footpaths to the world

Musical Extraordinaire, King of Pop, Michael Jackson

2009-06-27T12:41:00.002+08:00

I guess most people of my age group especially in Malaysia and Singapore wouldn't connect with MJ's music.
We were born into an era of his contemporaries. Of Backstreet Boys and NSync and Usher and Black Eyed Peas and Green Day, Jay Chou, Wang Lee Hom, Mayday, JJ Lin and many many more.
We were born into an era of the beginning of his decline. I am sad that I never experienced his heyday. The 1980s days of Thriller and Bad or even the even earlier days of Motown and Jackson 5.
I read this Facebook post this afternoon of my friend thinking Michael Jackson had died some 10 years ago and wondering what was all the fuss about today. I was absolutely appalled by his nonchalent attitude towards this musical icon. He has done so much for the music industry, too much to mention. So much of what we are listening to today are imitations of his creative output. But then again, no blame on him as I guess we were born to late to taste the full package of The King of Pop.
Its odd for me that Michael Jackson has played such a significant part in my life. I remember tellling my friends that I enjoyed Michael Jackson and getting weird looks. I used to type Michael Jackson as one of my favourite artists under Friendster and Facebook.
I remember when I was much younger, I added this guy called Michael Jackson as my friend in ICQ. Never knewing if this was the real him or an impersonator. The innocent me even went as far as to send offline messages to him saying hi and introducing myself. His status was never online and he never replied my messages. Leaving me slightly disappointed.
In the days before Youtube, I used to buy those pirated VCDs of his music videos and concerts and for the first time in my life, I saw morbid fans screaming and crying and fainting during concerts.
From then, I kinda decided that I wanted to be a superstar, I wanted to be famous and earn the adoration of so many people. Branching into music as a career.

Well, Michael Jackson, I hope that you will finally find peace in Heaven. Peace was never close to you when you were on Earth. Thank you for all your amazing and smashing creative output. Thank you for trying to Heal the World. Unite all Black and White. You rocked my world, you know you did. God bless ;-)

Michael Jackson, King of Pop 1958- 2009

Hmmm...

2009-06-15T16:15:00.001+08:00

Hmmm... testing this thing out... is it okay?

SHIFTED

2008-09-20T16:00:00.003+08:00

WOOHOO... PRELIMS ARE OVER...

SHIFTED TO here

I can't get it out of my head

2008-09-03T01:38:00.002+08:00

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

2008-09-03T01:17:00.002+08:00

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

2008-08-31T00:16:00.000+08:00

Happy birthday Malaysia =)

Jackass. GORY IMAGES AT HAND

2008-08-30T21:55:00.003+08:00

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

2008-08-29T00:15:00.000+08:00

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

2008-08-25T22:39:00.002+08:00

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

2008-08-24T20:22:00.000+08:00

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

2008-08-24T00:59:00.003+08:00

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

2008-08-21T23:08:00.001+08:00

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

2008-08-21T00:54:00.002+08:00

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

2008-08-15T20:34:00.002+08:00

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

2008-08-15T19:47:00.002+08:00

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

2008-08-11T01:48:00.001+08:00

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

2008-08-09T17:57:00.003+08:00

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

2008-08-05T23:57:00.002+08:00

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

2008-08-05T00:14:00.002+08:00

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

2008-08-02T01:43:00.002+08:00

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

2008-07-26T18:12:00.002+08:00

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

2008-07-25T22:20:00.002+08:00

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

Over and over again

2008-07-23T00:12:00.002+08:00

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

2008-07-22T01:01:00.002+08:00

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

2008-07-19T16:53:00.002+08:00

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

2008-07-18T01:07:00.002+08:00

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

2008-07-13T12:03:00.002+08:00

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

2008-07-07T19:23:00.002+08:00

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

2008-06-30T17:29:00.002+08:00

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

2008-06-18T01:40:00.003+08:00

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

2008-06-08T23:01:00.001+08:00

Photobucket Album

Phantasia

2008-06-05T18:16:00.002+08:00

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

2008-06-05T00:18:00.002+08:00

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

2008-06-04T00:57:00.003+08:00

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

2008-06-02T23:33:00.000+08:00

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

Back with vengence

2008-06-02T22:45:00.004+08:00

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

2008-05-06T21:29:00.004+08:00

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

2008-05-03T18:09:00.002+08:00

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

2008-04-22T22:53:00.002+08:00

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

Lets Get HIgh

2008-04-20T12:00:00.002+08:00

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

2008-04-11T22:52:00.002+08:00

It wasn't to be.

When will this all change for the better?

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

GRRRRAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

So close but still so far

2008-04-11T00:38:00.002+08:00

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

2008-03-27T22:53:00.003+08:00

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

2008-03-27T22:40:00.002+08:00

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

2008-02-15T23:35:00.003+08:00

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

2008-02-15T22:53:00.002+08:00

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.

Holiday Pictures

2008-01-26T03:01:00.001+08:00

Just some of the places I visited

This was the church in London where Caryn's congregation was held.

Climbing to the church dome in Florence

Manchester United's dressing room. Carlos Tevez's seat.

Christmas Dinner at Aunty Jenny's. Look at the food. On the left is Andrew, Alvin in the middle and me on the right.

On the top of the greatest church in the world. The St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.

At the tomb of Antonio Stradivarius in Piazza Roma, Cremona. Stradivarius is the greatest violin maker in the world.

On the rooftop of the Duomo, a cathedral in Milan

The Pursuit Of Happyness

2008-01-26T02:11:00.000+08:00

Its amazing that I've abandoned this blog for more than a month. Well, worry not because I'm back!!!!
To continue where I left off, I traveled to Spain to escape the English winter and Spain was great. Went to Benidorm, Alicante, Valencia, Calpe and so many other villages. The weather was a good change from London's freezing cold.
Celebrated Christmas over at Aunty Jenny's. Food galore.
Then it was Boxing Day sales. Push and squeeze and jostle with the crowd at Oxford Street and Harrods. Pooh.
Lastly it was time to go home. Quite sad though I was looking forward to 2008.
Arrived Singapore 31st December. Didn't go out for countdown. Jet lagged for a few days. Some how managed to cramp whatever Chemistry stuff that I could and went for the R-Paper and I passed by a mark!!
So after orientation, normal school service resumed. Studies as usual. I'm putting more effort towards not sleeping and doing my tutorials nowadays. My class is getting slightly better. Due to my better timetable this year we are going out more. Unsuccesfully pranked the junior class. Had 2 class dinners with them already. My angel and mortal are fine. Though I had to write to my angel first. My mortal's erm.... okay la. No complains thanks to the alcohol chocolate.
Overall this year has been quite good so far. Laughing and being happy everyday in school. Though I'm quite worried with the CCA side of school. Quite screwed. I really want.. No I really must get into Berklee. I can't imagine anything else. MUST, MUST, MUST...

Then the big day came. 24 January. From here I would like to thank and give a big hug to everybody who remebered and wished. I was pleasantly surprised by some people who wished me though. It turned out to be a great birthday. At the stroke of midnight, the first person was Hong Jie, followed by Fanny (actually both same time) Thank you guyes.Then there wasn't anymore. So I went to sleep.
In the morning when I woke up there was Hong Hu, Aaron Tan, Cheryl Lim (with a birthday song sms) and the only Malaysian in Malaysia who remember Ho Li Ling. (and I'm not even super close to her!). These people all smsed in the middle of the night. Thank you very much.
After that, throughout the morning there was Mum and Dad, Sze Ching then Jieru. Then all the gang of guys (Shannon, Bernard, Aaron, See Ann, Xianyong) from S44 in school. Then the girls (Sheila, Huiting, Cheryl, Yufang etc.) Then Gomez. Then in the middle of lecture, Roy Foo and Chia Weei. Thank you guys. And girls. Then the very surprising Audrey Soh.
Then all the way from Malaysia by beloved senior Kham Ming Fatt and Phan Shei. Thanks guys.
Anyway, so the Singaporeans in classed bought a Sara Lee cake for me and stuck 18 Pocky sticks inside. Thank you so much for the effort. I really appreciate it. Oh and they gave me a VIOLIN!! Haha, just a toy Barbie PINK violin that plays funny songs like Odd to Joy.
Then we went to Cineleisure to watch 27 Dresses. It was quite a good movie. The girls were all in love with James Marsden (Cyclops) and his big smile. One of the few times a class outing so succesful thanks to everybody listening to the birthday boy's instruction to go watch movie. Haha. Then we ate at Long John's. Thanks also to Caryn Chua. Go sista.
6pm went off to meet up with the Malaysian Jar Jar Binks Brothers at Plaza Sing. Jun Lam, Mops, Chia Weei, Johnson, Alvin Chew, Andy, Roy, Hong Jie and Ming Yao. Oh ya, Jun Lam's Esther also wished me happy birthday so thank you very much Xiao Sao.LOL. Coincidentally 24th was the release of O level results. So Roy in good mood and treat me Ajisen. Yay. Thanks Roy. Anyway after that I treated them Earthquake at Swensens. Sastisfied to the max. At this point of time I was already very happy with my day.
On the bus home, Chia Weei show me a sms of Khoo Lin Wei wishing my happy birthday so thanks to her too. Rather unexpected. But more unexpected things were to come.
10.50pm I was already settling down for the day. Then beep beep, it was Melodie wishing me Happy Birthday, say what wanting to be the last. WTH. Then I went to ask CopyKate to wish me Happy Birthday. Haha. Then certainly unexpected, 11.25pm, handphone beep again. Nina wished me happy birthday. I was like wow, today not bad ah. Then the best thing and even more unexpected with 20 minutes to go. Handphone beep yet again. This time it was Jenny. I was quite shocked already. All the people actually bothered to remembered. Quite touched and happy. Thanks a lot to the last 4 girls.
Then got one very extra guy. 11.59pm sms wish me happy birthday. My girlfriend, Ho Jun Lam. Bloody idiot. 4 girls then suddenly 1 guy. Haha
Then possibly the best birthday of my life passed. Well I normally do nothing on my birthdays especially last time when I was in Malaysia so this was a big change and I was very touched by all the kind gestures and birthday wishes. Another big THANKS and HUGS to everybody. Even Gwen who wished me belatedly on the 25th.

So well, I'm 18 now. FINALLY. 18 is kinda like 16, when u actually gain access to something. Unlike 17 which is neither here nor there. 18 allows me to buy alcohol, cigarettes, go clubbing, go to pubs, watch M18 movies and... and.... LEGALLY. Haha. Though I doubt I will actually exercise my rights.
There you go. Time to wisen up. Time to slowly stop sitting around in circles playing games that I played when I was 10. Time to exercise authority, learn to say NO to people. Time to do something about my life if I want to get into my dream college and do my dream job and prove everybody wrong. Maybe time to indulge in some romance. Haha. We'll see how this year pans out for me.

Change

2007-12-15T04:08:00.000+08:00

I realised that many of my old friends especially those from Muar. The first thing that they like to ask me, after they have found my Friendster or Facebook or blog or some other place is HI, ANDREW, DO YOU STILL REMEMBER ME?
Come on guys, if you can remember that my name is Andrew, I most definitely will know who you are save for a select few from primary 6 where we didn't have much communication and I really can't remember. I mean am I such a bad friend that I'll go around forgetting people's name. I won't forget my friends' name, definitely not Muarians. Despite so many of my friends giving themselves new names after I left I still know them, people like Hong Cheng is now known as Vincent, Chang Geng is like Gabriel Koh now, Ting Xin is like KopiKate, Huiyi is Katie but I still recognise their faces anywhere. So next time we happen to chance across each other, ask me how I am instead of do you still remember me cause the answer will be of course I do. Now you know.

Anyway, I'm still in London as of now. I just came back from Manchester. When around there. A few museums and of course Old Trafford. Took a tour. Sat on the very seat Ferguson sits in. Sat on Giggs, Scholes, Nani, Ronaldo, Tevez, Van der Sar's seats in the locker room. Incidentally the seat between Ronaldo and Nani belonged to Cantona before. I found out that the people there regard AIG the shirt sponsor of Man Utd to be Alex Is God. That's the gist of it.

A week before of course I was touring Italy. Landed in Milan, saw the huge Duomo Cathedral, took a train to Cremona to look for violins, didn't like any and didn't buy any, went to Florence. Saw more cathedrals and statues, Pisa, to see the leaning tower of Pisa of course, Venice, see the canals and stuff and finally down to Rome to visit the Vatican and various other churches. I'm not an arts buff like H2 so after awhile things get boring seeing painting after paintings, statues after statues and climbing churches after churches. I guess I climbed over a thousand steps in Italy. I saw Michaelangelo at the Sistine Chapel though. Well not him but his paintings. Really well done but i feel the whole Vatican thing is overly commercialised. Tickets are expensive and there are guards and barriers and modern technology everywhere. Lacks that feel. Maybe I should have travelled with an arts buff who would have been able to explained more. How about a trip there after our A's eh H2?

I've got a new violin. The physical look of it wasn't exactly what I had in mind but the sound is something I like. I'm not sure if its the Evah Pirazzi that causing it but I hope its not. I must put my heart into violin playing now. Really.

GTG. Bye

夜里的奇想

2007-11-23T16:54:00.000+08:00

The latest collaboration between Ming Yao and I brings to you 夜里的奇想

Photos

2007-11-20T23:56:00.000+08:00

I realized I've seldom ever posted photos in my blog so here goes.

Thats me acting cool and pretending to me a Mat Rocker with shades and all. But I really can play the guitar. Anyway as you can see, my guitar is in a poor poor condition so top of my Christmas wish list or Birthday wish list is a electric guitar. Second hand also nevermind. A Fender Stratocaster or a Gibson Les Paul Standard. I'll leave it to you. (Gee, I hope somebody rich does read this post. Like IAN or PYKA.

And thats like part of my class. The small girl behind with the funny look is Audrey, Jieru is beside her. See Ann is the guy right at the back, Shannon is beside me with his hands around me, and the one is yellow is me! Darn, anybody know how to photoshop my zits away?

Lyrics requested by N!ck

2007-11-20T01:16:00.000+08:00

教室里的桌椅模糊

唯有在我视野里清楚

点燃我所有的希望

除了她就没其他欲望

忘记了是什么理由

我开始选择了放弃

在她世界里我已找不到真理

开始到现在我只是一直等待

相信她渐渐离开我会心伤

木鱼它默默对我说别受伤

挥别了总有她陪伴的心房

还是没办法失眠了几个晚上

教室里的桌椅模糊

唯有在我视野里清楚

点燃我所有的希望

除了她就没其他欲望

忘记了是什么理由

我开始选择了放弃

在她世界里我已找不到真理

开始到现在我只是一直等待

相信她渐渐离开我会心伤

木鱼它默默对我说别受伤

挥别了总有她陪伴的心房

还是没办法失眠了几个晚上

一个人走思念在路的最后

不会停留期待美丽的邂逅

教室里的桌椅模糊

唯有在我视野里清楚

点燃我所有的希望

除了她就没其他欲望

如今我还在等待阳光

New Songs

2007-11-17T23:43:00.000+08:00

Home is a really good place for me to work. I came up with 2 songs in 24 hours.

The first is called 还
Lyrics written by the amazing Lau Hong Hu in 30 minutes.
I immediately set a melody to the song after he sent the lyrics to me but when came home I had another idea of using this motif that I had came up with some time ago. Its basically do, mi, ti so 4 notes. Yeah so here it is. Enjoy it.

还 by Lau Hong Hu and Andrew Chua

The second song is called 杰伦的风格
Lyrics was co-written by Jingxuan and her unnamed friend.
They actually wrote it based on Hei Se Mao Yi's melody but I didn't know about it previously.
I originally tot of a rap but I realised that my budget set up cannot get the proper rap effects like the hip hop beats and turntable scratch.
So i came up with this. I added in quite some lyrics on my own. Those lyrics talking about the different Jay Chou songs were written and crapped out by me.
The lyrics in all is quite crappy. Only a Jay Chou fanatic can write this. Its not suitable for a guy to sing it too. Sounds damn gay. So here it is. Enjoy :)

杰伦的风格 by Yang Jingxuan, Unknown and Andrew Chua

Dream dream dream

2007-11-14T02:05:00.000+08:00

Okay before I go off to sleep, I must report that most unusually I've been having dreams for the past 2 nights. I don't normally have them.
Anyway first night, I dreamt I was having dinner or something around a round table like those at a chinese restaurant with music people. I remember Audrey was there. I also remember MT was there. I dunno where were Chang, Teo and Ong. Anyway, we were chatting happily. Audrey wasn't always in the picture. MT was always in the picture. I was chatting happily to MT. I dunno what were we chatting about. She was smiling, I was happy and POOH I woke up.
The second night I dreamt I was listening to this conductor talk on the podium and I was sitting beside him. In front of us was an student orchestra. We were in some kind of practise room in some school. Anyway he finished his lecture and told me to come up and conduct. I remember saying I've never conducted before. Anyway we got started and apparently one of the flautist couldn't understand my hand gestures and came up and ask me what was I pointing with my baton hand. Apparently I was doing up and down motion only. I counted 1,2,3,4 for him and he could understand. After that I started doing the standard down, cross, up motion instead and the conductor started saying very good. I was doing well. I remember closing my eyes and raising my hands up high when this very warm and soulful strings section came in and they were playing very well. The conductor then stopped me. Apparently the end of the movement had an attacca with a sustained oboe note bringing in the next movement. This reminds me of Mendelssohn Violin Concerto but there wasn't any soloist so this couldn't have been Mendy's Violin Concerto. The conductor praised me. WAHAHA.
Ming Yao said TS is leaving. Maybe i'm the next conductor. WAHAHA.
Okay of to sleep now. Guitar practise tomorrow.
DS is quite mad. Online 24/7. Edwin doesn't even do that.

1000th visitor. ARE YOU??

2007-11-14T00:51:00.000+08:00

Hey take a look at the counter up there? Are u visitor number 1000? As I'm typing this post now its 999. I won't be counted if I visit my own blog because i configured the cookie already.
If you are visitor number 1000, drop a comment or put in the tag board who are you. I'm really curious. Haha
Finally after so long, my dead blog has finally reach 1000 visitors. Nothing to be proud of but quite an achievement for my blog considering its less than 10 visitors a day statistics.

I'm packing to go home now. Darn heavy boxes and loads of rubbish.

Anyway, I heard of this amazing story from Jingxuan today and then I realised I've been missing a lot of things that have been happening in class. Nobody seems to tell me. Anyway, I got the first person account of it so nvm. The story is quite sad. After hearing it, I realised its a miracle my PW Project was completed. It really is a miracle with so many things happening behind my back. I would like to thank them for putting their differences aside and working together for this project. Thank you guys so much.
I do hope that the grief can be translated into lyrics. Haha. Exploiting people again.

Anyway, I found another great lyricist again tonight. Its Mr. WOO SEE ANN. DARN he is AMAZING with his language. His first ever lyrics was not about the cliche love. It was about he issues with life. Damn nice. Damn pro. Anyway Jingxuan sent me her 2 set of lyrics. About JAY CHOU. HAHA. Refreshing ideas. Its good really. I'm going to make a rap song out of it.
The 3 sets of lyrics I received today are going to challenge my songwriting skills. It really is a big step up. It longer puts me in the comfort zone of piano and vocal love songs. These are going to need the electric guitars, the basses, maybe even special vocal effects, rap, turn tables. WOW.
I'm going to get started ASAP.

CIAO

Jeng jeng jeng

2007-11-13T01:46:00.000+08:00

Had guitar practice again this morning and the Mambo No.5 piece is going along nicely. Gaspar surprised us all by asking us to play Polka and Comme. The Polka was okay but the Comme was already a nightmare from last time with all the lines but thankfully I must say that my guitar note recognizing skills have improved and I was able to read the lines and match it with the frets correctly. I do hope my section gets it alright so that I won't always be playing solo and can pon guitar prac once in awhile without the conductor calling and asking me to come to school.
In anyways, Ian and I went to Ebenex. It was my second visit there but my first with a good look around and they really sell all kinds of guitar pedals. Gosh. These are the times when I just wished I was super rich, okay not necessary super rich but sufficiently rich to buy some pedals back. There was a Epiphone Electric Guitar hanging there with sunburst finish that looked quite nice. As to whether its tonally attractive I don't know.
Later on, under Ian's suggestion I went to town to watch a movie. Two movies in fact. I caught Bee Movie and after that spontaneously decided to watch Stardust. Bee Movie is quite a nice movie and so is Stardust. So I was quite satisfied with the money spent on movies today.
Today's dinner in the hostel was quite good actually. I suddenly decided to smile at the canteen lady and said 'xie xie' to her and she amazingly returned my smile. Normally she's quite sour faced and when I was reaching out to get a bowl of soup she stopped me and when and scooped another hot bowl of soup for me. The soup laid out there were already cold. I guess a friendly smile and a word of thank does do wonders.
Came back to my room and started checking out some cliffs of dover videos. Saw the one by fengheng and also eric johnson himself. These guys are just amazing man. Someday, in the near future I'm going to be there. I place my trust in Raphael. But I was thinking I need a better guitar haha. So went to see the PSR site and the Gibson sites. WAH, the guitars damn shiok but no money lah. How to spurge few k on a guitar when I'm so new to it. Even the guitars on soft also in the high hundreds!! ARGH. Some rich guy please read this blog and buy one for my birthday.
I practised the guitar for like almost 2 hours. Doing the drills. I'm staring to like doing bending a lot. Such a interesting technique. I'm so looking forward to guitar lessons. Meanwhile, no news yet from Hai Won. Haix.
I started my lyrics collection project again. Approached Jingxuan for help this time. Apparently she has 2 completed lyrics in her possession that she wrote together with her friend based on a tune Jay Chou song but of ALL things her computer cannot type CHINESE!!! FREAK. OF ALL PROBLEMS.
Meanwhile I approached Hong Hu too and amazingly like 30 mins later he came back to me with a fresh piece of lyrics. That guys is so efficient and doesn't have like emo periods to write lyrics. He's like this lyrics churning machine. WAH, hidden talent. I'm going to exploit it now. I'm going to take a look at his lyrics now. Its his first time writing one so... 'clap hands'
So long.

I love the way she pouts

atheism

2007-11-10T23:11:00.000+08:00

The following comic strips are not suitable for people who have a strong affinity for their God. Please leave immediately if you are not able to accept various religious critics. BE ADVISED. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. Open it in a new window so its bigger.

I don't really understand the submarine one so maybe somebody could explain it to me :)
I STRICTLY DO NOT WANT any comments criticizing my actions for putting up the above material. Thanks.

Cope them for DS's blog :)

手

2007-11-10T01:57:00.000+08:00

我想就这样牵着你的手不放开

Poop

2007-11-10T01:09:00.000+08:00

I must say that I haven't updated in a long time, not since promos ended with a few random post, two to be exact in between then and now. But I'm not saying this is an update. I come to realised that I don't have much to say anyway. I prefer to keep my feelings pent up and don't see the need to tell people and well hardly anybody reads this nowadays.
I haven't been doing much since the end of promos. PW was going according to schedule and I must say that I'm actually neutral about PW despite some of the 4am sessions I had with Bernard and public holidays sessions and some hair pulling moments. Its really good for what I call relationship bonding. Because of all that we've been through, I feel closer to Bernard now. In the past I only knew him as a quiet, emo, cool dude in the corner. Besides that I think I feel closer to the girls now. I can talk more smoothly with jingxuan and cheryl, no problem. Talking more frequently with jingxuan now. I must say that I was quite wrong to make false assumptions about her unwillingness to participate in PW. Admist all her protests and complains, she still got her job done. Just like any other kid that needs a bit of toughness and pushing. Thank God I stalled on reporting her to Miss Ng on her slackness halfway through.
The end of promos also meant more class outings for us. Although its still not at a optimum and frequent level, at least it is a beginning. I've stayed at bernard's house twice, gomez once and jingxuan once. We watched movies, we cycled, we played Winning Eleven, we watched soccer matches, we drank vodka cocktail, we ate prata, vomit fish and fries and airport food, sent fanny off at the airport and had FIFA lan gaming sessions. It was all quite good. A huge change from the beginning and mid year.
The cycle of PW ended with our OP because Miss Ng already got us to hand up and complete our I&R and GPF before OP on the last day which was very very very good indeed. OP was quite fun. All the different jokes and expression we went through. I was thinking of new jokes every practise session just to keep people engaged but unfortunately not all of them worked.
I decided on impulse to start electric lead guitar lessons and I managed to get this very cheap and good and young teacher called Raphael who looks a lot like Wang Lee Hom. His guitar playing is very good, teaching more so. I'm learning a lot and being exposed to a lot. He gave me a list of songs to experiment with so I guess that's very good for my music education too. Learning new techniques and terms like palm mute and hammer-ons and pull-offs, humbucker pick-ups, single-coil pickups, tube amps, whammy-bar. So thats pretty great.
I'm hoping I can put all this skills to good use. I'm back to writing music again and thats great. Currently I'm not working on anything solid. Just experimenting around with different chord progressions and melodic development stuff. Working on lyrics writing too. Rhymes, chinese, english all that stuff. I look out of my window every night and feel that there is so many things I can write by just looking out of the windows but the ideas just don't materialize. I'm going to lug all my recording equipment back to Muar, well actually its not much, just my laptop, my headphones and a computer mic. Thanks how unprofessional I am.
Planning to write a song for S44 because they have been all smiles and great. Hui Ting is going to help me out with lyrics. Planning to write a song for a friend too. Dunno if it will work out because my lyrics ultimately become very cheesy.
Talking about friend, Sharon suddenly told me the other day that I better don't be mean to her or she will spill my secret. I was like WTH?? What secret do I have? And she didn't want to further explain. Haix, girls nowadays...
Jay Chou's new album, On The Run is actually quite a good production upon a few hearings. I must say a huge improvement on Still Fantasy. Comparable to November's Chopin and Jasmine Orange. Some of the material inside are actually very fresh. A few were tunes from the movie Secret which wasn't too bad. Just takes some getting used to as string ensemble pieces are now being sung. The Wild Wild West theme was quite refreshing too but I wondered if there were other ways the melody could have been written without changing the harmony instead of just being copied wholesale from western tunes.
I completed Need For Speed Carbon for the second time. It wasn't too difficult.
I must announce that my violin skills, having been neglected since promos are now at a all time low. Not that it was any higher before that anyway. Simple tone and semi-tones intervals are no longer in tune. I think my fingers are getting used to guitar frets now. I must admit I love the guitar a tad more. Still getting used to Eric Johnson, Malmsteen and Santana instead of Gil Shaham and Itzhak Perlman but I'll get there. Maybe I'll be famous for my enormous versatility in handling diverse music. MUAHAHA
I think I'm over practising my music instruments. My right thumb and index fingers have blisters on them due to over enthusiastic guitar ensemble practise sessions in school these 2 days.
I injured my left little finger. I think I accidentally cracked them on something or I over practise my siren drill on the guitar so they are hurting a lot and can hardly bent now and couple that with my double jointed problem I have a big problem.
Phew that was a long post wasn't it. Well just to announce my travel schedule for the next couple of weeks.
I'll be leaving Singapore for Muar for my long term holidays on the 15th of November so Muarians please lay out the red carpet. Hahaha
I'll be leaving Muar for Singapore on the 24th of November. The day my parents are flying. So Singaporeans please lay out the red carpet for me. Thanks.
I'll be leaving Singapore for London on the 26th of November. Close to midnight. S44 u guys coming to see me off? I do really hope to see you guys there one last time for the year.
Once in London I'll be doing a whole host of traveling and visiting different places thanks to RyanAir's cheap airfares.
I'll be back in Singapore on the 31st of December. Yes New Year's Eve. Jajabinks we should meet up as is customary to us.
So now u guys know when I'll be where so please call me out as I'm so BORED at home doing nothing.
I guess I'll be studying R papers if things continue this way.
So long for now.
Everybody have a nice holiday. :)
Ohh, I've got a new music teacher. Darren Sim from YJC band. I would rate him okay so far.

They say its obvious. But in what way?

Musical Tears

2007-11-04T23:35:00.000+08:00

I was testing out Jay Chou's new album. Seeing what new ideas he had came up with. There is this song 蒲公英的约定 if i'm not mistaken. I know the chorus is taken from the movie 不能说的秘密 but he added lyrics to it. Something about the chorus, the 7 notes, invoke some kind of memory in me. I don't know what izzit but its definitely not the lyrics. I can't understand the words he is singing but something about this melody overwhelms me. I think I'm getting more emotional but tears actually fell. I squeezed them back of course but this is something special. The melody is actually derived from Rachmaninov's Symphony No.3 I think its the 3rd movement or 2nd movement. I was actually writing a song that had a similar motif but seeing he has already done it, I'm going to change plans. But these 7 notes are just amazing. What happened? I don't know. I can't figure out what is the memory exactly.

Maybe its the rain brushing across my face
The sound of water pattering outside
The cars zooming pass on the highway
Street lights illuminating the rain drops
Leave rustling
Piano in my ears
What am I trying to tell me???

Chitter-chatter

2007-10-27T00:15:00.000+08:00

HI MUM!!!
Welcome to my blog. Enjoy reading it.
Hahaha.

Bored. I need the beach, soccer, cycling, food, anything.

Life's Good

2007-10-04T23:56:00.000+08:00

I woke up this morning at 11.44 with Jun Lam's call waking me up. The first thing I thought when I saw the clock was, Oh SHIT, 11.44, I should have woke up earlier to study. STUDY for promos. SHIT SHIT SHIT. Then suddenly I realised, PROMOS ARE OVER. I tell you what. That is the greatest feeling on earth. WOOOHOOO. Ate lunch at MP then went to town to watch Ratatouile and it was absolutely a good show. I would have preferred the more action packed Cars but this Rat show was good too. The plot was good. The animation was good. Later at night Johnson brought was to Simpang Bedok for Malay food and the Roti John was nice. The nasi goreng not too bad either and I drank Milo Godzilla for the first time. A huge cup of milo with milo powder and a scoop of vanila ice- cream. Nice and fat.

I came across this blog of a young Singaporean girl today. Here is something interesting that I notice in her blog. I shall not name who is the blogger but here is the interesting thing.

Style comes with things she loves;

God
Culture!
Family
Friends
My Mp3
My blog :D
My Billabong pencil case
My gorgeous new handbag! Wheeeeee...
My study Bible
Being culturelicious
Milky Bar :D

I was wondering actually why did this girl list God and her church group Culture before Family and Friends. Okay, I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me here but why choose to love something that is a figure of your imagination, that you can't physically touch and feel ( I know a lot more people are going to disagree) more than your family especially. Real people that can wipe your tears when you cry or crack a joke and make you smile. Even the church group was rated higher than family and friends. Okay maybe the people in church group are better than your friends but FAMILY? I roughly know about this girl's family, after all one of her sibling is my friend and through her blog and I know her family is pretty stable and not those abusive kind.
This kind of left a question mark in me. Why is God higher in her love list than family? Or maybe I'm just seeing too much into this and she didn't rate them according to who she loved more.
Does this say something about society?
I dunno.
Tell me what you think.

人生海海

2007-10-03T22:53:00.000+08:00

Commentator: ITS OVER, ITS OVER, THE FINAL WHISTLE HAS BLOWN AND I'M FINISHED MY PROMOS!!!!

Yay, finally finished my promos with the end of music practical today!!!

One song that got me through promos was this

This song is absolutely superb.

The lyrics are as below,

有一天我在想我到底算是个什么东西
还是我会不会根本就不算东西
天天都漫无目的偏偏又想要证明真理
别人从屁股放屁我却每天每天都说要革命

就算是整个世界把我抛弃
而至少快乐伤心我自己决定
所以我说就让他去我知道潮落之后一定有潮起
有什么了不起

常常我豁出去拚了命走过却没有痕迹
可是我从不怕挖出我火热的心
手上有一个硬币反面就决定放弃嗝屁
但是啊在我心底却完完全全不想放弃

常常我闭上眼睛听到了海的呼吸是你
温柔的蓝色潮汐告诉我没有关系
就算真的整个世界把我抛弃
而至少快乐伤心我自己决定
所以我说就让他去我知道潮落之后一定有潮起
我不能忘记无论是我的明天要去哪里
而至少快乐伤心我自己决定所以我说就让他去
我知道潮落之后一定有潮起有什么了不起
啦啦啦啦啦啦
明天我在哪里～～～

Absolutely amazing stuff. This song got me through my promos. Motivated me when I was down. Yes that's the power of music.

雨后

2007-09-30T11:44:00.000+08:00

After much delays, I'm glad to say the song is finally completed. I must say that this song was sung by my vocalist with a sore throat and a flu so it wasn't well sung. A lot of falsetto had to be used to compensate. Anyway, my greatest apologies to Zong Xing and Jun Lam for the unsuccessful attempts at sending them the song. The truth was I fell asleep in front of my computer. For some funny reason, I'm not able to upload my song onto geocities for u guys to download so for now you will have to ask me for the file on MSN. Anyway if you guys know any better file hosting sites, please tell me. The song was submitted for Spop, which is the Channel U competition.

闯

2007-09-22T17:44:00.000+08:00

我烂命一条
走在路上
影子在地上
像我的慌张
黏在脚下
抓著我不放
我不懂
我不是这样
我不该这样
额头流下的汗
又流进眼眶

为什么要给我一颗跳动的心脏
却忘了给我飞翔的翅膀
每天我活在这多无聊的地方
多么想要流浪
为什么要给我一颗跳动的心脏
又把我丢在这寂寞战场
这世界有多大我就有多彷徨
有没有一点希望
让我去闯

把我的灵魂
装进纸箱
寄送到天堂
那云端的光
会不会是
希望的形状
每一天
来了又走了
匆忙的太阳
感觉自己蒸发
慢慢从这个世界上

天涯海角
让我去闯
。
。
。
。

这世界只限于我的想象力那么大
张开我的双手
闯出一个我要的未来

雨后

2007-09-16T22:29:00.000+08:00

My apologies to those who were not able to download the song. The link should work now. Leave comments!!
Hi guys,
Due to some technical problem, I wasn't able to record my song in its full length. My Adobe Audition software expired on me so I had to use the Windows Recorder which limited me to 60 secs of recording. Anyway, listen to it and tell me what you think.
The verse is available here
The chorus of my new song available here

弹琴- 秋聪胜
歌手- 舟嫁维
曲- 蔡扬斌
词- 林明耀

King of Pop

2007-09-15T22:35:00.000+08:00

I've been watching some old videos of the Jackson 5 and I must say Michael Jackson is truly the King of Pop. I think those comments about him being a pedophile is very unfair to him. I think he is a very complex person so nobody can really judge him for who he really is. Appreciate him for his music and contributions, not skin color or anything else. Here are some videos, enjoy.

I'll be There. "If you should ever find someone new, I know he better be good to you, cause if he doesn't, I'll be there."
This phrase is just touching.

I want you back- Jackson 5
A young Michael Jackson is totally at ease at relaxed

ABC-Jackson 5
This is the absolutely best song. Yes, the tune is as simple as ABC, 123 and Do-Re-Mi. Simple as Do-Re-Mi, baby you and ME!! Disco at its height. Girls, trying singing this song. See if you can hit the notes.

Ben- Michael Jackson
And the answer to who Ben is..........
Michael Jackson's pet RAT. yes, pet RAT. Luckiest rat on earth.

Enjoy the videos. Till the next time.

You've got a friend in me :)

Gone Too Soon

2007-09-14T22:24:00.000+08:00

This is a beautiful song by Michael Jackson.
I think everybody out there who has a heart should watch this video of Gone Too Soon by Michael Jackson.

He dedicated this very beautiful song to this guy called Ryan White. Ryan is the guy who is speaking at the beginning of the video. Listen very carefully to what Ryan says.

I think its amazing that people have dogs at home when dogs are so different. Its amazing that people are willing to accept dogs but are unable to accept people of another race, religion or having something inside them.

Ryan was diagnosed with a blood disease since birth and required constant blood transfusion. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with AIDS which was transmitted through one of his blood transfusion session. Upon realising Ryan behing HIV positive. Parents and teachers immediately called for his expulsion from school for fearing that their children might be infected to despite doctors attempt to clarify that AIDS cannot transmit through physical contact. The school principal and board took in the story and expelled him, starting a court case by Ryan's parents that would last for 8 months. When Ryan was allowed back into school for a day, half of the school did not turn up. Later when he finally won the right to study for the long term, he was forced to use disposable cutlery and separate toilets and made few friends.

Ryan's championing of the AIDS cause caused him to become a national celebrity and making many celebrity friends with Elton John and Michael Jackson amongst many others. He was dubbed the first poster boy of AIDS. After his death in 1990, many people all over begun to realise the severity of this discrimination and moved to solve it. Numerous charity foundations were also set up in Ryan's honour.

Reagan said upon Ryan's death that "it is the disease that scares people, not the person who has the disease."

May it be disease, or race, or language, or religion. Discrimination should not occur at all. Every human being has the right to live freely.

This one is for Ryan White. 17 years after his death. God Bless.

Bring on the Russians

2007-09-13T01:17:00.000+08:00

The Russians are coming to Wembley tonight.

Bring the fight to them England.

Russia's threat lies in their playmaker Andrei Arshavin who would most probably playing in the hole behind the strikers. Get Barry to shakle him and stop the supply to the strikers. Ferdinand will have to be focused for the entire match> Wright- Phillips and Joe Cole need to be at their tricky best. Play Heskey up front instead of Crouch. His partnership with Owen is the best. Bring Crouch on only maybe for the final 30 mins when Heskey ran out of steam last time out. His height will then be a threat to the tired defenders who will have to jump hard.
England should win and must win at all cost.
Its not going to be pretty.

Bring it on you Russian asses.

Remembering the day

2007-09-11T23:45:00.000+08:00

September 11, 2001. That faithful day where the world watched in horror at the horrors that the terrorists created. Where the world watched in horror at the vulnerability of our own back yard.
6 years has past. The world has moved on. Its time the mourning stopped and the rebuilding started.
STOP the pointless war.
There is no sense of direction to it.
Stop harming innocent people.
Bush should go.
I believe in Fahrenheit 9/11
Corruption and greed should not be possessed by the most powerful man on earth
Go Obama.

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Some people have unlimited joy and smiles during their birthdays. Peppered with loads of pictures and presents.
Some people have low key celebrations. A few words from the closest friends and family.
Some people its just another day and Happy Birthday to myself.

I guess life isn't all that fair but be happy knowing that it doesn't really matter how you celebrate, it was another great year gone. Be thankful and be happy. Many people are even struggling to stay alive not least celebrate birthdays every year.

Happy birthday to Shiane and Melodie amongst many others.

Screw the fucking terrorists.

May you be satisfied with fucking all the promised virgins in heaven now that you have sacrificed youself for it.

FUCK YOU

Bad Hair Day

2007-09-10T17:23:00.000+08:00

F**K

Got caught for long hair my Mr. Bean's friend today.
Bloody idiot. First thing in the morning, first day in school start catching people already
Still use some Hokkien words, think I dunno.
I still can't get over it. My hair the back wasn't extreme like some people.
Bloody hell
Always bias towards girls
The girls dye hair and some even don't tie hair like nobody's business and nobody cares.
F**K

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Anyway I decided to pamper and comfort myself and I went to have the most expensive haircut that I ever had in my life. A whooping 24 bucks at SuperCuts saloon. It was an interesting experience leading the high life though. And my hair isn't all that ugly either. Phew. They employed some rather interesting hair cutting techniques that I've never seen before. Quite cool.
But still 24 bucks is like RM 50++ and for that price I can have a total makeover in Muar already.

Bloody IDIOT.
Go watch your girls do push-ups la!!!

Permanent scars

2007-09-09T03:29:00.000+08:00

I scratched my beloved Ibanez.

F**K

Exams are coming.
Study hard.

My new song is almost ready.
Stay tuned

Botak Mugger

2007-09-07T01:44:00.000+08:00

I was thinking and looking back at some old pictures when I came across one of me botak. I then realised that I never really told anybody the real reason why I went to slice my hair off and endure a few weeks of horrid stares in school. Well the thing was as I left on taxi from Thai Pan after lunch with Ye Zi to Cat High to collect my O Levels results, I was looking at the sky and I made a pact with God. God in general, not any specific God. It could be Buddha, Jesus, Allah, Vishnu etc...
I told God that if I managed to remain in VJ, I would go slice my head off. Its kind of funny to think of it now. Well, the rest is pretty much self explanatory.

I think the only way that I can mug is at night and my laptop is confiscated. Like awhile ago when Weei took used my laptop to watch movie and I couldn't use it so I sat down and read through 4 chapters of Physics in an hour and 20 minutes. Cool.

I've been downloading and watching quite a lot of movies nowadays. Dead of Alive is one of the crappiest movie that I've ever watched. Whats with the frequent camera panning and zooming in on cleavages and breasts. Fighting scenes are fake and stupid. RATED CRAP.
Fighting The Giants was an okay movie. Brought tears to my eyes and had my hair all standing up but I felt there was this over focus by the producers on spreading the Christian Gospel.
Secret is also an okay movie. The plot and twists are quite interesting if you haven't watched The Lake House before. But some of the dialogs make me go YUCKS. Its rather cheesy and.... dunno how to explain. I wished more of the unexplained loose ends were tied up though.

Guitar Fest at Far East tomorrow. Its 2 am and I'm still here blogging. I'm kinda glad that my new song is coming along fine.
Hope I won't suffer from jitters tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Rush Hour 4

2007-09-04T00:42:00.000+08:00

Rushed from hostel to Cineleisure Orchard to The Cathay today trying to catch a movie to watch. And ended up not watching anything. Rushed from hostel to catch the ever elusive 36 bus to Orchard to watch Secret and guessed what when we arrived there. Secret was totally SOLD OUT, yes SOLD OUT. After being screened for almost a month I would never have expected this. Decided to watch it first thing tomorrow morning. DAMN, this movie better be good. We decided impulsively on the spot to watch RATA2E instead and rushed from Cineleisure to The Cathay only to find that the next 2 shows were also SOLD OUT. DAMN, that movie must be good.

And I ended up doing the most sinful thing ever which is to indulge in loads of food. Ate the XXL Crispy Chicken from Shilin, then when over to Starbucks where I sat down and drank free milk then went to the new donut shop at Orchard where I bought a glazed for myself. All these food after dinner at 6pm. Donut at 5pm. KFC at 3pm. Lunch at 1 pm. Cream puff at 12pm. Breakfast at 9am. Yes, I practically didn't do anything today except eat. The scales are already pointing way beyond the allowed limit. STOP!!

ASEAN DANCE 2007 is back again!!! YEAHHH!!!!

As if anyone is looking forward to it...
The Jar Jar Binks contingent has returned to Malaysia. Only the handful of us from the same hostel are around. What a bore... Did they ever spared a thought for the shy us who won't dare to ask for a dance? Nobody is interested.

Except perhaps the people from Down South..

Sigh...

Time wasters.....

Happy Birthday

2007-08-29T23:48:00.001+08:00

I would like to wish Happy Birthday to that someone that is very very special in my head.
Thanks for everything all those years.
Even though I might not have openly talked about my love for you
I might not have told anybody I love you
You never complained,
never questioned.
From the bottom of my heart,
I would like to say

I LOVE YOU

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

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..
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.......

MY DEAREST AND MOST BELOVED MALAYSIA

The 7 cries of Merdeka rang out across the festive atmosphere,
A new country was born,
A country free from the chains of out colonial masters that bounded us.
50th years and counting,
I pray for RACIAL HARMONY, RELIGIOUS FREEDOM and UNLIMITED OPPORTUNITIES

Emo Song No. 1

2007-08-29T23:45:00.000+08:00

I started work on the composition of my first emo song. Coming out soon. Harmony is already completed. Refining the melody. Stay tuned.

Opus One

2007-08-29T23:42:00.000+08:00

The concert review of Opus One is available at

here

The photos from Opus One is available at

here

So go check them out now

Madness

2007-08-26T01:28:00.000+08:00

Li Chuan Yun said:"Music makes me go mad." Before he played his encore piece during his concert today and he proceeded to play an insanely technical encore piece on the violin. His facial expression was like that of a mad man. He really look like he had been possessed. Like an insane mad man!!! When he finished, he was stamping his foot and punching his fist and chest. Really insane. I would give anything to be like him man. Imagine that, I would ACE my A Levels, Audrey would be speechless. Muahaha. Practise hard.

Later when I went to get his autograph. He just sat there, shaking his head, shaking his legs, a nonchalant expression on his face. When I told him he played very well, he just nodded his head at me. Really mad, really insane but I LIKE

Too bad Keely Wee lost in the finals to Shawn Tok. Hoped she enjoyed herself tremendously. I predicted correctly that a girl will never win these televoting competitions. Not in Singapore at least.
Firstly lets break the people who are going to sms in into groups. The teenagers will normally be split la. Keely will get some, Shawn will get some. But those more bimbo girls, or those in their early teens, who know little about singing will go for Shawn because he's cute. Those middle age or golden age auntie will surely go for Shawn because he is cuter too. The uncles most probably won't bother to vote. The odds are always against girls la. But at the same time I don't think Shawn's vocals are terribly bad. But on the whole everybody's vocals are not very good anyway compared to other countries. American Idol and America's Got Talent have got some pretty young and great vocalist. Maybe those with great vocals in Singapore are all banana and dunno how to sing chinese songs.

Whatever it is, congratulations to Shawn and Keely for their achievements.

Live long and prosper

Moonlight memories

2007-08-25T00:47:00.000+08:00

I was on my bed preparing to sleep when an old buddy msned me and sent me a letter from him.
Actually, firstly I'm really grateful that u bothered to visit this site and read my blog.
The letter brought this whole tide of mixed emotions back to me.
Transformed me back to CHMA 2006.
From the first jamming session playing Swing swing and Gui Ji with a tone-deaf vocalist
To the first jamming session playing accidentally in love with a proper vocalist
To taking the form from in front of the GO,
To being brave enough to appear at the CHMA auditions, facing Isthmus and Pan Island Jam amongst others.
People thought us crazy, people thought us weird, singing Chinese Pop Songs, some even laughed
It was a miracle we got in
CHMA 2006 was mind blowing for us, performing on stage, throwing the roses off stage after that.
The results turned me off in the end

Actually I'm one to believe that the most important is the experience I've gained from a particular competition. I think this is only self consolation when we have lost la. People always say the experience gained is the most important. But I think differently I guess, I feel is self consolation. Most pitiful.

After all these years u started emoing and brought back the past to me. I think I might have shed a tear or two. It really it very touching for me to be reminded how far we have came and how far we have conquered.

As for whatever band activities I'm doing now. Well, things are practically close to nothing. I've lost my keyboardist, guitarist, bassist, vocalist. The only guitarist I have now dislikes Chinese songs so I don't know why am I even wasting my time. I think I've kind of like threw my whole future to the music scene, to band and stuff. But I can't even find bandmates who are passionate about it. People who share the same passion, the same interest and the same chemistry as me. Its elusive. Thats why I say my future seems bleak. I don't even know wats going to happen. I hope this problem resolves itself quickly. Meanwhile, I'm just going to be a one man band. I dream of writing better and better music. The possibilities are there for me to grab and savor.

Here I come.

Thanks Zong Xing

You brought that fire back to me again. FIGHT ON!!

I feel good

2007-08-19T17:16:00.000+08:00

I also dunno why I few good. Screw AS man. She didn't allow me to go hear the talk. It could have been a life changing talk. It was Lee Wei Song mind you. If I'm going to jumpstart my career. He is the guy that I should listen to and follow.

I haven't been blogging for many days. Hostel internet sucks like shit. But thank god that my room is under the coverage of the Wireless@SG, the singapore government's plan for a huge wireless network covering the entire singapore. WOhoo.. Internet is like so fast and so smooth.

Opus 1 concert just ended on the Thursday. I'm still very angry and disappointed with myself for fluffing that entire phrase in the Dvorak which I had worked so hard on because the fingering and intonation is quite tricky there. Ended up I got so engrossed in my own world that I forgot where I was and totally screwed up that phrase. Haix. Yet another disappointment. I'll be back next year, with a better violin and a perfect performance. This I promise myself.

Darn I spent so much money on the new earphones yesterday because it had super noise cancelling technology which I think is going to be quite useless as the noise blocking technology of the in ear earphones are already quite good. No need to emit the negative frequencies to cancel out the sound somemore. It can be quite unnerving at times living in the totally silent world. Makes me kinda giddy after awhile.

I want to write a song about the world. Good luck to me.

Why do they keep trying to infuse those bad thoughts in my head. I'm already over it. Dumbs are really just nice to look at and nothing else. I dare say that I'm too smart for her. Please, I would like common sense in people. Stop trying to put that face in my thoughts 24 hours a day. JL understands. The lack of common sense makes me go ARGH...

Melody and harmony

2007-08-19T17:12:00.000+08:00

There was once two good friends named melody and harmony. They couldn't live without each other. Melody was the popular one, the first to catch people's attention when she was beautiful. She was the loudest amongst all. Always the one that had the attention of the singers and the lead guitars. Harmony on the other hand lived in the shadows of melody. Never mind that she had more content and flesh. Melody knew that without harmony she wouldn't be where she was. To the average listener, nobody knew of harmony's existence. Harmony was confined to the bass guitar, the rhythm guitars and the keyboard chords.

Grey skies

2007-08-19T17:07:00.000+08:00

Staring out of the window pane,
staring at the blue sea that's now grey,
at the ships that disappear into the distance,
the cars that zoom quickly by,
the sheets of rain falling from the sky,
not forgetting the green trees,
that are swaying hi,
life is just so wonderful.

Look for Beez

2007-08-05T00:22:00.000+08:00

There is this guitar repair guy called Beez located in Roxy Square. He just came out to open his own shop like 3 days ago. Visited him today. Amazing guy. He not only repairs, he explains what he is doing. He even teaches people what to fix and how to fix. He gave me like a ton of guitar tips in the one hour I was there waiting for my guitar to be fixed.
The Ibanez action is now so much lower and its so much more playable. Beez ROCKS. He did so without even filing the guitar, only adjusted the truss rod. Wow. Incredible.
Beez is located at Roxy Square II, #01-125. Open Mondays-Sundays.

Tears in heaven

2007-08-05T00:15:00.000+08:00

怎么去拥有，一道彩虹。怎么去拥抱，一夏天的风。
才发现，笑着哭，最痛。
如果我爱上，你的笑容。
如果你快乐再不是为我。
会不会放手其实才是拥有。
知足的快乐叫我忍受心痛。。。。。。

一闪一闪亮晶晶，
满天都是小星星。

满天都是我每晚很想和你一起看的小星星。

Life Satisfaction

2007-08-04T00:10:00.000+08:00

Ming Yao said that I'm always so unhappy with myself after performance because I'm always not satisfied with myself. He said I should be satisfied with myself so that I won't feel so unhappy always. The point is during today's performance, another one of those things happen again. Its like normal practising at home or with Mrs Soh won't have such thing, but when it comes to performance, things go back. No matter how perfect the piece is in the practise room, all those practices goes to waste if you can't reproduce them on stage. So how to expect me to be happy and satisfied with myself when I know I could have been better and in fact I've achieved better in the practise room.

Anyway, I took this Life Satisfaction Test at here just for fun. So the results were

Slightly satisfied

You have an average score. The average of life satisfaction in economically developed nations is in this range – the majority of people are generally satisfied, but have some areas where they very much would like some improvement. Some people score in this range because they are mostly satisfied with most areas of their lives but see the need for some improvement in each area. Other people score in this range because they are satisfied with most domains of their lives, but have one or two areas where they would like to see large improvements. Generally people who score in this range have areas of their lives that need improvement, but would usually like to move to a higher level by making some life changes.

I guess I'm quite average like most other people which isn't too bad a thing. Of course there are improvements in my life that I would like to make.

Sights and sounds

2007-08-04T00:04:00.000+08:00

Check This OUT!!!

I found this Kay Poh Rd, near Great World City. Interesting rite. Maybe the people there are very nosy

Where it all begun

2007-07-29T01:20:00.000+08:00

3 years ago,
January 2005 to be exact,
One boy bang into Catholic High School's Music Room,
Mrs Chaillan was addressing a class of 20 in its first lesson of 2005.
Who are you? She asked the boy,
"Erm, I'm taking music"
Auditions were already over,
Students were already rejected,
the 20 students were already selected.
This one teacher never gave up on anyone,
"Come in a find a seat", she said.
This boy had only a grade 6 violin cert and grade 5 theory cert to show her.
But she still never gave up on anyone.
This boy didn't know who was Bach,
or that Chopin was "Showpan" not "Chop pin",
or what a concerto, symphony or sonata meant.
She still never gave up,
nevermind that her class had now an odd number of 21 students.
A1 for his O Level Music and top in the cohort for music in VJ now,
Not a bad price not pay for having faith in your students and not giving up on them isn't it?
See teachers, don't ever write off any of your students,
Give them the faith and confidence to show themselves, to prove themselves,

I THANK THE ONE WOMAN WHO HAS MADE ME WHAT I AM TODAY,
I THANK HER FOR THE FAITH AND CONFIDENCE SHE GAVE ME,
I THANK HER FOR NOT WRITING ME OFF AND CHASING ME OUT OF CLASS ON THAT FIRST DAY,
I THANK HER FOR ALL THE PRECIOUS KNOWLEDGE.
MRS CHAILLAN MUI TUAN, THIS ONE IS FOR YOU.

P.S. I never meant to show off my achievements

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

Minister of Manpower Dr Ng said today that upon visiting the many different schools, he realised that each school had its own identity that was unique to it.
Comparing Cat High to VJ,
the speech Mrs Chaillan made during the CH Young Performers Show today, she said the school always believed in giving the boys a chance to showcase themselves, especially in the arts. Thats why Cat High has all these arts programmes, Band Concert, CO Concert and not forgetting the CH Young Performers Show and CHMA of course. VJ has these kind of concerts and programmes too but everything VJ does is so big and grand, guest of honour and stuff, none of the close and intimate concert.
In VJ, competition is so stiff that a lot of times only the very best get the chance. Of course, one might say that competition will make you work towards being better and improving ourselves but a lot of times its not that the weak don't try hard enough but the strong have a earlier head start etc. Cat High is also good in the sense that it puts appropriate emphasize on the arts, with the groups getting proper practise rooms or places to practise with decent instruments.
In VJ, although they do give money and small rooms to the arts, but it seems that nobody seems really enthusiastic about it. I feel like when people see you as belonging to some arts group, they kind of associate you with the weak or soft, unless you are from choir.When people watch the string ensemble play or the Chinese Orchestra percussion section play, or piano ensemble they laugh and talk. Sometimes I wonder whether the ticket is bought for the sake of supporting their friends or they are really interested in watching it.
It's in the mindset of the people, the culture of the people to turn to sport, to support sport, to think of the sports as something cool, something in. People oogle at the people wearing the Adidas sweaters and windbreaker. Who cares if you are carrying a cello case in your hand.
I feel the arts shouldn't be oppressed.
Viva la ARTS, VIVA LA MUSIC
Catholic High School, for all that it has given us, we must learn to love it, not criticise the management and flowers in the school.

Arrow through

2007-07-24T01:19:00.000+08:00

Somebody told me this today

最远的距离是当她在你面前但却不知你爱她。。。

It hit me straight to the heart. The furthest distance is when she's in front of you but she doesn't know you love her...

Its still impossible

English tutor, Englishmen and a game invented by the English

2007-07-21T00:58:00.000+08:00

Some pictures from the last match at Kallang.

The cauldron lights up for the last time

Brotherhood of JJB

Team Australia

Malaysia vs Singapore

Part of the Brotherhood of JJB

Beautiful skies

Shouting and bickering and...betting? is part of the Beautiful Game

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

Why wasn't the ad that an English tutor put up to attract students to join her class successful??

Because the ad was in English...

Hahaha... That joke was invented by myself. Funny rite.

Ok nvm..

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

There was a letter that a Australian guy wrote in to the Straits Times today commenting how efficiently the services in Singapore were and how his son got immediate treatment when he fell and injured himself at the Singapore Science Centre. That got me thinking. Was the services all that good? Were the people really so polite and so quick to take action? Was it because of his ethnicity?
It just so happen that today is Racial Harmony Day but I can't help mentioning this topic. It is not the first time that I've seen bias treatments towards the Mat Salleh in Singapore. Its so very obvious when a Mat Salleh enters the shop and a local enters the same shop the difference in the level of politeness and patience that the shopkeeper offers. One obvious prove is from Auntie Cecilia, a Malaysian Chinese who married a Mat Salleh. She has told me countless stories of how hotels, shops, etc greeted her husband but somehow managed to not see her walking beside him. How people gave him first class service but third class for her. My parents always told me, especially Dad that the Mat Salleh are not all that good as they seem. Too many a times have I seen in Sim Lim Square of somewhere else a Mat Salleh strutting and fretting himself/herself in a shop. He dares to shout and threaten the shopkeepers. Mrs Soh also once say stop worshipping the Mat Salleh, they are not God. I guess when you have been in their country for sometime u will realise that they are not all that good. When I went to Cambodia and Nepal, it is so common to see street beggers hounding the Mat Sallehs begging them for money because they assume that they are richer and superior and would be more kind to give them some money. Seldom will they approach a Chinese in the presence of a Mat Salleh. But in the end who is the one that shrugs them off like pesty flies and who are the ones that will dig into their pocket for spare change? Over in SIA a few years ago on the flight to Canada, the bloody air stewardess was treating this Sikh people like s***. There they were showing their black faces, screaming at them, purposely waking up their kids, making them cry, making everybody frustrated, claiming some some safety procedure was breached. Things shouted included:"IF YOU DON'T GET YOUR BAG INTO THE OVERHEAD CABIN, THIS PLANE CANNOT TAKE OFF." When facing a family of the opposite skin colour, the mood changed immediately. The black cloud over the fake pretty face disappear, the voice decreased by a few decibels. What more can I say?
Back to the topic of Racial Harmony Day, I really did not see the point in VJ getting its students to come dress in ethnic costumes. Knowing the people in VJ, this became something more like a fashion parade, with everybody jostling for that few minutes of being able to wear something pretty to school and being cheered on by the whole school. Just what race did those two Ninja's represent? This is a day we celebrate the peace and bond shared between the different ethnic groups, not parade in our traditional costumes. How has that parade helped me apart from giving me a few laughs? The Pegasus guy pointed at the guy and said this is a Baju Kurung. I almost fainted. Come'on man, that is a Baju Melayu, worn by guys, not a Baju Kurung worn by girls. To thing that that costume was something from this race. Hey man, make sure you know your own culture first before trying to harmonize with other people. What did I learn? Nothing. Didn't make me a few more friends from the other culture or helped me learn something about the other ethnic groups that I don't already know. All I saw was people scrambling to toilets to get changed into their best to again strut and fret the hour upon stage as quoted from Shakespeare's Macbeth.

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How to get closer to you?
I don't know if I should.
Please respond.

Mockingbird

2007-07-19T22:32:00.000+08:00

I imagine myself on stage
I imagine myself either sitting on the throne behind the drum set around me
I imagine myself holding a Gibson standing right behind the monitor speakers
I imagine beside me is my quiet bassist, smiling at me
I imagine my guitarist, wide smile and waving
I imagine my vocalist, holding the mic up high, eyes closed
I imagine looking down stage, thousands of fans screaming their lungs out, arms raised
I imagine looking at my own posters held up high my fans
I imagine the flashes clicking non-stop
I imagine the G chord being strummed and the sound booming out of the Marshall behind me and the gigantic concert speakers beside the stage.
When will this come true?
Where am I going to find that elusive bandmates?
When are the right people going to appear?
Please answer my call for help.

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

I did a test that was supposed to be very accurate

Your view on yourself:

You are down-to-earth and people like you because you are so straightforward. You are an efficient problem solver because you will listen to both sides of an argument before making a decision that usually appeals to both parties.

quite true i think

The type of girlfriend/boyfriend you are looking for:

You like serious, smart and determined people. You don't judge a book by its cover, so good-looking people aren't necessarily your style. This makes you an attractive person in many people's eyes.

This is only half true. I do like serious, but not serious all the time, must be able to humour me. Yes, being smart is important, not just smart academically but in terms of common sense too. Don't like dumb blondes. Determined yes. I actually do kind mind the cover part, just that my sense of beauty is a bit different from many people.

Your readiness to commit to a relationship:

You prefer to get to know a person very well before deciding whether you will commit to the relationship.

Not really. I normally rush head on.

The seriousness of your love:

You like to flirt and behave seductively. The opposite sex finds this very attractive, and that's why you'll always have admirers hanging off your arms. But how serious are you about choosing someone to be in a relationship with?

True

Your views on education

Education is less important than the real world out there, away from the classroom. Deep inside you want to start working, earning money and living on your own.

True

The right job for you:

You're a practical person and will choose a secure job with a steady income. Knowing what you like to do is important. Find a regular job doing just that and you'll be set for life.

Not true. I'm a risk taker.

How do you view success:

Success in your career is not the most important thing in life. You are content with what you have and think that being with someone you love is more than spending all of your precious time just working.

WRONG. Success is never near for me. I'm never satisfied.

What are you most afraid of:

You are concerned about your image and the way others see you. This means that you try very hard to be accepted by other people. It's time for you to believe in who you are, not what you wear.

True.

Who is your true self:

You are mature, reasonable, honest and give good advice. People ask for your comments on all sorts of different issues. Sometimes you might find yourself in a dilemma when trapped with a problem, which your heart rather than your head needs to solve.

True

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Scholarship under probation due to unfavourable results. I'm supposed to get average C but ended up with crappy C,D,E,E,S. which is like an average E. Sigh. It was a mistake coming to VJC I think. There is nothing except music that is inspiring me. The pressure is huge. The lectures are going so fast I don't even know whats going on. Its so competitive. Maybe I should have gone to SAJC. Jun Lam even got a C for GP. Its terrible la. Everybody is so smart and hardworking, everybody is so far ahead. And if I had gone to other JCs I wouldn't have met you. Causing me to go head over heels over nothingness. Pointless. Blankness. Emptiness...

MATHS SUCKS

Die Hard Harry

2007-07-17T23:54:00.000+08:00

You are back,
great to see you bright and healthy,
I've been thinking of u a lot during those days,
I wonder who was on your mind.

2 movies in 2 days. Die Hard 4.0 was superb. The hackers and stuff. Wow. John McClane the cop is sexy with his bald head and insane about his job too. Shoots himself to kill the terrorist hacker. The technology involved is astounding.

Harry Potter not very nice. The whole movie seemed like rushing from scene to scene, plot to plot. The newspaper comment about it better than the book is CRAP! Book is definitely better. At least we don't have to rush from scene to scene just to watch Harry spend 3,4 precious minutes kissing Cho, a plot which was non-existent in the book.

I haven't been posting frequently. So tired everyday. I've nothing much going on but I also dunno wat the hell I am doing. Maths lectures are a waste of time. I've no idea whats going on during Maths. SUCKS.. Dun have Mrs. Anna Tan to inspire me anymore. Exams results like crap. C,D,E,E,S. S for Chem, C for music.

I DUNNO WHAT'S GOING WRONG!!!!!!!!

I wonder how are you,
I wonder how did you do for your exams,
I wonder, I wonder,
Wished I had a bit more guts,
Wished there wasn't such a gulf..

Post exams blues

2007-07-11T01:01:00.000+08:00

Hi peeps,
Sorry I haven't been updating in a long time. Been pretty busy running around.
Exams results sucks. E,D,S so far. Hopefully, music will bring me some joy tomorrow. Sigh.
I'm playing Sonatina by Dvorak and Gavotte from Partita No.3 in E by Bach for concert.
Some amazing lyrics from Jay Chou's new song 不能说的秘密. I'm quite in love with it now. Never been in love with a Jay Chou song since a long time ago. I love the ostinato bass line that repeats itself throughout the entire piece. Simply beautiful

冷咖啡离开了杯垫
我忍住的情绪在很后面

拼命想挽回的从前
在我脸上依旧清晰可见

最美的不是下雨天
是曾与你躲过雨的屋檐 oh
回忆的画面
在荡着秋千梦开始不甜

你说把爱渐渐放下会走更远
或许命运的签只让我们遇见
只让我们相恋这一季的秋天
飘落后才发现这幸福的碎片
要我怎么捡

I'm going to start composing already. I jammed with lu dou bing the other day and they are amazing people with this amazing vocalist who has a Cao Ge voice. Amazing. Hopefully our gig at Orchard on the 22 of July will work out fine. My EoM is kinda sucky. Haix. Update soon. Its 1 am!!!

Celebrate our youths with football

2007-07-02T02:11:00.000+08:00

Just the other day, one of my friends mentioned I don't understand at all how guys can get so excited watching 22 men kicking the ball around.
Well, there really is this undescrible feeling which, is undescribable. Its very different watching on TV and live really. I don't really watch lots of matches on TV anyway. Just those huge matches and I mainly watch for the goals. Anyway, watching live gives you the advantage of watching all the off the ball movements and the players make and you also get to see the sutle little movements that the players make that makes you go WOW which you normally miss on TV. Watching the final football match at Kallang Stadium adds to the emotion I guess.
I'm not a Singaporean nor did I grow up watching matches at the National Stadium but I could feel the emotions going through the crowd there. Despite many of them being only there to watch the football match and leaving soon after which is a sad scene. Even for me, I could feel the tingling and ripples on my skin as the video was played and historical moments were slowly read out. I think Singaporeans are really lucky to be able to enjoy all these facilities and monuments so close to home and all the special efforts and events organized to commerate historical monuments. I really wouldn't care less if the Muar Stadium was torn down. Actually, the faster they do that the better. I wouldn't care if Bukit Jalil was torn down anyway. There's zero emotion between me and that place. I have actually only seen it once. I must say I'm very grateful and proud and to be among the last people to see the stadium in its full grandour. I'll post pictures I took tomorrow. The scores for the matches were

Malaysia ex-internationals 1-1 Singapore ex-internationals
Singapore 0-3 Australia

Anyway, today the Brotherhood of Jar Jar Binks and Juniors gathered to celebrate our youths with a football match. At first, the sky turned dark and we were all praying that it won't rain. Then it didn't rain. Then to our horror, the field was taken up by many PERKS. But we managed to work out a compromise so the match finally start. I played as striker today and had one penalty saved my Ji Teng and one chance hit the post. I didn't make a single tackle today. Anyway, I realised that the one handed push whicle running technique that Gomez taught me is damn useful to help myself and my teammates from oncoming defenders. I am quite happy that I was calm everytime I got the ball today which is a big improvement from last time already. The only problem is I'm still not calm enough to make the correct moves and decisions. Haix... need to improve. I'm really glad that the gang met. It really is good fate that I've such great friends. In fact, they are so great that they totally set the benchmark for any other type of friends that I might have in school and nobody comes even close. So maybe that's why I always say I don't have friends in school.

Adios

Check back tomorrow for photos

Practise, practise, practise and more practise, is there any use?

2007-06-28T17:28:00.000+08:00

Some times i wonder whether there is any use in practising my violin.
I think when it comes to music, practise is totally different. Its not like maths where the more u practise, the better and faster you get. For the violin, no matter how much I practise I still seem to be the same. I don't feel much fast or more accurate.
To think that I gave up on my Chem last night to practise so hard last night, and the night before, and the night before, and throughout the holidays, and before the holidays and before term started all for today's mid years music exams.
First thing Audrey said, "I think you all never rehearsed enough".......
Thank you very much....
Those people who started young and had good teachers who had good teaching methods and learn to play the correct way, or were born talented (this applies more to the case of singers) WIN ALL LAH!!!

What am I thinking of... Forget it la.
Hours upon hours upon hours of practise comes down to a 25 minute session in which if you screw up then that's too bad for you...
I've been insulted....
Goodnight

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered

2007-06-24T01:45:00.000+08:00

Your True Love Is a Sagittarius

Why you'll love a Sagittarius:

Deep and philosophical, you'll love getting lost in hours of conversation with your Sag.
Your Sagittarius is curious and adventurous enough to keep you interested... not an easy task!

Why a Sagittarius will love you:

You're passionate about a few important issues, a kind of depth that Sagittarius finds very attractive.
You're outgoing, flexible, and up for almost anything. You and your Sag will have tons of adventures together.

What Sign Is Your True Love?

The only sag that i know? My sister. No wonder we are siblings

Call me a genius

2007-06-21T00:37:00.000+08:00

PHEW!! Its finally over. I finally managed to fix the bloody mess of a network in Dad's office. I've never configured a network as complicated as this before and a huge thanks to all the people at www.broadbandreports.com who helped me so much. This network is so tough because I had to work with a hell of a lousy streamyx modem that Telekom provided and I had to isolate Dad's computer from the rest of the 20 computers on the 24 port network switch which was itself connected to a D-Link router so that I could set specific firewall rules for all those computers and Dad's computer was isolated from the rest so that it would not be limited by the firewall rules. Its basically DSL modem-->Linksys WRT54G wireless router-->D-Link wired router-->D-Link Gigabit 24 port switch. Phew, my mind is like swirling with ip addresses now as the Linksys and D Link have different ip addresses and the modem on its on has another set of ip address. So i was like doing trial and error the entire day until i finally hit on the correct combination. The entire network of computers is up and running how and the wireless is working perfect and so is the online video cameras and I just keep my fingers cross that everything goes well. YAY

And this are pictures of me experimenting with Mum's amazing mirror which has this amazing ability to magnify our reflection. I've plenty of Physics laws going thru my mind now. Wonder which one fits.

Going to Ahma's village tomorrow which is called Sua Teng which is translated as on the hill top which is actually this village called Gombang which is a few miles from the slightly bigger village called Pagoh. I can't wait to attack King Kong's coffee shop for the delicious toast kaya and butter bread and some Milo ais or Kopi or Teh Tarik. His coffee shop has always been that delicious since I was born. And of course I get to see my not-too-distant-cousin/relative who is 18 this year who got married and gave birth to a baby girl last year. Considering I'm already 17, this is amazing. I'm like an uncle now. (feels old)

Malaysia is Great

2007-06-19T01:37:00.000+08:00

The joy of escaping from that blessed country and coming back home is just incredible. There is this indescribable feeling of freedom and liberation. I think coming back this time is especially special and fun because Jie is back and I've somebody to talk to and fight with and share the fun with instead of like being at home in my room alone the entire day. And the thing is most of my friends are already freed from the constrains of school and transport and communication so a lot of us communicate through handphones and MSN and they can already drive around and have lots of free time so there have been an increase in gatherings and parties from people whom I've never went out with before. Anyway here's a picture from Wei Xiang's birthday party last night. And I have not met Jiun Farn and Wei Xiang since I left for Singapore 3 years ago. Yup, thats what constrains to communication, transport and school can do to you and your friends.
I think the 3 air cons in the house have to been switched on simultaneously for the night for like 2,3 years now. I've had a lot of fun this time. The only spoiler is the mid years directly after the holidays. I've to juggle practising the violin and studies and the joy of being at home and all the food galore. I wonder if any other superman out there have achieved this feat before. Just music alone is f***ing crazy. I mean other subjects don't have stuff that requires you to practise everyday for 2 hours at least and you have to be focused and well disciplined during those 2 hours and you have to be in good well awake conditions too and that is on top of the huge pile of music notes that you have to study. Its insane really to take music. I wonder how are the others coping. I figured out that if I'm not done revising by now I might as well give up because I'm going to fail anyway. But I'm guilt stricken.

Currently reading The Jester by James Patterson and Andrew Gross
Currently listening to 你不在-王力宏

My beauty of an on loan violin from Ms Kwok. Its a 20+ years old German Mattio Alban copy. The bow and the violin cost an incredible price of $6000. I'm very much in love with its aesthetics and the huge sound that it produces

My beauty of a violin case which Jie bought for me from London costing an amazing 70 pounds which is like $200 plus Sing dollar which is much cheaper and cooler than those $800 bucks BAM cases.

Lyrics

2007-06-17T21:52:00.000+08:00

As requested by Cleaven,here are the lyrics for 放假了 together with guitar chords :-)

放假了
C F G x3
C F G# G

C F G C
阳光洒进房间被闹醒了
C F G C
假期的第一天就开始了
Am Em F C
仿佛昨天还正在上课
Am Em Dm G
想起在讲堂里打瞌睡

Chorus
C G Am Em
又放假了心里不知该干什么
F C Dm G
昨天今天明天就过去了
C G Am Em
又放假了心里不知在想什么
F C Dm G
刚才现在当会儿就过去了
C F Gx3
好快
C F G# G

C F G C
阳光洒进房间被闹醒了
C F G C
假期的第一天就开始了
Am Em F C
看着窗外美丽的早晨
Am Em Dm G
我想忘掉所有的烦恼

Chorus
F C Dm G A#
刚才现在当会儿就过
A
去.......YEAH

D A Bm F#m
又放假了每次假期都过好快
G D Em A
昨天今天明天就过去了
D A Bm F#m
又放假了这次我要好好的过
G D Em A
刚才现在当会儿就过去了
D G A
好快
D G A# A
D G A G D

FLY, FLy, Fly,fly

2007-06-17T02:50:00.000+08:00

I'm back in Malaysia finally :D Just when everybody was starting to go back to hostel to mug, I'm going back home to play. Damn I am crazy and out of my mind.
Anyway, don't think so much about exams. This about the miracles of flying. Cos I was at the airport to pick up Jie today and its like so amazing thinking like 12 hours ago I was on the phone with her and she was like halfway around the world, 7 full hours behind me and 12 hours later she walks out pushing the trolley in front of me. Isn't the invention of the aeroplane simply AMAZING. Just think about it, in 12 hours, you go from fish n chips to asam fish. You go from angmohs to Chinese, Malays and Indians. You go from foreign land to HOME... Its just amazing... blows me away. I bet none of u guys have thought about aeroplanes before. I can't stop saying how amazing it is... Mind blowing stuff.
Ohhhhh, I can't wait to step out of house tomorrow and go and eat all the wonderful food that I miss so much. There is:
1. Asam fish
2. Bak kut teh
3. Mi hun kueh
4. Roti canai
5. Teh tarik
6. Everything the mamak stall sells
7. Laksa
8. Char kuay tiao
9. Wanton mee
10. Char siew rice
11. Cendol
12. Dough nuts
13. Goreng pisang
14. Ikan bakar
15. Mee rojak
to name a few. YAY... come quickly tomorrow

Now listening to 倔强-五月天

All the way my band :)

Last day

2007-06-16T02:22:00.000+08:00

Last night in H1-11-04, the room that I had grew to love especially during this few weeks where I was all alone. I love the darkness, I love the quietness when I tuck in to bed every night. Oh, I can enjoy a bit more when I go home tomorrow but after the hols its going to be back to 4 people in a room again. Cramped, bright, noisy... Sobs..
I wanna go home..

Now listening to 知足-五月天