MusICian

they aren’t exactly linked, but well, you’ll find out.

CNY was quite happening for me! played soccer on the morning of new year’s eve and had quite a bad fall after i challenged for the ball. abrasions all over! but ok lah, still managed to scrub my floor in the afternoon, go for reunion dinner in the evening and then paint the door at night! stayed up till i couldn’t take it anymore, went to sleep at about 3 or 4am. my ah ma stayed over so we didn’t go to her place on CNY morning. a few relatives dropped by, then my family went over to my paternal grandma’s place for bai nian and lunch. went over to grandaunt’s place for bai nian then went home to rest. the 1st day was more or less like that. quite tiring, though!

on day 2 my paternal grandma and uncles and aunties came over, before sweetie arrived in the afternoon. she made really yummy almond jelly for me and my family! so nice!! showed her my scores and photos, then my yearbooks, then we went KTV with the entire family! no luck at chinatown K-ster, so we went cineleisure kBox, belted 3 hours of crooning, then went over to the food centre opposite NLB for vegetarian dinner. food was not bad, but a little expensive! but ok, all went well, and my family sent sweetie home in my dad’s car. good day!

day 3 was interesting. sweetie and i went to look for the HSBC treetop walk at macritchie reservoir; found it with the help of gerald and a taxi uncle. walked a distance before we finally found the beginning of the route, replenished our resources (water) before carrying on the journey (one that we didn’t expect would last forever). climbed loads of stairs before we reached the bridge! the bridge is beautiful!! and the scenery is one of a kind! took some pictures and saw aza with her friends. walked down the bridge via neverending stairs, and we took a wrong turn that lead us to an extremely trecherous route that took us a few hours to complete! we walked rifle range road, one that we thought would lead us out, but it turned out to be somewhat 10km long!! and the trail was tough; it was slippery and difficult to cover, and was neverending. we found ourselves starving and aching all over when we finally reached whatever pitstops we could find. all in all we must have taken at least 4 stops at various places within the trail! when we finally got out, we were so tired we had to park ourselves at a bench for a while, before gathering enough reserve energy to move on for lunch!

speaking of which, lunch was a total disaster which involved some cheesy stall with a silly uncle who won’t leave us alone, while attempting to cheat me of $5. sickening.

finally when i sent sweetie home, i was exhausted. took a train home from her place, and got a call when i was about 10 mins away from home. rushed home to prepare, and some visitors came over almost immediately! still had some fun with them before seeing them off from my place. had dinner with a few of them, and chatted a bit about some of the problems they faced.

fruitful CNY!

phew, the weekend is finally over! it seems crazy to say this, but if you know what i’ve gone through, you’d be glad too that my weekend is over. haha.

start with friday, shall we? the morning didn’t start that well; had a little misunderstanding and couldn’t get out of it. attended pragmatics class (finally) at 9am, basically sat there without contributing to the class discussion at all, and figuring out how i should allocate my tickets after i swopped 2 of them with cloud. class ended early, and i went over to vivocity toastbox to get my favourite thick toast, slacking just a little while there. finally got on the train to sengkang, and spent most of the journey finishing up the seat allocation. had lunch at NCHS, with a few band members keeping me company, whilst trying to hurry me. haha. the prac didn’t go on that well… recruits did more theory than practical because the seniors needed their instruments for footdrill downstairs. there was only 1 saxophone (4 players), no french horns (2 players), 4 cornets (5 players) and 4 clarinets (6 players). oh well, didn’t manage to do many exercises of SOE. the horror was when i checked the members at their footdrill session… and when i took them personally as well. gave them a lecturing session on effort, and the lack of ambition and desire in their pursuit. i hate doing this; it always makes me feel very bad. i left NCHS that day wondering if they could do a proper video on saturday, and i was indeed very very stressed up. went for a pool session with victor, renjie and mr png, destressed quite a little! then had a good talk with mr png before going home. sir, i’m glad to be of help to you

saturday began with me waking up very late (too drained from the day before), rushing down to PRSS for sectionals. did some constructive work with the clarinets, shaped some sound, worked phrasing. they looked happy with the sectional! then watched them do their drill video before rushing down to changkat for theirs. sir did the recording while i went to have lunch with the 2 tutors. went back and saw the poor drum major under serious attack; he was so blur… went to NCHS for their prac, did sectionals with the percussion cos mrs angeline tan couldn’t come. didn’t manage to work much (in my opinion, but at least i explained some important concepts); i think they are quite worried about the drill session after that, especially joe and poh yih. eventually, they produced a Gold Medal effort, and the drill session was done in a record breaking 1 take for stationary drill and 2 takes for marching! worried the hell out of me…

stoned at KFC after that, half expecting the NCHS ppl to drop by for dinner. marked the recruits’ mini theory test till i fell asleep! seriously. dozed off a few times. finally the NCHS ppl came and i was able to stay awake. went off for reuinion dinner at grandma’s and was practically falling asleep, if not for terry chatting with me about NUS. strange, we never used to chat! anyway, was glued to the TV after that, an old show on TV. went home dead beat, sweating in dad’s car cos the air-con is faulty. kaputt. had a good chat with sweetie on msn before literally dozing off on the laptop. went to bed feeling at least a sense of accomplishment.

sunday, band prac day! woke up at nearly 1pm, cooked noodles for myself while i rummaged through my emails and other stuff. got to mus’art very late, sight-read overture to candide (the Eb clarinet part is really tough…) and also theresa teng’s songs. the medley is incredibly long: 6 songs together! play till lips burst. and the title translation is so cheesy: when you will come back again, a lot of words, i only care about you… practised a bit of immer kleiner (half expecting the piece to arrive today) before going over to NUS subway for dinner. as my earlier premonitions, immer kleiner arrived! but the parts weren’t enough so we couldn’t start that prac. stressed! NUSWS prac was quite productive but i was dead tired and couldn’t make the most out of it! did give it my best shot though, and benefitted

there goes the weekend. and also all the excuses i gave myself for sleeping till 1230 today

well, everything just seems so messed up right now. work, buang. school, buang. come home, see outstanding bills, buang. practising for solo, buang. misunderstandings and differences, buang. so this week can be summarised with only one word: BUANG.

but i’ve gotta have faith! work’s gonna be ok, NCWO will pull themselves together and deliver a good drill tape, i’ll do much better for my essay and quizzes, i’ll get pay coming in to pay for the bills, i’ll get sufficient practise and do a good solo, i’ll settle the misunderstandings and differences. so maybe it’s not so ‘buang’ after all!

anyway, thanks to cloud, i’ve finally settled my ticketing problems. my SL very blur lah, give us the wrong numbers. but ok, things are more or less cleared up!

i must have faith, and not falter. because my ambition of achieving a Gold with Honours for this band has not yet come to a halt. and i will fuel this ambition and push them towards this goal. no matter what happens, i will not falter. have faith, have heart, and we will achieve it with one mind, one heart. let’s have a ‘Gold with Honours’ effort from every one of us!

tomorrow will be a better day!

oh where was i? i was literally falling asleep last night when i was blogging. oh, concert rehearsal!

yah, so concert rehearsals were going on, and i was kind of falling asleep (too tired). but they went on fine, and after the kids went on stage to rehearse, i was a little more free. some trouble came when i asked them to go collect their food themselves as i had to rehearse. the person in charge refused to give them their food, saying that he wants me to get the food for them. argh. as if i didn’t need to rehearse!! actually i didn’t need to lah, the piece was Ross Roy (played many times liao). so ok, i got them their food, briefed them a little, and everything was ok.

my own dinner was a more relaxing affair. sweetie and i went to sit at the stairs with our fried rice and i ate slowly, not wanting to rush and have no time for resting. after dinner, it was time to organise them again, and this time without much screw ups. everything went on smoothly till the concert. played the best Space Battleship Yamato yet, and one very messy Danceries, before going down to get them organised again. after they played, i handed them over to Tim, who brought them into the concert hall to watch the rest of the concert. intermission was kind of short (relatively), and sweetie and i met up with nick, huishan, daniel, qicai and i forgot who else (oops…). got some chocolate stick that looked like 3-in-1 kopi, which i later devoured at home.

the second half was without confusion, and i played like there’s no tomorrow! everything was ok, entrances were not missed, notes weren’t too far away. and West Side Story was the best we’ve ever attempted! not forgetting ending the concert with a very high note (on a very high note too)

sent sweetie back to eunos before getting on one of the last trains back home myself. so i squeezed in some bits of time to blog last night after i bathed, but unconciousness took over, so yup.

anyway, joe, it’s ok. like i’ve told you, it’s better to falter now and realise that we’ve got a long way to go than to triumph and be complacent! let’s do our best, NCWO

just came back from one of the most tiring days of my life! the whole day was filled with music, the object of my passion, and i was on the ball when my attention towards music needed to pull through. well, that is about the only time i come alive anyway, right? so yup.

the day started at 5:30am; the birds haven’t even begun chirping. i dragged myself out of bed (had a late night again due to a busy friday), went for one of the coldest showers in my life (the air was just too cold) and ironed my pants. ok, the rest of my prep sequence needn’t be reported so i got out of my house at 6:30am. travelled to NCHS, reached slightly late, sorted out a few things and some mild warm up, then we headed to Mayflower Sec! i was still quite ’seh’ anyway.

ran through pieces in the prep room, did some minor tuning, and consoled some poor soul who was too stressed up to play properly. she nearly cried (i was so worried that she would), but luckily she didn’t. mentally prepared them for what was up and we went to the hall. after that i was basically sidelined with nothing much to do. and i suddenly became the NCHS teacher-in-charge. Mr Tan claims to have forgotten my name. seems like it isn’t the only thing he forgot. haha.

listened to 5 schools in all, including NCHS, and i did my own evaluation. learnt a few good things, saw a few bad things. and then one of the worst moments of my day… sitting around doing nothing, wondering about loads of things, mentally lamenting my predicament and such. had a talk with Mr Ting about teaching as a career, and realised that i probably should get back my piano skills again. not that i have much to begin with

maybe i’m petty. i dunno.

anyway, i was rather lost after i left the school. rushed lunch and just hailed a cab since i was really in the middle of nowhere. and i was so sleepy i fell asleep many times during the cab journey. when i finally reached, i had to really get my things prepared really fast, as the rehearsals have started. tiring rehearsal, silly management problems, trouble with the school timings and well… it was just a whole big mess.

i think i’ll end here. i know it’s abrupt, but i’m really falling asleep. dozed off again. sharks. ok, i promise to update REAL soon