Sunday, September 28, 2008

A Change.



...Afraid for far too long.

...Characterised by Apprehension misguided.

...Marked by keen Circumspection.

...Wary in vigilance.

And now, for something completely different.

Mich will throw caution to the wind

And live for the Moment.

Paul Newman, Hollywood Icon And Gentleman, Dies at 83.

The end of another good man, Paul Newman.

NEW YORK (AFP) — Paul Newman, a Hollywood legend and American icon beloved for his piercing blue eyes and roguish charm, has died after losing his fight with cancer, his family said Saturday. He was 83.

Newman, whose health had been the subject of intense speculation ever since photographs of him looking frail and gaunt appeared in the press in June, passed away on Friday, a spokeswoman said.

A devastatingly handsome leading man who appeared in scores of Hollywood classics, Newman's death relegated the US presidential election and Wall Street's financial meltdown to second place in news bulletins Saturday.

"Our father was a rare symbol of selfless humility, the last to acknowledge what he was doing was special," Newman's daughters said in a statement.

"Intensely private, he quietly succeeded beyond measure in impacting the lives of so many with his generosity."

Tributes began flowing in from around the globe, with friends, co-stars and celebrities hailing an "exemplary life."

Robert Redford , Newman's friend and co-star in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "The Sting," led the emotional outpouring.

"There is a point where feelings go beyond words," the 72-year-old said in a statement. "I have lost a real friend. My life -- and this country -- is better for his being in it."

Flowers were placed on Newman's star on Hollywood's 'Walk of Fame' as the Motion Picture Association of America hailed an "extraordinary career ."

Heart-throb George Clooney said simply: "He set the bar too high for the rest of us. Not just actors, but all of us." Newman played youthful rebels, charming rogues, golden-hearted drunks and amoral opportunists in a career that encompassed more than 50 movies.

He was one of the most popular and consistently bankable Hollywood stars in the second half of the 20th century.

Newman was also a philanthropist, a health food mogul -- he once quipped that his salad dressing was making more money than his movies -- an auto racing enthusiast and a leftist political activist.

A passionate racing car driver since the early 1970s, Newman became co-owner of Newman-Haas racing in 1982 and also founded Newman's Own, a successful food company he built from the ground up in which all the proceeds go to charity.

More than $US220 million has been given away to humanitarian projects worldwide from sales of salad dressing, pasta sauce, lemonade, popcorn, salsa and wine. In 1988 he started Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a residential summer camp for seriously ill children.

Newman won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1987, late in his career, for his role as a pool shark named "Fast Eddie" in Martin Scorsese's "The Color of Money," co-starring Tom Cruise. Many critics at the time said he was really being awarded the Oscar belatedly for his original performance of the same smarmy character in the 1961 movie "The Hustler."

Born Paul Leonard Newman on January 26, 1925 in Shaker Heights, Ohio into a comfortable middle-class family -- his father ran a successful sporting goods chain -- Newman acted in school plays as a youth.

He joined the navy in World War II wanting to be a pilot, but tests showed that he was color blind. Instead he served as a rear-seat radioman and tail gunner aboard Avenger torpedo bombers in the Pacific theater.

Newman's film career almost ended with his first movie -- he considered his performance in the sword-and-sandal 1954 drama "The Chalice" so mediocre he paid for a page-size ad in a Hollywood trade publication to apologize.

Newman redeemed himself in his next movie, "Somebody Up There Likes Me" (1956), a portrayal of boxer Rocky Graziano, and by 1958 was nominated for an Oscar with a smouldering performance in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," starring alongside Elizabeth Taylor.

Hit movies rolled on from there, including "Exodus" (1960), "The Hustler" (1961), "Hud" (1963), "Cool Hand Luke" (1967), "The Towering Inferno" (1974) and "Slap Shot" (1977).

A committed liberal, Newman openly campaigned for several Democratic Party candidates -- which got him onto Republican president Richard Nixon's famous list of enemies in the 1970s, something he described as "the highest single honor I've ever received."

Later Newman film roles include "Fort Apache, the Bronx" (1981), "The Verdict" (1982), "Nobody's Fool" (1994), "The Road to Perdition" (2002), and as the voice of a vintage Hudson in the animated "Cars" (2006).

Newman had six children, three from an early marriage that ended in divorce and three with actress Joanne Woodward, whom he married in 1958. He had five daughters and one son, Scott, who died of a drug overdose in 1978.

Had he ever been tempted to stray during his long marriage? "Why fool around with hamburger when you have steak at home?" he told an interviewer.

Newman became interested in auto racing while filming the movie "Winning" in 1968, and quickly became a race car enthusiast. Over the years he won four Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) championships and competed in the famous Le Mans 24 Hour race.

His last screen appearance was as a conflicted mob boss in the 2002 film Road To Perdition opposite Tom Hanks, although he continued to provide voice work for films.

Newman retired from movie acting in 2007, at the age of 82.

"You start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So I think that's pretty much a closed book for me," Newman told ABC News in an interview, referring to his acting career.

Source : New York (AFP)

Friday, September 26, 2008

Jack Johnson - What You Thought You Need.


Scott Shaw / The Plain Dealer / AP

Jack Johnson - What You Thought You Need

I can't give You everything You want
But I could give You what You thought You need.
A map to keep beneath your seat,
You'll read to me in time I'll get you there.
But fold it up so we don't find our way back soon
Nobody knows we're here.

We can park the van and walk to town
Find the cheapest bottle of wine that we could find
And talk about the road behind
How getting lost is not a waste of time.
Le Bois d'amour will take us home
In the moment we will sing as the forest sleeps.

It's all for the sake of arriving with you
Well, it's all for the sake of arriving with you

Well, I will make the table into a bed
The candle is burning down, it's time to rest.
I can't take back things already gone,
But I could give You promises for keeps.
And I would only take them back
If they become Your own and You give them to me.

And it's all for the sake of arriving with You.
Well, it's all for the sake of arriving with you.

We could make this into anything
We could make this into more than words we speak.
This could make us into anything
It could make us grow and become what we'll be.

How will we really know?
It's just like it feels.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

I Turn To You.



Whenever I don't know who to look for, I turn to You.
Thank You. =)

"For the arms to be my shelter
through all the rain,
For truth that will never change,
For someone to lean on,
For a heart I can rely on through anything,
For that one who I can run to.

For a shield from the storm,
For a friend, for a love
to keep me safe and warm
I turn to you.

For the strength to be strong,
For the will to carry on
For everything you do,
for everything that's true
I turn to you."

[ Christina Aguilera - I Turn To You ]

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Quod Erat Demonstrandum (Q.E.D)



Circa. 2007 - In a nondescript cafe, Mich had predicted a global economic neurosis in October 2008. Mich had specifically mentioned that the financial meltdown would be "an imminent shadow of the Great Depression." Such a bold prognostication was met with raised eyebrows and refuted with an all-too-familiar dismissive laugh.

Sep 2008
- In yet another nondescript cafe, the very naysayer is now a convert after reading an article in the Guardian, We Are In The Worst Crisis Since The Depression, Says IMF. In the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse and the AIG crisis, a different tune is sung. "You know quite a bit about financial markets, don't you?"

No, Mich doesn't. It's just a lot of common sense, critical analyses derived from international politics, an enthusiasm for socionomics - if only for the sheer coalescence of history and social engineering - and a voracious appetite for the crème de la crème arc in the global economy.

This is when "I told you so" augurs not a winning hand.

DBS : Habis?

*habis (malay) : finish / end

DBS High Notes investors at risk

Bank warns they may lose entire stake in Lehman-linked product

By Francis Chan


SOME local investors of a product linked to bankrupt investment giant Lehman Brothers have received late-night phone calls from DBS Bank warning them that their entire stake may be wiped out.

The investors have their cash in a product called DBS High Notes 5 that the bank offered wealthier clients last year. It came with a promised annual return of about 5 per cent.

But Lehman’s collapse on Monday means the product will be unwound and investors may only get a portion of their investment back - or none at all.

One 52-year-old customer told The Straits Times: ‘I received a call from my relationship manager late Tuesday night. He told me that…my investment may amount to zero.’

The man had invested $50,000 - savings he had earmarked for retirement.

A customer in her late 40s said: ‘My relationship manager called and told me to be prepared to receive a letter from the bank…[it] would say something to the effect that my investments in products like High Notes 5 may be totally gone.’

She invested $50,000 and US$30,000 (S$43,000) in two separate transactions.

Investors are mostly clients of DBS’s priority banking unit, DBS Treasures.

The product - DBS High Notes 5 - is a 5-1/2 year structured product linked to eight underlying shares, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Macquarie Bank and Lehman.

Customers who invested in Notes 5 said they were sold on the relatively high 5 per cent annual payout by DBS. But now they just want their money back.

‘What we do not understand is: How can the fall of one bank cause our funds to just vanish when there are seven other stocks within the product that are still trading?’ said a man whose elderly aunt invested $50,000 in DBS High Notes 5.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the largest single investment made on High Notes 5 was $2 million, although this could not be verified by DBS.

DBS confirmed that it took immediate action to notify customers once it learned of Lehman’s chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

‘As soon as the news broke we immediately started communicating…to our retail investor customer base,’ the bank said in an e-mail reply to The Straits Times. ‘We are very concerned and understand the anxieties our customers face as they wonder what will become of their hard-earned money.’

DBS said the Lehman collapse has triggered a ‘credit event’ and the bank called for a redemption of the notes on Monday.

It said unwinding of the product has begun and it will be at least 30 business days before clients learn of the final payout. But DBS also confirmed that investors in High Notes 5 may - ‘in the worst-case scenario’ - not get back their entire principal amount invested.

The product’s prospectus also indicated that in a credit event such as bankruptcy, the notes ‘will be terminated and the investor will receive zero payout’.

The bank said the product does not contain a guarantee that the principal will be protected. It also told The Straits Times it would ‘fully investigate’ claims by some customers that High Notes 5 was in fact sold on such a promise.

Meanwhile, UOB and OCBC Bank said that though some customers have invested in Lehman-linked products, the volume was ‘modest’ and ‘negligible’.

‘Since news of Lehman filing for Chapter 11 broke, we have taken a proactive approach in updating clients on the latest developments,’ said UOB’s spokesman.

OCBC’s spokesman said in an e-mail that its securities unit has advised customers to wait for updates from Lehman.

Source: Straits Times Interactive / Simply Jean

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Busy Sep 14!

  • Nephew's wedding. ( er...my nephew's 2 years older. Wonky family tree.)
  • Nephew's (yes, the groom) Birthday.
  • Mum's Birthday.
  • Aunt's Birthday.
  • Uncle's Birthday.

Yes, there's something about Sep 14 in my family!
4 people on the same date?!

Yup! =)

(Nov 14 will have another list altogether...)

You.

(whispers)

Thank You.

=)

Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Tonight.


The little girl was weary.
And so, she yearned to stop.
A rest was what she craved.
One that would take her for a walk in the clouds.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Wan.

  • 2005 : One plus One.
  • 2006 : Which One?
  • 2007 : Minus One.
  • 2008 : Minus One.
  • 2009 : Wan.

Saturday, September 06, 2008

If A Song Could Get Me You.



A feel-good ditty by Marit Larsen.
(Remember the blonde from M2M?)
This quirky clip was shot at the greengrocer's!
I could try you with a waltz
I could try you rock and roll
I could try you with the blues
If a song would do

I could sing it high or low
When I let you go you know
I thought it was for the best
Now it is so obvious

So here it is, here it goes
I could try rock and roll
I would change your life forever too
If a song could get me you
I could make it high or low
Sing it on the radio
If that is what I need to do
If a song could get me you

I could run for miles and miles
I'd take off and I'd start flying
I could cross land and sea
If you just believe me

I should not have hurt you so
This old house is not a home
Without you here, there's no use
I've got no time left to lose

So here it is, here it goes
I could try rock and roll
I would change your life forever too
If a song could get me you
I could make it high or low
Sing it on the radio
If that is what I need to do
If a song could get me you

If a song could get me through
I'd sing my way, right back to you
Tell me how, to make it right
Tell me now, I'll start tonight
I know I could make it last

I swear to you that if I knew
What I was getting myself into
I wouldn't answer to my fears
I'd never leave you standing there

Just look at me

If you'd only see me
I would prove my love for you
I could swallow half the moon
Just tell me where, tell me when
I will have you back again

So here it is, here it goes
I could try rock and roll
I would change your life forever too
If a song could get me you
I could make it high or low
Sing it on the radio
If that is what I need to do
If a song could get me you

Friday, September 05, 2008

Snuffed.



Mich has taken ill after a day out.
  • 39-degree fever
  • Runny nose
  • Sore throat
  • Cough
Sleep beckons.
Goodnight!

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

Lost.



When right is wrong, and wrong is well, wrong.

When nothing's right and right is nowhere near in sight.

Questions - a barrage leashed in seamless strains.

What do You do? What can You do? What do I do?

Who is right? What is right?

I can't live like that anymore.

A shoulder, a pillar of rest.

Please?

Coincidence.

Def : anything that happens suddenly or by chance without an apparent cause.

The unending limbo of toil.

Panic trifles.

-SiGh-

Of Which To Choose.

Of which to choose and none to be,
In putrid imbued morality.
To whom this trickled mien perceived,
Of much to give, a tad naive.

As trephine chastens faculty,
A cloaked respite to yet decree
Is and was and am, to be
The shadowed lair for none to see.

A dance of chance, however brief,
Crinkled curves of slight reprieve.
To One whose glance these words receive,
Dwells forth the knot thus deigned to weave.