Crowded House in Oakland

So this post was going to be about finally seeing in person the soundtrack to my last 11 years, and how awesome that was. Little was I to know the Crowded House concert in Oakland wouldn't be the most exciting thing to happen that night.

Anyway, I need to go back to '96. Legendary Aussie band Crowded House breaks up just as they are reaching the height of their fame and I am at the wrong end of the country when they play their farewell gig on the steps of the Opera House. I console myself with their Greatest Hits album, Recurring Dreams.

It would be the first time of many that that CD would do the trick. Through heartbreak, homesickness, loss and disappointment across three continents, there wasn't much a good cry and those tripping melodies couldn't remedy. Singer/songwriter Neil Finn just has a way of making depression delicious again.

Having reformed earlier this year at the Coachella festival, Yen and I were excited to finally be able to see them in concert–we had been too young to appreciate them live the first time round. So it was with a mixture of awe and anticipation that we headed to the beautiful Art Deco Paramount theater. We were clearly a good decade or so younger than most of the audience, and two of the maybe five Asian people there, but we know all the words and no one was bloody going to stop us using them!

Standing in the nosebleed seats, I finally got to use all of them. Being part of the 3000-strong audience singing "Better be home soon" acapella, was really one of the most sublime magic kind of sparkling moments I've had in awhile. If it is even possible, I am even more in love with those songs now. It must be one of the great joys in life to have people sing back the song you wrote. Apart from the obvious, it must majorly rock to be in a rock band.

After tripping out of the theater on a high from that, things took a sudden turn for the worse. Actually we got snapped off our cloud nine so fast we got whiplash, because when we got back to the car, it looked like this:

Some thugs had smashed the back window and rifled through everything. A young couple two cars in front were picking through the broken glass in their back seat as well. We called the police, but Oakland is a really bad part of the Bay area and they have bigger problems than a few vandalised cars. Bizarrely they took my cash-less purse, but left my Coach handbag, made off with the parking change but didn't notice the iPod shuffle!

Not that we were really laughing. With no window the ride home across the Bay was bloody freezing. Then there was the excitement of calling insurance to file a report and Singapore to cancel my cards. We did feel slightly CSI when we fished the screwdriver they had discarded off the seat with a tissue and put it into a zip loc bag! Not that anyone from the police dept would care to print it or speak to us or give us the time of day or anything.

I slept as usual though. Fear is exhausting.

Hard Partying

So amazing what hours of primping can do...for other people. We, on the other hand, rolled out of bed like this.

Partying in SF is not so much entertainment as an endurance test. Firstly, no matter what weather it's like near your house, or how cute your new dress is, a cardigan/jacket/both is required to brave the squally winds and b*tch of a fog in the city. Then there's the inordinate stress of finding the place. As head non-driver, I am constantly struggling with different retarded GPS systems. After that whole palaver, there's driving round and round for a park. Shouting and cursing at every godforsaken imbecile who takes one ahead of us. Then, finally, after the stars have aligned and a human sacrifice made, a space is found and the whole car erupts in a self-congratulatory cheer.

Mind you, we're still two blocks from the place. There's still picking your way through the unusual streets–here a posh new office block, there an alley populated by various homeless people and surly old security guards (is there any other kind?). Once accomplished, belly up to some bar small enough to fit into the private rooms at Zouk.

Aaah San Francisco. How much do I love thee?

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Graffiti Book Launch

One of the fake titles I place after my name is 'travel writer' and one of the publications helping to keep the facade in place, is the Graffiti Travel Guide: Singapore. It's a collection of locals writing about places they love in Singapore, set out in an arty kind of way. I wrote a shopping spread for it (but can't show it yet, cos still waiting on the PDF) and they're having the big launch party this Friday in Singapore which I'm very sad to be missing. There's going to be much alcohol and government-approved spray painting; a combination I just don't see often enough.

If you wanna go, email me for the rsvp number, and here's the cute invite:

And here's some of the other inside spreads:

I can't wait to get my copy in the mail!