Of Snakeoils and Wolftickets

It’s a tiresome week.


I didn’t have a day off; I worked on Thaipusam, and the best thing is that I went there in work clothes at the usual time only to find out that work starts at 10, where non-formal clothes are allowed and it’s actually a half-day. So I was at work dressed like Napoleon Dynamite at prom dance, sitting with people in jeans and t-shirts and Hawaiian shorts, working hard on a day I shouldn’t be working, and then working past what we constitute as a half-day.


That morning Pei Ling dropped me the news that Heath Ledger is dead, and I remembered being stunned on the way to McDonalds for lunch, repeating the news to anyone who asked and realising that I was talking like I was shell-shocked and traumatised (I wasn’t; I was just very surprised, but I think I looked completely despaired).


I just wished the church in Australia will bury him; I heard from someone he was refused burial there because he acted in Brokeback and it was a “blatant promotion of gays and the rights of homosexuality”. He’s not gay. Give him a break, and let him rest in peace…


Leeching off the free internet at work (until recently, when it refused a connection to my laptop as though in determined retaliation), I found a very neat song titled “Mad World”, sung by Gary Jules doing a cover for Tears for Fears (an 80’s band). If you’ve heard of it, you’ve probably heard it over Donny Darko or in the first Gears of War teaser. It’s a sad song, about the world and how normality is madness mostly, only that we don’t see it that way, but I don’t do it justice so listen to it if you can.


Downloading Gary Jules meant that I would subsequently get his entire album, which I did, and it was a pleasant collection of gentle songs titled under the album name of Trading Snakeoils for Wolftickets.


I don’t know what it meant, but I like how it sounds. And mostly the songs sound great too.


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I’ll be heading down to Segamat for my aunt’s wedding tomorrow and will be back on the 28th. Maybe I’ll blog about it, with pictures and videos and stuff.