SHIFTED

WOOHOO... PRELIMS ARE OVER...

SHIFTED TO here

I can't get it out of my head

Big big thanks to meimei for drawing this for me. Haha... Oh and another big big thanks to Vui Yung for the Macs breakfast and accompanying me the whole morning.. Haha... (Sorry Mr X, borrow her for that morning) HAHAHAHA :P
Gosh, exciting times ahead... I'm rubbing my hands in glee and anticipation for Mr X.

Anyway, for some funny reason. These songs were replaying in my head over and over again the days I was in hospital.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------






当我需要你的爱你不在。。。。。
过后我有点发现，
也许，
我。。。



Letting my thoughts be known through songs...

Weekend at the hospital

Well well well..
I'm back from the hospital after spending the weekend there.
It was rather exciting though. I guess it didn't really really that much on Friday until some idiot in the crowd mentioned something about amputation and that got me really scared. WALAO, I still want my toe!! No toe how to play soccer? Right toe some more. So I was like constantly wriggling my toe, make sure its still working.

Anyway, I learnt that the back of the ambulance actually has air con. Haha. Cos this cool wave of air hit me when they pushed me into ambulance.

Of course I would like to thank some people who showed so much care and concern over the period of time. So in no order of merit the Malaysian Scholars GANG, wah, ride bicycle to chase ambulance lah, argue with teacher about how to bandage me lah, telling me lame jokes lah, standing beside me and not making things any better la, you name it, they've done it. Haha. Thanks for making so much noise at the hospital and the Hokkien Mee though... Haha.. Though I had to chase this rowdy bunch of people away...
Of course to the hostel admin staff too. The teachers who came to visit me. The teachers who worried and fretted over me. The Mr Muscular dude. Haha. Aunty Linda and Aunty Stella too for all the concern and care and FOOD!!
To the brothers of Jar Jar Binks excluding LOW JI TENG...
To the mystery couple who visited me and gave me super sour green grapes (WHICH I FINISHED!!!) and red boxing gloves... ^_^ Haha...
To my family and last but not least the three guitar heros who came down to visit me despite their heavy mugging schedules. And Jenny, Geraldine who smsed. And Gomez and Bernard who also smsed.
WOOTS!! I'M AOKAY NOW!!!

Alive and kicking!!!

Merdeka

Happy birthday Malaysia =)

Jackass. GORY IMAGES AT HAND

Haha, i'm like blogging from the hospital now. A lot of ppl should already know this but anyway i got impaled by a metal rod while playing at ecp on friday. I guess some photos are underway. I totally own the class guys who stapled their own ass. Haha. Take this guys.

The Shattering of Dreams

And of all times I had to go fuck up my music practical prelims. The end result was a walloping from a Simon Cowell like guy. His comments were much and long and the usual stuff about intonation and rhythm and pitch except in a more scathing. To sum up all his words, he basically said what I was playing didn't sounded like the violin, every single rhythm and tone basics was wrong and that if this was an audition to get into his school (he's the head of NAFA), he wouldn't even think about excepting me as a first year student.

Well, the most parts of his comments I could take it. The biggest blows to me were when he said "You don't practise your violin" and "If this was an audition for NAFA, I wouldn't even have accepted you"

Well, well, the harsh realities of life. I probably practised more than any of my classmates but the first comment I get was that I didn't practise enough. Well... nothing much I can say there.

The thing was I got back the actual score yesterday and no surprise I finally, somehow managed to fail music practical. A component which Mrs Soh said was impossible to fail. There, I've done it. FAILED THE BLOODY THING. Before all the other papers have even started, I've failed it. Anyway, the severity of this failure means I've to get full marks to scrap A for music which is near impossible. So that pretty much means the great Berklee dream has been shattered. Something that has been on my mind since 2 years ago is just... well.... gone..... I guess I'm still pretty calm about it. The seriousness of this matter hasn't really sunk in but when it does, tears will fall but well.... I guess I should have expected it sooner rather than later. Considering a career change now. I really don't know what I want to do. After 2 years with all my heart and soul set for music, this comes at a pretty bad time.

But.. haix... what can I do? Life goes on... I'll just take each day as it comes as my mei always tells me to do..

That's the final whistle Part III

So here I am in this foreign country and the year is 2005.

Room 3.2 had the best people as far as I could remember. The forever helpful and kind hearted Ming Fatt, quirky but fun Phan Shei and Hong Hu who is as ahu as always. And so first day at Catholic High, I was posted into 3-1. Realised Singaporeans have this weird habit of reciting the pledge every morning and they have to put their fists to their heart. Kinda superficial. In Catholic High, its the school pledge every morning too. Something about being gentlemanly etc etc. I realised school facilities in Cat High is absolutely awesome. High School could never compare to this. It would never have enough money to buy a saxophone or tuba or Da Gu or electone for its students. I'm amazing by all the infrastructure with the full field, 400m 6 lane track, basketball courts, school hall, band room, chinese orchestra room, dance room etc etc.

I was happy I was in 3-1 together with Hong Hu until I chose Music as my humanities and had to change to 3-5. I was initially very reluctant but it was a decision I never regretted. I remember suddenly opening the door to the music room on the first day of school and 21 pairs of eyes including the teacher's staring at me. The teaching immediately asked me, What are you doing here? I was like, erm... I want to take music. At that point of time, the music auditions had already passed and the 20 students were already selected, but Mrs Chaillan never gave up on me and took me in without any questions. So thus began my true introduction into the world of music as I found my first love.

I found the locals rather unreceptive to me. Refusing to talk to me when I called them and being unresponsive to me. But no matter caused I made friends with the Malaysian scholars in my class, Chia Weei, Chong Siang, Ming Yao and Moppeng. Later in the year, I started to know more Malaysian scholars in Cat High such as Jun Lam, Ming Jie, Ji Teng, Ze Yi, Johnson, Cheng Hung, Hong Liang as we soon formed the Brotherhood of Jar Jar Binks. A totally random name. Sec 3 passed quickly. I fondly recall the first English essay I wrote, I practically used up all my power and the essay came back with a fail. Totally shocking me. I remember the first Chemistry lesson, where the teacher started discussing the periodic table and all the bonds which I didn't understand a single word. I never even heard of a Periodic Table. During Maths lesson, I was totally confounded by the complexity of the algebra. During Physics, the formulas overwhelmed me. During music, I was like what's a concerto? Whats a symphony? What's a fugue? What the hell are you talking about? Who's Show Pan (which I later realised was Chopin) Who's Bach? (I always thought it was Batch). Basically, the first week of lessons left me extremely demoralised and totally at lost for words and overwhelmed by everything. I really was struggling. I was some smart scholar from Malaysian Independent Chinese School, I was some Malay school dude. But anyway, things naturally straightened out and soon I was on par with most of the locals anyway. As such, when I think back, I realised how far I've come and how much I've improved and this is where I get the inspiration from when I find myself in a similar situation in JC.

I was also exposed to this whole lot of violin music in Sec 3. Ming Yao showing all these insane violinist and he played all these insane pieces which left me totally demoralised and realizing how lousy and small fry I was and that all those years of violin lessons and left me now where. So it really was a whole new learning experience starting from Sec 3 and yes, I guess my violin playing has come a long way too.

I first walked into Esplanade Concert Hall in Sec 3 because Mrs Chaillan highly encouraged us to go for concerts. I remember it was Vladimir Feltsman playing Beethovan's Emperor's Concerto with Okko Kamu conducting. The first scene of walking into Esplanade made my hair stand. The bright stage and the rows and rows of seats. I achieved my dreams of performing there later in the year in the Catholic High Esplanade Concert.

I also joined the CO in Catholic High, being in the percussion section. And that was a whole new learning curve for me too. A different genre of music and a whole new instrument to start from scratch.

I also started doing crazy things such as this one weekend where Hong Hu and Phan Shei and I decided to go to Escape Theme Park to explore and play. I begun doing a lot of urban walking. Walking all over Singapore and exploring different places.

Everything passed in a blur and I found myself in Sec 4 soon. We of course moved to Dunman Hostel and the hostel's mistake of placing all sec 4 Malaysian scholars on the same level was our gain. It was the craziest year every as all our mischief combined equaled total chaos. We went out to eat every now and day. Played basketball or soccer everyday. Even the day before prelims and O Levels when all the Singaporeans were mugging, we were playing soccer and we didn't do that badly either. I remember the durian sawing sessions and most importantly the mass cooking session. I always contributed the bowl because I had the biggest bowl and we would like cook 3 packets of noodles which would be whalloped in minutes. We had luncheon meat and fishball and fishcakes and peanuts and meat and otah and all sort of other rubbish all in the middle of the night with school the next day.

We also had insane buffet sessions. I swear any shop we targeted for buffet made a loss on that day. It was like hungry prisoners being realised into food haven. We went and whalloped the whole shop upside down.

Sec 4 was also when I had some personal moments and proved the saying that having it means you will get distracted and not do well for exams WRONG. It is on the contrary actually.

I wanted to post more about JC1 and JC2 but realised that JC life hasn't ended yet and I might end up creating some uncomfortable moments by revealing all my feelings so I will just put that thought on hold until November 26.

Meanwhile, this two videos are dedicated to all my friends. Thank you very very much for everything and if I ever get into SDD, I'm definitely going to perform one of these songs.

Cheers to life and enjoy the following songs. That's What Friends Are For and Thank God I Found You.

That's the final whistle Part II

Well, to continue from yesterday..... warning about some explicit content though....

So here I am, in Form 1 now. Form 1 is the same as Secondary 1 in Singapore. Successfully got into High School Muar. Totally new school, totally new environment though many of my primary school classmates went to the same school too. Anyway, High School was a Malay school so everything from the teachers' conversations with us to teaching medium was in Malay.

Anyway, during the end of year holidays after primary 6, I kinda played too much computers. Sat in front of the computer every single day from morning till night. So, I noticed things started becoming blur and my eyes were watering all the time so that was when I had to wear spectacles. My aunt also recommended me to this new hair saloon and thus gone was my coconut hair and a new spiky hair emerged.

And so with a partial makeover and with Dad's advice from Primary 2, I entered High School Muar. First time seeing so many Malay people. There were students from the other primary schools. High School Muar was Dad's school so I guess he had a certain sense of pride too. I remember the discipline master Cikgu Zainal. He would walk around with his super huge cane everyday. And YES, unlike Singapore, students get whacked by the cane for all the smallest matter from talking in class, talking during assembly, to bringing handphones to school and even for bringing liquid paper to school. It it was public caning btw. In front of the class or during assembly, on the hands or on the ass.

Being in a Malay school also led to things disappearing extremely easily. My pencil case got stolen twice just because during recess I left it on my table and did not put it in my bag. All my pens and pencils GONE!! But I had many Malay friends. I remember this Mohammad Amin who sat beside me who stole my Kemahiran Hidup electronic project and I investigated and I found out!! What an idiot and bastard for stealing my project.

Anyway, I remember Form 1 vividly as the year I finally found out what sex was. It was a funny story really. During Sejarah (History) lesson, we were learning about Islamic traditions and one of them was the Majilis Berkhatam (Circumcision). And so I begun asking my friends why do you need to chop of the skin from your dick. I remember asking Mohammad Amin and Wan Ahmad about it. Then they said so you more POWER LA. Then I was like huh? Why you need your dick to be power? Then they said you need to reproduce next time what. I was like huh? What has dick got to do with reproducing. (Yeah, that was how naive I was) So Wan Ahmad when, HAIX, apabila awak buat, awak ambil itu lelaki punya jibai, cucuk dalam itu perempuan punya jibai. And I was like totally shocked? Really? That was how people reproduce? That was what's called sex? Anyway, so that was like the initiation rite for me.

I was a total nerd and geek in secondary school. Kinda like reading books all the time and sometimes hacking people's computer by embedding keyloggers in people's computer. Form 1 was 1 Intelek, Form 2 was 2 Pintar. Lower secondary was in the afternoon session which meant I could wake up late. Form3 was in 3 Pintar. Took my ASEAN Scholarships test in form 3. I remember how badly I screwed up the paper. I also remember during the test how this girl tried this pick up line on me but being the Girlss EE Yucks person I was, I didn't exactly respond how she wanted it. It was during lunch break that she came up to me while I was reading Lord of The Rings, then she said, excuse me, are you Jason. I turned around, saw this total stranger, quite pretty actually, but I didn't even smile and said, ERM... NO! then turn back and read my LOTR.

Took my PMR national exams in Form 3 too. Results were not that impressive until the week or two before the exams when I realised hey the paper is damn easy. Everything is MCQ. Even Maths, History, Geography was in MCQ. So I took the past year paper and just do them. Then suddenly became very enpowered. During the exams, most of the questions repeated then at the end of it all I was feeling rather confident about it all.

Anyway talking about girls, Form 3 was also when I started knowing some girls of my age from Science tuition. I knew Ting Xin and a few of her close friends. Of course la, at that immature age, I guess everybody did some stupid things with regards to the opposite sex. Anyway, I got my first handphone in the end of Form 2 when we went holidaying in Bangkok. But it was more like a housephone because I couldn't bring it to school anyway.

A short while after PMR, the letter from Singapore MOE came saying that I've made it through the interviews and I should get ready to come to Singapore and I was elated!! Partly because I was pretty tired of Malaysian education and wanted to try out some new stuff in a totally new country. I remember dreaming about this very explicit scene about myself when I had came to Singapore which till this day has not happen! Haha.

So, with school leaving settled, I came to Singapore. Posted to Raffles Institution Boarding and it was there that I learnt that I was posted to Cat High instead of RI. Something which I was kinda sad of but later realised it was the best choice being at Cat High instead of RI.

I remember the first night when I wanted to message so somebody back in Malaysia but realised the international rates were so freaking expensive. Then I started missing home a bit then became a lot. But thankfully there were great friends from room 3.2 such as Ming Fatt and Hong Hu and everything was soon forgotten.

Two days after moving in, my friends in Malaysia smsed and said PMR results are out!! How did you do? I was like WTF, my Dad didn't call me. So I had to call home, ask him to help me go take my results. And a few hours later the dreaded call came.. 7As. YES, straight As!!! WOW, sigh of relief.

And so that was another 3 years of my education. We are now standing at December 2004. I remember clearly the day I came to Singapore, December 26, the tsunami struck.

Anyway, I shall leave my life story just here. Be back for more tomorrow where I will talk about the final 4 years leading up to JC2.

Cheers to life

That's the final whistle Part 1

So here I am just getting ready to go to sleep and checking up some blogs then I saw Ian's blog and realised, alamak, although I'm not the mushy mushy kind of person like I'm, still must write something about him la.

So to Ian, haha, well what can I say man. Its been one heck of a time and one heck of an experience. And erm.. well, you get me... Thank you very much.

Anyway, was feeling all sentimental and emotional on Friday because it was the last day of school and I woke up that morning, feeling all that emotions and memories.

I can still remember vividly the memories 12 years back, a little boy wearing dark blue shorts and white shoes walking in to primary 1M of Chung Hwa Presbyterian School. Feeling slightly nervous, don't know how to speak and read and write a lot of Chinese. My parents were standing outside, settling all the admin matters and paying money and buying books. But through all that I put on a brave face and found a seat in class beside a boy called Lok Kah Beng. Yes! I absolutely remember his name. Lost contact with him since primary 2 though. After that during recess, Dad brought me to the canteen and bought me a packet of Vico chocolate drink, then he brought me to the toilet to show me where the toilet was. After that went back to class and met Xiuling and her Mum. And her mum said something stupid about the both of us to my parents and that stupid comment has stuck me with for the rest of my life. And then it was about 9am then Mum said Dad had to go to work and there were going to leave. Yes, I was slightly scared and nervous but still put on a brave face. The rest of the day passed in a blur.

Primary 1 passed quickly. I remember getting caned by mum for getting 98 for my Chinese. Because I made a careless mistake and connected the lines to the pictures wrongly and got deducted two marks for that. Because of that, I didn't win first prize for that year. Lost to Xiuling and got second prize. Weilun was third. I remember the day I came to school during the school holidays to collect the prize. Drawing teacher's twin daughters got some top student award on that day. I recall vividly.

Primary 2 I was in 2K, I remember the first day of school. Dad was in the car telling me. Well, 1 year older now. I hope you are 1 year wiser and with that piece of advice, I got down the car and started primary 2 life. My classroom was upstairs on the second floor and I was feeling proud about it. I remember I wasn't very very early for school that day so there wasn't enough tables and chairs for everybody so I had to wait and stand at the back of the class while the teacher went to look for tables and chairs. The guy standing beside me was Yam Herring Ping (his name is spelled that way). Lost touch with him after that year. Anyway he was rather friendly and we chatted a bit. And with that, Primary 2 passed with a blur though there was this incident of me acting hero and climbing onto the school roof to help me friend retrieve his pencil which he had dropped earlier in the day.

Primary 3 I was in 3K. Best form teacher I every had. Madam Kong. Remember driving her red van to school. She was the one that taught us with so much dedication and helping us get through our PTS exams. I was recommended by her for the prefectorial post. 3K was famous as the class that had 50 pupils squeeze into it. So a prefect I became. And I would have to miss recess to go guard the queues. And I had the resposibility of delievering test papers to the venues. When teachers were having meeting I had to go guard the classes. (Now that I think of it, its kinda stupid). Anyway, it was great fun. When I didn't feel like going for classes. I would purposely walk in a zig zag manner across school. Primary 3 was also when Miss Kam, the English HOD begun to take notice of my English skills. And as a result, I ended up on the school's English quiz team as the youngest member. And we were the champions of the Muar division. Took my PTS exams at the end of the year. And my GOD we did a heck of a job. Almost 90% passing the exam. So we all skipped a year to Primary 5.

Primary 5 I was in 5K and was special because classrooms were at the topmost floor which used to the the school hall. But due to space constrains, they put of partitions in the long hall and turned it into a few classrooms. Mr Yap was my form teacher. This was the first year I wasn't in the top class because they assumed PTS students were not as bright so they put us together with some zapalang students but these zapalang people were great fun. I remember this tall girl who was from some Malaysian youth badminton team and most importantly I remember Lau Weng Keong. The guy who taught me all the nonsense and kinda shaped me into the person I am today. All those diry stuff. I learnt it all from sitting beside him.. Gosh... And I was selected to represent the school in the English essay writing competition and was champion of Muar division. I was also a member of the English choral speaking team and we made it to the state level before losing to Convent Johor Bahru. But those times travelling out of town with friends to compete were fun. Chances were few and far between.

Primary 6 I was restored back to the top class, 6M. So my classes in primary school was M,K,K,K,M. Got head got tail. Anyway all the brightest were in one class. And I was somehow elected to be chairman of the English society although I've never attended a single meeting. My essays appeared in the school's English magazine publication the Beacon. And when I met Miss Kam over the holidays, she said students nowadays continue to read my essays and photocopy my textbooks. Haha. Sort of like an inspirational figure. But having mentioned that, my Chinese was totally crap. I was still speaking like an angmoh. Anyway, I barely won the English essay competition because I made the mistake of calling the dog He instead of It. Got deducted a whole chunk or marks but still scrapped a first place. Got selected by the teacher to take part in some music competition. It was quite a joke. There was a singer, a keyboardist and Lisa and me playing the violin. We had to play some national patriotic songs. It was a joke because I remember looking at Lisa's score and a lot of notes in her part were too low for the violin but she was somehow faking through. And when we went for competition, a lot of Malay school sent totally music noobs there and they had numbers drawn onto the keyboard keys and they owned us with rock songs and all that crap. I was a nice experience though. I remember momentarily having an infatuation for the singer although she was a year older than me. I was also like a small team leader in the prefectorial board. Kinda like the second in hierachy. I still have my primary 6 photo hidden somewhere. I'll post it after the A levels when I'm even more sentimental. With that I graduated from Primary school. Although we performed very very badly for our primary school leaving UPSR exams, I'm still glad we've been there and seen it all. I didn't get straight A's for that exams. Instead getting 6As and 1 C. C for chinese essay. After appeal for rechecking it was changed to a B but that doesn't mean much anyway.

In primary school, girls were still kinda la aliens from the opposite side. Like EEEeee, yucks kind of people. Haha..


Anyway, its getting late. I shall name this part 1 of school life. The first 5 years out of 12 years. I shall continue with the story tomorrow.

Unglam moments

A little while ago I thought about this very funny thing.
I figured out that everybody would look their most unglam best when they are sitting on a toilet bowl shitting.

Now imagine this hottest and cutest hunk or chick that you've ever seen sitting on a toilet bowl, face screwed up, KEK SAI. The air is all smelly. Imagine like Paris Hilton KEK SAI on toilet bowl.
Imagine Brad Pitt KEK SAI on toilet bowl.
Its just hilarious. Seems that even the best looking people have their ugly and unglam moments too. Now when you are in school or in the bus, imagine that person next to you in all his unglam glory.
Wahaha.


Woohoo. Cheers to life.

Lol. Random....

Songs of the 90s

Switched on my computer today to finish up the first draft of my free composition.
Well, life has been going on for me. Nothing much as been happening.
Lee Chong Wei lost to Lin Dan but still, I'm very proud of the silver medal.

Decided to hark back to the music of the 90s today. Some absolutely beautiful music. Music that I grew up with. The boy bands. When we didn't even have youtube or P2P software to listen to this music so everyday we would pray by the radio hoping that they would play our favourite songs. And of course, once every few months, Malaysian TV would air the MTV and that would be a bonus.

But if you've never listened to any of the videos I've posted. I guess you should listen to this next one. It pretty much sums up everything we love about music.



Let The Music Heal Your Soul by Bravo All Stars. A tribute song by a lot of the top American boy bands at that time. Watch out for the young Aaron Carter and Justine Timberlake.







Love me for a reason by Boyzone.
Yes, within couples. We should love each other for a reason and not for fun.

Still Goes On

Read this quote from Evonne's blog by Robert Frost

"I can sum up everything I've learnt about in life into three words,

Life Goes On"

Well, yes!! Life indeed goes on. Here I am sitting in front of my computer. Prelims barely a week away. Still struggling with my violin pieces. Haven't had a single practice with my pianist because I hate to admit that I haven't finish learning my pieces yet!!

But life goes on...

And stupid stuff that happened over the National Day weekend. Stupid things that I did and regret doing

But life goes on...

How I told myself I am going to own prelims

But life goes on...

How in today's Math's test the fucking question turn out to be a two tailed test. Means the sign from > becomes not= and because of one fucking sign change the whole question goes from full marks to ZERO!! KOSONG!! LING DAN!!! ELEK!!!
Fucking maths.

But life goes on...

Understand nothing in music class, and the teacher also doesn't seem to understand anything...

But life goes on...

How I'm so happy that I passed a Chem test for the first time in my JC life but everybody else passed too and are like so many marks ahead of me.

But life goes on...

Yea. Life goes on. I choose what I want to do with it. Like what Terry Winchester said.
Great.

Life goes on....

Of Pigs and Olympics

Michael Phelps has been as amazing as always.

Now I wonder if you have heard of LEE CHONG WEI?
He's carrying Malaysia's only medal hope and he just won't his badminton semis and is going to the finals where he will most likely face Lin Dan. So,so,so,so proud being a Malaysian. We are finally getting a medal after Muar boy Yap Kim Hock last got one in 1996. And hey, a true, blue, born and bred Malaysian Penangnite is getting a medal. Not some imported foreign talent. Go Lee Chong Wei, just one more step now to the Gold medal.


This is a drawing of my MONSTER PIG!!! Felt that the whole world should get the opportunity to admire my art works.

爱情的模样

Discovered this pretty little acoustic song by Mayday.
People say its their best song from their first album, which was like what? 10 years ago.
Something Mr. WU will enjoy I guess.
This one's for you and all the people who love pretty little acoustic songs.

爱情的模样- 五月天

Howdy from Haha Land

Yo folks, abangchua.blogspot.com is back after some technical mishaps that happened over the day.

Yeah so I hope the new abangchua would be more concise and controlled. I will try to type shorter posts. More pictures. Lesser updates. More user friendly and most importantly less personal.

Right...

So, I talked about writing a new song quite some time ago and I'm glad to say I finally have lyrics to match my melody.

There's isn't a title for the song yet so lets just call it ABC at this point of time. A tribute to the SFY.

This song is a duet. The melody shot into my mind when I was revising maths the day before maths CT2.

Verse

闭上眼微笑，
想着你容貌，
暧昧的信号。

我脸红心跳，
对自己傻笑，
感觉很奇妙。

那一天相遇，
我早就知道，
我（你）属于你（我）的怀抱，

那一天之后，
我无法思考，
陶醉想你氛围里。

Chorus

你我都知道,
彼此相环绕。
却不愿,
承认要依靠。

仿佛好像只隔看空气，
却一直寻找不到。

我们的邂逅，
不向人炫耀。
只想要，
承诺的讯号。

就向海边日落的夕阳，
海鸥成群掠过，
才算，
美满。

by
林明耀
27/7/08
10.58.am


There you go. ABC.


I'm quite excited over it actually. First time writing a duet and I feel this isn't one of those crappy songs that normally is a result of amateur songwriters anymore.

So here's a big CHEERS to ABC.

Stay tuned to this space for the recording.

Something about blogs

You know there is this very weird thing about reading strangers blog.

I've been reading the blog of this VJ girl for over a year now. Chanced upon it one fine day last year.
She is the good friend of one of the girl that I secretly liked last year so I was hoping that by reading her good friend's blog I get to see her photos and what did she did over the weekend and stuff like that. Pretty stupid of me.

Anyway the point is, reading a total stranger's blog has given me this insightful knowledge of this person's emotions and feelings and thoughts. I practically would know what she did last Sunday and how did her overseas trip went. What they did during the trip for example and even the emotions felt during her overseas trip.

I even know who her best friends are. Who she frequently hangs out with. What tuition she has. What subjects she failed.

I feel like I know so much about this person. But the strangest thing happens when I walk past her.
That's pretty frequent cos the both of us have hangout places close to each other whether it is in the canteen during breaks or on Wednesday afternoon.
When I walk past her, there is simply no exchange of emotions. These two people are after all strangers. No smile, no wave, no nods. Just another person walking past.
But yet, unknowingly to the other, one person just knows so much about her...

That's the weird feeling you get when you read stranger's blog and meet them out of the virtual world.

I thought this was something interesting worth mentioning. Don't know if any of you have had this strange feeling before.

The Chase

Chasing those dreams....

Chasing those grades....

Chasing those certs...

Chasing those friends....

Chasing those loved ones....

Chasing those monies....

Chasing those time....

Chasing those memories....

Chasing the light....

Chasing cars....

Chasing reality....

Chasing fantasies....

Chasing happiness....

Chasing my perfect melody....



我们人，
活在这个世界上，
每天，
到底在追求些什么？？


我的一个脚步声虽然很小,
但是,
两个,
十个,
一百个,
一千个,
一万个,
我们就可以震动地球了。

你愿意，
做那另一个脚步，
跟我一起震动地球
闯出一个自己的未来吗？

Opus 2

Woohoo, Opus 2 ended like 4 hours ago and I'm so high that I can't fall asleep just yet.
I would say that Opus 2 was my best violin performance so far.
Yes, I was nervous, yes, my bow was trembling, yes my legs were also trembling especially for the Wieniawsky. But I'm incredibly satisfied with it.
As Havas said, no matter how much praise or critique is lavish upon a performance, the only person who can truly be satisfied with his performance is himself.
Opus 2 was one of them. People mentioned my trembling bow, but to me, it was one of my best ever efforts in front of a crowd.
I didn't make disastrous errors. I memorized the score for my first piece. I was satisfied with intonation and technical aspects. The fast Czardas, the double stops in the Romance, all just went perfectly for me. So YAY. Cheers to myself and to all those people who sent me good luck messages.
Biggest thanks goes to Patrick. Of all the people I massed smsed, he was the only one that turned up for my recital, that purposely stay back in school for hours, missed dinner and came to my recital alone.
To think that some people refused to come for my concert cos nobody was coming with them. Patrick is one heck of a good friend. :D
Of course not leaving out the Malaysian gang. Thanks guys. But you all stay in hostel la, different.

The closing chapters

Woke up this morning to the drum beats of the VS lion dance. Saw this white light shining thru the window. What a wonderful and beautiful day I thought. Made me extremely happy for some unknown reason. Haha.
Gave my melody to Ming Yao to write the lyrics.

Anyway I just came back from College Day. I got an award for topping Music last year.
As I was sitting there waiting for the event to start, my mind started to wonder and so it flew back some eleven years to the Chung Hwa Presbyterian school hall. Well, it wasn't exactly a school hall, my primary school didn't exactly have a hall. I was just a few classrooms with the walls in the middle removed making it one long room. I sat there on that beautiful morning, on small primary school wooden chairs waiting to get an award for getting second place in class. Lost to first place Xiuling because she got 100 for all subjects and I got 100 for all subjects except 1 which I got 98.

Yeah so that was the very beginning of school life and little would I have imagined that 11 years later I would find that the white shirt and dark blue shorts have changed to beige shirt and pants, in a whole different country, quite different culture, totally different friends and very very different setting, a performance theater with huge comfortable chairs full of comfortable paddings waiting to get an award from some senior minister of some neighbouring country that was Singapore and dreaming of studying music and having a career in music. I wanted to become a lot of things when I was seven, among them a gardener, a rubbish collector, a scientist, an astronaut, a computer technician and an engineer.
I never got another academic award between those 11 years so I think its apt that I started and ended my school life with an academic award.
Of course back in those days, the award just didn't mean too much to me. It was just another thing in life but today, this music award means so much to me due to this highly competitive environment that I've landed myself in where everybody competes for all that papers.
But I'm not thinking about it in that context. This piece of paper is very much to me the zenith of my pathetic VJ life that has been filled with countless failures from the extremely huge disappointment in failing to get into ODAC, watching them have so much fun amongst themselves, failing to achieve anything for myself in Guitar, for having made so many wrong choices and of course most importantly for failing my studies so badly. I've indeed dropped so low.
I guess when I leave VJ, I'll bring with me all the lessons that I've learnt from this countless failures and of course all the friendship that I've made in VJ. I dare say that I only started having great Singaporean friends in VJ and I now have more than 1 hand worth of Singaporean female friends. Haha.
Some how or rather, today's award doesn't really come as a comfort to me because there are many could have beens if Gwen had not fallen sick and didn't take the papers or if Melodie had not written out of point for her essay. I say this because the truth is if I'm like doing very badly for music now. Rock solid bottom of class and at least 2 grades away from the next closest person. I'm not doing my essays properly and of course, my violin is always letting me down. I'm chasing the rest easily 30 marks for my music practical.
So this is such an embarrassment for me and especially with Opus 2 coming up next week and plenty of outsiders coming to watch and even music students from other school, my common sense tells me to pull out from this thing and stop making a fool for myself and showing off the gulf in standard between the violinist and the pianists and soprano and flautist.
But I guess my heart just says go in and just whack. Play all the wrong notes and after that, keep my head up high and just be satisfied and accept my shortcomings.
Anyway just to promote my concert

Opus 2, VJC Music Students' Concert

Friday Night, 1st August

Performance Theater.


Watch out for the live ad on Monday. Please do come. If you are not there to support me, at least you can enjoy the music presented by the rest.

Ass Fetish

Yes, its Ass Fetish in 07s44 this month. Check out the class blog here and vote for your favourite ass.

Over and over again

Got the guitar farewell videos from Patrick today.

Realised when I sing, I sound like I've my nose squeezed.

Anyway the video was super high with audible background comments by Hai and Edward. And they were like Aiyo IAN!!!! WRONG CHORD!! or Woah.... or Where's your song Waihong or Wah not bad leh and LOUDER WAIHONG!!! Louder lah!! or even I LOVE JAY CHOU...

Anyway it was hilarious and fun and sentimental watching that video and I loved it so much I watched it 2 times and mind you it is half and hour long. But it was amazing. One of my first and amazing medley arrangements like 17 songs into 1 whole long song although at some parts there were perfect cadences ending the song, but I was quite satisfied with it. Thinking back, we when thru like 5,6 keys? Started off with A minor, when thru C,D,E,G,A major. Covering songs from classical Tico-tico to jazzy Fly Me to the Moon to Cai Hong to bluesy Wonderful Tonight to pop-rock Jenny and The Great Escape to self composition Song For You. WOAH. I guess the best part was between Secret and Wonderful Tonight where Hai and Edward went WOAH!!

Amazing. I loved it so much I would love to do that again haha.

Midnight Insomnia

I dunno what the f*** am I doing being awake at this hour. I was incredibly lethargic for school today. Its like 1 am now and tomorrow's a school day!!

Gosh, just wrapped up my physics lasers tutorial. Been on some kind of physics inertia today. Once I start, I can't stop unless acted upon by an external force. (Not even sleep)
When thru 7 freaking periods of Physics today. Thats like wat? 3 hours? 1 period tutorial, 2 periods practical which essentially nowadays is tutorial. Then 2 periods personal remedial with Mr. Lee. Then after that 2 more periods cohort remedial. Ended school at freaking 5.30. I think I just set the record for the latest time I ever ended school with official lessons. Gosh. All in my final year of school. Phew phew phew!!!

Have had a few songs shuffle up on my iTunes. Jay Chou's Yuan You Hui and Wu Ding just came up. Reminds me of the post PMR pre-Singapore days when I was still with her.
Then Clapton and his Change The World came up which reminded me of the big dude and his relationships 101 thing that he has got going over at his blog. Some parts of it are quite true though but then again who am I to say what's true and what's not when I'm quite a failure in this field myself.

Finally decided where I was going to place the Guitar Farewell plate. Its been sitting pretty on my desk of the past 2 weeks and I realised some of the envelopes got stuck to the writings and when I forcefully peeled it off, the words sort of peeled too.. OOPS..
Used blue tack and stuck it to the wall and NEARLY broke it when the blue tack gave way. In the end decided the best place was the top shelf where it will collect dust until I pack to go back to Malaysia.

Then read thru all the emo farewell letters and photos one last time before putting them in an envelope and burning them.





Nah, just kidding. Put them in an obscure corner of my drawer and told myself that yes, that period has ended. A whole new chapter now.

Performed with a perk at canteen today for racial harmony day. Played his self-composition. A very standard song. I had to figure out the chords for him which was easy peasy. Took away a period of chem lecture from me but I was rewarded with this opportunity to listen to other people's composition and learn from them.


Anyway, I promised something about CHMA the last time.

Well, CHMA stands for Catholic High Music Awards. Its Cat High's version of VJ's musicfest. And for me CHMA is the total benchmark for any school organized concerts. I attempted to replicate that benchmark for Perfect 5th but was far from the standard but still I guess we didn't sound too bad.
Anyway, for anything that CHMA lacks in in terms of performers skills and techniques (come on, they are just kids), it makes up for it with its lightings and sound.
To get an idea, the lightings for CHMA are somewhere like those used for the dance concert but bigger and better and more cool. All the flashing strobe lights and laser lights are just awesome.

The sound without a doubt trashes Musicfest. I counted 2 Marshall stack amps, this super huge 4 speaker bass amp, a drumset with double pedals, 2 crashes, ride and splash. And the best thing of all, every single thing was miked up to house speakers.
I remember when I was in the Finals 2 years ago, the speakers they used were taller than me, like 3 speakers stacked on top of each other for each side of the hall. Mr. Wang said, 周华健 used those very speakers 2 weeks ago.
This year the speakers got smaller but the sound got louder. That's what I call advancements in technology. The hall floor was seriously vibrating and by the time the 4 bands finished their stuff, I was half deaf. Kinda reminded me of the Mayday concert.
And the stage crew are just amazing people. All the guitarist has to do when he comes on stage is to bring himself and his guitar up on stage. Two guys assigned to him will take care of plugging his guitar in, switching on his amp and pedal plugs and everything. Awesome and really professional.

That said, I don't think the bands lose out to VJ bands either but unfortunately for me, there has been a tendency towards heavier and heavier metal songs as the year pass. Cat High is like turning into a mat school. Since's my year's Qing Tian, last year had Hotel California but this year, all 4 bands played noisy songs. Pooh... What a metal fest with the moshing and everything going on.

Sadly didn't win any of those fantastic lucky draw prices (iPod Nano, PSP)

Best of all, CHMA class A tickets were only 12 bucks and class 2 were 10 bucks. How much was Musicfest without all those equipments and professionalism?

To check out the CHMA video made by iMedia Club which again totally trashes anything infocomm has been able to produce, check out here.

Bye, Goodnight.

Guitar Lessons 101: Cheena Pop

Delivered my first guitar lesson to pigmei yesterday and I was immensely happy and satisfied with her progress.

I decided to tackle this lessons from a classical musician point of view because I personally am a strong advocate of classical basics combined with modern music as much of today's pop songs are based on classical theory anyway.

So started off with teaching chord triads and key signatures. Those simple stuff is only a matter of memory work and I guess after getting used to it, there won't even be a need to memorize it. After that moved on to chord progression and of course I started off with my favourite chord progression sequence, the almighty Circle of 5ths.

I refused to blatantly vomit out chords of songs she wanted to learn because I feel that with the full understanding of chord progression theory the learn process will be exponential so even though things seem very hard and slow now and you finish a lessons without learn a single song, after you have fully mastered the progressions, you will be able learn almost any cheena pop songs you want.

After teaching chord progression I realized that it would not be possible for her to further figure out other stuff at home if she didn't know how to play the chords so I had to move on and teach her the 6 strings and 5 strings bar chord shapes. I can't remember which of the CAGED shapes are they already. Darn!! So with that, she could play any diatonic major and minor chords of the chromatic scale.

Challenged my very brilliant student to begin TRANSPOSITION!! Yes.. amazing. I simply gave her roman numerals chord and she figured out everything and slowly was able to play Secret on C major and G major and I figured out that was enough for the day. A lot of things to process and pigmei had done very very well.

I'm very glad for her that she has this opportunity to learn all these things. Took me more than 3 years since I first started to play the guitar to figure out the link between classical theory and modern music myself through sheer coincidence and trial and error and luck and this for me is still an ongoing process and she gets to learn almost everything in one day.

Personally, I've been always reluctant to teach people because I know that with my temper, I would most likely end up shouting and scolding my student, but yesterday went better than I expected. The only thing I am worried about is that she might because stuck like me in this classical conservative theory box and be unable to get out of it which kinda limits a person's creative expressions. I don't know how much of yesterday did pigmei managed to absorbed but I'm always around to re-teach and ask questions.

Yay. So I guess I've this career option as a guitar theory teacher teaching Cheena Pop.

Anyway, I'm going off for CHMA already. More about CHMA later.

As always, here's a video of another old growing up boy band that I found.
Check out Madison Square Garden man, the number of people watching this concert is mind- blowing. I swear to myself, one day its going to be me on that stage. With hundreds of thousands of fans screaming at everything you do.

Here is N Sync with I Drive Myself Crazy

Anywhere For You

I realized that music affects me a lot. Visited the juniors during their practice the other day and I must say that they still have a long long way to go. But I guess they've got some good players inside that could help them.
Anyway, since the guitar farewell I've been constantly listening to some very emo songs. Ballads and all. Like Sunshine in the Rain slow version by Alexander Klaws and other similar stuff. Tear inducing stuff.

And the thing was my mood, like these songs turned for the worst. I became angry and frustrated. And during music class on Wednesday I was already showing signs of cracking when I started beating up the bean bag getting frustrated over my violin practical stuff. And that night during dinner, something Stephanie did really blew me off my limits and everything just went downhill from there and I totally lost control of myself. I didn't know what the hell I was thinking but I accidentally let lose some undesirable words at somebody very close to my heart.

The next morning, after waking up I still wasn't doing very good. When I was using the computer the school, I received this offline message that mei had sent last night but apparently I didn't receive and it said I should stop listening to emo songs and something clicked. Back came Mayday's song. Back came the highness in me, like somebody had just switched on this light inside my head and I realised wat a dork I had been.

Anyway I though I should let you people listen to this very veyr inspiring Mayday song but try to understand Hokkien though.



Some music have the ability to suddenly at any point of time in the music to suddenly make my body go cold and cause the hairs on my back to stand up. I realized these music are so good that the melodies or the lyrics induce certain strong feelings into me.

Thanks to Justyne, I had to dig thru my old CD collection and decided that I should take a few out for a listen, see if they are still working or not. Some of these CDs have been abandoned for super super long. The first one I listened to today was....

THE BACKSTREET BOYS- GREATEST HITS: CHAPTER ONE

Wow, imagine that, the BSB. Growing up band. Stuff that had been with me since well... super long... There were a great number of songs inside that I remember very fondly and well, I've chosen to present one very very old

Anywhere For You by The Backstreet Boys



This song is like from WOW, 95/96? Amazing. Haha. A little more insights into growing up in Malaysia.


I realized that whenever I start to like somebody, I started doing all sorts of weird things like attempting to make conversation out of empty air and start to embarrass myself and then things start to go downhill for me especially when I get no response and start hating that person for no reason and I end up finding it difficult just to be friends with that person. It has already happened to me once last year..It seems like its going to happen again now... WTF is wrong with me....

A moment of missed opportunity, a lifetime of regret

Hello folks, just woke up and decided I should write down this funny dream or rather nightmare before I forget about it. Well, last night I dream that Jasmine was trying to hit me when I was playing the siren thing for the Torn song...Tsk tsk...

Anyway, Guitar Farewell was yesterday and lots of mixed emotions associated with it. As the title suggests, it was a moment of missed opportunity, a lifetime of regret. But I guess that's the way I'm going to remember guitar farewell for the rest of my life even though it's in a bad way.

The speech I was going to say was actually very simple but I dunno why I made such a big fuss out of it. Maybe I gave it a lot of thought over the days, but now it seems stupid to me.

The thing was although I didn't go around giving souvenirs like everybody else but I very much like to say thank you with music because music is such an important element of my life and my greatest show of appreciation is to share that huge part of me with all of you wonderful people.
Well of course I would like to thank the Junior Exco for giving this one half of Csus4 what I feel would be the last performance ever. Although many people say that we can always get together and play but the feelings not the same as performing in public and delivering our message through music and getting all that high feeling. Maybe one day in the not too distant future we might be famous and have many more chances to perform together until we are old. LOL, imagine this

Old Andrew: Ian (coughs coughs), eh, we going to perform Jenny today...(coughs coughs), you still can jump at the chorus there or not?

Old Ian: (hobbles around), hand(coughs)some, I try my best la, I scared my legs give way..

Old Waihong: Eh we take half the tempo do emo version can? My hands if move too fast might fly out... Aduh, pain sia.. Got deep heat?

Of course the first great big thanks goes to my favourite juniors from my cheena group, I love you guy and girls a lot.. We had a great time together..
Big thanks of course to the entire Csus4, Ian, Waihong, Edward, Jansen and Zheng Whye. Thanks for making Perfect 5th the most perfect concert in my life as of yet.
BIG BIG thanks to PRIME 1 and PRIME 2, especially my SL Justyne, one heck of a job, one heck of a SL.
Thanks to Senior Exco, Ian, Sharon, Jasmine, Jenny, Waihong for all the behind the scenes stuff.
Thanks to Basses for always being there, the music just isn't the same without all the boom boom boom.
Thanks to Alto 2s. I salute you girls and guy's sheer hard work. From where you came from to where you ended up... Just amazing. I wished I had that patience with my violin...
And of course to Alto 1s, pro as always with all the main melodic lines and tiny frets...
Conductors too, thanks for generously sharing your wisdom and knowledge with us.

Always been proud to be a VJC Guitarist although there have been its painful and sad moments for me which I shall not elaborate at this point of time. But yeah, CHEERS to a great many years ahead.

Part Of Your World

Hullo folks, well I've been always complaining that some one wasn't updating her blog then she updated already so I've no choice but to update myself.

Well results are already back and its so embarrassingly bad that I've this feeling MOE is regretting renewing my scholarship last year. So yeah. For the first time in my school life I'm resolved to completely study each and every chapter through and through by the next prelims. It's going to take a lot of effort on my part by I can see the 4 A's gleaming brightly. Laugh and smirk all you want but this is the moment of reckoning.

Anyway I've been preparing the Guitar Farewell performance. I cannot believe I'm going to sing. Hopefully I can pull it off without any pitching problems and be able to hit the high notes without breaking my voice. Just have to work hard on it you know and give everybody good memories to bring home. Well actually I've been thinking that it isn't such a bad thing to zao sia, at least that's something people will remember me for. I can imagine like 20,30 years down the road I meet like Ian on the streets with his wife (*****) and kids then he's going to point at me and tell his kids, that's the guy that sang so horribly during my guitar farewell. Truth is, names will be forgotten but zao sia stays forever. Hahaha.

Well post common tests have been rather traumatising and depressing for me. With record low after low being set. But I've been up to my self-soothe thing again. Seriously I think any other teenager going through the kind of stress I've been going through alone without the help of family and friends would have commited suicide.

Found this great buffet place over at Excelsior Hotel at City Hall MRT. Basically ala-carte buffet which means u can order anything from the menu unlimited times. There was crabs and shark fin soup and all the other amazing things that the Jar Jar Binks gang would never have remotely dreamt of eating during our time in Singapore. For the first time we didn't have to decide should we eat this or that or can we afford it. For the first time, we just ordered till our hearts contend. I suspect the restaurant made a loss off us that day. Haha. Maybe we've been blacklisted forever by them.

Watched an incredible amount of movies this week. YES!! I'm a movie buff. My GP teacher was so correct about me when I wrote that first essay on 'Is the book or the movie better?'

Watched Wanted, Hancock, 21, P.S. I Love You, Warlords and part of Initial D.

The best was 21. Totally blew me away with all those tricks and memory power and maths counting.

Anyway went to Kbox. I was very satisfied with the choice and songs. Even managed to sing 祝福 and hit all the notes.

Here's the video of a very good song that totally reminds me of all the childhood things. I remembered after watching The Little Mermaid how I felt as a 5 year old kid that how free the mermaids were swimming underwater and just gliding around like there was nothing to worry about and your hair just suspended in water and your body suspended in the middle and you really could just lay back and watch the world stop. Even tried submersing myself in a bathtub to turn into a mermaid and thank God I didn't drown.

Post common test ravings

Apparently quite some people have been viewing my blog cos the counter is now like beyond 30oo visitors. A year ago I didn't even have 1000.

Anyway as usual of my post tests/exams rituals. I will select and post up a song that I feel guided me through all those horrible days of studying and exams. This time, surprisingly, the song didn't belong to Mayday.
This song is a rather old song. Quite some years ago but extremely melodious and meaningful. So here's Jay Chou with 蜗牛 (Snail)




Hope you enjoyed it.

Anyway, EURO 2008 is finally over. Still remember almost a month ago when I watched the opening ceremony. I think this is one of the most exciting soccer tournament that I've watched so far with plenty of thrills and spills. And a big HURRAH to SPAIN who won the cup. Finally I can really see a team that I support win something. But ultimately my heart lies with my dear old England. Try harder next time lads.

I must say that I'm pretty depressed with the results of CT2. Failing left right and centre. As of this time I'm under the threat of failing all 4 subjects.
So yeah... GOTTA WORK HARDER.

Blessings

Wow, been a long time...
Exams are coming up next week...
Studies are going up and down. I can read and remember well one day, and the next day I can't concentrate at all. I think I need a psychologist...
I couldn't study today for one reason. This song was totally stuck in my head the whole day. I kept playing it on the guitar over and over again. I even transposed it thru all 12 keys. So I'm proud (or should I be?) to say that I can play Jacky Cheung's 祝福 in all 12 keys.
Its a very beautiful song. The lyrics are just amazing. People don't write songs like that nowadays. I wish I could though. Its deceivingly simply having only use the 5 pentatonic notes in a major scale.
I was singing this song quite a bit because I thought it was a suitable song for the guitar farewell but after some thought I decided that I won't choose a song for guitar farewell. Firstly this song is like as old as us and I doubt many people would know about it especially the non-cheena people and non-cheena people wouldn't understand the lyrics anyway which render the song pretty useless. I can sing this song. The highest note in the original key is a G which is just about the limit for my voice but I guess with nervousness and all that stuff on that day I won't be able to hit the note properly. So anyway, I think I will ask Jacky Cheung to sing on my behalf. I would love to dedicate this song to the guitar people with special mention to random clique, Csus4 and most definitely the CHEENA group, Yinhong, Huiyi, Patrick. Thanks for making Perfect Fifth 2008 the most perfect concert that I've ever performed it. No amount of superlatives can beat the feeling of completing a perfect and succesful concert. Thanks for accepting all the last minute changes to our performance and erm... dealing with my crazy temper. So yeah, here goes, the best version of 祝福 that I could find. The orchestra version. Oh.. and not forgetting PRIME 1!!

Random Guitar Outing

Photobucket Album

Phantasia

I didn't know that there was actually this collaboration between Sarah Chang and Julian Llyod Webber the brother of Andrew Llyod Webber to produce the Phantasia Suite. Phantasia is actually a violin and cello double concerto based on music from The Phantom of the Opera. I randomly heard this piece on the HMW CD machine and I must say like the voice version it is absolutely gorgeous.

Sarah Chang handles the violin with such great tone and vibrato and virtuoso techniques. Webber on the cello is brilliant too. The tone is just amazing. Truly bringing out the human voice-like qualities of a cello. And as many people know by now I'm quite the tone freak, obsessed with tone though I might not possess the appropriate technical skills and control to produce the tone I want on my instruments but nevertheless I am a tone freak.

I think I should play Phantasia for my Opus 2 concert with Stacy or something. Not sure where to find the score though.

Here are the videos, enjoy

Think of Me


All I Ask Of You

All I Ask Of You is absolutely simply amazingly GRRRR no words can describe it. Brought tears to my eyes. I'm serious.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

Sex and the City

Today was another crap studying day. Went to try violin. I think I quite like the $3800 one at Gramercy. For that price, I guess that's as much as I can get.
Well after that, had super nice chicken rice at Katong beside Gramercy. New finding.
Then decided that I should go for movie marathon with Ming Yao. Started at 3.05 with Sex and the City. Its a GREAT movie. Highly recommended to all those above 18. I initially thought it would be a normal chic flick that would last slightly over 90 mins but the movie was two and a half hours LONG!! Amazing anyway, the plot and the humour and everything. Really good. As a result of the long running time, we were running late for the next movie scheduled at 5.20 Iron Man.
Reached Cineleisure at 5.50. Well, this was my second time watching Iron Man and it was subsidised so I didn't really care.

Anyway, I want to dedicate this video to my friend. Its a really beautiful song and the lyrics sort of reminded me of busking in the sun when I was typing about busking yesterday, so yeah. Enjoy it.


Really beautiful lyrics

You're in my arms
And all the world is gone
The music playing on for only two
So close together
And when I'm with you
So close to feeling alive

A life goes by
Romantic dreams will stop
So I bid mine goodbye and never knew
So close was waiting, waiting here with you
And now forever I know

All that I wanted to hold you
So close

So close to reaching that famous happy ending
Almost believing this was not pretend
And now you're beside me and look how far we've come
So far we are so close

How could I face the faceless days
If I should lose you now?

We're so close
To reaching that famous happy ending
And almost believing this was not pretend
Let's go on dreaming for we know we are
So close
So close
And still so far

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Went to library for a short mugging session and I still don't understand binomial distribution after two days of studying it. Gave up and studied quantum physics instead. Easier to understand.

Anyway after that went out with guitar peeps. Huiyi, Waihong, Ian, Rong Rong, Jenny and Ian. Basically Prime and Bass section with the extra alto 2 Jenny. Ya so had lunch at Carl's Junior. I've been eating a lot of Carl's but I still enjoy it.

Went to watch Narnia:Prince Caspian after that. Not a bad movie. The length is worth the money. More humour added this time round. The music scoring wasn't too bad though a tad predictable. The last contempory song was a bit out of place I felt maybe something more operatic, like a aria should have been used. The plot as usual is quite predictable but the scene where the soldiers were trapped was quite sad. But the sadness on that part wasn't further developed. It was left just as that. Still I think its quite a good movie. CGI was quite impressive.

Of course there were some biblical quotations like the river fighting scene was somewhat similar to Moses and his people crossing the Red Sea or something. (Correct my biblical quotation if I'm wrong)

Anyway after that walked from PS to Esplanade to have dinner. As with all guitar dinners it always becomes scandal gossip. Quite a far bit of personal stuff were exchanged. Ya so learn a bit more about each other and naturally bond closer to each other. As usual people were trying to squeeze information out of my very private mind. Guessing various girls but all wrong. And they said what I throw various smoke screen. The fact was that I've never told anybody about this sort of things... Anyway, photo at Ichiban Boshi.

Waihong gave the most predictable guess which was wrong. Dunno why ppl say I like her. I think I just treat her like my sister.

Then Jenny came up with this list of girls. Started scrolling thru her phone contact list. At this point of time I must thank my Mei for keeping my secret so tight. Walao, got some like WTH girls, even WH's girl was in the list. Like WTH. I'm not that bastard. Anyway, she guessed the correct girl and I felt I could trust her to tell her the truth. But its nothing anyway.

After that went home. All in a days life...

But on the way back still got somemore more private stuff which I shall not further elaborate. I can only say that I finally got this big burden lifted off my head and I feel much more comfortable and relaxed now. So yeah, goodnite.

Another photo from Plaza Sing. They were having Creepy Crawlies exhibition so we took with the giant shoe.

Shoutout

Oh and a big shoutout goes to my mei. My random chit chat buddy. HELLO

Back with vengence

Ok folks. I'm back after a super long hiatus and being MIA for such a long time. The thing was I was going thru plenty of high and emo periods and its hard to put down in words the feeling of being high and emo. I can't type ESTACSY and TEARS into my blog.Speaking of which, here is More Than Words by Extreme

Anyway as I was saying. So much things have happened since my last post. The first of which of course was guitar concert or rather the completion of guitar concert. Well, that marked the end of my best ever performance in public. Very on form that day. Apart from the ensemble pieces, Annen Polka, Variations on Shabondama, A Comme Amour, Cordoba and Mambo No. 5, I played Cai Hong, Zhi Zu and Bu Neng Shuo De Mi Mi arranged by me for my cheena pok small group. I also played as part of Csus4 and we played our signature song Jenny of course and totally rocked the house down. My only regret was not giving an encore. In case u missed Jenny, here it is

And of course after concert there was the sad farewells to all those people who were not going to Japan. And the official photos can be viewed at

VJC Prespectif

Meanwhile, Csus4 had another mission to complete. Busking in the sun.

Well, our songs line-up for that day were Jenny, Smooth, Wish You Well, Stars, Song For You and Accidentally In Love. I was happy about our performance that day really. First time we were performing in public. We went up there, really enjoyed ourselves and had fun. There was no nerves or stuff like that. We even managed to pull off harder songs like Stars by Switchfoot so I was pretty satisfied and happy but sadly fate and to play a part and Justyne missed the song that was inspired and written for her. I was sad seeing Wai Hong so sad. In fact I blamed myself quite a bit for it because I was the one that was psyching him up a lot for it and I irritated the organizers when I refused to cut songs and worst off all, I should have pushed the song to the last song. What the hell was I thinking on that day. Its sad, it really is. 

Well, after Busking In The Sun was VJ Guitar Ensemble's trip to Osaka, Japan. This trip has really opened my eyes, allowed me to know that I was only exposed to what sunny little Singapore had to offer. Japanese guitarist are simply amazing and showy. The range of techniques on show was just way beyond anything I would have imagined. The professor was simply amazing. Tambourine sounds, snare drum sounds on the guitar, you had it all. And he performed magic on my fingers. When pressing on a string, a person's entire body cannot lift my tiny finger away from the fret board. How cool is that. Of course there was the sight seeing and stuff which was really good too. I would list Osaka, Japan is my choice of retirement home after Italy. Photos from Wai Hong are below

http://s288.photobucket.com/albums/ll173/twh1990/

And of course after Japan is back to the mundane CT2.

100th POST, Class Blog

Greetings from Singapore,
Glad to say I've finally achieved 100 posts after like 1 year. Haha. But nvm/
Anyway, my class blog has been activated for us to dump our photos in it.

http://07s44.blogspot.com/

So yeah, visit it if you are free to laugh at our spastic photos.
Guitar concert is coming up



This is the photo from one of our promotional posters which are pasted all over school in various sizes. I realised I've a mohawk hair which I hate and I should get my hair cut soon to remove that fugly mohawk.
As you can guess from the photo, we are playing Jenny. Yes, her name is Jenny. But I dunno what is her problem.

Anyway, if you dunno what the hell song is Jenny. Just click on the video above.

And we(Csus4) signed up for the busking at Orchard Road thingy and they just told us that day they are going to provide us with battery operated amps which are like OMG OMG WTH WTF.

In case you didn't know, battery operated amps are like toy amps, real small and real not powerful. I think we can just tap the drums and it will cover the amps up. Anyway, even if its big size amps it won't do too cause no power plugs means we cannot plug in our pedals.

So I guess, we would have to change to an acoustic gig which is not as fun cos we can't really do Switchfoot's Stars anymore.

I'm still thinking of a solution.

Till then...

The day of May

Woohoo, stupid SAT is finally over. I guess that this will be the last time I'm going to voluntarily, randomly sign up for tests and exams. The paper was so bloody long and the stupid sections thingy and so much words. Towards the end I couldn't concentrate any further so just anyhow do and be done with the paper. And this pretty hectic week is finally coming to an end. Still got the violin and chem lecture test to settle. PHEW!!

Anyway, last week was Mayday's concert and I WENT!!!!
My first time going to a rock concert anyway. It wasn't a small size gig but rather a large scale production at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. I didn't take a lot of pictures because firstly I was sitting at the second last row, their faces would have been dots anyway and secondly concert lighting aren't exactly very good for photography. (Not at least for my standard anyway). Anyway, here are some photos








































~The End~

Csus4 plays Jenny

This was the video taken during the Music Fest Pre-show. Forgive the high speed tempo for the song. Haha. Enjoy.

Lets Get HIgh

Hello to my three dear readers, which happens to be Copykate, Michelle and Yezi in alphabetical order. (Waves)

Anyway, emo period is over now. Its time to get high. First up because last Friday I performed at the Music Fest Pre-show for all the losing semi-finalist organized by VJC Subjectif. It was an amazing gig. I tell you, when I go on stage with the guitar, there is no fear at all. No fear. Unlike my violin performance which sadly I'm still waiting for my first perfect performance. But with the band, with the guitar its totally different. My heart doesn't even skip faster with all that people looking at me.

Kudos to Subjectif. You guys organize gigs better than the SC. They kinda suck. Wow amazing, you guys gave us proper and good Marhshall amps, provided cables, good bass amp and a very good and new drum set. Simply reminds me of the Cat High Music Awards Days where iMedia took care of everything and all we had to do was to bring ourselves and our guitars there and just plug it in. Anyway we played Smooth by Carlos Santana and Jenny by The Click Five. Both songs were really good. I'll upload the pictures as soon as I get them from Patrick.

Well, after the Music Fest pre-show there was, Music Fest itself for the winning semi-finalist. The results were a bit unexpected in the end for the vocals, dance and video categories. Vocal group was no fight because Melodie's group is really on another level. Band group despite many people expecting Paper Pavement to win cos they were in the finals last year and they are quite popular I must say that I thought Polarix was better. Polarix were more stylo, more fierce, more dynamic and of course showed more technical expertise. Although many people say they were noisy and the songs are those noisy type but that's how a gig is. Paper Pavement I felt were a little too stagnant. Shoulders and Down of course even more 'guai' and still. Ultimately, Polarix edged out.

Vocal solo, I think Audrey should have won. Her technique was much better than the other two. Hello Panda or the Finger Breakdancing video should have won the video category instead of the Wushu group. The Hello Panda group video can be viewed here. Must watch. Its super funny.


Anyway that's that for Music Fest.

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At least 3 people have commented about my MSN nick which goes "She laughs at my dreams but I dream about her laughter"
Joshua Chin Ze Yi said "since when did I become so philosophical."
Stacy said "Ohhh, by the looks of your nick, you are in love"
Mich said "Cute"

Anyway I've always been philosophical, I'm not in love and maybe I'm cute but that line is from lyrics from the song Just the Girl by The Click Five.



That's all. (From the Devil Wears Prada)

Where is happily ever after

It wasn't to be.

When will this all change for the better?

.
..
...
....
...
..
.


GRRRRAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

So close but still so far

I guess what copykate said is true that I put too much pressure on myself to perform well and I guess I haven't had many places to seek comfort and solace. In that sense, I think I'm pretty amazing. Yes! Self-praise. The average teenager going through what I'm feeling would have jumped off a building but here I am still living with hope for the unknown.

People say bad things happen in threes. But bad things have been going on for so long now that I've already failed to notice the good things happening. (ARE THERE ANY?) Like ex-classmates and faraway friends saying hello on my blog. My Wonderful Tonight and How Deep Is Your Love for the guitar concert was pulled. Pretty much leaves me out of the limelight. Its sad. I know. I very much wanted to perform that gig. But I guess at least I still have some items. My bassist was left with no item. Cheer up dude. I know exactly how you feel, happened to me in sec 4. All I can say is you still have a long way to go and lots of time left unlike me who's becoming old.

And yes, tomorrow is judgement day. The day of our PW results. Judging by how things have been turning recently, I shouldn't been feeling optimistic for it and I must admit that yes, there are some doubts in my heart which normally wouldn't be there.

I know that I've put in my very best for my PW and I shouldn't have any regrets but then again I don't think in a normal way. Trying my very best for PW will make me crave for the A even more. And yes, I must say that I won't be able to accept anything other than an A. Please la, whichever God that is punishing me or putting me through these hurdles in life, I think I've learnt a lot from them and shouldn't it be time for some glory now? PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!!!

Apart from that I've been moving back towards English songs again in the past few weeks. At this point I must announce that I've gotten tickets to Mayday's concert in Singapore. YAY. Been moving back to a lot of duets from the 80's and 90's. Bee Gees, Bryan Adams etc etc. My iTunes never fails to shuffle some emo Josh Gorban or old Chinese songs at night. And I'm finding Kammermusik real irritating.

Anyway, been really addicted to this song since I heard it that day. Its So Close by Jon Mclaughlin from the movie Enchanted. I like the jazz infused chords which gives it this heighten sense of sophisticatedness and the singing is really emotional and the orchestra scoring is just so lush. Alan Menken charms me yet again as he has done so on so many occasions watching my favourite Disney cartoons.
Anyway here is the song,



There is this one thing that I realised about relationships is that I must get to know the person a bit first before making any moves. The problem is I don't have a chance/don't dare to approach/don't know if I should get to know the person better.

Anyway, good night.

Of Strings and Wood

VJC Guitar Ensemble presents.....

Perfect Fifth,

Our annual guitar concert features a diverse range of music from the classical era to modern rock.

VJC Performance Theater

16 May, Friday

Tickets at 10 bucks.

drop me a message if you want tickets. I'll be playing Santana's Smooth, The Click Five's Jenny, Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight, Elvis Presley's I Can't Help Falling in Love With You, Jay Chou's Cai Hong and Secret and Mayday's Zhi Zu.

Phew what a list. Hope I make it through the auditions.

Reflections

And here I am, back in this blog typing my thoughts away.

I must say that I'm going through a tough period of time. Failing in many of the things that I'm doing and being worried about a lot of things.

Common tests came and went and my results were not bad. They were absolutely dreadful. Failed Maths, Chem. Lowest in class for Music. Barely passed Physics. Disappointing GP. The worst thing of all was Chemistry. I spent all my time studying for it. 2 freaking weeks. I doubt the others mugged that hard for Chem. I was inspired by a new and much better teacher and wanted to do well for it. And it comes back all disappointing and in red. And to top it off, Mr Lim walks up to me and say study harder Andrew....

Then there was the joy of getting into Music Fest semis. And the extreme pain and sadness in getting booted out of the semis. I guess I took it especially hard because I really wanted to achieve something in VJ. Something to show that my time at VJ hadn't been totally wasted. And I failed. I guess maybe some of them are blaming me a bit with my refusal to change a vocallist for the semis. I was never that brutal and ruthless to drop people coldly, prefering to give people a chance to improve.

Then there is this constant worry about having achieved nothing in VJ. Pathetic CCA membership, no leadership position, no significant achievement, no CIP hours. I guess what my teacher said is coming true. Its going to be a blank testimonial for me. It is that pathetic. Some people complain that they have to come home from school late everyday and they are always tired. They don't understand the guy who reaches home at 2-3 plus everyday with nothing to do and plays his guitar to himself and resorts to playing computer games and sleeping.

With my current position now, Berklee seems so far away......

Maybe I should reconsider my options. Poly courses interests me quite a lot. But then why am I doing my A levels for....

Welcome to Vertigo

Compare this picture of the band U2 above (Bono is on the right) with the picture below. Don't you think there are some similarities? Especially between the guy dressed in all black and Bono?(Ignore the bewildered face)



Anyway I felt this photo above that was taken at the Duomo looked like the album covers of rock bands with the lead singer always standing in a weird sideways pose and the drummer always the one behind. There is actually a U2 photo with Bono in that exact same pose but I can't find it though.

Miles and miles

Well, the event that I've been looking forward to, Chinese New Year has came and gone just like that and so normal programming resumes.
Before CNY, we had a stay over at Cheryl's. Although I was pretty much conked out by the time they started talking, I caught enough pieces of conversation that made me realised I'm actually quite lucky and fortunate and leading a good life after all. I've a target and a goal that I want to achieve. I in a way have a purpose in life (more about this later) and I guess whatever friendship, relationships, familyships that I have are pretty stable. And I've never done anything really bad in my life so far, makes we feel extremely blessed and thankful.

The only thing I'm worried about at this point of time is that I've no plan B. I don't know what to do if Berklee rejects me.

Anyway, about the purpose in life thing. That day when I was queuing up for Mee Poh in school, I was looking at the uncle, watching him take orders then preparing the noodles then it suddenly struck me that why was he doing what he was doing. What is his purpose here? To feed us? Then what was our purpose here? To learn? Then what was our purpose to learn? To earn money? Then what was the purpose of earning money? What is our purpose on Earth? Why are we placed at a specific place and this specific time? What happens beyond now? What does our future bring? Will one of us die tomorrow? WHY THE HECK ARE WE HERE? WHY ARE SOME ENTITIES HUMAN WHILE OTHERS ANIMALS? WHO ELSE IS OUT THERE? WHY? WHY? WHY?
So many questions, so little answers....

I'm not saying this because I'm frustrated with life or anything but really, what is our purpose here? What role do we play?



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First three days of CNY was pretty much mundane. Went to Ahma's house everyday. Didn't even go visiting anywhere. Didn't gamble. No cards. NO mahjong. I guess Malaysians are not so addicted to the game than Singaporeans. Anyway, it was the perfect opportunity for me to really chill and relax and enjoy it all. So I was pretty much satisfied with it.

The afternoon of the third night met up with Wei Xiang and Jiun Farn and Edwin and etc. Then at night went to Cikgu Teo's place. Could tell that she was quite bored. Cos we kinda self invited ourselves to her house and it was only like a place for us to catch up and talk, leaving her out. But I tried keeping the conversation going with her. Catch up with some really old friends that I haven't seen in the 6 years I left CHP or in the 4 years since I came to Singapore. Couldn't remember some of their names. Anyway I had a great time.

After that had some nerve wrecking moments in a Kancil. I'm glad to say I survived the galloping-like-a-horse-car and the engine-mati-car 7 times. I'm still reluctant to believe that the driver didn't pay under counter money for the license. Amazing. Which makes me think, I CAN'T WAIT TO LEARN HOW TO DRIVE. Which leads me to think, Singapore kinda sien already. Having to put up with all the fakeness and unnaturalness is tiring. Its time for a return to the past. Sort of like neoclassicism. Malaysian friends are really different. I don't know how to explain but just different. Better....

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Valentine's Day the girls were giving chocolates and cookies to everybody. I survived on chocolates and cookies that day. Feel a bit bad having not given anybody anything. But I gave Louise the cup from Malaysia and some more new year cookies. I guess she's quite satisfied. Haven't eaten the dark chocolates she given me yet. Got to wait for the correct mood.

Guitar Ensemble had our performance. My wonderful classmates failed to remember that I had a performance (as usual)(most Singaporeans always very last minute and don't bother to remember a lot of things)(not that Malaysians don't)(SOMEBODY CONVENIENTLY FORGOT TO PASS ME SAT NOTES) and didn't turn up. BUT never mind. Don't want to care too much about that. I performed Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight playing the lead guitar and Lifehouse's You and Me playing the shaker. Wonderful Tonight was okay. Considering the number of times I could have made a mistake but did not. At least I retained the same key despite some screw ups to my solo guitar improvisation. Phew..

And I witnessed some not so happy things happening on Valentine's Day. Oh well, harsh realities of life I guess. I wanted to eat the cookies though. But looking at the way he threw it in the bin, better not ask.

After school, I went jamming with my Music Fest band! Edward, Jansen, Wai Hong, Ian and me! First time jamming with such pro people. Within a few trieds our song Smooth by Rob Thomas and Carlos Santana was already quite good. Cool. I'm quite confident for this years Music Fest. Must win. Else throw face.

Cross country meet today. I was supposed to walk the whole way with the guys but lost them so I ran seriously but still finished 357 position. I felt that I ran with the same pace last year but I got 120++ last year. Which goes to show my very TERRIBLE fitness state. I keep telling myself I should train I should train but fail to do it. My long term plan since last year has already come and gone today and I've still achieved nothing. Anyway my long term plan was to consistently run 10km every week and then this year be the dark horse and trash the crossers or smth but I was far from it. More than 300 positions to be exact.

NAPFA's next week and I still can't do pull ups...
Went to eat with Roy today at Kim Moh at Laguna Park. Its famous for the beef noodles. It really is nice but super expensive. 9 bucks per small plate. Not even full.