Wednesday, May 21, 2008.3:06 AM

Berlin Philharmoic's home on fire

News below taken from BBC.com. And not too long ago, news of Simon Rattle's wavering support from the orchestra members surfaced; he may be ousted from the Orchestra, which will be the first in the orchestra's history if it really happens.

Fire at Berlin orchestra's home

German firefighters are battling to extinguish a fire at the home of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra.

All staff and visitors at the concert hall have been safely evacuated, a spokesman for the fire brigade said.

Firefighters are trying to reach the source of the blaze, via the roof of the distinctive 1960s building.

"We don't believe anyone is in danger as the fire appears to be [confined] to the roof," fire crew spokesman Marco Trenn said.

Bassoonist Stefan Schweigert said the fire brigade had allowed musicians into the building to remove instruments that had been left in lockers overnight, although some, such as pianos, were too large to move.

It is unclear what caused the fire. The area around the building has been cordoned off.

Firefighters are in the process of cutting holes in the building's tent-shaped zinc roof to get at the fire. Reports say the building has suffered major damage.

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Firefighters on the rooftop of the Berlin Philharmonic building trying to put out the fire

"We can rule out a total write-off of the Philharmonic," firefighters spokesman Jens-Peter Wilke told n-tv television.

"But the building is obviously in danger. We're doing all we can to rescue this important cultural site in Berlin."

The Philharmonic, Berlin's leading orchestra, is directed by Sir Simon Rattle.

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Monday, May 19, 2008.11:29 PM

Imitation of vietnamese manicurists. Hilarious.

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Funny prank in the office! I have one of those powerpoint slides if you want! :D

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Saturday, May 17, 2008.4:40 AM

NTU Student survey - Funny comments

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Nasi Babi Ori 2

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Thursday, May 15, 2008.1:38 AM

The Internet is for porn avenue Q original - Video

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Tuesday, May 13, 2008.3:40 PM

4 Years after...

Goodbye, student life! And on to the cut-throat world of the reality.

Below are some pics taken at the Graduation dinner in school on 9th May, 08.




I swear these were our BIGGEST smiles EVER! :D



We were trying to take photos with the video mode. Lol

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New Music?

What's with this obsession of creating newer and more obscure music that no one seems to like?

Music in the early ages were used to accompany rituals. Later on, they became music for entertainment - to accompany dances, singers - and so on. There's no need for me to go into the brief historical development of music cos it will bore you to death.

20th-century composers such as John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Adams and D. Shostakovich are among the most prominent. Other than Shostakovich being more 'conventional' as compared to the rest mentioned, most works by these modern composers are, interesting to play at best. I certainly wouldn't term most of these sounds as music. Let me just show you one video of John Cage's Variations III to demonstrate my point.


The human voice, crumpling of paper, wound-up toy 'marching' around in an area surrounded by clarinets, man banging his head on a wall, buzzing your lips while submerging your face in the water...all these form a piece of music? Isn't it incredible then to discover that while you're sitting in your office in front of your desktop typing, you're hearing music of the combined sounds of air-con vent rumbling, that printer, fax machine and colleagues walking around whispering/laughing? No! How can anyone call that music? These so-called pieces of music are merely showpieces, more to please audiences visually than aurally.

Then there are those compositions which sound like gibberish and have no visual effects to credit for. Like the new composition that I'm playing, it causes everyone great distress. Apart from the lack of melody (the atonality of it), the very frequent change of time signatures, tempo and bad rhythm/note-relations make the singer and musicians sound and look spastic.

Compositions take a great amount of time to complete and I salute composers for that. But do you really enjoy writing works that don't sound logical or nothing vaguely like music? Perhaps I am too conservative to lash out at composer like this. And I will bet my bassoon on it that if people find classical music too cheem, these new compositions aren't going to help the music scene find new audiences at all.

So what is the way to go if new daring compositions (that don't sound vaguely like music) don't draw audiences and classical music is far too boring/cheem for people to enjoy? I have no idea either. My only suggestion for you composers to save yourselves is to start writing sane works which make musicians and audiences happy. You don't want your audiences to start a riot like what happened to Stravinsky's premieres of Rite of Spring...

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Monday, May 12, 2008.1:44 PM

New skin!

Decided to be more daring with my choice of blogskins. Had wanted to choose some bright, cheerful and kiddy skins, but i don't think it can get past my conscience.

- I'm not 15yrs old anymore - LOL.

Think this skin has more cheerful colours than my previous ones. Don't like those emo skins...too depressing for sane humans to read.

And I added many emoticons inside my Blogger posts!
Naruto ones!
Pukka ones.

Dunno what this is.

And... The normal ones.

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