One close colleague and friend of mine has actually asked me to "DJ" at her post-ROM party. The venue has yet to be decided.

I am quite flattered really. I have been colleagues with her for about four years now over two different workplaces. She knows I listen to "non-mainstream" music (because I used to be able to play music over at my last workplace) and I am pretty astonished by the fact that she trusts me to pick music for her! What if I pick drum 'n' bass tracks by Goldie that threaten to tear the house down?

This is how I am going to approach it: from now until two weeks before the party, I will compile whatever songs I can think of. My target is about one hundred tracks. In good spirit, I am going to try picking a variety of tracks across different musical genres rather than choose the "safe" ones (like how I could buy up the whole Hotel Costes series and play them back-to-back but that would be so wrong). I would try to let her listen to them and pick before burning them onto a CD before the party, so my job on that nite is to sequence them according to the mood of the party (and slot in some "surprises" for her).

The first track that came to my mind was - (Trying To Throw Your Arms Around The World) by U2.

The ROM-party Song Registry (not in order of merit)
1.(Trying To Throw Your Arms Around The World) - U2
2.(So Com Voce) - Thievery Corporation
3.(Fade Into You) - Mazzy Star
4.(Sometimes Always) - Jesus and Mary Chain
5.(Aurora) - Veruca Salt
6.(Oh Baby!) - Siouxsie and The Banshees
7.(Forever) - Siouxsie and The Banshees
8.(Evening Rain) - Toshifumi Hinata
9.(Time Flies) - Orbital
10.(Near Wild Heaven) - R.E.M
11.(Theme from Control Centre) - The Herbaliser
12.(Can't Take My Eyes Off You) - Morten Harket
13.(My October Symphony) - Pet Shop Boys
14.(Lullaby) - The Cure
15.(Not Enough Time) - INXS
16.(Harder) - Kosheen
17.(Unfinished Symphony) - Massive Attack
18.(Xxplosive) - Dr Dre
19.(Carnival) - The Cardigans...

I believe that everyone has a weakness in the retail realm. For some people it's CDs, for others it's toys. For me, my weakness has always been denim and shoes.

I can't believe that I just shelled out $400 over on two pairs of jeans. I remembered how defeated I felt when I found out that every single pair of Levis' Red Loop 510 Saddle Stitch was sold out (my size). So how could I ever resist when I found out they just restocked it?

Courtesy of my brother, I managed to land a pair of Levis' N3BP dark rinse jeans. He told me that that Levis' store he visited was the only one in Taiwan that stocked it. Prior to the launch in Hong Kong, Japan was the only country to have it.

This denim double-whammy really burnt a hole in my pocket. And I am still pondering - on whether I should get that pair of Nike Air Alphas...

And of course, this year's Film Festival will probably be the only one in my lifetime where I get to see my name flashed out in the credits of one of the films. And to mention the dubious honour of having my name in the credits and actually not appearing in the feature at all (That scene ended up in the cutting room floor...).

It's actually quite a surreal feeling... to see your name appearing the credits in a dark cinema when the film ends.

I got the movie's poster with the director's signature. It will be a keepsake for me.

I just counted all the ticket stubs. I caught eighteen shows in total for this year's Singapore International Film Festival. This is quite a far cry from the past. In 2001 it was forty shows, thirty-seven shows for 2002 and twenty-eight for 2003.

This year, I realised that I no longer have that vitality to withstand catching four or five shows a day (my record was six in a day, which I don't think many people can claim that). I was a little morose from this realisation. I missed out on a few good shows because I just couldn't bring my body to walk into the cinema again. My greatest regret this year is not catching Guimba, Fear of Intimacy and Yolngu Boy.

And the best film I have caught for this year's festival is the opening film - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring.