

A right fuckturd

This story from The New York Times, The Religious Right’s Hostility to Science Is Crippling Our Coronavirus Response, gives a probable explanation why Donald Trump is such a big fuckturd to many people's eyes. Not too different from our holier-than-thou racists back home, but that is another story. Some excerpts here from The New York Times article:

Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise. In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown.

At least since the 19th century, when the proslavery theologian Robert Lewis Dabney attacked the physical sciences as “theories of unbelief,” hostility to science has characterized the more extreme forms of religious nationalism in the United States. Today, the hard core of climate deniers is concentrated among people who identify as religiously conservative Republicans. And some leaders of the Christian nationalist movement, like those allied with the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, which has denounced environmental science as a “Cult of the Green Dragon,” cast environmentalism as an alternative — and false — theology.

This denial of science and critical thinking among religious ultraconservatives now haunts the American response to the coronavirus crisis. On March 15, Guillermo Maldonado, who calls himself an “apostle” and hosted Mr. Trump earlier this year at a campaign event at his Miami megachurch, urged his congregants to show up for worship services in person. “Do you believe God would bring his people to his house to be contagious with the virus? Of course not,” he said.

Rodney Howard-Browne of The River at Tampa Bay Church in Florida mocked people concerned about the disease as “pansies” and insisted he would only shutter the doors to his packed church “when the rapture is taking place.” In a sermon that was live-streamed on Facebook, Tony Spell, a pastor in Louisiana, said, “We’re also going to pass out anointed handkerchiefs to people who may have a fear, who may have a sickness and we believe that when those anointed handkerchiefs go, that healing virtue is going to go on them as well.”

By all accounts, President Trump’s tendency to trust his gut over the experts on issues like vaccines and climate change does not come from any deep-seated religious conviction. But he is perfectly in tune with the religious nationalists who form the core of his base. In his daily briefings from the White House, Mr. Trump actively disdains and contradicts the messages coming from his own experts and touts as yet unproven cures.

Not every pastor is behaving recklessly, of course, and not every churchgoer in these uncertain times is showing up for services out of disregard for the scientific evidence. Far from it. Yet none of the benign uses of religion in this time of crisis have anything to do with Mr. Trump’s expressed hope that the country would be “opened up and just raring to go by Easter.” He could, of course, have said, “by mid-April.” But Mr. Trump did not invoke Easter by accident, and many of his evangelical allies were pleased by his vision of “packed churches all over our country.” “I think it would be a beautiful time,” the president said.

It is fair to point out that the failings of the Trump administration in the current pandemic are at least as attributable to its economic ideology as they are to its religious inclinations. When the so-called private sector is supposed to have the answer to every problem, it’s hard to deal effectively with the very public problem of a pandemic and its economic consequences. But if you examine the political roots of the life-threatening belief in the privatization of everything, you’ll see that Christian nationalism played a major role in creating and promoting the economic foundations of America’s incompetent response to the pandemic.

A nightmare?

Another Ed Sullivan moment. The Beatles played on the Ed Sullivan Show on 09 Feb 1964. Immediately, the United States was transformed into two groups. The youths of America were solidly behind this British invasion but typically, the adults were horrified. 

Newsweek, for example, reviewed the performance in less-than-glowing terms. 

"Visually, they are a nightmare: tight, dandified, Edwardian/Beatnik suits and great pudding bowls of hair," they wrote. "Musically, they are a near-disaster: guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of “yeah, yeah, yeah!”) are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments. The odds are they will fade away, as most adults confidently predict.”

And then, there was this typical opinion piece that appeared in an American newspaper two days later. It is completely laughable when read today because like the rest of the mainstream and conservative media there, how wrong could they be?

If Ed Sullivan can find no better use for the time allotted him on Sunday night than to devote it to such exhibitions as he presented last Sunday night I suggest that CBS-TV find something else to put in this hour of prime time...

Why Sullivan found it necessary to aid in the phony promotion of four rock 'n' roll exponents, all of whom resemble Moe of the Three Stooges, is beyond comprehension. And why he felt it necessary to "load" the theater with screaming teen-age girls when he normally restricts his audience to grownups, is also a mystery. 

It was obvious to those who saw the Beatles, four young fellows from Great Britain, that they have not attained their present notoriety on the basis of their musical talents, for the sounds emanating from their mouths were anything but melodic.

Shorn of their mop-like hairdos they would look and sound like many other inferior rock 'n' roll groups which are still attempting to keep alive the fad which died when Elvis Presley entered the armed forces.

There is nothing attractive about the looks or the sounds of the Beatles,

UPDATE: Newsweek wasn't the only mass media that refused to accept that The Beatles' music was here to stay, but who could blame them? Several other newspapers in the United States were derisive of the band as well:

“The Beatles’ vocal quality can be described as hoarsely incoherent, with the minimal enunciation necessary to communicate the schematic texts.” - New York Times

 "With their bizarre shrubbery, the Beatles are obviously a press agent’s dream combo. Not even their mothers would claim that they sing well. But the hirsute thickets they affect make them rememberable, and they project a certain kittenish charm which drives the immature, shall we say, ape.” - LA Times 

“The Beatles are not merely awful; I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are god awful. They are so unbelievably horribly, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music, even as the imposter popes went down in history as “anti-popes.”” - Boston Globe 

"The Beatles must be a huge joke, a wacky gag, a gigantic put-on. And if, as the fellow insisted on What’s My Line?, they’re selling 20,000 Beatle wigs a day in New York at $2.98 a shake — then I guess everyone wants to share the joke. And the profits.” - Chicago Tribune 

“Don’t let the Beatles bother you. If you don’t think about them, they will go away, and in a few more years they will probably be bald….” - Boston Globe

Heavy sounds

It's been such a long time since I listened to this album that I had almost forgotten how good it was. True, some snippets of the music still rolled through my mind once in a while but that was about all. Then it was two days ago that while rummaging through my long unheard albums, I came across Heavy Sounds again.

This was a rather unusual album for CBS. It showcased 11 of their most popular rock recording artistes of the Sixties at a time when performers were becoming more adventurous and experimental with their music. It was perhaps just after the cusp of flower power and psychedelia. For sure, music had taken a creative and most interestng turn.

So this album was unusual; it was as if CBS had come out with a promo album to bring these performers to the attention of a new audience. From my point of view, they succeeded. I took a risk when I purchased this album in the early 1970s. At that time, the only performers I was very familiar with from this album were Chicago and Blood Sweat & Tears. Maybe, also Laura Nyro and The Byrds. The rest? No. From the risk of buying this album came a mind-opening adventure into music.

In my opinion, the first side of this record was, and is still, more interesting. The album opened with a near-nine minutes of heavy, electrified blues by the Big Brother & The Holding Company. There was no mention at all about their lead singer but the moment her voice emerged from the speakers, I knew that she was special. It was a voice that tore into me and evoked all sorts of pain and anguish. The singer? She was the late, great Janis Joplin. The song? Ball and Chain, from their Cheap Thrills album in 1968..

The very next song brought me back to earth, or maybe it was heaven. There they were, Blood Sweat & Tears, tearing me up with God Bless The Child from their eponymous 1968 album. I still get the shivers listening to this song as towards the end, the group's horn section sequed into a sequence that would have made any jazz trumpeteer truly proud. Breath-taking!

Killing Floor was taken from The Electric Flag's debut album in 1968 called A Long Time Comin'. I can't comment much about this track other than to say that it was gritty rock music, very soulful and peppered all through with a mean horn section.But I know now that the band's most famous members were Michael Bloomfield and Buddy Miles.

I was transported into a stupor the first time I listened to White Bird, the signature song by It's A Beautiful Day, from their 1969 album. The essence of psychedelia cannot be missed from this song which was about the rain, being caged up with nowhere to go. Basically, feeling miserable. I soared with the violin and was brought back to earth when the music ended. This was a track I could play again and again.

Laura Nyro was a songwriter of the late Sixties and this song, Sweet Blindness, was taken from her 1969 album, New York Tendaberry. I had been familiar with her music which had been recorded by bands such as Blood Sweat & Tears, Three Dog Night and Fifth Dimension. But Nyro was also a recording artiste and this song tells me why so many other artistes picked up on her songs.

I won't go into the other tracks other than to mention that monumental track, Albert's Shuffle, from the second side of Heavy Sounds. Albert's Shuffle, from the Super Session album which was released in 1968, was an Al Kooper-Michael Bloomfield jam session, a really incredible music excursion by two very talented musicians. It was also one of the tracks that I could play over and over again. Even today, I never got tired of listening to it.

A simple message: Everybody's free (to wear sunscreen)

These words originally appeared in a column by Mary Schmich in The Chicago Tribune on 1 Jun 1997. In her introduction to the piece, she described it as the commencement address that she would give if she were asked to give one. Due to the marvels of communication - or miscommunication - her words were later erroneously attributed to the American novelist, Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut did remark later: "What she wrote was funny, wise and charming. I would have been proud had the words been mine."

Two months later, on 3 Aug 1997, Schmich wrote: "But out in the lawless swamp of cyberspace, Mr Vonnegut and I are one. Out there, where any snake can masquerade as king, both of us are the author of a graduation speech that began with the immortal words, "Wear sunscreen."

"I was alerted to my bond with Mr Vonnegut Friday morning by several callers and email correspondents who reported that the sunscreen speech was rocketing through the cyberswamp, from L.A. to New York to Scotland, in a vast email chain letter. Friends had emailed it to friends, who emailed it to more friends, all of whom were told it was the commencement address given to the graduating class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The speaker was allegedly Kurt Vonnegut."

So here it is, Wear Sunscreen, as written originally by Mary Schmich:

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen
would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

Australian film director Baz Luhrmann was also inspired enough by these words. Together with Quindon Tarver to do the vocals, they cut a song set to techno beat which ultimately became a big hit in 1999. Let's spread the words to the next generation who may not want or think they need advice from "ols farts, what do they know".

Chess patriarch speaks out

My exclusive interview with Dato' Tan Chin Nam has appeared in the Lifestyle pages of StarTwo today, coinciding with the start of the sixth IGB Arthur Tan memorial Malaysia open chess championship at the CitiTel MidValley ballroom in Kuala Lumpur. Here is the story as it appeared online. I had recommended "Chess patriarch speaks out" as the title but the newspaper had other ideas. Also, the use of Datuk instead of Dato' is a house rule adopted by them:

IT’S been nine months since I last met Datuk Tan Chin Nam in Penang. That Sunday in November, he was still basking in the glory of winning the 2008 Melbourne Cup in Australia. It was an unprecedented and historical win for him: the only horse owner ever to win that coveted cup four times.

Prior to the Malaysia Chess Festival starting tomorrow, I sat down with him again and this time, it was at his office at Menara Tan&Tan in Kuala Lumpur. This time, instead of horses, he turned his attention to the other interest in his life, which is chess.

This game of kings has taken up much of his free time, effort, and money since 1974. In that year, he was elected president of the Malaysian Chess Federation. But despite stepping down in 1986, he could never get chess out of his life. He remains the main engine behind chess in this country. It is estimated that in the past 35 years, he has poured at least RM10mil into the game.

“People remarked that I am stupid to put so much of my money into chess when I cannot see the return from there,” he remarked. “They say that if I had invested this sum and the time I’ve spent on chess into my business, I would have earned back my capital many times over. Am I stupid? Of course, I’m stupid!”

Then, as he leaned forward as if to confide in me, Tan boomed: “But you know what? It’s not all about money. I did it because of personal joy. I enjoy chess just like I enjoy horse racing. But I’ve already achieved the peak in horses.

Grand plans: ‘I am embarking on the Malaysia chess project to take the Malaysian chess culture to a higher plane,’ says Datuk Tan Chin Nam.

“In chess, there’s still much to do and I like to see other people enjoy the game and succeed in the game. There’s the joy of watching a young child of seven or eight beaming when he succeeds. I think that chess is valuable to the community as an intellectual sport endeavour. It’s incomparable.”

Want to read the rest of the interview? Click here which will take you to my other blog, It's All In The Planning!

(UPDATE) Mmm...that's fast. It's only 10.45am here in Malaysia and halfway across the globe, I see Susan Polgar had already picked up the story for her widely-read blog. Who's Susan Polgar, you may ask? Here's the entry on her in the Wikipedia:

Susan Polgar (born April 19, 1969, as Polgár Zsuzsanna and often known as Zsuzsa Polgár) is a Hungarian-born American chess player. She is also a chess writer and promoter and the head of the Susan Polgar Institute for Chess Excellence at Texas Tech University. She was stripped of her membership in the United States Chess Federation on August 7, 2009, and thereby lost her seat on its Executive Board. On the July 1984 FIDE Rating List, at age 15, she was the top-ranked woman player in the world. She was the first woman to earn the title of Grandmaster in regular competition. She was the Women's World Chess Champion from 1996 to 1999. In October 2005 Polgar had an Elo rating of 2577, making her the second-ranked woman in the world at the time, after her sister Judit Polgár. She has been inactive and has not played in official competition since 2004. She was born and brought up in Budapest, Hungary, and now lives in Lubbock, Texas, having recently moved from Forest Hills, Queens in New York City, where she ran the Polgar Chess Center and the Susan Polgar Foundation, which gives chess training to children, especially girls.

It's a mighty world

Side 1: It's a mighty world, I've been told, Reminiscing, Hush hush Mamie, Camphorated oil, Bull jine run 

Side 2: Come a lady's dream, Sweet potatoes, Chevrolet, Love proved false, One man's hands, Got my mind on freedom

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NPR, or National Public Radio in the United States, once ranked this album, It's a Mighty World, by folk singer Odetta Holmes as number 41 is its list of the 150 greatest albums made by women. This studio album was recorded in 1964.In describing this album, Michele Myers of the KEXP-FM radio station wrote:

During her fifty-year career as an American folk icon, Odetta Holmes was a singer, guitarist, actress and activist who inspired generations of folk, blues and rock musicians. Exuding intelligence, outrage and hope, the 1964 album It's a Mighty World showcases Odetta as a folk original. Fans of Joni Mitchell, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez and (most notably) Bob Dylan may be shocked to hear guitar and vocal arrangements usually credited to those musicians on this record in their original form. In context of her struggles as an African-American woman in a brutally oppressed time, Odetta believed in free will. The might of her truth and persistence, particularly on this album, is undeniable. On it, Odetta leads the listener through powerful melodic histories of the oppressed, including old spirituals, prison camp and slavery songs, transforming them into anthems of liberation. Odetta said she read in her elementary school books that slaves were "happy and singing," so when she discovered folk music, her intention was to rewrite false and oppressive history. The words of folk music helped to voice her and others' hatred of oppression, and she once said: "It got to a point that doing the music actually healed me." Many of what she called her "interpretations" (Odetta did not often compose) became part of the soundtrack for the Civil Rights movement of the '60s, inspiring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to name Odetta the "Queen of American folk music." Yet another mark of Odetta's genius is that most of these recordings still feel relevant, thanks to her unique guitar work and her vast vocal range, which soars through a variety of styles from field calls to operatic to bluesy. 

The liner notes of this album carried quotes from many sources that had written about Odetta previously. The New York Times said of Odetta at the Newport Folk Festival, "The focus of the first concert was on Odetta whose mahogany hued sonorous voice offered what this listener felt was the crowning performance of the weekend." The New York Herald Tribune said, "She makes her words understood - and, there is thunder to their meaning and depth and power and punch." Variety magazine said, "....as direct and powerful as a blow torch, as deep and resonant as an old master viol....Odetta goes off to thunderous applause." And the Miami Herald wrote, "She stepped back an extra foot from the microphone and turned loose her two octave voice in full power. It left the audience stunned."

If you ask me, the only modern equivalent I can think of which comes close to Odetta's voice is that of Tracy Chapman singing Talkin' Bout a Revolution or Baby Can I Hold You from her seminal self-titled album of 1988.

Chicago, Chicago

Don't you love their album covers? There's variety and colour in monotony. Anyway, one of the very first albums I bought was Chicago II. At that time, jazz rock was a rather new concept to me. Also, it was a novelty then to find double albums. But somehow, I had listened to Chicago's first hit single, Make Me Smile, and I liked it. And when I discovered that this song was actually part of their Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon from this album, I knew that I had to have it.

Their first album, Chicago Transit Authority, was my second purchase. I remember that I spent so much time in deciding whether to buy it or not, but I'm glad I did. It was one of the best rock albums that I had listened to.

Chicago IV was actually four vinyl records in one package. A live album recorded at the Carnegie Hall in New York. And as the years went by, I added their albums one-by-one to my collection.

But though I kept buying their albums almost as they appeared in the Malaysian market, except for the ninth album which was a Greatest Hits compilation, I knew that sooner of later I would have to stop buying them because of the group's change of musical direction. I was disappointed. I liked the rock music they played but after the death of Terry Kath, Chicago's music had turned contemporary and soppy. Even if they had gone off on a jazz-tinged tangent like on their seventh album, I would be happy. Chicago X became the last straw. Reluctantly, I decided that enough was enough.

Unfortunately, I could not completely exorcise the ghost of Chicago. My final purchase was of their four-CD compilation, Group Portrait. When you listen through the four CDs, it's a musical journey through time with Chicago. Of course, the set does not do justice to everything they've ever played but for anyone who is just starting to appreciate the music, this set is better than most other Greatest Hits albums in the market today. You'll thrill over Chicago's hard-rocking early days and experience them degenerate into today's middle-of-the-road, soppy stuff.

Mamas and Papas

The Mamas & the Papas were part of my growing-up years. As teenagers, we knew California Dreamin’, Monday, Monday and Dedicated to the One I Love because they turned up regularly on Radio Malaysia and Radio RAAF Butterworth. Beyond those three songs, the rest of their output was largely a mystery to me. That is why, when a friend passed me a copy of 20 Golden Hits in the 1990s, I was taken aback to find a double album’s worth of material. It said a great deal about how deeply the group had once lodged itself in our everyday lives.

Listening again to 20 Golden Hits reminded me of just how brief and explosive the moment of The Mamas & the Papas really was. For a group that existed for barely three years, their hold on the sound of the mid-1960s remained strong. This compilation, first issued in the early 1970s after they broke up, captured that moment almost in full. With only five studio albums to their name, a collection like this felt definitive.

At the heart of the record is the group’s unique vocal chemistry. John Phillips shaped their songs and harmonies. Michelle Phillips added a cool presence, visually and vocally. Denny Doherty carried many of the leads with a smooth and elastic voice. And then there was Cass Elliot, whose sheer presence and personality gave the group its most recognisable human centre. On these recordings, their voices did not compete so much as complement, stacking emotion in layers.

The songs traced their rise and decline. Early hits like California Dreamin’ and Monday, Monday were fully formed, confident and expansive, while later tracks carried a sense of strain within the members. Creeque Alley turned their own history into pop mythology, name-checking friends and failures. Even the title of Dedicated to the One I Love carried a hint of fragility, as if everyone involved knew how precarious things already were.

California Dreamin’ remains the emotional core of the album. The song that came to define sun-drenched West Coast longing was written during a bitter New York winter, when John and Michelle Phillips were holed up in Greenwich Village and dreaming of escape. The imagery of brown leaves and grey skies is not symbolic so much as literal. It came from what they were living through at the time. The stop at a church, the pretending to pray, the ache for warmth and light, all grew out of that moment. Even the haunting flute solo felt like cold air moving through an empty street, a sound that carried the chill of that season straight into the song.

What made 20 Golden Hits particularly satisfying was its sound. Issued at a time when stereo remastering was taken seriously, it allowed the group’s harmonies to breathe. I could hear how carefully constructed these songs were, even when they presented themselves as effortless.

As a portrait of a band, 20 Golden Hits succeeded because it was more than a convenient collection of hits. It was the sound of a brief, intense California dream, captured at its height and preserved just long enough for us to hear its radiance.

Addendum: I also own a compact disc of the best of the Mamas and the Papas, where Mama Cass’ solo work after the band’s breakup is represented by four songs: Dream a Little Dream of Me, It’s Getting Better, Make Your Own Kind of Music and I Can Dream, Can’t I?

That compact disc, with its handful of solo tracks, hinted at a much larger and more complicated chapter in Cass Elliot’s life after the Mamas & the Papas came apart. When the group fractured in 1968, she emerged both liberated and exposed. For the first time, she was free of the internal politics and personal entanglements that had defined the band, but she was also left to navigate an industry that had never quite known what to do with a woman of her size, intelligence and force of personality.

Cass moved quickly into a solo career, releasing Dream a Little Dream in 1968, followed by Bubblegum, Lemonade &… Something for Mama and Make Your Own Kind of Music. Although commercial success was uneven, she continued to work steadily and refused to disappear quietly.

Her personal life remained turbulent. Deeply affected by the breakdown of the band and by years of being underestimated and judged for her appearance, she worked hard and struggled with health issues. By the early 1970s, the optimism of the “California dream” years had given way to a more demanding reality.

Cass Elliot’s death in 1974 at just 32, closed that chapter and froze her public image in place. In the years since, she has often been remembered as a tragic figure or as a symbol of a lost era. Yet looking at her life after the Mamas & the Papas, what stands out is not failure or decline, but persistence. She kept working, experimenting and asserting her presence in a fast-moving industry. If there is sadness in that story, it lies in how little time she was given to finish becoming who she wanted to be. 

Side 1: California dreamin', Dedicated to the one I love, I call your name, Twelve-thirty (young girls are comin' to the canyon), Creeque alley
Side 2: Dancing in the street, For the love of Ivy, Go where you wanna go, My girl, Look through my window
Side 3: Monday Monday, Words of love, Twist and shout, I saw her again last night, Dream a little dream of me
Side 4: People like us, You baby, Got a feelin', Trip stumble and fall, Straight shooter

The boxer

I've been back from Kuala Lumpur for several days now and while trying to settle back into my normal routine, I bumped into an old YouTube video of Paul Simon performing The Boxer at a live show in Paris. I've known this song for most of my life, of course. The original Simon and Garfunkel recording has been with us since 1969 and I must have listened to it countless times over the years. But this particular performance impressed me tremendously. Paul Simon was no longer the young man who wrote the song, but there he was, guitar in hand, performing it with such ease and confidence that I found myself listening to it several times.

There was a simplicity about it all. The original recording of The Boxer was a magnificent piece of studio work but here was Simon performing the song live with his guitar, and somehow it worked just as well. Perhaps even better, with the warmth, maturity and intimacy that came through in the performance.

Of course, once I had started listening to The Boxer, it was only a matter of time before I found myself going back to Bridge Over Troubled Water. One song led to another, and before I knew it, I had spent an hour wandering through music that I hadn't properly listened to for years.

Bridge Over Troubled Water was released in January 1970 and was Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's fifth studio album. It was also their last. The record went on to become one of the most successful albums of all time, winning six Grammy Awards the following year, including Album of the Year. Yet, behind the scenes, things were becoming increasingly difficult between the two men.

Simon and Garfunkel had been together, in one form or another, since their schooldays. By the late 1960s, however, their relationship had become strained. Art Garfunkel had also begun pursuing an acting career and was away filming Catch-22 while work was still continuing on the album. The recording itself took almost two years, and I can only imagine the difficulties involved in putting everything together when one half of the partnership was increasingly occupied elsewhere.

What eventually emerged was quite unlike the Simon and Garfunkel of their earlier folk days. Bridge Over Troubled Water was a varied album. The title song had its gospel flavour, El Cóndor Pasa took them into the world of Andean music, Cecilia was infectious pop, while Keep the Customer Satisfied went off in yet another musical direction. Paul Simon was clearly stretching himself as a songwriter and exploring a wider range of musical styles.

And then there was The Boxer, which had actually been recorded earlier and released as a single in 1969 before being included on the album. It was Paul Simon's song, written at a time when he himself was apparently feeling rather battered by criticism from the music press. The story of the lonely young man struggling to survive in New York has always seemed rather personal, even if Simon himself may not have intended it to be read as autobiography.

But watching Paul Simon in that YouTube video made me realise that after Simon and Garfunkel went their separate ways, The Boxer continued to live on in Simon's own concerts. He had written it and sung the lead vocal on the original recording, while Garfunkel supplied the beautiful harmonies, but over the years it became a song that Simon kept returning to.

Perhaps that is why the Paris performance impressed me. Here was a song written by a young Paul Simon about a young man being knocked about by life and refusing to give up. Decades later, Simon was still singing it, but the years had indeed rolled by. The song was the same, but the man singing it was older, just like me.

I suppose that comes from revisiting music from our younger days. The songs haven't changed, but we have. We hear things differently and perhaps understand them differently too. When Bridge Over Troubled Water was released in 1970, I was simply enjoying their music, not caring that this would be their final studio album together. All I knew was that they had produced some wonderful songs. And more than half a century later, The Boxer pops up on my YouTube, Paul Simon is performing it in Paris, and there I am again, being taken all the way back to Bridge Over Troubled Water.