Month: January 2006

Kris Kringle Karaoke Karma

P- was out last night with her high school friends for their post-Christmas gift giving dinner. That left me home alone to fend for myself.

This was the perfect opportunity to try out for myself the Karaoke DVD player that I got her for Christmas. Self-consciousness is not a factor when you can practice karaoke at home! I got the one-legged Chris Martin jig down pat while singing Coldplay’s “Yellow”, and mangled a few other songs on the three disk Memorex economy karaoke set.

The final song I did from that collection was Lou Rawls’ “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine”. As my natural range is baritone, the song works well for me. From the second half of the song, which is sung-spoken, I could see how he could have been the predecessor to today’s rap and slam, as some accounts claim.

It was a shock to hear today that Rawls had passed away from cancer. His history of giving back, including the years he ran a telethon for the Negro College Fund, makes him someone to be admired. We’re going to miss his lovin’, baby.

Belated Happy New Year Greetings

Thanks FC for the always enjoyable year end recap. One of the things I look forward to now that I can’t do it in person.

I’ve been traveling a lot, actually almost constantly for the past 6 months now. Currently back in the hometown, Ipoh Malaysia . B- and I have been running errands and took a couple of days off to visit Damai Laut (see previous postings) at the Swiss Garden Hotel Damai Laut. The trip started out very nice, our stay was extremely relaxing and we bummed around a lot in bed watching TV, eating and sleeping. But the experience leaving the resort was very disappointing and leaves much to be desired. In terms of the overall experience, I think it was bit better than the Mutiara Burau Bay Resorts Langkawi except for the poor spa service and travel arrangements from the resort to Lumut bus station.

Next stop to KL for some meetings and a B-‘s cousin’s wedding to attend. Tonight is a family dinner for my cousin who’s getting married tomorrow in Ipoh. Non stop eating of course but getting slower in my old age. Can’t pack it down like I used to :-(. I suppose that’s a good thing. It’s sobering when you’re insurance shopping :-|.

Limited email and internet (by design) to enjoy myself here. Let’s see how it works out.

Cheers all,
=YC

Stuff

“Chinese Language Catching on in US classrooms” – hmm. So, kindergarteners can learn Mandarin Chinese and I still can’t figure out Cantonese? Oh, well. Nice to see America trying to embrace multi-lingualism, as usual.

Dining articles almost makes me hungry —

Looking for a good macaroni and cheese recipe? NY Times has a nice article and some recipes.

An article on a drink that’s not sake.

Mark Bittman is encouraging readers to go back to butter.

Tips on plaintains in Newsday.

Daily News’ David Bianculli felt that Vargas and Woodruff on ABC’s World News Tonight were pretty good. I caught the new on-line World News Now webcast on ABC News on-line – it looks and feels like World News Tonight – familiarity can be a good thing. (like, keeping the theme song more or less intact, unlike Nightline’s strange break from its respectable past). So, maybe Vargas and Woodruff can do a decent job.

Speaking of Nightline, Ted Koppel, his executive producer, and a number of Nightline staff got signed on to Discovery channel, to do the stuff Ted wants to do. Well, good luck to Ted. And, gee, will I really have to give in to getting cable someday???