was watching the recital tape on sat... realised i made more mistakes than i remembered. but it's okay. i'm going to work harder and i'll make sure i won't be lost halfway through the pieces again. it's a brand new day!

went to sajc band concert yesterday, didn't know of anybody going but when i reached there i found that crystal was also going and i met jiehui too. the concert was not bad... they were basically quite in tune and their intonation is quite good. some out-of-tune notes were quickly re-adjusted. just that they sound a bit murky, i think it's the same prob as tj band... too many people but not listening enough. i was more impressed with their musical in the second half. instead of doing a short skit thingy with a small stage band like our concert, they did a longer musical involving a bigger group of instruments (about half the band i think). the script was funny, lame and interesting... hahaha... the acting was good, the main cast's and narrator's singing were not that bad too (though they were singing familiar songs with lyrics replaced by cheesy lines). the arrangement was quite professionally done... either the arranger is rather skilled, or the pieces chosen modulated into each other well, or both. on top of all that i think it was really entertaining and like jiehui said, it's mainly what draws the non-music people to sa band concerts.

recital was very bad. it's the worst yet... even my sucky first june recital last year was better. slips and uneven notes here and there... that's still the usual. what was worse was the number of times i broke down because i got lost halfway through the pieces.

gave the rest quite a scare when i suddenly started crying after recital... they must have been shocked that the normally calm, composed and unreactive me was actually crying. i just couldn't control my emotions like i usually can. halfway through the recital during sculthorpe my eyes were already starting to fill up with tears but luckily i was able to hold them back until the end. i was very disappointed that i screwed up so badly... the slips and uneven running notes here and there were of cos inevitable, but i never expected to get lost in any of the pieces... much less almost all the movements of sculthorpe and 2nd movement of beethoven. i think it was a mixture of disappointment, anger and some shock... it wasn't supposed to turn out that badly. it was painful when suddenly i thought of all the effort i put into preparation for the recital... and yet in the end everything went wrong.

feeling better now... it always feels better after crying. and thanks to all of you who tried to cheer me up... doing stupid actions to the beat of yushan's recital piece. thanks really... appreciated it.

argh... blogger sucks... after making sure that the template is okay using preview... i saved the template and published the blog... THEN... the navigation becomes screwed... goes all the way to the bottom. what crap! argh. and the stupid colours. whatever... i shall wait till i'm feeling less irritated to complete it. haha kankan, u're right. i'm rather irritable. =P

piano was terrible as predicted. hahahaha i think i'm fortunate that miss ching didn't burst an artery or something... she looked horrified that i could actually screw up the mozart K.365 when playing at such a slow speed. hahahaha... quite amusing but rather frustrating... just can't get my fingers to play the right notes. bleah... i totally need more practise.

going to sleep... haha miss ching was telling me to sleep early, "and play properly". hahahaha...

lol.......dis is poot.....juz trying to be extra hahahahahahha

stupid poot. we're all feeling bored in ms... the games carnival is still going on and it's so super sian. my right ankle hurts when i walk or basically when i move it in certain directions. luckily i can still press the pedal... so i shall see a doctor for my thumbs and ankle after recital is over.

yesterday while walking home i witnessed something that left me feeling down. there was an accident across the road from the bus stop outside my house... a 13-year-old boy from boon lay secondary was knocked down by some sort of delivery van or truck or lorry. he died... my god. when i walked past the scene of the accident he was already covered with a white cloth. later on the radio i heard that the driver said the boy suddenly rushed out onto the road. so sad... he's so young leh... and that road is normally quite deserted especially in the afternoon. and cars usually move rather slowly along that stretch cos the traffic lights are not properly spaced out. sigh...

now when i'm crossing the road i'll always think of that little boy.

had a slack day today... after luis' recital we went to ljs for lunch. was initially quite reluctant to waste time and money but eventually gave in to temptation. argh... i ate the chocolate pie!!! oops! super sinful... luckily it was shared between me and pohning. got home early enough to have some spare time to practise. only did mozart... cannot make it liao... my hands are becoming weaker or something... just play a few passages and they'll start aching. something's wrong with me... my thumbs are beginning to ache like how my left thumb felt before mct recitals, only not as painful yet. i'll probably survive recital and then i think about two weeks later i may have to wrap both thumbs this time. it can't possibly be over-practising... how could it be? people can prac for 4 hours nothing happens... i just prac for half and hour start aching. doesn't makes sense lor.

tmr's games carnival... ensemble people excused for practice... which leaves me stranded alone... dun care... i shall leave at 12.30 sharp. not going to care about having to run at 6 pm. what crap! i dun mind running but could i at least be given some choice about the time i'll be running... it's so brainless to come so school and wait from 7.30... no, more exactly i reach school at 6.50. so wait from 6.50 am to 6 pm just to run 1 km! spent chem lesson dreaming about more enjoyable ways of raising money for charity... like pledging to practise for 6 hours instead of pledging to run for 1 km... at least practising for 6 hours is doing something productive. =P

recital's been postponed to friday... doesn't really make a difference. dunno what's happening, when i found out that it's been postponed i didn't even feel anything... i'm starting to feel numb about recital. not even touching beethoven or sculthorpe nowadays... die la. (okok, tmr i shall spend at least half the time from 6.50 to 12.30 doing only recital pieces.) like i told kankan... usually 4 to 5 weeks before recital i'll be super kan cheong but by 2 weeks before i'll start to become unfeeling. maybe it's cos of miss ching. she'll pressure u to get ur recital pieces right long before and then nearer to rectital she doesn't seem to care about them anymore... and she'll ask you to bring other pieces. has a calming effect cos it seems like she thinks the pieces are ready for recital. or maybe she's just sick of me playing the same things every lesson. haha i think it's more likely the latter. but nevermind, my self-delusional skills are superb. it still calms me down to think that i can move on to other pieces.

i'm having second thoughts about friday... actually we had planned not to go to school cos of the tower records sale... but now i'm wondering if i should. i quite desperately want to buy the art of piano dvd at a cheaper price... plus i wouldn't mind buying the super chor lor recording of K.365 played by radu lupu and 'what's his name'... argh... can't remember. although it's chor lor, it's not a bad deal cos they're very precise (how do they do that... they're not even brothers unlike the labeque sisters...) and at 20% off... i really wouldn't mind. on the other hand... it's a long day with lots of tutorials plus pe too... quite bad to miss all of them rite. sigh... can't decide whether or not to go.

sunday is almost over again... it's always around this time when i'll realise how much i've slacked and how much time i could have used to do something productive. about the only productive things i did were to practise piano and go for guzheng lesson. mr. chek's fingers are shorter than mine! didn't believe him until he told me to play a wide chord from xue shan chun xiao and i realised he had to stretch to the max whereas i still could reach even wider than that. wow... surprised. he said perhaps people with long fingers have less power and used the analogy of short sticks being more powerful weapons than long ones (assuming you hold both at exactly the end... just like fingers are joined to the palm at the end) hmmm... what a mind boggling hypothesis... i can think of people like liszt and weber with long but powerful fingers... =( maybe it's just me. but mr. chek also said i shouldn't worry too much about power yet cos if i tried to exert too much force, not only will it be harder to play the fast passages smoothly, i may also injure my fingers. so i'm delaying practising guzheng until thursday after piano recital. than my fingers can break for all i care.

finished about 75% of the two gamelan commentaries... but i need to listen to the extracts again cos i didn't take down lots of details and i tend to be unable to make any head or tail out of what i scribble down during lesson. hahaha. need to study for chem test... can sorta predict i'll fail the test cos i've always been doing badly for the organic tests. but no harm trying to pass for once.

went to the dvorak cello concert yesterday. WOW!!!!! wang jian is GOOD!!!!! even from AA seats in circle three where i had to either lean over the railing or sit hunchbacked and squint through the tiny space between the railing and the "wall"... (or watever you call it) i really enjoyed the concert. for the brahms double concerto i sat in circle three too... and it was fraught with lots of intonation problems while gerald said from circle two it sounded alright. but dvorak yesterday was only a teeny bit short of perfect intonation. only his higher pitched trills sounded a little out (can't blame him... getting a nice tone on high notes is already quite hard rite).

one thing i must complain about is of cos the killer passage played by souptel. perhaps his fingers are too fat to be in total control of his violin... i.e. one small little movement makes him sound totally out... or perhaps like gerald said he vibrato too much. hello... you're the principal violin, everybody claps for you to just walk out and make the oboe play A... can't you just practise a bit harder and make sure the intonation is okay?! and to be out when playing with such a good cellist makes him sound even worse. bleah. another thing making the concert a bit less pleasant was lan shui's conducting. i feel that he's too overly dramatic... for more experienced conductors, super dramatic actions are reserved for places which they are really required. in lan shui's case, almost the whole concert was filled with such actions. not only is it unnecessary, it is what's affecting the precision of the orchestra. the orchestra is usually quite rhythmically challenged not because they cannot count or what, i believe it's because they all intepret lan shui's conducting differently and come in not in unison. often when guest conductors (especially the more well-known ones) conduct an SSO concert, we get pleasant surprises and say, "hmm... SSO can actually play together!"

but overall, the concert was mesmerising... the academic festival overture was okay... except for (guess what?) intonation problems again. and other than intonation problems (yet again!), the sibelius was enchanting. i can see what miss ching means when she says whenever you play for people you must touch them, or change their perspectives...

just reached home... realised a phenomenon in my blog... mostly consists of thursday posts and less of posts on other days. weird. watever... what am i saying??? sorry, the weather is so terrible i can't think properly. i'm sweating as if i've been stuffed into an oven. arghhhh... wanted to do something to my jazz compo but really can't stand sitting here feeling sweaty and sticky through the nite. hopefully i could do that tmr.

tmr... my first saturday without band. feels kinda weird like there's something i haven't done. sigh... hate going for band but hate not going for band. bleah.

this week was another of those weeks where everything becomes suspended... probably cos of recital... and maybe cos i'm running out of fuel. did very badly for guzheng recital... all the xiao kuai ban parts (or prestissimo for those unfamiliar with chinese music) were screwed. once i played a wrong note... the rest became wrong too and i felt it would be quite unmusical to stop and do it again cos it's in the middle of the piece and it would also be worse if i screwed it up again. that would really show how bad i am. apparently the teachers didn't seem to think i played as badly as i thought i did. ms chew said it was ok except that it's a bit short... 15.12 mins... oops... i guess it's cos i timed my programme including long breaks between pieces but during recital when i'm nervous the breaks are not as long. nevermind, i shall find another rubbishy piece similar to the nan zheng gong that i have now and dump it in to make up for the time difference. ms kang said i would start out confidently but after a while dunno what happens and i would become less confident and the music would lose its character. that's sad. even if my technique was bad i could have at least showed some character... that's part of the art of faking i need to master before As so that the examiners would unknowingly think i'm good even when i cannot make it. haha... quite evil. =P

didn't touch the piano much this week... except thursday after the guzheng recital was over, and that wasn't alot cos i was rather distracted by the computer... me and emz were looking at and ordering prospectus. york is crazy, they sent both of us three copies each of their prospectus. one from the music faculty and one from the administration is understandable... but two from admin is weird. back to piano... lesson was okay today, ms ching was more pleasant and encouraging (maybe she wants to give us a morale booster before our recitals?). at the end of the lesson she said she could see how my finger strength is improving after i did the berringer (dunno how to spell that person's name, it's the killer exercises i totally hate to practise). i couldn't really believe it, i always only practise them like on the day before lessons. she actually said that i played night and stars well for the sculthorpe night pieces. surprise! they are supposed to be my worst movements??? but probably i couldn't really portray the titles of the previous movements and i only managed to portray those two when i got into the mood near the end of the piece. for beethoven she said she still thinks i should play with more temperament. and she kept saying... it can be good BUT you must work on your concentration.

haha concentration lapses are back again... and not only in piano man. when i got back my maths test and looked at my mistakes... all careless mistakes. it was totally hilarious when i discovered my mistakes. but also partly frustrating... i kept thinking how many marks i lost because of them. but well, it's just a test and i'm going to work harder for the exams. i must have been asleep or something when i did it... how could i plug in the values for the question by using the values from the previous parts?! and even better... i actually had time to check the paper twice... which i did, but i actually didn't realise i was making enough careless mistakes to fail. what am i doing?!!! i need to wake up.

did a 'true color test' at tickle.com yesterday... was adding xinmin as a friend and felt a bit sian to start mugging...
Brown
You're brown, a credible, stable color that's reminiscent of fine wood, rich leather, and wistful melancholy. Most likely, you're a logical, practical person ruled more by your head than your heart. With your inquisitive mind and insatiable curiosity, you're probably a great problem solver. And you always gather all of the facts before coming to a timely, informed decision. Easily intrigued, you're constantly finding new ways to challenge your mind, whether it's by reading the newspaper, playing a trivia game, or composing a piece of music. Brown is an impartial, neutral color, which means you tend to see the difference between fact and opinion easily and are open to many points of view. Trustworthy and steady, you really are a brown at heart.

sounds like me yet doesn't sound like me. if my constantly stoning and stagnant brain is called inquisitive... i dunno what to call those with really inquisitive minds. as for curiosity... only for certain things and i'm totally not a great problem solver... unless you count typical expectated-method kinda maths qns problems. about challenging my mind, i dunno... i like to compose but i always thought of reading books as a sort of escape from reality rather than a challenge for my brain to workout. (as if it doesn't already have enough work to do) hahaha the part about neutral is quite true... i don't have a stand and according to emz, that equals to no character. watever. but i'm definitely not impartial, how can i be, my 'glasses' are tinted.

going to bathe... can't stand the sticky, oily feeling... aurgghhhh... disgusting!

last band prac on sat.... dunno wat to feel... quite sad that i may never play a euphonium again. but on the other hand it means being free from having to worry about every single note... no more intonation work... bleah... hate to have to use lipping to sharpen or flatten consecutive notes. in the first place i wonder why i even joined band... but i can't deny that it has left me with many pleasant experiences and memories. though i'm happy that i'll be free from band pracs, i'm already starting to miss playing in band. the fact that euphos are not required in orchestras makes it feel worse... we're almost worthless, unless some weird conductor wants to play any ulu eupho concerto... but even so i'm not up to standard to play anyways.

at piano lesson... technically better esp for places where i couldn't quite manage before. but emotionally it was the same as before... or issit worse? i can feel it when i sing the thing to myself... it just doesn't sound the same when i play on the piano. miss ching said i have the details but no temperament while kankan has temperament but no details... she said if only we could donate some to each other. but good idea... i could ask kankan how to play with emotions... though i believe she already told me before to sing the melody. miss ching also said... definitely u've improved, but that is not good enough for you. you are too intellectual (yar, rite... if only that was true)... you must let the music go from ur heart to ur fingers, not from ur brain to ur fingers.

took the colour quiz at www.colorquiz.com... kankan was so excited to know what my results are but the school's network was down... lousy... so too bad for her. generally i think the quiz is quite accurate... sorta fits into what i feel but i never realised that that's how my feelings are described when put into words... there was just a sort of feeling i couldn't describe.

=Your Existing Situation=
Relatively inactive and in a static condition, while conflict of one sort or another prevents peace of mind. Unable to achieve relationships of the desired degree of mutual affection and understanding.
[relatively inactive and static... true for my tutorials and emotional depth of my playing... i can't pinpoint the conflict preventing peace of mind... as for relationships... i dunno, it has always been that i would have friends but never close enough to really understand each other very well]

=Your Stress Sources=
Is responsive to outside stimuli and wants to experience everything intensely, but is finding the existing situation extremely frustrating. Needs sympathetic understanding and a sense of security. Distressed by her apparently powerlessness to achieve her goals.
[i really dunno what's the "existing situation" that's making me frustrated... quite true that i need sympathetic understanding but then i dun usually confide in pple ley. sense of security... quite true... esp what miss ching said about how i'm afraid to show emotions in my playing. my goals... now i'm not even sure of them anymore... feel a strong urge to lower them]

=Your Restrained Characteristics=
Feels that she is receiving less than her share and that there is no one on who she can rely for sympathy and understanding. Pent-up emotions make her quick to take offense, but she realizes that she has to make the best of things as they are.
Insists that her goals are realistic and sticks obstinately to them, even though circumstances are forcing her to compromise. Very exacting in the standards she applies to her choice of a partner.
[receiving less than my share... i dunno if i even deserve that much. true that i have lots of pent-up emotions... BEWARE... in case the dormant volcano erupts someday. wish i could find some way to express the emotions in my playing... that would help relieve tension and also improve the playing. do i take offense quickly??? sorry to those i've offended because of my pent-up emotions, i hope there are not many of these pple around. still wondering about my goals and i dunno about the standards i apply to my choice of a partner... what are my standards in the first place?]

=Your Desired Objective=
Badly in need of rest and relaxation, freedom from conflict, and the chance to recover. Wants to protect herself against destructive and exhausting influences. Longs for security and freedom from problems.
[maybe this explains why i love quiet places and dream of spending time in solitude away from everything]

=Your Actual Problem=
Depleted vitality has created an intolerance for any further stimulation, or demands on her resources. This sense of powerlessness subjects her to agitation and acute distress. She attempts to escape from this into a stable and secure environment in which she can relax and recover.
[quite true about escaping... i'm forever daydreaming and living in some place in my dreams.]

=Your Actual Problem #2=
Wishes to safeguard herself against criticism and to entrench herself in a stable and secure position; but is herself inclined to be critical of others and difficult to please.
[oops... am i too critical and difficult to please? hmmm... sorry to those i've been too critical to... and those who encountered difficulties trying to please me]