Was tired but it was good

Hmm.

Work yesterday was just... *groooaaaannnnsss* tiring. Stock-taking, I tell you is one evil which comes with any sales job. What makes it worse is that I slept at 1am the previous night helping my dad pack his equipment for an exhibition in Thailand. 5+ boxes with some weighing in at an excess of 20kg is no mean feat man.

Then yesterday morning I had to wake up around 7:30, to help my dad do the final loading of the boxes onto the wooden pallet and secure then in place with strong straps and cling-wrap so that the boxes will not shift when being shipped / lorried-about.

At my current level of physical and mental state whereby I need to focus on so many things at many points in one day... 6.5 hours of sleep is just too little. Yeah I know plenty of you guys out there are surviving on much less and I think the human race will probably evolve to a point whereby one just needs to plug their brain into a wall plug and charge for 2.5 hours and they're all ready to go back to work again.

Anyway, before I went to work, I had to kip over to Colin's place to retrieve the Esplanade outlet's keys, before heading home for a quick shower and to get my guitar, pedalcase and stuff. I reached Esplanade 15 min late (sorry Vincent!) and I was in a state of near-exhaustion. Imagine carrying a 3kg load on your back, a 2kg load around your shoulder and a 15kg load on one arm and walking a combined distance of 2km in under 20 minutes. Can die man.

In the end I was working at the excelsior outlet, and the moment I saw the clock hit 7:25, I started to close the store and clicked the lock shut at 7:33 precisely. After walking all the way back to Esplanade to return the keys to Vincent, I trekked to city hall with my gear to get on the MRT ride to Dhoby Ghaut.

I reached the jam studio about 10 minutes late, but the guys came in only 30 seconds later... apparently they had just had their makan, while my stomach growled on with a lack of nourishment (argh).

As we set up our gear, we noticed that the band next door had their bassist's amp practically on 11. I can't understand why some bass players just can't understand the term "volume control". Is your drummer THAT deaf??? Are YOU as a bassist DEAF as well???

Once everyone was ready we kicked start our jam with "Jumpin' Jack Flash", followed by plenty more songs. At 8:50, we had polished off about 7 songs. I called for a break, and when I came out, to my surprise and a lingering sense of dread, I saw Mr Porteous of the Exxit, lounging outside with a fag in his hand. Sitting next to him was Ark Analogy's former bassist, Tobias, and behind was Steph, their drummer. Realising that ignoring them was not the way to go, I decided to say hello.

What was interesting was the fact that it seems like the few members of The Exxit had heard what Ark Analogy was playing inside the studio. Tobias even plucked up the courage to ask me "was that a new original?" I had no idea what song he was referring to,, but I resisted the temptation to say "yeah, that's the 6th original since you disappeared without any notice and since I happily left the Exxit". Considering that they were courteous but silent, that seemed like a good course to undertake.

Upon finding Stan, Liesl and Drea the four of us trooped back into the studio where I promptly introduced everybody to each another. We kicked off the 2nd half with a slightly limping Communication Breakdown but we did rectify it with a 2nd try later in the hour. I guess our guests enjoyed themselves despite the high volumes, but I hoped that they were pleased with an updated rendition of "Healing of Time".

All in all, the jam went pretty well despite Mervyn being slightly sick and Boon being rather tired as well, along with my guitar string breaking mid-song and forcing us to re-do "Pocketful of Blues" with 2 false starts. But the mere presence of my old friends there to listen to us play made me pull out all the stops and I produced some pretty good solos.

On a new note, Ark Analogy will be trying to get a gig along Orchard road on the 12th of June, 3pm onwards. Details coming soon.


Cheers,

Crawldaddy