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Praying Mantises
This afternoon I went for a run, for the first time in eons. I think I did a Parkrun earlier this year, but today I waited until it was ludicrously hot, and after I was tired from a day of taking the kids to museums and swimming lessons, and then finally went out. I wasn’t […]
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Return to comedy
After work today I went with an old friend from Hong Kong (and now a co-worker) to a comedy night in Santa Clara. Even getting there was the stuff of hilarity; there are identical Hilton Garden Inns up and down Palo Alto, and instead of being picked up outside the one I stayed in, we […]
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Irresponsible superheroes
On the way home from the track, we fell to reminiscing about TV programmes of the 80s; classics like Air Wolf, Street Hawk and Manimal, that bizarre classic where through the simple power of heavy breathing, a man could transform himself into any animal he chose. Although mostly he chose to be a bird, possibly […]
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Comedy at the Fullerton
One of my friends was performing in a comedy night at the Fullerton Hotel, and I hadn’t seen him for over a year, and he put me on the guest list, so how could I refuse? The show was in the Post Box bar, which was almost as far removed from a suitable venue for […]
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Fast on the draw
At last night’s Al Murray show, at one point he got out a camera and took a photo of the crowd – I suppose that counts as cultural sensitivity, as that’s what every single person in Singapore does all the time. Well, almost. As I was in the third row from the front next to […]
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Al Murray in Singapore
This evening, the wife and I abandoned the kids to our babysitter and went to the NUS Cultural Centre, to see Al Murray. I can’t think of a more inappropriate place to watch a strange facsimile of an irate Little Englander pub landlord ranting away, than in the terribly-clean and polite surroundings of the Cultural […]
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Dylan Moran
We went to see Dylan Moran tonight; Singapore was the last leg of a long tour for him. Maybe it showed; things were rambling and unstructured, but that’s what you’d expect anyway. There were some great gems: an altercation with a hipster barista; the description of people into extreme sports as “a waste of rope” […]
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Bill Bailey – Limboland
This evening I had my first birthday present of the year, two weeks early: tickets to go see Bill Bailey perform at the NUS Cultural Centre. These were ludicrously expensive; $150 each, although we were in the second-to-front row. It was something we didn’t feel too much guilt over, because I’d been given $250 of […]
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Back up
For the first time in an absolute age, I was back on a stage, performing to paying customers. This was the high point of a weekend where I mostly lay around the house, devoid of energy, trying to prevent my daughter headbutting furniture, so it was a good way to end Sunday.
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Drop out
Instead of returning in triumph to the bosom of my pub quiz team (isn’t that an appalling image in itself?) I stayed at home tonight. I was feeling groggy and confused, and while that’s a reasonable place to be after a few hours at the pub, it’s not such a great place to start from.