Wednesday, January 31, 2007.1:00 PM

You Are Somewhat Machiavellian

You're not going to mow over everyone to get ahead... But you're also powerful enough to make things happen for yourself. You understand how the world works, even when it's an ugly place. You just don't get ugly yourself - unless you have to!

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You are "Sleeping"

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Tuesday, January 30, 2007.2:07 AM

Having said so much, I still expect. That leaves a bit of hope. Something for you to look forward to. Though I can't help feeling upset when things happen that don't fall in together with my expectations.

I have to try to NOT expect anything (does that sound contradictory to my previous argument???) from matters that are quite beyond my control.

John Lubbock:
What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

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Expectations...

Sometimes my silly brain can't help but start to wonder about things. Asking myself questions which I can't get answers to...and then in the end try to answer them myself.

Anyway, was pondering about certain expectations that I have.

High expectations often lead to disappointments. So may I conclude that having low/bad expectations make one happier? Hmz...

For instance, going to a concert expecting good performance. When the performance doesn't meet your expectations, you get really disappointed. However, if you had not expected much out of the concert or given any thought to it at all, things would be quite different. Rosier.

That said, expectations don't pop up from the magician's socks or what. They are born from past experiences or simply the lack of it.

Past experiences of good concerts lead to you having high(er) expectations of future performances. Vice versa.

However, if you don't have any prior experience, most likely you'll have an idealistic (cynical) view and go with high (low) expectations.

Being human, to not have any expectations (as a result of being un- idealistic or un-cynical) is almost impossible. Or perhaps that's not the case for people who don't think or ponder about things (by will or by nature). The more you think, the unhappier you're likely to be. You don't want to have high expectations cos you're afraid of disappointment. Similarly, when you go for low expectations, you get sucked into pessimistic thoughts and get sadder. Both are equally depressing.

And IS there actually such a thing as ZERO expectation at all? I think not. Expectations can only be good or bad. Either positive or negative.

So conclusion is, I should be simple-minded and go about doing things without pondering at all.

.:. 0C o m m e n t s.:.

Monday, January 29, 2007.1:13 AM

Highly trained Monkeys

I was uploading video clips onto Youtube. The video was almost completely uploaded and...this happened. !&$(*#$(*%)!@&*)$%......

500 Internal Server Error

Sorry, something went wrong.A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation.

Please report this incident to customer service.Also, please include the following information in your error

report:oDGIVyu4LeHjoPoSn5ExxECUUOte2ODcDgYThPxHp72hBaeKAXNWIyNsJDMg CvPaAg1n_fWrmdzdrE0whY2WpF-.............................

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Cheena Opera part 1

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Cheena Opera Part 2

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Cheena Opera Part 3

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Cheena Opera Part 4

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Saturday, January 27, 2007.5:08 PM

Recital

I think my Repertoire for my 1st of March Junior Recital shall be:

1. Bassoon Concerto in F major - Weber
2. Variations et Rondo - Kalliwoda

Haven't consulted Laoshi though...but I doubt he'll have any violent objections over this.



My reed blanks have been lying soaked in water for weeks.
Have to start making them tonight. I actually found a page that showed some reed measurements on a small notebook that I keep inside my drawer... *phew*

.:. 0C o m m e n t s.:.

Ms Suaku learns something new!

Woohooo...we're always learning something new.

Internet has just become MORE interesting now!

Please wait patiently for more updates on this blog. keke...

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Friday, January 26, 2007.5:38 PM

Little Prince from Vietnam

Was in the library searching on LINC for bassoon music.

The Little Prince came along. *He's my best friend from the Conservatory*
(He sees Indonesian girl A at the computer and goes up to her)

LP: Hello *A*!
Girl A: Hello
LP: What are you doing?
Girl A: Oh I'm writing emails.
LP: Writing emails here ah? (seems Singlish has rubbed off on him a bit)
Girl A: Haha...

(Indonesian girl B comes into the library - LP has tried to hit on her before)


Girl B: (mutters something in Bahasa Indonesia to Girl A - guess it means she's late and she's apologising)
Girl A: Hello *B*!
LP: Hello *B*!
Girl A: Let's go!
LP: Where are you going?
Girl B: We're going dating.
LP: Where? Tell me where. Maybe I can follow you.

(Me: *biting back my lip to prevent myself from laughing out loud*)

Girl B: We're GOING DATING.
Girl A: Yes, we're dating.
LP: ??? What's dating? What do you mean you're dating?

(Me: .....*faint*.....)

Girl A: You don't know what is dating???
Girl B: *laughs* Yes we're dating! Haha...Bye!!!

(The 2 girls leave LP behind and walk out of the library)

(LP appears despondent and walks over towards me)

(ME: Please don't come over and sit next to me (I whispered under my breath)

(LP walks to the computer terminal behind me and sits down)

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What's happening to me?

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Can the Earth stop rotating now?

I don't feel like doing anything anymore.
There're a thousand things that're going through my head and they keep gnawing at my brain.
So much so that I can't even process a single thing at all.

Unable to do anything now.

My heart is pounding furiously.

And I feel nauseous.

Feel like throwing away all I have at hand and escape to somewhere far away from here.
Where I don't have to see anyone or anything remotely reminding me that I have a recital coming and I have yet to FIX my repertoire.
Or the essay and project researches and readings I have to do for my music history classes.

Help.

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STRESS...

I originally decided on this repertoire for my upcoming recital this 1st of March.

• There're so many fast-tonguing passages.
• My tongue goes limp after playing the Weber.
• Overall this piece is TOO tiring.
• The work is too famous for my own good.

.:. 0C o m m e n t s.:.

Thursday, January 25, 2007.2:17 AM

I want to take videos on my phone and post it on my blog.

But first, I need to get a clever phone. Not like the one I have now that hangs up on people calling me and shuts itself down thereafter.

I like Sony Ericsson phones. How about the SE K800i 3.2 megapixels camera phone? *same picture quality as my digicam mind you*


Key Features of Sony Ericsson K800i (3G) Tri-band
*3.2 Megapixels Camera with AutoFocus and 16 x Digital Zoom
*Built-in Xenon Camera Flash
*Image & Video Stabilizer Function
*BestPic™ Function
*Red-Eye Reduction Feature
*Secondary in-built VGA front camera for video calls
*Supported Video formats: MP4, H.263, 3GPP and RealVideo8
*Video Recording, Playback & Streaming
*Supported Messaging: SMS, MMS, EMS, Video MMS, IM and E-Mail (POP3 & IMAP4)
*Supported Audio:a) MP3, M4A, MP4 (AAC, AAC+, eAAC+), XMF, WMA, RHZ, AMR-NB/WBb) 3GPP, G-MIDI, SP-MIDI, eMelody, iMelody, Mobile XMF
*72-Chord Polyphonic Ringtones
*Video Ringtone (up to 10 seconds)
*Supported Connectivity: Infra-Red, Bluetooth (A2DP supported incl.) and USB 2.0
*64MB Internal Memory
*Memory Stick Micro™ M2™ support (up to 2GB)
*Music Player
*Voice Recorder
*FM Radio
*Picture Blogging (!!!)
*Video DJ
*PC Synchronization
*Java MIDP 2.0
*GPRS
*WAP 2.0
*xHTML
*Supports Chinese


It's been out in the market for some time now. Both my sisters have the newest SE walkman phones and they've warned me against getting it.

They got it at a steal of $99 only.

Buggers.
Or how about this girly phone N7390?

Key Features of Nokia 7390 (3G) Tri-band
*3 Megapixel Camera with autofocus and integrated flash
*Theme
*MMS
*Expansion Memory using MicroSD (Up to 2GB)
*Support Video Call
*WAP Browsing (xHTML/WML)
*GPRS/EGRPS/HSCSD
*JAVA
*FM Radio with Visual Radio
*3GPP Streaming & Video download
*Digital Music Player (MP3, AAC, eACC+ and MIDI files)
*Self-recorded/Downloaded Video Clip as Screensaver (3gpp)
*Support Chinese
*Bluetooth

My Starhub contract is FINALLY ending soon!!! I can smell it.

.:. 5C o m m e n t s.:.

Post-concert

Surprising concert. Trumpets hit the jackpot on the Festive Overture. At least they hit my jackpot cos that was really the only time I've heard that opening so harmoniously played.

Beat this surprise - W.C.'s S.S. with that retarded^ tune was the CROWD FAVOURITE. O.K....maybe not all of it was retarded. The 2nd movement (title: a vocal genre that Bach wrote alot in his lifetime) and 老舞蹈 sound rather nice and peaceful lah...

My first very obvious embarassing blunder came in the Arutunian Trumpet Concerto. I swear on my dear life that I am NEVER going to cut/scrape/fine-tune my reeds just before concerts again. AG even warned me against cutting/scraping since it'd disturb the balance of the reed. How bloody daring of me.

Ok, go on and laugh.

*Kiang dio ho. Mai geh kiang.*

^represents only the opinions of the author of this blog and no one else's.

Labels: Concerts

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Saturday, January 20, 2007.10:05 AM

Mr. Deity Episode 3: Mr. Deity and The Light

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Friday, January 19, 2007.5:16 PM

GREAT. Now i'm down with flu, sore throat and cough. And this doctor didn't even ask me to open my mouth to check my throat. The even bigger problem is I don't think my sore throat will get any better. Cos the lozenges she prescribed for me are the exact same brand and flavour that
I've been taking for days. Kept dozing off in Orchestra just now - SHOULD have asked for non-drowsy formulas.

Guess who I bumped into after I left the clinic and went down to YIH canteen for lunch?

My PRIMARY school classmate!

Strange how we're able to recognize each other's faces and call out names. I blurted out his TWIN's name though. Haha...He's never really changed. Still not-so-tall but he's muscular now!

And he rides a bike.

Cool.

Found out from him during lunch that he's now into his final semester at Medicine and his twin has graduated from Engineering. Both went to VS, VJC and NUS. They're even in the same CCA - NUS Canoe Polo.

It's amusing how some twins do everything together and other twins are like the North Pole and South Pole.

---What a SMALL world---

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Wednesday, January 17, 2007.7:39 PM

Sore throat! Sigh...
I think I'll do the Junior Recital on 1st March. Horrible timing at 4.30pm though. Is it good or bad to have almost everyone UNABLE to come for my recital? Lao Zhang said, "Good! Do it!!!" ... =

No ideas what pieces to play yet.

1.Elgar's Romance?
2.David's Concertino?
3.Reicha's Bassoon Sonata? (very boring leh this one)
4.Milde's Concertino? (quite short and a boring, albeit it has a nice tune to it)
5.Bitsch's Concertino? (Nice...)
6.Some unaccompanied stuff like Gordon Jacob's Partita? (Risky)

Any ideas?

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Tuesday, January 16, 2007.9:58 PM

Video Games Live - Classic game themes Orchestrated

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A night in Fantasia 2006 trailer

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Princess Mononoke - Eminence Orchestra - ANIF06

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Mozart Duo

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Jay Chou - Ju Hua Tai

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You Are 51% Feminine, 49% Masculine

You are in touch with both your feminine and masculine sides. You're sensitive at the right times, but you don't let your emotions overwhelm you. You're not a eunuch, just the best of both genders.

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Your Sloth Quotient: 36%

You're a little lazy, but normally you're a very energetic and motivated person. Don't beat yourself up over a little laziness every now and then. You do need your downtime!

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Useless Meetings!

What's the big fuss about all these meetings? I'm not the problem kid you want to talk to. So please. Get OFF my back!

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Quintet

Kaitze suggested getting together someday next week to play through some wwind quintet pieces. We've got Nielsen and Ibert...and maybe will find some classical not-note-busy pieces. Cheryl came up with Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik and she wants to read through Prokofiev's R&J for wwind quintet...

So here I am listening to Naxos online for possible nice quintet pieces we can try out that hopefully YST library might have. Came across this recording of the Estria Wind Quintet playing pieces by Stewart Grant, Ka Nin Chan, Andrew P. MacDonald, Robert LeMay, and Dennis Gougeon. It's an all canadian production, from the quintet members to composers featured. All of them are contemporary music, and as many of you might know, SOME contemporary works sound noisy, irrelevant, makes no musical sense, and all the notes are stringed together like randomly picking a bead out from a box full of colourful beads of different size and texture and putting it together to make a necklace - it might all make mathematical sense but who cares about that? We're talking about music, not maths here. Not to be rude to some modern composers, but you don't write music to be different or win some awards for the Most-avant-garde composition in the 21st C. And playing contemporary music is challenging. Stop trying to make us do some weird things using our instruments and we are humans. We have limits. I don't have a tongue that can flag continuously at an interval of a split second (ok, my tongue is slow...)

Back to the quintet pieces that we'll read next week...
On the other hand, contemporary pieces make classical ones sound like nursery tunes. Simple and lyrical...the way I like it. :)
I think we'll do some Reicha's Quintets.

Labels: Chamber music

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I like the black minimalist template!

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