Last friday, i went crabbing with my cousin, Loreen, her husband, Mark, their cute cute cute daughter, Sarah Jen May and some of my cousin's church friends. We (i mean Mark coz obviously, i can't drive!) drove for about an hour before we reached Mandurah, a town south of Perth. We went crabbing along the river at Mandurah. Apparantly some retirees actually sell their houses in Perth and buy water-front houses along the river.
This is my cuter-than-cute niece, Sarah!
It was Australia Day (national day) so it was a public holiday and there were LOTS of people at the river even though it was blistering 39 degress Celsius! Oh my, it was really hot. And i mean really really HOT. Sunday was supposed to be 41 degrees Celsius but it didn't feel as hot as on friday because on friday, there were hardly any clouds!! When i looked up at the sky directly above me, it was blue. really really really blue. I've NEVER seen a sky so blue before. The only clouds visible were the ones that surrounded the sides of the hemisphere. So basically, if you were to look up at the sky, you'll see a thin rim of sparse strands of white clouds on the edge of the hemisphere and LOTS of blue in between. I'm not sure if you can picture this. See i told you, i drafted this while bathing, so i may not be excatly coherent.
So anyway it was really hot coz the sun was directly blazing on our skins. Plus, even when there was a breeze, all that was blowing in our direction was hot wind! Apparantly, it's gonna get much hotter in feb. So it'll be absolutely stunning if i don't return to S'pore with a tan! haha!
Here's Lee Su Ern aka THE ISPANKA Su Susu Ernie Putri Poultry Lavanya Rhonwen Kyznetsov's guide to crabbing for dummies:
1: Buy crab nets. The nets are made of 2 circular metal rings placed directly above each other, joined by netting. There's a small plastic container in the middle that is full of holes.
2. Place a sizable amount of bait (spleen) into the plastic container.
3. Attach a length of string about 1-2 metres long to the crab net.
4. Tie the open end of the string to one of the small metal rings that are found on the sides of the jetty.
5. Release the crab net into the river.
6. Wait for 5 mins
7. Check if a crab has taken to the bait
If there's a poor crab in the net, go to step 8.
If only seasweed's present in our net, go to step 9.
8. Congratulations! You succeeded! Now, go home and cook the crab! and STOP boasting bout your catch to me!!!
9. Well wells, just throw the net back in the river and wait.
10. and WAIT
11. and WAIT
12. and WAIT
As you probably guessed, the whole lot of us caught NOTHING. Absolutely nothing at all. Unless you consider a ton of seaweed and an empty mussel shell a catch at all. And to think I was dreaming of chill crabs for dinner!
But it was quite an eye-opening experience and though there was LOTS of waiting under the hot sun, i guess it was still fun.
It was about 6pm i tink, when i looked at the horizon and saw copious (Ms Chau? See this?) amounts of smoke arising from the horizon. There must have been a bush fire somewhere. This is NOT surprising, considering how hot it was on that day. But the scene was really scary. The heavy, brown smoke just kept on rising into the atmosphere. When it mingled with the low-lying clouds, it felt as if the part of the sky was heavily contaminated with Nitrogen Dioxide. It probably was. It was scary coz this continuous release of toxins just never seemed to stop. Can you imagine what all these toxins will do to the environment and to our health? Even the setting-sun looked blood-shot red as it peeked behind the toxic, mangled mass of smoke and clouds.
Then we went to McDonalds for dinner. I got a frozen coke, which is basically ice-blended coke. Prices, as i've mentioned in my earlier post, are comparable with in S'pore's Mc. But there's much more variety over here!
By the time we left Mandurah for Perth, it was already bout 9+ pm. So it was very dark and much cooler. The road out of Mandurah had only 2 lanes. So it was pretty deserted. There were no street lamps coz you probably only have street lamps on the freeways (highways). Thus, the only lights which were seen were those from the headlights of Mark's car and the church friend's car, and the occasional on-coming car.
But there was enough light for me to see the scenic view from the car window. The trees on the outside were definitely not as dense and bushy as those found along the M'sian highways. But it was still quite a sight to behold especially at night. There were some relatively short and sparse trees among fields n plains. You can also see a couple of horses n all.
It was so quite, peaceful, tranquil, serene (you geddit). So it was the perfect time and place to listen to John Mayer!! haha. It was so quiet and still that I could hear almost everything on his tracks through my Sony headphones. Coz normally, when I'm on a crowded and noisy train or bus, you can pretty much hear only the cracking of the engine and other such noises. The music is barely audible. I don't usually like to turn the volume way up coz I don't want to hurt my ears. So when i'm travelling on trains or buses, more often than not, I'll only listen to songs that i'm very familiar with. Coz i'll probably be able to hear only the drums, some of the vocals and feel the vibration of the bass. That's bout all. So I'll "hear" the rest of the vocals and instrumentals in my head. So yar, i'll be "imagining" the song! hahah. But i still "hear" it nonetheless.
So i was very very nice listening to John Mayer while travelling on the quiet, dark road. A great experience! I decided that his heavy blues-rock songs were too "heavy" and loud for this such a quiet night as this. So i listened to his Inside Wants Out ep and songs lyk Daughters [from Heavier Things], The Heart of Life, Stop This Train, Dreaming With A Broken Heart [from Continuum] - the more acoustic type of songs. I decided to drop Gravity and Vultures from my playlist coz i've listened it too many many times. But i added Belief in coz Belief's my newest fav song. I juz started liking it!
As I was saying, it was so quiet and serene that i even managed to hear "things" that i didnt hear before. Random as i was (and always will be), I even compared the two different versions of No Such Thing in Inside Wants Out and Room For Squares.
No Such Thing in Inside Wants Out is purely acoustic; only John and his guitar. Whereas No Such Thing as found in Room For Squares has the backing of a full band. This difference is obvious enough, so nothing special bout this.
BUT i found ANOTHER difference!
For those of you so have yet to hear No Such Thing, the song starts out with an Emaj9 chord repeated every quaver. But there are accents on certain quavers. (btw i've uploaded the acoustic version found in Inside Wants Out on my blog)
The version found in Inside Wants Out starts with the introduction panned fully to the LEFT. It only balances out when he starts singing. However, the version found in No Such Thing has the introduction panned fully to the RIGHT.
Small difference, rite? But i wonder why the change?
Then I remembered what my violin teacher said: If you want to be more aware of your pitch, make sure you left ear directly faces your accompanist. But if you want to be more aware of your rhythm, you'll have to face your right ear to the accompanist. So i guess it's the left and right brain theory.
So i guess, since the introduction is more rhythmic than melodic (coz it's a repeated chord after all) so maybe Mayer or the sound engineers wanted us, listeners, to be more "aware" of the rhythmic pattern? erm... possibly?
This is as random as i can possibly get.
If you actually bothered to read till this portion, well, thanks for bothering to read this extremely, and probably unnecessarily, long post!
