Tax planning for the rock stars

U2 moves part of its business empire to the Netherlands to avoid royalties income tax

Rolling Stones earnings suffers effective tax rate of only 1.6%

Book Review: Shadow Family

Nothing comes close to getting your hands on a brand new, unused book from the National Library (except getting your hands on two!), and that's exactly what happened with this title. A quick search for Miyuki Miyabe's titles in the National Library catalogue shows quite clearly that her books are all available for loan. Quite unlike 'light fiction' authors like Jane Green or Marion Keyes whose books look like they've seen some major wars when you finally manage to get your hands on them, and that's just 1 month into their release! (& yes, i do read brainless fiction now and then!)

Anyway, back to the review. "Shadow Family" (Original Japanese title: R.P.G.) is Miyabe's 2nd title to be translated into English (all hail Kodansha!), and it was, I have to admit, just the cheapskate notion of getting my hands on a brand new library book that made me borrow it. Little did I expect a treatment of a detective case quite unlike "All She Was Worth", the 1st of her novels to be translated into English which I had read a few months back.

"Shadow Family" centres around the case of a double murder. Or rather, 2 separate murders that seem to be linked - one of a middle-aged salaryman and another of a highschool girl who hostessed on the sideline. The police had identified a prime suspect with motive and no alibi, but is she really the criminal? Working on a hunch, the police decide to go about investigations in another direction. They had discovered that the middle-aged salaryman was part of an internet role playing family group where he played the role of Dad. Could the real criminal be one of the members of his internet family?

Unlike "All She Was Worth", the reader is not presented with the investigator's "hypothesis" right from the beginning, with clues substantiating the hypothesis unfolding along the way. Instead, for "Shadow Family", you are left guessing about the criminal's identity right to the end. Also, a good 80% or so of the plot takes place in the interrogation room, hence there's not much of the usual action that you see in detective novels. Instead, it's suspense of a different nature.

I suppose I'm getting used to Miyabe's style; it's a sort of half-documentary style that always has some societal commentary hovering in the background. In "All She Was Worth", it was about consumerism and credit card debt. In "Shadow Family", it is about family ties. She makes an astude observation that "the unhappiness ...(of the family)... had at the core a hard fact, one never spoken about: parents and children are not always compatible, and where difference are irreconcilable, ties of blood can end up turning into heavy chains."

I'll be moving on to Miyabe's 3rd translated title soon... and I'm sure I'll be getting a kick again, not just from landing my hands on a brand new library book once again, but also from the surprises that she'll surely spring onto her reader.

gah... of course i feel bad about what i ended off my last post with..
what they think about the china market is one thing,
but i'm certainly happy they're enjoying such support in china lah :)
i'm especially proud of how they won over so many people the first night at Ark
*beams*
uuurrrggghhh.. i should get down to writing all the memories down!!!!!!!

oooooh, here's a sneaky thing i did yesterday
see, i was approached by the school where i used to teach, to do some freelance lecturing.
why not, right? it's good money!
the per hour rate is fantastic! (so it looks like i was badly shortchanged when i was teaching fulltime... )
the assignment's for next year, March to May,
once or twice a week in the evenings.
thurs and/or fri evenings.
then i realized: May 4 is a friday!
so i asked the school to please give me that week off.
XD XD XD
of course i don't know whether i'll really join whatever 10th Anniv celebrations there will be,
but just in case, u'know? :)
& luckily it's still early stages in the scheduling of classes...

***
THE BACK HORN
ライブツアーDVD『ライブ イン ザ サン』
2006.9.27 RELEASE
VIBL-330 \3,800(税込) \3,619(税抜)
【収録内容】
●LIFE IN THE SUN 　ツアーの表と裏側を描いたドキュメント映像+ライブ映像で構成。
●LIVE IN THE SUN 怒涛の全爆音ライブ映像集
【特典】 無限メニュー
1.証明atなんばHatch
2.ブラックホールバースデイatなんばHatch
3.コバルトブルーatなんばHatch
4.ファイティングマンブルースat日比谷野外大音楽堂
5.アポトーシスat横浜BLITZ
6.未来atなんばHatch
7.世界の果てでatなんばHatch
8.夢の花at日比谷野外大音楽堂
9.カオスダイバーatなんばHatch
10.浮世の波atなんばHatch
11.サニーatなんばHatch
12.初めての呼吸でatなんばHatch
13.ゆりかごat日比谷野外大音楽堂
14.光の結晶at横浜BLITZ

原来会有好多Hatch的影像呢!
好像记得那个cameraman就在我们后面。。。

***
「謡声」debuts Oricon Charts at No. 5 and stays at No.5!
おめでとう!
Oricon article on 8/22 Discussion Forum
Wow...No. 5...

不好意思，我要茶！

这次single最喜欢的就是那DVD了。
足足55+min的影像。
看得好过瘾！

发现原来凸的语言发音还满准的！
不论是华语（电梯里那段！）或英语都不错呢~

好喜欢看他们轻轻松松地在欧洲游玩的画面
还有跟德国muccrew说再见的片段~

&,&... all those unsuspecting passers-by who end up getting into the DVD!
whether it's the boy with the bowl-cut hair, or the ah-peh pushing that humongous cart in shanghai...will they ever know they're part of this DVD!? XD

live方面，可能我已经有了偏见，不过还是觉得上海的最intense.
那两晚的live，真的是。。。没话说。
至少对我来说，就是那两场live，让我重新燃起对他们的信心
仿佛让我恢复记忆，想起了为什么我当初那么喜欢他们的原因。

yes, the reaction of the audience to their lives was indeed quite different.
i hate to say this, but till this day i still feel that most of the audience at Ark were there just to headbang, go wild, have a good time.
while there's nothing wrong with that, i think it's somewhat a pity that they don't look up sometimes to see the members playing their stuff.
if you just watch the first live clip during the euro leg,
sure, the audience was equally wild (and i'm sure if i were there, i'll probably just see the back of the person in front of me throughout the live, since i'm so short!), but at least people were looking at them, like after yukke's short solo bit, there was some...erm...coo-ing, some sort of acknowledgement of their music.
i don't know if i'm biased, or do i just have higher expectations of certain audiences...
it just urks me somewhat that mucc is now getting quite popular in china, but whether it's for the right reason, i really don't know...

'nuff said! :)

oh no i haven't been blogging when there's so much i want to write about!
blog block?
or just distracted by other things XD
will update soon, i promise! :)
and since it's now past midnight... happy birthday tatsurou!

Happy National Day lah

Fireworks, fireworks, fireworks!!!

MORE!!!

nice hor?

[Pics all taken by my SonyEricsson 610i! :o)]

I was reading an America mucker's live report and she wrote about how now, when she plugs into her earphones on the way to work, if a song that the band had performed during the live comes on, her face will unconsciously become a big 8D!, and she'll find herself dancing/bobbing/whatever to the tune.

YES!!! This is exactly the "after-live syndrome" that any live-goer would and should experience if it was a DEM SOLID LIVE!!! Really, nothing beats that sort of... bliss? :) That 'lingering factor'... ... ... do you just go home and forget all about those few hours, or has some part of your brain somehow been permanently fused with the sights, sounds and smells of those few hours, and if 'appropriately probed' (read: CD music), strange things happen XD

Not very different from reading a brilliant book or watching an awe-inspiring movie, really!

Am suddenly inspired to blog about the Apr lives again! Really, if there's one band who's built up a reputation for themselves for delivering powerful, ---out-of-this-world-type-powerful--- lives, it's -*points to above*- Mucc.

As usual, Youtube reigns

short otakon live clip - looks like it was a solid live, メンバー状态不错！
start of panel session - audience response was cool!
clip of coming 666 DVD - which they showed at the panel session.. i'm having goosepimples ;D
qn at panel session - what was that at the end?

Added on 8 Aug: 最終列車

Description for Deathnote's Vol. 13 at CDJapan reads:
"Special manual for the "Death Note" manga! Comes with special goods including Near finger puppets (Kira, L, Misa, Mero and Near) to re-enact infamous scenes from the manga , deluxe art box to house to DEATH NOTE comics (vol.1 to vol.12) and "HOW TO READ 13." Also includes bonus card showing the true name of L! Puppet size: 50mm (height), 20mm (diameter) approx."

LOL!

Just some musings on Passenger & House MD...

Passenger is a short fiction piece about an old lady (played by Chen Meiguang, a face recognizable to many as the grandma in early TCS/SBC serials) taking a last trip in a taxi around Singapore, before she departs for China to await her death. She requests the taxi driver to bring her to places that hold memories for her, and recounts bits and pieces of her life story during the course of the trip. The dialogue is mostly in Teochew, and what I really like about the short film is how it portrays various parts of Singapore, quite literally, in a different light. All scenes were shot in the dead of the night, and the places that the taxi stopped by were not exactly places of interest -- well, except to the old lady.

I have to admit, I was hoping for something more poignant towards the end of the short film, and the taxi driver seemed too nice to be true, but nonetheless, it was a good local film effort. Commendable, too, that the film used original music throughout - a haunting melody refrain using guitars.

House MD, on the other hand, is a totally different kettle of fish. It's been on the air since 2004 (3rd season starting soon), so to many it's probably not a new series anymore. But over here in Singapore, it's only shown over AXN channel on cable, which I don't subscribe to, so it was only by chance that I stumbled upon the first season's DVD set in... where else... China! Yeah.. it was during the trip to see mucc's Shanghai lives in Apr this year.

Well, House MD is a medical drama focusing on the diagnostics dept, each episode typically starts with an unsuspecting person falling prey to a sudden attack on his health. When the cause of the attack remains unclear, the case gets referred to Greg House's team at the Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. That's when the action starts. Or rather, the brain-cracking. Totally absorbing stuff.

Interestingly enough, even though it's the same formulaic structure for almost each episode (House's team eventually diagnoses correctly), it got me reaching for the next DVD everytime I'm done with one. Large part of the reason is Greg House himself (played by Hugh Laurie of Blackadder fame) - a wry, cynical chap with a sarcastic remark for every occasion. Caught myself laughing out loud at his comments at certain parts, heh. And as the first season progresses, we learn more about House the person, and what makes him tick, culminating in a beautifully written season finale that's now got me hungering for the second season DVD set. uuurrgghh...

It's how you tell a story...
i like it when it's not too self-indulgent, yet makes the audience think.
fine balance, that is!
recent finds: Passenger, House MD

The people at my workplace have once again convinced me that the country is being run by conformers. i really need to leave this country one day. maybe when there's no more reason for me to stay. "but you're just running away from the problem! is that why you've been changing jobs?" well. IF it's worth fighting for, i'll stay to fight. IF there's a reason to stay, I will (like now). but IF not, then i say, life's too short to make it difficult for myself. there's got to be "a piece of sky", as they say in Mandarin, out there for each & every one of us.

La Vie En Rose announced their break-up today. I can only hope that they'll continue to stay on in the music circle, that it's not the last we'll see of each member! ;_;