The Buccaneer is a great product. How did you decide it’d be your venture?
We started out as a 3D printing service company. When Professor Neo got on board, he pointed out that the business model was unsustainable and not scalable, so he suggested we shoot for the stars and built 3D printers instead.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve overcome so far?
It took us at least three months to work on a prototype and it didn’t work well. Getting this done quickly was one of our biggest challenges—we had to look for a good mechanical engineer who could get things made on top of designing it and we found one.

Seen any cool stuff being printed?
Figurines, jewelry and kitchen utensils.

Which of your stretch goals have stood out the most?
Our new print platform. We can’t reveal it yet, but it’s a first for the industry.

What would you like to make next?
A completely prosthetic hand with motorized actuators! Replacement limbs of the future would be completely customized and 3D printed.

Is Singapore a great place for those who want to make things?
It’s not so great for making physical products. The sad fact is, manufacturing has long moved overseas. Hopefully, with initiatives towards building 3D printing facilities, making things here will get easier.

Where did the idea for Films at the Fort (FATF) come from?
Open-air cinemas are really popular in Europe, North America and Australia, often heralding the arrival of summer in cities such as Paris, New York and Sydney. They are a great place to relax with friends, watch a film under the stars and enjoy being in the outdoors.

What’s special about the festival that hasn’t been seen at other events here?
FATF combines award winning films with gourmet food and wine. Quality food at reasonable prices, accompanied by an extensive drinks menu that include a dedicated G.H.Mumm Champagne bar, Australian and New Zealand wines, as well as boutique beers and ciders.

How did you go about selecting the films?
The feature films were selected to offer the audience films that are not only entertaining, but also slightly different from the films that usually feature at the top of the Singapore box office charts. We are also screening one short film per evening and these were selected in conjunction with Objectifs. The short films had to meet two criteria. Firstly, they had to be made by an emerging Singaporean film maker, as we are keen to support the local arts scene by providing exposure to talented up and coming artists. Secondly, they were selected with the aim of providing the audience an insight into local culture.

Why Fort Canning?
Fort Canning is perfect venue for this event. The gently sloping natural amphitheater ensures that everyone gets a great view of the screen and the lush setting makes this a pleasant place to relax as the sun sets. If that wasn’t enough, it’s central to the CBD and a short walk from three different MRT stations.

Films at the Fort runs from August 22-25 at Fort Canning Green. Tickets from SISTIC at $19.80-$24.80.

What’s the energy level of the band like these days? 
The band is still pumping and the energy levels are high.

You guys perform plenty of retro songs. What is the most contemporary song you’ve played?
Yes, we do love retro songs because there is quality in this kind of music. We do play the latest hits from Bruno Mars, Pitbull, Daft Punk, Maroon 5 and the likes.

Playing alongside greats such as B.B. King and Gloria Estefan must’ve been memorable for the band. Who is an artist the band would pay to perform with?
That would be, without a question, Sting.

Do you think your band would be open to bringing in new blood in the name of longevity?
Yes, we do like to inject new blood in the band when the time calls for it and hopefully this will keep the group going for decades to come.

Social media is such a huge tool for marketing these days. Have you guys jumped onto the bandwagon?
We have our Jive Talkin’ fans facebook page and the website (www.jive-talkin.com). We keep in touch with our fans by constantly updating with the latest news, events, photos of the band through social media.

One word to describe yourselves?
Jive-licious.

Catch Jive Talkin' every Tuesdays to Saturdays from 10:30pm till late at Fern & Kiwi.

Being a pioneer is hard. Explaining our type design business to people is hard but making them understand that it has value is harder.

Adaptation can save your business. My friend and I founded Cadson Demak to be a graphic company but it didn’t take off. We tried product design but it wasn’t our expertise so we lost money. We finally switched back to our greatest strength, which was graphic design.

Thai people are always passive in term of using technology. We are addicted to technology but never question it or try to improve it to match our nature. We found Thai typo issues in international software and phone technology. That’s why we started doing custom-made fonts: so we could speak our voice.

You must speak up to make people accept your identity. Thai fonts were ignored because our language isn’t widely used at an international level. Heck, we’re the only ones who use it. But if we never speak up, who will know what we want?

Types can speak. The font design can make your product or company unique and convey the whole feeling of your message out loud. Using the same font is like using the same MC.

Being distinctive makes you go further than others. Find your identity and people will recognize you.

Learning from your experiences helps you see the whole problem clearer. Self-learning and overcoming past mistakes make you an expert in this industry.

Trial and error is good. If you never try anything different, you never discover new knowledge that will help you continue to learn.

Space can design people. I decorate my office minimally because I want my designers to be neat and clean like our finished work. A minimal space creates an environment where people need to adapt their behavior to match it.

If you want people to be a certain way, feed them that. I don’t think designers can create fine, clean projects if their workspace is a mess.

Fonts are things beyond words. They are in every part of our lives. You’re unaware that they are always there to serve you.

Humans love challenges. It’s our nature. That’s why people are always attracted to strange objects or unusual advertising. Type design is about playing with their literacy, creating new fonts that they have to learn to read.

Design is part of our life. Your clothes, table or chairs have been all designed. Whether it’s a good or bad look, it’s important that it fits you. Though you’re not a fashion designer you have to choose your shirt and shoes to match your jeans. It’s all about the decisions you make.

Good designers make things memorable and impactful. Having a bunch of great designs is better than having thousands of useless designs that people don’t recognize. And if your work can be revised and stay fresh, that is fucking cool. It’s the biggest success for a designer.

The type design industry will do well when the AEC arrives. I think there will be more regional companies coming to do business here and they need custom Thai fonts to best communicate their image to Thai people.

Pushing beyond boundaries is fascinating. For me, type design does this. Readers are challenged to improve their skills to read new types of fonts every day. They don’t notice it because this change happens slowly at a snail’s pace.

Thais love to depend on luck. I hate the one-man one-shot system where we all wait to have great people emerge like Tong Sitchoi (legendary Thai snooker player) or Paradon (famous Thai tennis player) who make their own success. It’s really annoying to see people swarm to Olympic medal-winners when they never give a shit about creating better conditions to produce more great athletes. This is so wrong.

Pave the way for the young generation to grow. It means nothing if you are successful while others still struggle. I’m trying to create a solid platform for type designers in Thailand to be able to grow and stay in this industry for the long term.

Setting goals is important. It doesn’t matter whether your goal is short or long term but setting it will help you see a clear picture of the process to get you there.

Nothing is tough if you understand the reality. I’ve been through every kind of rejection in my career. But I never gave up because I saw it as part of the work process.

Some problems don’t need to be fixed; they just need time to be proved. Just stay strong against all the critics. I still see my work as an on-going battle to make people understand and value what we do.

Living with low requirements is a kind of luxury for me. It’s better to find happiness around you instead of struggling to have something that doesn’t match your reality. It will just make you unhappy.

How did you first form?
Om-Yim: I was inspired by Room 39 [famous Thai cover band on YouTube who are now a mainstream recording act]. I love their style. I watched them over and over and decided I wanted to do this sort of thing, too. So, I started looking for someone to sing for me. One night, about two years ago, I noticed that Peach had posted a clip of her singing to Facebook so I asked her to join me. I planned to play piano but we only had one camcorder and it turned out the sound quality was pretty bad. So, I switched to playing guitar which matched her voice better, anyway.

What makes you different from other cover bands on YouTube?
Om-yim: We try to entertain audiences as much as we can. We don’t want to be musicians who play it cool all the time. Our clips tend to show a relaxing atmosphere, like they’re actually an informal jam session.
Peach: Our clips are fresh and real. We don’t try to act like we are serious musicians. I think this makes our audience happy, this sense of intimacy.

Do you receive many negative comments?
Om-yim: Yes, but it’s simple—you can’t please everyone. But even criticism can be good. If we didn’t receive it, we might get carried away with ourselves. It helps us remember that we haven’t made it yet. We have to improve. It keeps us grounded.

Do you think YouTube now acts as a shortcut for new artists?
Om-yim: It is. But it doesn’t always work. We encountered obstacles. We talked to a record label, but it turned out that they weren’t being honest with us and they broke the deal we had made. It was so bad. We were so disappointed and thought that we may have to give up our dream of being musicians. But we still had our fans. It helped us look back at the reason we started doing this. It gave us the strength to continue to chase our dream. And here we are.

How does it feel to maybe have your own songs covered now?
Om-yim: We’re happy, for sure. I felt a lot of pressure at first. Would people like our songs? Or would they only like our covers of other people? But it’s good. We really have our own voice now.

What’s your biggest dream?
Pete: I love to sing. But I do have another dream. I want to open a hotel because I love to travel and I love languages. It would be great if I could be a singer and start up a business that I like.
Om-yim: I want to have a two-story house so I can open a restaurant and have a home studio.

As a kid, I was dreamy, nerdy and spent most of my time with books. I love reading fantasy and sci-fi genres and I’m not ashamed to admit that I still read young adult books, even though I’m possibly 30 for 40 years older than their target audience.

I can talk about Percy Jackson with my 12 year-old nephew and I know Harry Potter backwards to front.

Fashion for me is every day; it shouldn’t be high-end or low-end. It’s a silent expression of your personality, without having to say a single word.

I’m not a devoted slave to any label, I would appreciate a piece or a collection that a designer does at any one time.

When I was a legal journalist, I spent many hours listening to court cases, from molest and divorce cases to trademark issues. Property disputes are the ones that seem to capture the most attention. We’re in a country with a remarkable penchant for figures and it’s fascinating how people can remember to the last dollar what the valuation was.

Ballet is something that I’ve been doing since I was little, but I still have the worst balance in the world and fall during my classes. It’s terrific exercise for anyone interested in fashion, though. It gives you tremendously good posture.

Part of what makes you look fabulous is the way you carry yourself and how you move.

All the spare time I have—even during holidays—is dedicated to dancing. Nowadays it’s lindy hop, which I’ve been occupied with in the past 10 years. I even took part in a dance competition in Korea with a bunch of my friends—all in their ‘30s and ‘40s. We abandoned our kids for weekends on end to rehearse, and came in third.

I have the worst memory in the world, and to be a good dancer you need to remember all that choreography. I think the reason why I love lindy-hop so much is because it’s impromptu.

Singaporeans are a very practical lot. They dress appropriately for the weather, yes, but I can’t say we’re a style capital. There’s a cultural mindset that Singaporeans have in terms of valuing comfort and convenience over style, and we have a higher threshold for dressing more casually. But there’s a greater nod from the younger folk to wear things that are unusual.

The education system here kills your brain by stuffing so much into your head, making you feel like running a frantic race to learn facts. This whole grading system, where you’re rewarded based on how well you do, stops people from taking chances if it isn’t worthwhile. But it should be worthwhile if you’ve tried, or you’ll never know.

People should dare to make mistakes more, and not be afraid to say what they mean even if they’re wrong. It irritates me when they give some kind of a tentative answer, fishing around to see what you’re going to think.  

There was hardly a week that went by, during my time as a journalist, without someone questioning why I gave up being a lawyer and that was how I was introduced by colleagues in the newspaper. It bugged me that people in Singapore care about that, like it made me more respectable and elevated my status.

I’ve always had a soft spot for nerds; they belong to a certain breed. Big Bang Theory guys, baby!

What are you working on at the moment?
We just finished a DJ mix compilation for NY-based house label King Street Sound. It’s coming out this year. We are also working on the next Kyoto Jazz Massive album.

What are you listening to nowadays?
Any kind of good music, like always.

You’ll be playing at two different venues, what have you got planned?
Friday I will be spinning jazzy dancefloor music but on Saturday I think I will bring in more soul, boogie, Brazilian and organic sounds.

We heard you recently worked with French singer Bembe Sege, what came out of that collaboration?
We ended up releasing two tracks with her, one called “Mystery Of Ages” for a compilation CD called Tokyo Crossover Night 2012 and another called “Karmapa Chenno” for another compilation called Black Finger. Both came out in Japan late last year.

Did you notice any difference to how people party in Bangkok compared to Japan on your last visit?
Last time was so nice. I didn’t feel any difference, though. Bangkok people know good music and have an open mind for new sounds. I also think they are now getting that same rebellious streak as is found in Japan.

What has kept you in the music business for so many years?
What can I say... I just love music!

After Bangkok, where are you heading next?
Back to Japan! Back to reality!

My family oppose me being a politician because they see it as too dangerous. They try to stay away and not get involved. I wish I had more time for them.

Life is more than money. Money used to be a medium of love for me. I always gave money to my parents as an act of love. We loved each other but we didn’t really express our feelings.

I was so sad when my dad passed away. That’s why I quit acting ten years ago, entered the monkhood and changed my name.

My first name means to repay an obligation. That obligation was to my dad. My last name, “Jitissara” (free soul), is meant to remind me that I have to retain a soul that’s free from all anxieties.

I studied Chinese to continue my dad’s dream. He taught me Chinese but I didn’t bother studying hard. I later opened a Chinese language school and lectured about my life and Dharma.

I loved being a teacher. Giving knowledge and bringing out new ideas can broaden your own thoughts. The best teacher is the one who teaches you to think on your own.

Step out from your professional world to be an amateur in another field if you really want to learn about life. I love to drop out and do something else instead of being stable at the peak of one profession.

Teaching inspired me to jump into politics. I was used to expressing my ideas to thousands of students when I was a lecturer. But I thought it would be great if I could spread my ideas to millions of people and turn them into something practical. You’re not reading history, you’re making history.

I chose Don Mueang district by myself. I asked the Democrat Party which district was the most difficult to win and they said there. It’s in my character to accept a seemingly impossible challenge.

Politics is difficult. It’s like you’re a boxing trainer, you can never know what it is really like unless you have fought yourself.
Being a politician helped me get a deeper understanding of Dharma. After studying it for more than a decade, I realize that the more chaos I encounter, the more I find peace within the chaos. You must have a lot of life experience to really understand its teachings.

Be earnest in what you do. You have to love what you do and to keep doing it even if things don’t go the way you expected. This victory was about winning people’s hearts through my actions over a number of years.

People always want to be your friend when you’re successful but you will only see your true friends when you’re in trouble. I have experienced both.

Taming your heart sounds clichéd but it’s really hard to do. During the campaigning and the floods, I had to dig myself out of the bed at 4am and drive to Don Mueang every day. It’s really exhausting.

I considered giving up on politics. I lost 99% of my work as a lecturer and MC after I entered politics so I don’t have a lot of money. I really questioned why I did this. But I convinced myself that if I am worried about this then I won’t have the freedom to truly convey my message.

Being in the midst of extreme hate is horrible. Someone doesn’t even know you yet they’re ready to hurt you.

Forgiveness is the only solution in confronting a political rival like Karun (Hosakul). I can’t avoid him so it’s better to remain calm.

Death threats are something I expect. The latest was on the day I won. Someone called me and said “Congratulations and be prepared to die like your assistant.” My former assistant was shot dead in 2011.

I’m afraid to die but what can I do. Being paranoid doesn’t help. My colleagues try to convince me to get bodyguards but I still go around alone. If I have to die, then I don’t want anyone else to have to get into trouble with me.

Thai laws are never respected. Nepotism is everywhere.
People create corrupt politicians. Many people expect politicians to pay them extra and don’t care where the money comes from. I tell them that I don’t have money and just try to be as honest as possible.

Many people still don’t understand the duty of an MP (representative). They think we can do everything, like order the drains to be cleaned, which, in fact is a municipal job. When I try to explain, they just say they won’t vote for me anymore!

Investing in people by developing their intelligence is more sustainable than building material things. For me, we make too much, but it seems no one ever has enough and always wants more. I call it Greedilization. People don’t even notice their life is actually stuck in an endless loop.

Don’t try to find the meaning of life, making your life meaningful is more important.

I won’t end my life as a politician. I dream of living somewhere isolated where I can be free of everything. I might go teach kids in the mountains.

Why the name 3-2-1?
Gavin: It’s easy and catchy for Thais and foreigners to pronounce. It was actually the idea of the creative team. But we did try. We came up with stuff like “Bubble Pop” and “Coco-Pop.”
Poppy: 3-2-1 is like a countdown. We’re unique because we have only one girl. I get to be the most beautiful group member. I wasn’t even their first choice; the guys wanted a sexier girl.

How do you guys get along?
Gavin: In the beginning we didn’t talk to each other at all. We didn’t get along. Then one day we were like, hey, shouldn’t we get to know each other? Now we spend more than 12 hours a day together, we’re like a family.

Describe your sound.
T.J.: We represent T-Hop style (Thai-pop mixed with hip-hop). A lot of Thai musicians do one or the other but don’t combine both.

Who are your biggest fans?
T.J. My parents, especially my mom. When our first album wasn’t going well, she told me that I could still succeed. Then Boom. “Nan-Oak” comes out and bam! We’re big! Poppy’s parents are also supportive and go to see her at every concert.
Gavin: My parents are more like auditors, they never get directly involved. But they manage to find out everything anyway. They have their connections, talking to everyone from the guards, the PR team, the producers and the assistants.

What’s the best feedback you’ve got for “Rak-Tong-Perd?”
Poppy: I love the covers of the song on YouTube,. And people recognize me more, but they call me “Nong-Nan-Oak” because of the song. It’s ok because at least they remember me now.

How do you feel when people say the song is only a success because of Baitoey?
Gavin: We get that a lot. But if we didn’t have the song, the choreographers, 3-2-1 or Baitoey, then the song wouldn’t have happened. It’s about all these people coming together and making it such a great song.

How do your fans perceive you?
T.J.: Gavin is definitely a favorite with the girls. Clearly, I’m the scariest as fans won’t take pictures with me—maybe because of my tattoos and mustache. But, I’m happy to get the badass image.

What’s next?
T.J.: We haven’t planned anything yet. C’mon, we’ve only just released “Nan-Oak” and the feedback was a real shock. But we definitely want to go global. We want everyone to listen to our music.

Do you have a problem with people finding your family rather alternative?
Gomez: No problem at all. We love to welcome them to our home for grave diggings and late night torture sessions.
Morticia: I feel bad for the people who find us alternative. Their lives are normally lacking imagination and inner life.

How are you coping with your neighbors?
M: Our life of solitude in Central Park keeps us far from neighbors.  We are thankful to be away from any friendly faces that may brighten the day.
G: If by "coping" you mean locking them in the dungeon then we are doing just fine.

Morticia, you look absolutely stunning as always. Would you be so kind as to share your beauty secrets?  
M: Pain inducing corsets, occasional torture sessions, and staying out of bright sunny weather give me my sickly glow.

How would you define a dream honeymoon?
G: A long weekend in the Bermuda Triangle with no food or shelter, followed by a couple massage by Thing.
M: A bed of nails in a rat infested, condemned motel, and sharp instruments of death sound like a dream come true.

The kids are not getting any younger. How do you keep tabs on their whereabouts?
G: We have many chains and shackles to keep the kids away from goodness and close to trouble.
M: On the contrary, I fully expect our children to play in the streets and talk to strangers.  I wouldn't want to shield them from the horrors of this world.

Looking forward to seeing you on stage. Thanks for your time!
M: Yes, it was my pleasure. I hope the weather is dreadful and your travel unsafe.
G: You’re unwelcome.

The Addams Family runs through July 28 at Festive Grand Theatre, Resorts World Sentosa. Tickets from SISTIC at $55-$75.