Much more, in fact.
Recently I've been to Cash Converters to look for old Japanese song CDs to, well, learn Jap as I listen to those songs. Haha.
I actually got quite a few good ones there, like a compilation album of hit songs, and also an album by Speed.
This week I went on a hunt with Bernard again... 2 brains and 2 pairs of hands really upped the returns big time, man! This time, between us, we got Chage & Aska (and yes, "Say Yes" is inside), another Speed album, V6, Eriko Imai, Ami Suzuki and some other compilation album of dorama theme songs (with the song I was looking for all the time: "Believe" from "Overtime"). And others too. In other words, overhaul!
Now for some 1st handed CDs... I got a copy of Ken Hirai's 10th anniversary compilation entitled "Utabaka". Haha.
Baka. Baka baka baka.
And also, a few albums by Olivia Ong, this Singaporean girl singer whose songs are mainly marketed in Japan.
Japan?
Well this makes sense if you know that she was once from "Mirai", the Singaporean girl group from n years back which sang mainly Jap songs, and then got disbanded, according to OliviaOng.com, due to "some circumstances". She later worked as a model before returning to a singing career.
The first of her albums that I bought was "A Girl Meets Bossanova". Bossa Nova is a type of Brazillian jazz and the words mean "New Wave" in... Portugese? Actually, one of the reasons I bought this CD was because there are 2 songs inside which I know about.
First was "Fly me to the Moon", a song which people who watch Neo Genesis Evangelion might know about (it's in the soundtrack, sung by a diffrernt person of course). I first heard the Evangelion version during some Farewell event in my JC days and I liked the song immediately after hearing it.
Another song was "The Girl from Ipanema". Ipanema is some place in Brazil. Well I happen to be playing this song on my electone and I find it nice.
So I decided to see what her rendition of these songs will be like.
Well her rendition of "Fly me to the Moon", sort of, erm, flew me to the Moon. And not the teeny weeny, "pruney" (if there's such a word) white coloured moon you see everyday from your HDB block, but that big yellow moon lighting up the starry (to the power of 10) sky of Pulau Tekong Firing Range (minus the noise of the gunshots).
In case you still don't know what I'm trying to say, I was mesmerized. By both the accompaniment and her voice. Yeah.
The arrangement of "The Girl from Ipanema" in the album was nice too, and the part when she was humming to the first verse.
Hmm, hmm hmm hmm hmm, hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm-
OK I shall stop trying to portray it textually.
Other songs in that album include "My Favourite Things" from "The Sound of Music".
I bought 2 other album of hers, namely "Precious Stones" (her first non-Bossanova album in which she wrote the lyrics of all the songs... in English of course.) and the recently released "A Girl Meets Bossanova 2".
Tokoro de...
I missed the broadcast for Jay Chou's new song entitled "Qian Li Zhi Wai" (Thousand Miles Apart) which, I heard, was a collaboration between Jay and veteran singer Fei Yu Qing.
"Shu shang xiao niao ti...."
And I also heard that the song turned out to be quite nice.
Now 8 Sep really seems like "a thousand miles" from here.
