randomscribbles

who'd ever thought that a little tiny seemingly non-threatening flu shot can have such a devastating effect? i got sick the day after i took the shot, which was friday. the timing couldn't be any worse. i had so many things planned for the weekend: a farewell party followed by a movie-marathon sleepover on friday night, followed by brunch on saturday morning, shopping for a friend's halloween party decorations in the afternoon, a birthday dinner at 6, and then a concert at 9.

however, by 6pm on friday it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to breathe through my poor congested nose, and i realized that my ambitious weekend plans might have to be cut a little if i didn't want to collapse completely and missed everything entirely.

so i cancelled my plan to go to my friend's farewell party and went instead with gary and mikail who picked me up after work for coffee. after about a couple hours at trident fueling ourselves with caffeine, we went to victoria's for dinner. we didn't get to wendy's apartment until around 11pm. so much for wanting to start the movie marathon earlier...

we began by watching y tu mama tambien, a mexican film about two teenage boys who take a road trip with an older woman to a fictional beach. it was pretty funny. kinda steamy, too. now i understand why the guys just looove this movie... heh heh...

afterwards, we did this pretty interesting experiment (recommended by one of mikail's friend) where we watched the wizard of oz with muted sound and turned on pink floyd's "the dark side of the moon" album at the third roar of the mgm lion in the opening title of the movie. it was kinda eerie... for the most part, the music matched the scenes perfectly!!! we didn't get to watch the whole thing, though, because everybody's kinda sleepy already, and in the middle the music got kinda stagnant... so we decided to switch to this french movie that unfortunately had no subtitle (and none of us understand french!), so that didn't last long either.

after sleeping for a few hours, we went for brunch at this little cozy diner in somerville, where i had this humongous plate of food with pumpkin pancakes, eggs, bacon, and fries. yummm... i ended up not doing the halloween shopping and going to my friend's birthday dinner as planned due to the lack of car and my flu-ridden condition.

so after hanging out at mikail's place after brunch, we went to this concert at the middle east in cambridge. there were four bands playing: zea from the netherlands, who played experimental electronic music with such zeal and energy (they must be on something) and turned out to be really cool (this was my favorite song); mobius, who were kinda so-so; mono from japan, who played oh so magnificently like nobody else i ever heard before; and freezepop, a local band who played japanese pop (kinda like pizzicato five).

the whole mono thing was kinda unexpected. we thought it was the british band who sang "life in mono" in the movie great expectation. well, obviously it was the wrong band. but oh how they played!!! i was just gawking the entire time. i had never experienced anything like it. it was a good thing that the venue is small, so we could totally absorb the whole experience (i was right in front of the stage near the big ass speakers).

they didn't talk at all the entire time they were up on the stage, and the music didn't have vocals either. first they looked kinda bored and detached... but when they finally started playing, you could almost literally see their passion bursting out and reach the audience. they started most of their songs with sad, slow melodic tunes, and gradually built up to a wild, completely chaotic electronic sounds with screeching guitars and deafening drums... and yet you could still hear the melody. check out samples of their songs here...

i ended up buying their cd and shamelessly asked for their autographs (i got 3 out of 4!) on the cd cover. they turned out to be very nice and friendly. i'd definitely go to see them play again next time they return to boston.

here are the [blurry] pics of mono and zea, and a 10-sec muted clip of mono taken with my new *ehem* nokia 3650...