Cart got it right though. Because a few days later, I needed a couple of these buscofen pills. Actually its a little scary at how Cart knows me so well to the point that he knows exactly what I am thinking at that point of time

Anyway!

We did manage to catch it live on the telley and I saw a couple of interesting acts, even if I was not familiar with most of them. One of the acts was the Tre allegri ragazzi morti. Translated, it means Three happy dead guys.

At first they reminded me of the Insane Clown Posse which at this moment has an extremely odd music video out. But the tre allegri ragazzi morti has an easy going grunge rock sound. Kind of like Smashing Pumpkins in their days of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and before.

The concert was hosted by this lady. Her name is Sabrina Impacciatore. Its probably a bad picture, but seeing the long hair and the white dress … the first thing that came to my mind was a pontianak.

But to her credit, she’s the first woman ever to host the concert. And, she is so funny! This is she in a Tomb Raider parody where she gives a tutorial for new users.

Its in Italian, but still amusing to watch anyway

As a person who spent hours playing Tomb Raider back in my pre-university days, I appreciated the poses and gestures like the flailing arms, the running and jumping which is quite on the spot in the actual game!

And then I noticed this :

These are the same guys who sang the annoying Carla Bruni song. This song is amusing because it sounds so much like they were saying, “Boleh. Boleh. Tak Boleh” which means, “Possible. Possible. Not possible” in Malay

As you can see, I’m easily amused

Si luncai terjun dengan labu-labunya. Biarkan. Biarkan. Biarkan. Biarkan

Cart was extremely keen to take a look but didnt want to go alone. So as a good wife, I suggested that I accompany him

Unfortunately, by the time that Cart finished his work and we’d had our dinner, we reached Circo Massimo at about 9pm when the concert started at 6pm. So we missed out on a couple of acts.

And it was raining!

But that did not dampen (geddit?) the spirits of the spectators who were there, because by the time we reached Circo Massimo, it was full of people. You could feel the festive spirit all around. And the first thing that came to my mind was how much it reminded me of WOMAD.

Cart and I joined the large conglomeration, and we chilled out to the music.

The first act that we saw was a singer musician called Pino Daniele. Apart from the acts from X factor Italia, I’m not too aware of the different Italian musicians but there were a few of the songs the he performed that I could recognize being played on the radio. Like Quando and Il sole dentro di me.

I looked around me and there were loads of people singing along. Its apparent that he’s a celebrated artist. But to be honest, I found his voice unremarkable, but his songwriting sounds good. And the accompanying musicians were fantastic, like the drummer, Omar Hakim. Not only does he banged the drums really well, he was charming too, flashing his pearly whites every few seconds

After about an hour, they ended their act and then started a commercial with the wide screen showing the viewers how you could take care of the environment and how the organizers planted enough trees to compensate the carbon footprints for the night’s concert. It was then when I saw the hottest looking garbage collector in my life.

Why hello there! What’s a pretty thing like you working in a place like this? 21 years old? You should be a model or a top 12 hottest garbage collector calendar or something. I’d buy it :-P

I’m not sure why I took this picture of this Italian comedian, but his tee shirt looked interesting. It said “Non succede. Ma se succede” It means, “It wont happen. But if it happens”. I’ll leave it for you to interpret what the ‘It’ could possibly be :-p

Soonafter, the next act started. And it was by Morcheeba. Morcheeba is a UK band, which I’m not too familliar unfortunately, but I do like the lead singer, Skye Edward‘s voice. She sounds really creamy, silky, smooth.

The song, Rome wasn’t built in a day was probably one of the more well known one here. I was a little amused to see when she spoke in English, it wasn’t such a loud response as when she said “grazie” instead

And her dress! She told us that she made it herself. Cool eh! I want a feather boa dress myself

In anycase, Cart and I didnt stay too long after that even though there was still another performance by a DJ afterwards as it was close to approaching midnight. Cart had to go to work in the morning while this old woman is already feeling lethargic.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves in spite of the rain. I hope to go to another one again

If you liked this post, you might enjoy :

• A day in Circo Massimo
• WOMAD in Singapore

Sidenote : I FINALLY got my Carta D’Identita! Whee! I’m not an illegal immigrant anymore! :p

And speaking of which, have you watched 15 Malaysia before? 15 Malaysia is a project consisting of 15 short films about Malaysia and I think that its quite fantastic.

I first got to know about this through Sha who was featuring Potong Saga. And then later through Hisham through twitter.

It was then when I noticed the 15 Malaysia webpage. Not every of film is published at this point of time as each will be released on a specific date. But my favourite so far would have to be this one.

Check out the cameo at the end of the video. I cant help to notice the little touches of irony in the film like when the boy walks through the school compound and there were the words Respect, Justice and Self esteem on top. What a sad story

Have you watched 15 Malaysia before? What do you think of it?

While many of us would be more familliar with the old analog receiver, I still remember the dish shaped receiver that my family used. Here in Italy, the television stations here are slowly phasing out their analog television and changing it to digital broadcasting. Because Mr Bananas wants to own even more tv stations. Cart got this little black device for the tv in the kitchen.

This is a digital tv decoder. Using new fangled technology, it allows users to have a clear reception. The instant that Cart installed it, I was rather surprised. The quality of the image was almost like HD quality while previously it was a tad snowy. The quality of the show on the other hand … I keed! I keed!

And previously, while we used to have about 7 stations, now we have about 25 free to air stations! Several of them are not Italian channels even. There was this one time when I caught an eccentric looking French chef completely in black outfit and black hat showing viewers on how to make a crepe. (No its not Emmanuel Stroobant but the chef took so much time in making one freaking crepe that makes me feel that I’d die from hunger if I were in France)

Anyway, so far there are a couple of interesting interesting Italian shows that I’ve watched. One of them is ‘X Factor Italia‘

X-factor is basically a singing competition rather similar to American Idol. Though I still dont understand much as I still am not so fluent in Italian, its still enjoyable to me. But what is strange about the show is that new contestants come to compete every two weeks instead of a cap at the very beginning. Also what is even stranger to me is that the champion of X Factor Italia has not had a CD out yet while all the runner ups already had theirs released.

Even Morgan, one of the judges in X Factor Italia is confuzzled.

Also, what is interesting about Italian television is that tv stations allows the broadcast of topless women after 10pm and later. Being in Singapore where a plentiful of things are censored, you could imagine my surprise when I saw advertisments of topless women promoting sun tan lotion, slimming creams et al.

Even youtube does censorship too!

But truth be told, now that I’m more used to it, there isn’t anything so special about seeing topless women on local television. Its not like suddenly I’m turning into a hard case molester or pervert. Its not like its so strange. Its just women’s body. Which makes it a tad hypocritical for the above picture, but nevertheless

In any case, another interesting thing about Italian tv here is that many (if not all) of the imported programmes here are dubbed.

• True Blood in Italian? Checked
• Simpsons in Italian? Checked
• Xena the warrior princess in Italian? Checked

Even Nobita from Doraemon can speak Italian! Look! Just ignore the background spoon and bowl sound. We were having breakfast while recording this

I never realised that Nobita could be so clever

But one question remains. How the heck do I set up digital tv on my HP Touchsmart?

You might also be interested :

• My visit to HBO
• Mr Malique and Rinaz Remix
• Rinaz Music tv
• I almost had breast cancer

Sidenote : Yesterday I made Ayam Masak Merah and it tastes very close to the real thing! I was so happy! Gave some for my mother in law to try. But I think I almost killed her because it was very hot.

For example, the fact that the lead character, Professor Langdon is able to move around central Rome in less than an hour is completely amazing! Anyone who has been in Rome knows of how bad the traffic is here. It intensifies as you go nearer the touristy spots.

Look at the amount of people at the Spanish Steps

And it will be like winning the lottery if you ever get to park directly in front of your destination since trying to find parking in Rome is extremely challenging. Its not uncommon for a Roman to drive around the neighbourhood for about 15 mins and more, just trying to find parking.

So much so that the people here does double parking sometimes

There was one particular scene where one of the kidnapped Cardinal gets bound in weights and dropped into the fountain in Piazza Navona. In the movie, it seemed that the fountain was very deep.

This is the famous fountain in Piazza Navona

In real life, its quite hard to drown anyone in there. The area is extremely crowded with people and only authorized vehicles can pass through. Moreover, the fountain is about knee deep in water. All you have to do is to stand up.

I am very amused.

Obi Wan on the other hand, is not amused

I was invited by Sumin of the PR agency text100 for a preview of HBO’s comedy. Having enjoyed HBO’s shows, notably, Sex and the City, I was happily confirmed.

It was a long ride all the way to the HBO office. We recognized the building when we spotted the large satellites on top of the tall building. When we reached the floor, we were welcomed warmly by Sumin. It was hard not to miss the HBO-ness of the place. There were loads of televisions everywhere. My eyes were attracted by the numerous shows that was playing simultaneously.

Our hosts brought us, as well as the other invited bloggers on a tour around the office where we explored the different departments. There was a green room, where one of the guests acted out and one of the engineers keyed in a background to the footage. There was a sound room where Jerrick’s voice was used as a sample sound for a tv commercial. And we were also brought to the control room where the there was one staff there that was manning the broadcast, LIVE!

Being someone who likes watching as well as editing videos myself, it was fascinating to me to watch the different processes. Unfortunately, due to security reasons, I cant publish any images from the production area. Regardless, there are loads of information on the internet about this.

After the tour, we were seated in a screening room where were previewed an upcoming comedy series called, “Flight of the Concords”. Apparently, the show roused quite an interest in the US.

Thats Jermaine on the left and Bret on the right

It is a little hard to describe how the show is. In a nutshell, its a quirky show where the show revolves around two artists who sings parodies of their day to day situation. The story seems to remind me a little of the gem of a show by MTV called, 2gether which parodies the obsession of boybands during the 90′s.

It was a little hard to get what the actors were saying, due to their New Zealand accent. But once you’ve gotten a hang of it, Flight of the concords was very very silly indeed. There was a scene where Bret refused to play in a gig with Jermaine. Eventually, he got replaced with a cassette tape.

Or this scene where Jermaine wanted some of his money back from his manager :

Jemaine: Murray, we need some money.

Murray: This box cost six.

And there was one actress in particular, that struck me -Kristen Schaal, who also acted in the immensely funny internet series, Horrible People – a parody of soap operas.

I sure am looking forward to just plonk down and zone out in front of the telley to watch the next episodes of Flight of the Concords. Hehehe … with that, I’ll leave you to one of my favourite music clip by Flight of the Concords – Foux da fafa :

And no, foux da fa fa doesnt mean anything!

Related links :

• Flight of the Concords on HBO
• Join the FOTC Video Contest to win a Macbook!
• FOTC Blog

In a nutshell, the teenage textbook movie revolved around 4 main characters, Mui Ee, a smart but shy girl, her best friend, Sissy Song, the popular school belle, Chung Kai, who secretly harbors a crush on Mui Ee, and his best friend, Hok Sean.

As my younger sister has read the book and has not watched the movie either, I thought that it would be a great time to bond together in a girls night out :)

We reached Old School at about 8pm and although I’ve been here before, I’m always charmed at how elegant the place was and impressed that it was converted from an actual school!

We chose our seats and sat down on the plush seats in the Sinema hall, and waited for the movie to start. I sat there lapping up each moment.

The movie was lovely – it was funny, it was witty, and I thought that the cast had good chemistry with each other.

The storyline was good albeit it was more of a condensed version of both the teenage textbook and teenage workbook. There were a number of scenes that were taken out, such as the lisping guy who keeps calling Sissy Song as “Thythy Thong” as well as the scene when Tom D’Cruise tried to make his moves on Mui Ee.

But that was a problem with many book to movie transition as different people always have different perceptions as to what was important to be kept in the movie and which would be cut away due to constraints.

And granted that the quality of the film was rather grainy, and that there were a number of references which was outdated, it was understandable as the movie was produced in 1998.

I had a blast recognizing the old “ship” currency, looking at popular spots like Orchard and Holland Village as they were 10 years ago as well as reminiscing about the days when Mark Richmond was deejaying for Perfect Ten.

When the movie ended, out comes Adrian Tan, the author, and Phillip Lim, the director to come to talk about the movie as well as a questions and answer session. I was so floored! I always feel a sense of privilege when meeting a creator.

And while the both of them were bantering, the audience could sense how at ease they were with each other.

I learnt that Adrian Tan was a lawyer, which was an interesting fact for me to note since going to the Kevin Matthew’s performance, and he was a lawyer too! Proving that lawyers are not necessarily fuddy duddy people :P

I also found out that Phillip Lim gave out directing lessons around the time when he was creating the Teenage Textbook Movie to supplement his income. Turns out that one of his students was Royston Tan, an emerging and acclaimed director in Singapore!

And in the end, I had a picture with the author, the director and two of the main casts in the show. Oh my. I cant believe that I was actually took a picture as well as had a short talk to Adrian Tan. He was a very eloquent and friendly person and I was so in awe and was very excited to the point of almost being delirious.

As if you could not see from my huge grin photographed next to Adrian Tan, Phillip Lim, Randall Tan and Melody Chen. Woah! I’m embarrassed to say that I was starstruck :P

All in all, I enjoyed myself tremendously and I think that it was an evening to remember :-)

Here’s a quick video about how the teenage textbook movie materialized :

How the Teenage Textbook Movie started from rinaz on Vimeo

And here is a clip from the Q&A session :

Q&A session from the Teenage Textbook Movie from rinaz on Vimeo

Have you read the teenage textbook? Did you enjoy reading it?

Related links :

• Catch the Teenage Textbook Movie in Sinema!
• Teenage Textbook Movie Review
• Watch the Teenage Textbook trailer

You may also be interested in :

• Leap Years

Sidenote : I don’t know what possessed my dad to get these. I think my future in-laws are going to disown me for sure.