images i can't get out of my mind

Birds mired in oil from the BP spill.







More here.

there are so many things you can do,
from this point onwards,
for the environment.

Today, you would be more conscious about the amount of plastic you throw away each day.








On a lighter note, you can vote for your favourite song at NEA Eco Music Challenge,
and support singer-songwriters like myself! who have written a song for the environment.

help spread the word!

go paperless.

you know what i need less in my life?

snail mail statements from the bank. the phone company.
bills, notifications, advertisements! so much trash!

who keeps this stuff! or even if you do, do you punch holes and file them like you did in the 90s???

okay for the longest time,
i did the best that i could - i kept all these envelopes/paper that was printed on one side
for future use.



my to-do list.




now i just seem really silly.
i should stop the problem at its source!!

I've spent some time and effort compiling a list of billers for all of you -
I had to sieve through all the intricacies of their websites to pull out the direct link for you.

Please click to receive emails in your email inbox, and not your snail mail box.

No more jammed printers, no more envelope licking, no more dazed workers sorting the mail,
the postmen can chillax and drink some coffee instead of buzzing around pushing paper, no more trees getting killed.

Yes please to bills in my inbox!

M1
Singtel
Starhub: Call 1637 (no link to be found! argh)
POSB
Citibank
UOB (after logging in to your account, you can click on Manage My Accounts > Stop Sending Account Statement)
HSBC
Standard Chartered
OCBC

You could also check out Green Post which offers you a consolidated stop to view e-bills from certain billers.

Green Post is a great idea, but it still hasn't worked out an integrated way of informing the billers to stop snail mail bills once you've signed up for their service.
At this moment, you still have to inform your individual billers to stop snail mail bills.

BUT you can still show your support to go paperless by petitioning to Stop Envelope received from your billers.


I just spent an hour and a half on this!
I dug up more sites and interesting stories on saving our planet, will share soon :)

write a song for our planet earth!

i'm proud to support this campaign, to spread awareness about our environment! ^_^



i wrote Plastic Mannequin Love some time back,
for no reason,
except to raise awareness about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.



now you can write a song for our planet earth,
and win $5000!!! ^_^

More details on the NEA Eco Challenge 2010 here :)

Join them on Facebook to win prizes as well!
I would be performing at various spots for this campaign and you can find out where/when by following this page :)



I wrote new bits for my song, and you can hear them here first :)

"I'm singing a song for our planet earth
Where green and blue collide
But jungles are concrete and the sea's disguised
By all the stuff that got us by

I'm singing a song for our planet earth
To keep in sight and keep in mind
The trash that you owned, that you just threw out
Are still here singing out loud..."

keep writing,
and submit your entries before end of August! :)

displaced

i have a secret.

sometimes i feel a little displaced from society.

i don't enjoy fast fashion, i don't enjoy relentless retail therapy,
nor our addiction to crass consumerism.

i wish i could find more like-minded people who consciously TRY to play a part
in saving our environment from its eventual doom.

we might not be able to stop the destruction, but we can help slow it down.


have you watched Toy Story 3?
what stood out for me was the all the trash that gets sent to landfills or incinerators.
it's something that ought to be kept in sight, kept in mind.

where all these consumer products come from, where they go when we "trash" them out.

i blogged about this, here it is again - The Story of Stuff.

kayaking-turned-ocean-cleaning exercise

while we're on the topic of beaches,
me and some folks spontaneously invented this game!

we decided to kayak at East Coast Park for some mindless fun with the sun, sand and sea,
and after about 10 minutes it got pretty boring.

not to mention the amount of trash that was floating around in the sea.

we started to hoist them up with our oars onto our boat.
and it was pretty challenging, considering the direction of the waves, the direction our kayak was floating at, and it was almost like a video game!


a variety of items... all plastics!

We collected an entire picnic collection, a shoe, a tennis ball, beautiful glass bottles.

It escalated into pirate warfare,
we would snatch the most desirable and interesting piece of trash from each other's kayaks.

The tennis ball and that huge piece of blue plastic was in high demand.



i don't know what the kayak-rental guy was thinking,
but i hoped that he would be moved in some way.



i encourage you to try this,
or simply just be more conscious when u trash stuff on the beach.

it doesn't disappear.



perhaps he would have more influence than myself:


jason mraz is all about being eco-friendly.
check out his blog for daily inspirations.

small simple steps on water conservation,
and mindfulness.

i'm glad i found a like-minded friend through his blog.

hello 2010!

hello to a new year,
hello to man-made divisions in time,
hello to New Year Resolutions that are not followed, nor make any sense.

all throughout the year i have been working hard,
striving for new inspirations,
opening my mind to new things -
i started yoga mid last year,
Japanese classes late last year,
Einein and I jumped onto an EP project late last year and made the impossible possible, by releasing our EP in 2 months, just in time for our Hong Kong show (behold the power of fixed deadlines!)

and I know as New Year approacheth,
that 1 Jan 2010 is just gonna be another new day for all things possible.


I have 2 things to share.

1stly,
Was shopping for a new laptop (not for myself though), and it came down to PC vs MAC.
After much fussing around, we decided on a Fujitsu, which everyone knows is a Made-in-Japan high end PC.
We went to 3 stores to compare freebies, and landed a better deal each time.

Eventually we checked out the Apple store,
and fiddled around with iMovie and iPhoto,
and the deal was sealed.

With comparable specs, Apple provided simple straightforward solutions for the non-techie consumer (me),
at a lower price.

The website was super easy to use -
do you want whie or black?
do you want more RAM?
do you want more hard disk space?
Done.

Everyone knows there's a Mac, Macbook Pro, Air, Powerbook
and everyone knows, or can guess its function from the name.

Who can name me a Fujitsu model?


Dell, HP, Acer, Compaq, etc - everyone is fighting in their same field with little distinguishing features, it eventually boils down to price competition which can only hurt the brand and its profits.

Mac is languishing in its own field, miles away from PC competition.

No doubt it took time to build its reputation of COOL,
aided by musicians and artists who used its system,
musicians and artists who defined COOL.


In my business and career,
that's what I want to aim for.

To stop petty competition in limited markets, and to reach out and expand into areas that are unconventional - and to provide something different.

It's not easy, it takes time,
but it all starts with a vision.




Second morsel for thought -

I read Jason Mraz's blog from time to time and it inspires me,
his commitment to environmentalism resonates with what i believe in,
and his commitment to spread the word to live consciously
makes me want to reiterate again and again what i believe in.

I become a fan of not only his music,
but his style, and mostly him as a person.

It seem like his music is only a byproduct of his person,
a distillation of what he is and how he lives.

His enduring success is only a byproduct of his person,
a reflection of how his music can spread his message, his personality, and endear him to millions of people.

A lot of people want to write music that would be a commercial hit,
or write music that people would like,
that would appeal to the masses etc.
With this motivation, some will succeed, some will fail.

But i think what endures, is to live fully and consciously,
and to write what means something to you, and what matters,
and when your music becomes a byproduct of your person,
instead of a conscious effort to win hearts and to sell records,
that's when you will succeed.




I hope to share more meaningful stuff in the future,
than the food I ate and the things I bought, etc.

Thanks for following me in this journey :)

Plastic Mannequin Love (original song!)

I have been sufficiently traumatised
by the realisation of how ALL the plastic we've ever used in our lifetime,
are still on planet earth - either in landfills or floating around in the ocean.

Read more of my rants on this!

Do you remember this picture I posted?


A plastic mannequin head, bruised and battered, eyes wide open, waiting.... waiting... waiting...
She's waiting for something.
We all know the wait is forever.
Plastic is forever.

And so I wrote a song for her.



This is the first time I'm uploading an original song, played in the bedroom :)

You can download the mp3 of this Youtube version :)

Plastic Mannequin Love
Music and Lyrics by Tay Kewei

Im writing a song for the universe
Im sending it out to space
If there was a boy who could hear my thoughts
Across the street in the window display

Im writing a song for the universe
To rescue me someday
I never had the chance to tell my love
I loved him since that suit in grey

Im sailing, sailing
In this great pacific garbage patch
My love for you is forever
Nothing will break me down
Im sailing, sailing
You are nowhere to be found
I believe one day youll join me
And well sail round and round, round and round

Oh is that you I see
Illusions they keep haunting me
O! tragedy

live consciously.

I keep thinking strange thoughts these days.
Trying to think out of the box,
trying to avoid a mindless living.

I think about what truly matters to me,
avoiding (if I can) the usual mainstream past-times such as movie-watching, hanging out for drinks, shopping.
It seems theses activities are the default past-times for city-dwellers, which I find hard to subscribe to sometimes.

I read about environmentalism, and learn about the destructiveness of consumerism.
Do we need so many clothes, shoes, bags? Makeup? Bottles of skincare?

Advertisements everywhere - on TV, in malls, in magazines, on radio, on celebrities,
they keep telling us that we WANT those stuff,
the latest iPhone,
the latest Loewe bag.

Honestly, I don't.

Once that switch is flipped, it's miraculous how differently you view shopping.


I have been less and less interested in shopping (which bears no good seeing that I need pretty clothes to perform), more and more interested in decluttering.

Can you believe a man chose to take up the challenge and live with only 100 items for a whole year?

I know, I think I have more than 100 items for makeup and skincare already.



I'm starting with the man in the mirror,
I'm buying less.

I'm still thinking of a practical way to rid of all my unwanted stuff,
which are still in great condition.

I might sell them here, or not.
Will think about it.


hoarding is emotional,
but i know there is so much junk in my drawers that remain untouched for years...

plastic is forever

In the search for remains of the Air France disaster,
all that was found was our trash floating in the ocean.

"Much of the ocean trash is plastic, which means it won't go away for hundreds of years, if ever. And the problem has gotten so bad that soupy "garbage patches" have developed in several locations, called gyres, where ocean currents swirl."

"About 80 percent of the trash that ends up in the ocean starts on land and is swept out to sea either from beaches or through waterways and sewer systems, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency"

"The search for signs of the Air France flight highlights what environmentalists say is a pressing issue for the world today: We produce a lot of trash that biodegrades slowly, and too much of it ends up in the ocean. Out at sea, plastics suffocate sea turtles and choke birds, which look at the bits of floating gunk as food."

Google "great pacific garbage patch" and take a look.

Two pictures that I can't get out of my head, I wish to put in yours:


a deformed sea turtle with a bottle ring trapped around it


dead seabird who mistook plastic for food...

More here on this CNN article.

let's talk trash

i mentioned the www.storyofstuff.com earlier in my 25 random facts meme



and i will mention it again and again.


The entire media industry glamourises consumption as a way of life,
the latest gadgets, the latest shoes, bags, clothes, trends,
they are the cogwheels that drives capitalism,
if you step out of this hamster wheel and think for yourself,
do you really need all this STUFF?

i hardly buy stuff now,
extra clothes and bags and trinkets that are not essential at all,
usually a consequence of frivolous mindless shopping.

it isn't driven by a motive to save money,
it is driven by a fear of the amount of trash that we accumulate.


Everything we own or use is made for one-time use, or to be disposed in a few years.
How many phones, mp3 players have you been lemming for in the past 5 years?
How many plastic bottles of green tea do I consume, wooden chopsticks, tissue papers, plastic forks and spoons... all these scare me now.

Where does all this stuff go?
It doesn't go anywhere.
Plastic takes more than 500 years to break down, all the plastic bottles you threw away are still here on this earth.

ALL.

All your mineral water bottles, shampoo and soap bottles that you'ved used all your life.

Plastics never actually 'decompose', they merely break down into smaller and smaller pieces.


"If someone knew that their toothbrush would one day end up thousands of miles away from the nearest spot of land, would they still carelessly throw it away?"



Welcome to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.





PLASTIC IS FOREVER.
We're sweeping this problem under the rug, into the ocean.