Chet’s Chatter

MIT Weblog Survey 2005

Posted on 28 June 2005 @ 17:55 in General

Learned about it from Savage Quill, followed the link and participated. You can, too. By following the link above.

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Old Friends

Posted on 27 June 2005 @ 22:26 in Family, Friends

“Do you remember my friend Anne?” I’d asked mother on Saturday evening. Anne, aka mellowbug, had just called and I was going over to see her at her mother’s.

Instead of giving her usual quick “no” , mother actually looked like she was giving it some thought before answering, “Anne? No, I don’t remember her.”

And so it was, on Sunday afternoon, I took Anne to visit mother. From afar, mother saw me, gave me her usual big smile and commented that I was there again. I looked over to Anne who walked up and asked mother if she remembered her.

Looking at her in the face, mother said no. But it didn’t stop her from taking Anne’s arm and caressing it as she chatted away with Anne.

I think if mother were a toddler, I’d have to worry about her over-friendliness and going off with strangers!

It was a short visit but at least Anne, all the way home from Toronto, got to visit mother and to see the living conditions at GT Heritage nursing home.

Anne and I go back all the way to 1979 when I’d started work at my first company and she was already working there. We share a common dialect (Hakka, or Khek), even though mine is Taiboo Hak and hers is Fuichew Hak. Nevertheless, it was something common we shared, which meant she was able to converse with father when she visited, and I likewise with her mother. And despite being Hakka, there are very subtle differences in some of our words, phrases and intonations, which only the older generation, like Anne’s mother, can recognise.

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In the middle of the night …

Posted on 26 June 2005 @ 18:45 in Stress Busters

It seems someone has absolutely no sense of timing …

I guess this is what is called a “midnight snack” ?

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Meeting up

Posted on 25 June 2005 @ 11:17 in Friends

Just got a call from mellowbug, she’s home (here in PJ!), having arrived at midnight on 24 June. And yup, she and JK flew straight into unbelievably, unbearably hot weather here. She took him for a walk around the old neighbourhood at 7 in the morning, and not 15 minutes later, he was asking to go back to the house.

Hope to meet up with her soon. Already we spoke quite a while on the phone, but it’d be nice to continue doing so face-to-face.

And oh yes, she brought back a book for me. Well, one of two books I’d asked for, the latest by Canadian Chinese writer, Wayson Choy. Just days before her departure, she’d written about reading his earlier book, The Jade Peony, which I’d discovered while in Vancouver in 1999. Since then, I’d not heard of anything new by him, but after reading his name on her blog, I did a search and found that he has since published two new books. So I commented on her blog, and asked her if she could get them for me. Apparently, she made a quick trip back to the bookstore for me and managed to get his latest book, All That Matters, which is the sequel to The Jade Peony.

More on Wayson and the book later …

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17 years on …

Posted on 23 June 2005 @ 21:33 in Janis Ian, Music

17 years ago, I bought the cassette version. 17 years later, I have added the CD version to my collection. How appropriate that the best known song from the album is a song called “At Seventeen” . And the year the album won Grammies for its engineers ( “Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical” ) and its singer ( “Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female” ), I was 17.

The album?

A vinyl version would complete the collection. I saw a mint copy at the concert back in February. Not for sale, but in the collection of what I would call a hardcore JI fan. He’d brought it along to be autographed by her. He also had mint copies of Breaking Silence (not one, but two copies!) as well as one of Billie’s Bones, for which he also brought along the CD version. Makes one wonder what else he had back home.

While “At Seventeen” is probably the most well-known song from the album, my own personal favourite is “In the Winter” . The other songs have also stood the test of time. In fact, the whole album has stood the test of time, sounding as good now as it did when I first heard it 17 years ago.

From the liner notes of the CD version, Janis wrote:

“In its time, “Between the Lines” was considered one of “the” albums for audiophiles; entire sound systems were developed around it. The players, pulled from jazz, classical, rock & roll, and folk backgrounds, transcended their classifications and training in order to play as one. And I myself probably sang better than I had at any time previous. It was an extraordinary to be a part of, and one that makes me proud to this very day.”

One song from Between the Lines I have not heard for many years – partly because I hardly play the cassette, not wanting to spoil the tape, and partly because I never found it in any of the downloads from the Net – is the one that leads off the entire album, a song called “When the Party’s Over” . I finally heard it again at the concert in February, it was one of six songs she sang from the BTL album. Unfortunately, I can’t share it with you online, because, while she has granted me permission to share her songs here, she does not own the rights to the songs on this particular album.

What I can do is share the lyrics here, and let you see for yourself the power of her songwriting talents.

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