exams are over! not really, but it feels over... mep on friday but studying for mep is not the same as studying for maths or chem. it's more interesting and i guess that makes it easier to remember. all the papers were bad. worse than mct. it's scary when u see how empty the paper is at the end of the exam. don't want to get my results back. but nvm... it's okay to fail... it sometimes pushes u harder and i think that's what i need. still trying to find that discipline that kept me in my room studying all day in sec 4 during prelims and Os. shall attempt to acheive that again but... not until we've celebrated the end of exams by going to watch movies after mep! hahahaha

meanwhile i've to finish editting my last compo and send it to ms chew as soon as possible... told her i forget to bring it. how lame can that be? how can u remember to bring two of your compos and forget the third? truth was that i only finished editting the variations and writing a new compo. by then it was 1am so i didn't have time to edit the jazz... it's the worst to edit. but i've nobody to blame cos it was me who made it that horrible in the first place. hahaha. i better finish it as soon as possible today so i can start on mep. was trying to do it last nite but the blackout cut me of. eyes started drooping while waiting for power to come on again... hahaha. it was beautiful to look out of the window and see the streets without street lamps... it reminds me of some secluded and quiet place faraway. but was really surprised that many parts of singapore experienced the blackout. at first we thought it was our oven causing a trip again... but the oven wasn't even on. then we realised that the blocks near us didn't have power too.

re-installing msn now... accidentally uninstalled it when i meant to uninstall the program below it. how blur can i get?

one more day to study for chem, maths, gp and finish editing compos, doing a new compo and doing the write-ups. screwed. well... time to put in my last minute efforts and hope everything will turn out sunnier than i imagine it would. parents have been out of town since thursday... got more things to do e.g. chores etc. that's still okay... i can study and do them at the same time (though it slows down both processes a bit). hahaha. the only drawback is that my aunt has come to stay today... it's as if she scared we can't survive without our parents. please... they've been out of town for quite a number of times liao and we're not kids! well, considering that she's come to stay for at least one day each of those times they've been out of town, i guess she really thinks we can't survive without them. don't mind her staying, but it's harder to do compo till late into the nite. so nvm... i shall go bathe and shut myself in my room to mug chem and maths. i just wonder what ms chew will say when i tell her i haven't finished any of the compos.

my mum called in the afternoon asking if my uncle called. apparently he had been trying to call my grandma for almost an hour and she still hadn't picked up the phone... he was worried so he called my mum. i was rather worried. from her routine i had gotten used to when i was a child, she usually has nothing to do in the afternoon except maybe ironing or otherwise she would be nodding off in front of the tv till it was time to cook dinner. reasoned with myself that she had probably gone out somewhere or was in the bathroom or something. twenty minutes later my mum called again, she had also tried calling but nobody answered the phone. she asked me and my brother to take a cab down to go check on my grandma. she said we were the nearest (which is true, cos i dunno where's my uncle's office) even though my uncle wanted to get off work to check on her. that's when all the absurd thoughts came across my mind. what if something had really happened to her? it was so unlike her not to be at home... she seldom goes out cos the only places she can independently travel to are the market and some person's place where she gets her hair permed. and usually she returns from these places at the latest just in time to cook lunch. and then i thought about how ronald smith suddenly passed away, even in the midst of preparing for performances. my grandma's probably around his age or older... i could still remember celebrating her 80th birthday. plus, there was nothing much we could've done... except ring the doorbell hoping she'd open the door or try calling her house phone.

when we got to her house, rang the doorbell and waited, we saw that the gate was unlocked... at first a fleeting thought of her house being burglared came across my mind. but of cos it became obvious that nothing of the sort happened when we found the door locked. and then we smelled that familiar pungent smell of incense... she had just offered incense to the dieties placed outside the door, did that mean she was at home? yep... she answered the door just a moment after we discovered the incense. she had been in the bathroom when we rang the doorbell, and it turned out that her phone did not ring today at all. nothing was wrong with it... we found the phones' receivers properly placed. so we called to inform my mum that it was a false alarm and tried calling grandma's house number... but the phone did not ring. then we tried calling our handphones using her phones... and realised there was no dial tone for both phones. but the wire was connnected. we tried everything we could possibly had done but still couldn't get her phones to work. but she said my uncle would try when he drops by in the evening... and offered us dumplings. hmmm... we just ate those for breakfast so we politely refused and after a while we left. i'm so glad and relieved it was a false alarm.

the incident got me thinking about my grandma. when i was a child and we lived in the unit opposite grandma's house, we would stay in her house until our parents were back from work. that was until our parents decided to send us to before and after school day care around primary three. dinner was always prepared by my grandma and it would be ready once our parents came home. i remember playing all sorts of make-believe games mostly with my brother, and sometimes my cousins, getting scolded when we camped under the dining table and pretended it was all sorts of things from a tent to a spaceship. as a kid, i remember watching cantonese dramas on tv in the afternoons, how i entertained myself while she did the ironing, or how i hovered around while she prepared dinner... trying to help but being a hindrance instead. i also recall when i first went to school, hated it and fought with her not to go to school, refused to do homework and how she always helped me colour pictures and always insisted on helping me cut excercise questions to be pasted into excercise books... she said i always created jagged sides. sigh... those are the good memories.

well, being nostalgic isn't particularly helpful, especially when jct is looming nearer. time to return to the present...

yep, that's what i'm in... i stink! jct is one week away and what have i actually done? just a teeny bit more than nothing. haven't done my new compo and not to mention editing the previous ones, haven't studied a single thing for mep. and it doesn't help when i think of how the recitals are going to pull me down. plus i still owe ms chew the paul h lang essay. that was from weeks ago! know nothing about maths except differentiation... and for chem... only one single chapter covered. chem prac on friday... i did read through the notes but what's the use of that? my stupid brain can't remember anything when i need it to. argh... what happened to that brain that could remember the important points even if it was last minute cramming the night before an exam? i don't have to wait for the jct results to be out. i already know how it'll be... but i wish it wouldn't turn out that way.

i've often asked myself what's the use of slogging over maths, chem and gp and all that crap when all i ever wanted is to study music. isn't there any other way to get to that? i guess... if u're talented or rich... but i'm neither. i'm less than mediocre when it comes to talent and obviously i'm not some rich kid either. and then there's the question of what'll happen after u study music. what am i going to do? i can't play in orchestras, sing in choirs and obviously i won't be good enough to be a pianist. and then even if i really could compose, which would probably turn out to be another stupid dream, there's no need for me in this little island that does not demand new works. i guess it'll just be a qualification so that i can find some job that will help me support the family. then why should i be so picky about doing music? why not get mediocre results, get into any nus or ntu faculty that will take me, graduate and get a job? i just know i won't be happy doing that. but i also wonder whether i'll be happy doing music. it's true that i love music but when u have to work yourself very hard and still not achieve satisfactory results, it takes lots of passion and discipline for u to keep up with the struggle. if i ever had enough discipline, i wouldn't have landed myself in this plight and right now i know the passion is really dying...

i can see a speck of light in at the end of this dark tunnel. after recital was really quite put off from practising piano for a while... miss ching was rite. when u play badly the memory of it tends to stick around for a longer time. but now i am starting to feel like practising again... class lesson was a miracle! well, not exactly a miracle, i still slipped over the mossy stones and smooth pebbles like a clumsy elephant. but i didn't break down!!!! YES!!!! finally. even though it was more under-prepared than recital. but who cares... the feeling of success does help to propel u further. miss ching was rite again. but of cos she stressed that success only hangs around for a short time... so i better practise hard and not let a bad memory have any chance of coming near me.

class lesson was inspiring and invigorating more because of the others' performances. shawn (assuming his name is spelled this way, it's the first spelling of shawn i came across in primary school anyway) was brilliant as usual. what's new. his chopin etudes really dazzled and i think the nineteenth century audience would have been awestruck... remember, they love the visual stimulation thus the popularity of virtuoso concertos grew? and someone should have heard him play beethoven's piano sonata op.2 no.1. that's what i'd call a good enough standard to play for recital. okok, i know my beethoven op.2 no.1 recital was disastrous too, and in fact less prepared than hers, so i shall not be so mean. stressful man, he's going to play op.2 no.2 next. help!!!! hahaha miss ching was telling him, "so we'll go for all the beethoven sonatas... no.2, then u've done no.3 already..." AHHHH!!!!

bernice played mendelssohn variation sereuses (sorry for the spelling, not very sure)... WOW! great. it was so breath-taking and engaging. grace is another shawn, though she's 4 yrs older than him. she also played dazzling virtuosic pieces. can't remember the title and composer though. ben played schubert impromptu again. whew, i'm not the only one playing the same piece again... though i'm the only one playing my piece for the third time, except maybe bernice. but then i'm not so sure about that, both bernice and priscilla played mendelssohn before, dunno how many times they each played it. waiting to hear them play their duet for the concert... two pro pianists playing duet. exciting!

hmmm... enough about class lesson. now that all major distractions are over, time to get down to studying for jct. and doing the compo. submission date is second day of jct, so it means i can't do last minute work without sleeping the nite before submission liao. that means the sleepless nites will be rite now. but then, if i'm disciplined enough, there's supposed to be enough time for me to finish everything. if i'm disciplined... =P

class lesson coming up on monday. glad that miss ching decided to put kankan and me on the same day... though it doesn't really matter who i play to but it does feel better when u know there's someone in the audience who is ur fren. hahaha does that make the rest of miss ching's students sound unfriendly... hahaha actually they're very friendly pple, they're just too good that i can't help feeling intimidated. kankan mentioned that miss ching said she may change the classes and that we may not be in the same class as shawn/shaun/sean??? (the boy who played bach-busoni chacconne) that's not so bad... though his playing does inspire me to work harder but it's even more intimidating that he's 5 years younger! at least the rest of the pro pianists in the class are older than me... except two la.

just finished practising... managed not to get lost, but i think it was technically super lousy. argh. not to mention emotionally super poor too. ARGH. how do u make it technically good, emotionally rich AND not get lost all at the same time?!!! technical things easier to settle i guess... shall prac the lousy parts from slow to fast with metronome tmr, than hopefully i can do the whole thing technically almost flawless plus not getting lost. only when that's achieved than can work on emotions, i suppose. and hopefully when i do work on emotions i won't loose concentration and get lost again.

meanwhile shall relax... hahaha SAT's over! can catch a breath. hahaha i sound as if i worked very hard for SAT... truth is, i only found the letter on thursday and i didn't bother to study! just an excuse for me to slack. =P going to watch harry potter later... 21:30. and the irritating person selling tickets didn't even bother to ask me where i wanna sit... and he gave me row E!!! argh. i dun believe it's so sold out that at 14:15 buying tickets for a 21:30 show u can actually get front seats. my bro say maybe cos i bought 4 tickets so harder to find seats if the rest of the place is taken up by pple scattered here and there, got holes here and there. hahahaha.

okay! finally got the blog to look how i wanted it to. yar yar, i'm slow... haha but i'm feeling a great sense of achievement! though still not satisfied with the colours... but no more patience to sit here and choose colour liaoz. i still owe ms chew the Paul H. Lang essay. if she finds out i spent my time doing up my blog instead of the essay when i promised her that i'll finish that one as soon as possible... =X

i'm dead... haven't finished 3 out of those 4 things we have to hand in to ms chew by 2nd june... tomorrow! wanted to finish 1 of the 2 commentaries and get started on the weber yesterday... but was hit by very bad migraine. had never experienced migraine at such a painful level before. at first it wasn't that painful, and i tried to practise piano... but my eyes couldn't focus on the keyboard so i decided to find other productive things to do. of cos practising guzheng was out of the question too... tried to finish the commentary on gamelan angklung but ended up squinting at the monitor trying to read what i typed previously. then it became more painful... it was a throbbing pain in the left side of my head. what i find amusing now is that i actually sat on the sofa... half stoning half hibernating away. can't remember much of what happened yesterday... my brain felt like it was on overload... everyting was swirling and weird nonsensical words kept appearing in my head. barely recall that my brain was thinking all sorts of absurd things... like "will i become blind?", "will i suffer from brain damage?". dun remember eating lunch... my hands and legs were trembling when i tried to get water. remember my mum asking me to eat dinner. think i ate a bit and then i took two panadol extras and tried to sleep. dunno how i managed to sleep with that pain going on in my head but i guess the medicine eventually got rid of it. feeling better today, hands still trembling a little and a bit groggy... imagine sleeping from 7.30pm to 8am. that's 12.5 hours!!! way too much sleep. shall wait till my head clears... then it's time to pia the essays and commentary.