Of Indians, percussions and a whole lot of dancer-drummers...
Dear TomHa,
Sometimes, I just hate saturdays as Saturdays mean 7 full hours of tutoring for me. Oh my Oh my, this is like the toughest day to go by, especially when you have to take on an uphill task of teaching brats whom I am teaching. They just make hell a heavenly place to live in. And, to make matters worse, I have an even steeper task of having to teach an Indian chinese today. Not that I am a racist or anything, but this is seriously too challenging a task for me to complete. First, she is not a mixed-blood, and she does not take chinese in school. Thus, that makes her as pure as carbon ore and I am expected to pressure her into a shiny piece of diamond. How hard is that and I believe anyone who had taken any elementary chemistry should know. However, all that I can say that whatever the little indian girl lacks in, she made it up with her enthusiasm to learn. Great to teach, despite all her apparent ineptitude today. Afterall, can you imagine yourself learning Tamil? I bet it would be 10000 times harder and the tamil teachers would be laughing at all your ineptitude. Attitude, as I always say, it is all that counts, as long as you don't have insolent brats to go along and disturb the class. Sigh.. Headaches aplenty from now on... It is like teaching a baby to speak?? Let's see what the lessons from now on will have to offer.

I was just so glad when the clock strikes 5 and I am able to leave the tuition centre. Somehow, it felt like the burden of imparting knowledge had gone off your shoulders and you feel 100 kg lighter. So, I proceed to locate some of my long-time-no-see friends to go and watch an open-air concert which was held in conjunction with the Singapore Arts Festival. However, plenty of disappointments followed. Some of them had PMS, citing reasons like I hate all the drummers in the world, some, when I ask if they want to hang out, just replied I wanna hang myself, some had prior engagements, some say they had no appreciation for arts and some say they want to go home to sleep. So, no long-time-no-see gathering and I turned to my trusty section for companionship and about half of them oblige. How nice. But, I only have this to say in the end, after this debacle of finding people for gathering. I suppose that when people invite you to an outing which even he or she does not know to be interesting or not, and does not care if you will derile him/her should the event turn out to be rather disinteresting, this person is seriously treating you like a friend. Afterall, would you ask someone whom you have little acquaintance with to an event which you can't ensure to keep him/her entertained? I am not one of this kind of people. I belong to the former.

So the event is named "drumming explosion" and as the name suggests,it is a concert of percussion ensemble. More than that. It also involved sightings and hearings of very special instruments, of people imitating percussion music in Arab/Indian manner Da-to-na, da-to-na, ka-badom-ka-ba-doo, of a goofy Josh Groban look-alike who can play the chinese flute instead of singing "You Raise Me UPPPPP..." in opera tenor like voice, of visually stunning dance cum percussion ensembles on those kind of lion dance drums, and well, I would give it 5 popcorns out of 5. Highly arty and entertaining as well and I think it is just like those that you are willing to pay for to watch in the esplanade. Nice, open air some more and with an irritating MC who is out to be sarcastic to everybody and thus provide more laughs, it is really ermm a good concert to be at.

Cheers!

Of Jazz and Alternative...
Dear TomHa,
Been rather obsessed with this two genres of music recently, or should I say, been rather obsessed with 2 artists recently. Under the influence of Wenyang, I decided to try out listening to Diana Krall, a jazz singer with a rather deep voice, I must say, and I never liked her from the start, as in I never liked her before Wenyang introduced his love for her to me (Well, wy loves a lot of women.. Hehe.. joking..). Decided to investigate his obssesion for this artiste who is not really the prettiest of female singer, nor the sexiest. Hence, with a little patience, I started d***** her songs and realised, She must be the best female singer next to Alicia Keys to sing while playing the piano!! (Well, I only know these 2 sings and play the piano at the same time, so.. yah). But that is not all, watching performing at the Montreal Jazz Festival yesterday managed to make me realise why Wenyang was so obssessed with her. She is a great performer! I mean, where can you find a female singer who plays the piano and sings with that much charisma on stage? Maybe Alicia Keys, but the way she performed made me regret very much not going for her concert last March/April... Very seh It is those kind of performance which only performers who is really seasoned and talented can conjure. Not to mention that she has got a great band and the drummer, who, although has a large pot belly and is balding (Hard to imagine Andrew like that in the future), is so deft with his drumsticks that conjures a "WOW" in me, stunned, petrified, scared of the fact that there exists this kind of human being in the world. With Krall's strong vocals and piano skills, music is certainly not for the weak jointed...

Now to the next genre of music, Alternative.. This time, it is again introduced to me by another friend, Yewei (hard to imagine this guy who indulges in WWE's Triple H can actually introduce decent music), no matter. Coldplay is certainly one of those bands that does not disappoint on delivering their band of music. Afterall, it is hard to find a band which blends piano and rock band so nicely. In fact, listening to Coldplay's music sort of makes me think that they are a new age band instead of an alternative band. Also, it is hard to find any singer better than Chris Martin in singing and playing the piano yet still shaking her and there like a rock maniac and do not look like he is going to swallow the microphone (refer Rob Thomas). Their new album, X&Y is a must-listen record. Somehow, you'll just feel that this band is going to be bigger than U2's ever going to be, but that would be for many decades to come...

Of Japanese, samurais and a MC who saved her best for the last..
Dear TomHa,
Just came back from the RV/Yuhua combined alumni band cum PJC cum Yuhua Secondary concert. It was a rather rojak combination and seriously, the first half of the concert was rather unintersting. PJC conjured a repertoire which includes songs that I had played during those days and their competition piece. Loud and run here and there. Typical Ms Chan, as expected, after 4 years and more under her baton. Yuhua, being not the band of its imperial past, at least sounded better in VCH than in SCH. Their tones are more full this time. Perhaps they had eaten, I don't know. Songs are Ms Chan typical and heard from the MC that their competition piece is composed out of the composer's reaction to the Iraq War. Come on, give me a break. The composer can really do better than that to reflect his reflection towards the Iraq War. Other than the use of the whip here and there which I construed to be a parody to the American Soldier's manhandling of the Iraqi prisoner-of-wars, and the very loud music, I cannot feel anything out of it that is in any sense reflective of his feelings towards this ill-advised war that does not seem to be going to end anytime.

The alumni band fared better in my opinion, although not as well as I would like to have them to be. Well, I must say that this is a rather unfair comment, thus I really hate going to concerts having already listened to the pieces somewhere before, especially those performed by the professionals. The alumni band performed 4 movements of Riverdance, and having seen it on TV countless times, and listened to the pros performing the music countless times, my opinion on the song had become fixed and thus I judge with already a fixed template of how the song should be played and making comments on it would not be fair anymore. Afterall, 1. they are not professional players but players who gave up their recreational time for the love of what they are doing, 2. There should never be a fixed for anything concerning music and the arts. However, being the person I am, I watched them with a coloured spectacles(有涩眼镜）. My comments don't count..

Anyway, the MC only revealed her true self at the end of the concert, after all gifts were presented. Do you all want an encore?? And then it appears that the audience got a rather rude awakening or something did they realise that Oh, I haven't shout encore hor.. then they started Encore! Encore! Encore! Then the MC, seeing that the audience do want an encore, replied Oh ok, then I go and invite the band and Ms Chan for the encore piece So funny, and so is the encore piece which I think should be known as A Samurai's Seppuku (hope I get the spelling correct anyway..) The piece began with a very Japanese flavour and it transported me back to those pre-Meiji Japan which is very feudal and all the Samurais and Ninjas are all around. Somehow, I felt that there is a tinge of majestic sadness and pride in it that is very reminiscent of a seppuku. However, it is only a prolouge. Then the music changed in the middle portion, which I contrued to be that the samurai is thinking back to his happy days together with his lover. However, fate just love to make fun of them as the woman that he had fell in love with is his master's daughter and the master refused to give him his blessings for the both of them. Very Romeo and Juliet.. Then, rain and lightning, under the influence of his deep love for his master's daughter, he killed his master in a moment of folly. He had actually killed his master! Oh, what dishonour, what had he done? He had disregarded the code of a samurai and with what pride and integrity would he have left to live in this world? Fast forward to the present and rain and thunder. The samurai sipped a few mouths of hard liquor as he prepares himself for the pain that would ensued. He drew his katana from its sheath. Harusame is its name. The sword that had served him only too well in his pursuit to be the best in Japan. It had helped him slay many formidable foes but now, the last blood that it would draw from would be from himself. What irony, what sarcasm. With a deep breath and one hard piercing stroke, the Samurai had ended his life. Blood gushed out of his body and painted the walls red as the piece ended in a the band holding a note of very conflicting chords. Although a deed of dishonour, he had died at the very least,with honour, and integrity...

Like always, I think i think too much...

Dear TomHa,
I think I am a big big big poser. I don't play soccer, in fact, I hate playing soccer but I bought a pair of street soccer shoes yesterday. Why? Because they are really cheap and I heard that they are really durable so, $29 for a pair of shoes that I would never utilise for its intended purpose.

Been reading a lot of 鲁迅 lately and I must say that his works are really good and if you look deeper, can be rather funny as he describes those Qing government and their policies as cannibals, setting up a fictional town and drawing up a government which is just the Qing government only for him to mock at them and thus not getting into trouble himself. The parallels are plenty and I was having a rather good time finding out. Woohoo! Chinese cultural revolution rocks! Long live...ermm.. better not say it out.. Blogs are no longer safe.. Hehe..

Dear TomHa,
The Eastern Conference playoffs had been concluded and like it shares a similar story with the Western Conference finals... The top seeds had been KOed out the contest for the illustrious World Championship Title. (funny how this sounds but an american league calling itself a world contest?? Product of the Cold War I guess..) But my point does not lie entirely on the 2 respective champions of the respective conference, but it lies in the knocking out of the Pacers in the Eastern Conference semi-finals. Reggie Miller retired after the semi-final, after being a hall of famer without a ring within his fingers...

Reggie Miller, one of the game's best shooters along the free throw line and beyond the arc had his best chance for the shot at the title in the year 2000 but unfortunately, the year was not made for him, but rather, it signals the start of the Shaq-Kobe dynasty of a hat trick of championship rings. It was rather sad, given that he had spent almost a decade before having his best chance to lay his hands on the very much coveted trophy. But it was never meant to be. He was just born at the wrong time.

He reached his peak at a time when it was Michael Jordan's era but a he had put up a fight nonetheless as who could forget how he played Michael Jordan all around the court, scoring his career best but to only see an even better Jordan in the next few games to knock his pacers out of contention for the championship. Michael Jordan is simply the god of basketball, Reggie Miller was only a superhuman, and I do not think that a superhuman can actually contest god's will. Hence, next come his best shot in 2000, but unfortunately, Shaq got really fat and strong, while Kobe Bryant proves too much for his team's denfence. They lost.. so near yet so far again..

Sigh, this is perhaps one of the sport's greatest tragedy, that fate would bring a person so near to immortalhood to only bring him down to the deepest of abyss. Now, as his legs and heart are no longer willing to aid him in his quest for history making, he had retired and there we go... a miserable tragedy made in a person of immeasurable talent.. Goodbye, 3-points and free throws.. this is the era of power dunks and lay-ups.. elegance is no more...

人生南北多歧路。将想神仙，也要凡人做。
百代兴亡朝复暮，江风吹到前朝树。　功名富贵无凭据。费尽心情，总把流光误。　浊酒三杯沉醉去，水流花谢知何处。

Dear TomHa,
Quote this from a book I bought at the World Book Fair yesterday. 儒林外史, guess anyone who had any affiliation with chinese literature should know how famous this ancient novel should be. The quote describes some of life philosophies which I had sadly failed tracing the author of it. Afterall, I suspect that it is quoted from another person by the author of the book. It just does not sound like the author's words. Never mind, shall not play this stupid hide and seek game for long. For those who could not comprehend the meaning of the quote, in direct translation, it says, life north south has a lot of obstacles. Generals, premieres, gods also needs ordinary people to fill up the posts. Hundreds of dynasties boom and bust, the river wind blows down the tree of the past era. You don't leave anything with your rank and riches, while spending all your feelings, and get your priorities wrong. 3 rounds of wine and you go drunk, the river flows, the flower fades and you don't know where you are... Hence it just means that riches and power are only worldy possession. Men spend their lifetime chasing it, but in the end, when they really got it, it just does not seem to be as good as what they had thought it out to be. From the past till the present, who had actually seen through this??

Anyway, enough literature for this entry, not many would have understand what I was saying anyway.. Not much revelation in anything this week, not much interesting fact this past week. Just that I really hope that my some of my old friends would turn up for the alumni dinner, and we could have some good gathering. Found that the advancement of technology might have shrunk the relative distance between people, but at the mean time, it had also made the distances between people further and further apart. I know, this topic had been everywhere on the general papers top 10 popular questions but in the end of the day, don't you think that it is so serious a problem that we must address? Now that everyone has a handphone, where SMS is the very much cheaper way to communicate, when is the last time that you chat with somebody hurting your eardrums in the process? Perhaps it is just me, I am not sure. But somehow, I still find the old way of getting to your friends through the household phone to be a more intimate way of communication and also, it apparently reduces the hazards of radiation.

I guess the recent spate of missing personnels had resulted in a more sympathetic nation in Singapore. Today is the second time when I see an adult asking if a rather forlorn-looking kid if he is lost or anything, showing some care and concern to a little child especially since it is already like 9pm. Perhaps I was ignorant or whatever, but this recent sightings of public sympathy and the public's moral obligation gives me a different view on the people of Singapore, and I guess this is good, that there are people who are apparently less educated than some tertiary students lending their bit to the society at large through some simple questions like "Girl, are you lost? You sure you are on the right bus?" and some simple gestures like a little "Good morning", "Selamat Bagi" (Hope I got the spelling right) in the languages of the other races to the person who serves you! I find that really makes you happy at the end of the day. I tried doing that to the Roti Prata uncle yestermorning, and although he gave me a rather stunned look, he smiled back and replied politely, and I was happy for the whole of yesterday. Haha. No wonder some people say I am a freak. And whoever is Jj please say which one are you please.. I know too many liao..

There is this bakery in the Bt Batok with a baker whom I find to be rather pretty and I guess I am rather smitten with her. Been buying cakes from the shop which I would have never eaten and some of them are rather lousy tasting. Who likes a blueberry chocolate cake? Guess I caught the syndrome from Xinru, but at least my crush should be better than a fruit seller, afterall, you need specific skills to be a baker, and I guess she is a professional. Boy, I am getting so poor buying cakes...

Cute and Cuddly guys, Cute and Cuddly
Dear TomHa,
Wow, whatever happened to the aftereffects of the previous post was really unforseen. I mean, it clearly wasn't meant for me to pour out my inner grievances but instead, a comforting sort of post for a friend who appeared to me to be feeling a little down due to a variety of reasons and I guess by comparing with someone (me) who supposedly have a fate worse than him, he should feel better. No matter, I enjoy the after effects though.. Hehe..Boy, I am so gloating...

Nothing really happened this week that is really worth blogging down, except that the family washing machine broke down in an angry roar that saw it flooding the kitchen and vomitting everything inside that we had thrown into it. It had been a rather loyal servant, serving our family for more than 10 years already and given that one of its young masters is so very cleaniness unconcious, and with all the mud and grime from the various games that he had engaged himself ever since it had been brought into the family, I guess it is only apt to say that it was a really hardy piece of sophisticated machinery. I guess, a little act of saying "Thank you" is in order and here it goes, Thank You!. Nonetheless, the washing machine breaking down had evoked a sense of guilt in me, especially in my purchase of the Creative Zen Nano Plus mp3 player. Although I bought this cute little beauty (complete with interesting features like FM transmitter, FM recorder, a mic recorder, a direct line-in recording feature that is completely unheard of in the mp3 industry and it is Mac compatible!) at a complete bargain of $199, a cool $100 shave off from its Sale price of $299, after camping overnight at the Creative warehouse to be the first 30 customers of the day, I would have contributed more to buy a better washing machine for the family had I not made the purchase. Darn, why do I need to listen to music on the road anyway, why did my MD break down and cost more than an mp3 player to repair anyway, why did the washing machine had to break down in the first place? Now, I am overridden with guilt. Sigh.. Why ain't I sounding sad at all.. guess I have to work on a little of my writing skills... Sigh...

Watched Madagascar yesterday. It was ermm.. rather nonsensical although I must stress that it had evoked me into rather deep thoughts about how Zoos, nature reserve and anything of the sort might have changed some animals' nature 180 degrees around. That animals would actually like to perform to the public and that the wild is in fact a nightmarish sort of place is really rather unthinkable. That animals would actually forget that there exists a sort of prey-predator relationship between canivores and herbivores to a point that they feel surprised at the fact that the carnivore is biting their butt? All this madcap movie sequence should have some symbolic meaning in it that I hope would make a lot of people think, I seriously hope...

Results came out, quite screwed, although I got my first A+ grade from an electrical engineering module, but the ensuing B- ensured that my CAP will fall faster than free fall (What am I talking about?).. Feeling rather down, guess it gives me more reason to quit canoeing...

The Stupid, clever, ugly, good-looking, rich and the poor...
Dear TomHa,
What had happened to all the people these days? Isn't this suppoesed to be a happy week? Afterall, Liverpool won the champions league amid all the adversity posed onto them at half time, and given that we, living in this little island named Singapore, which was a crown colony of the British imperial past, should be celebrating about it for at least another week! Well, not everybody watch football and understand the significance of sports on the lives of an average person like me... No matter...

Well, I guess somebody really need to wake up and look around at what they have and stop whining about what they don't have (I hope that whining is not too strong a word here..). I guess it gets pretty distracting when people all over your own hometown keeps talking about how lousy the local guys are, that the rigours of Army life is not turning our guys stronger, but whinier. And all this woohaa is really making me feel sick. Can't this guys who are like that stop what they are doing, me inclusive.. Can't they take a look around and feel that serving their own nation for only 2 1/2 years a discount already? What do we owe the nation? We owe them our lives and livelihood and I certainly believe that we are obliged to maintain them at this status quo, if not, for the better. Perhaps that is why I signed on, I don't know, perhaps I signed on because I knew from the very start that my parents would not have a good time putting me through such an expensive education which their son hates in the first place... How disappointed would they be to learn that their son would prefer to be stupid and not know anything. Yes, the education had done wonders in making me a study-phobic. Perhaps I am just emulating the heroes who had done their part in serving their nation with such pride, dignity and gutso and live on in the hearts of the many generations that followed their departure from this Earth. Perhaps I only want to keep myself from spending that much money on a product like education which I know I would never have liked in the first place. I like to be stupid, as I would like to stress again, but the workings of the society decreed that I could not.

So, I guess this is how the almighty or whatever up there like to do, to make fun of us, the lowly beings which in the end, turned out to be not so lowly afterall, as you compare how our brain works to say, a goldfish? A rich and competent man who was born ugly. A poor and incompetent man who is born handsome, pretty, aesthetically appealing, whatever. Any permutaion of them will do, but the conclusion is that no one gets everything that they want. I would prefer to be put in the situation of being ugly, but being rich and competent. Afterall, I had started slogging ever since I started looking like a adult. Tuitioning kids while telling them that I am some graduate majoring in chinese (Hey, their results really improved ok..), waitering, gardening, even dish wahing at some coffee shop. I had done it all. I think I can be called a part time king. Now, SAF forbids me to work and I had obliged. The trade off in accepting this scholarship is that I would not be rich at the end of my uni days. Trust me, I whined about that quite some days/weeks/months ago. So, so what if you can't speak well but write well? Do you have to cling on the ambition on being a lawyer? Or do you have other choices like journalism to work on? If you choose your ambition over what you do best, I guess it is best that you learn to cope with whatever you have now and improve on it. I have never seen a good looking lawyer (REAL ONE!!!) anyway, and like what my mum always says, Smart people are always the ugly ones... Also, Beethoven is deaf...

Nonetheless, I must stress that as a person with eyes that sometimes stray by themselves, and kicked off a scholarship interview before even being interviewed due to lousy grades, as a person who is doing what he hates most now, but have no other choice and have a set of teeth that does not want to line up properly when he was young and has an odd sense of humor that not many people can understand and am poor and poor with social skills, I am in no position to comment anything. But, as what I always say, No teacher can fully understand why his class finds him boring...