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over the weekend i got a Cenix VR-W240 series digital recorder for work (about which googling reveals no english-language websites, though it does provide the option to translate), perhaps wrong-headedly impressed by the user-friendly interface and amazing quality of the recording (which compares rather favorably against Olympus recorders and is at least as good as Samsung and Sony recorders to my untrained ears).

with nothing better to do, i took it out of the box on the train on my way to Orchard Road to find a coffeeshop to do some writing, and somewhere around Clarke Quay station, i turned the recorder on and left it on til i found my way to a Starbucks, bought a coffee and sat myself down. evidence of this may be found here:

http://skinnyblackcladdink.multiply.com/music/item/11

if i'm not mistaken, that's about 19 unedited minutes of, among other things, MRT station sounds, street-noise, traffic, pedestrian conversations in Mandarin, in-the-pocket-of-my-jeans-rattling-against-pens-and-a-celphone-while-i'm-walking-sounds, and a blind harmonica player.

i had the earphones on as well, and was astonished at how much of the world i never really hear, and how that kind of hyper-real hearing makes it difficult to understand what people are telling you about the large dollop of vomit-like crow or pigeon shit that just spattered your table, endangering your coffee and laptop both (not included in this recording; both the coffee and Audrey, the laptop, were, thankfully, unharmed).

it reminded me of Simon Ings' ruminations on 'augmented reality' in his brilliant All Cats are Grey, which occurs to me now i might not have linked to before:

http://www.fisheye.demon.co.uk/homepages/simoningsallcats.html

on the subject of cats, i've started up blogging about my other life again, though i haven't yet caught up enough to do 'real-time' reviews. i feel the need to clear my head of all the M. John Harrison reading i've been doing (while, paradoxically, doing some more M. John Harrison reading), so expect quite a few more posts about his writings before i move on to other things.

of course, i've rarely ever been consistent about anything i say here or there, so maybe you should just go see for yourself.

lately, not yet having any work to use the recorder on, i've been using it as an MP3 player, with Tom Waits' Rain Dogs in near constant rotation. (though i've also been finding much comfort in updharmadown's fragmented, which also takes a nibble at the Cenix's 1GB memory.)

which seems appropriate as it started raining after the Lunar New Year, and hasn't completely stopped since. not quite cats and dogs, but wet enough. and cold...

Gong Xi Fa Cai.

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having set up Zen in multiply, i'd thought my blogposts here would automatically be put up there as well. my bad. i'll see if i can find a way to link this up with the multiply blog; otherwise, i may just start blogging there as well.