chem prac was quite bad today... titration was about the only manageable thing... QA wasn't that bad la, but this sorta thing quite hard to tell whether i'm doing it rite. totally didn't know how to do the rate of reaction experiment. can't see the blue colour! the solution is so brown! anyway it's all over...

took a cab to piano with kankan after chem prac. haha, we were totally late... chem prac ended at 5! had lesson together and we let ms ching listen to the recording of the recital. first of all, there's not much to hear except that all the notes were hammering into my ears. i dunno whether it's because both kankan and i are so rough or whether it's cos the volume was turned up really high when we recorded it. ms ching said she couldn't hear any dynamics or colour... all she could comment was on our rhythm. hahaha kankan and i are like the north and south pole. she's super flexible while i'm super mechanical (with the exception of eating up rests!). haiya... that's a super old frustrating problem... even my previous piano teacher was totally nagging at me every lesson but then somehow my fingers are always hungry la. hahaha. ok, shall try to work that out over the next week... and see if i can be less mechanical. should be enough work liao i guess, still need to study for prelims. i actually prepared ravel and britten for today's lesson... felt quite wasted but come to think of it, not really cos i did practise and that's not wat u do just because there's a lesson coming up rite. so it's not really wasted in that sense. in the end i think i was also quite glad not having to play them cos i can bet i'd have forgotten some parts of the pieces again. listening to my recital's sculthorpe and all the anyhow-play-notes-cos-i-forgot passages was bad enough!

read an article about how all the visa and watever fees for studying or working in UK will increase by up to four times. scary! well, doesn't bother me that much yet... i dun even hold a hope of getting there for now.

Here's a quiz from pohning's blog, originally from gerald's. ya, u get the point. i'm just trying to beat around the bush mah. =)

You are a SECL--Sober Emotional Constructive Leader. This makes you a Politician.

You cut deals, you change minds, you make things happen. You would prefer to be liked than respected, but generally people react to you with both. You are very sensitive to criticism, since your entire business is making people happy.

At times your commitment to the happiness of other people can cut into the happiness of you and your loved ones. This is very demanding on those close to you, who may feel neglected. Slowly, you will learn to set your own agenda--including time to yourself.

You are gregarious, friendly, charming and charismatic. You like animals, sports, and beautiful cars. You wear understated gold jewelry and have secret bad habits, like chewing your fingers and fidgeting.You are very difficult to dislike.

Of the 19155 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 7.4 % are this type.

eh. doesn't sound that much like me...

browsing pple's blogs, can't concentrate on work in the afternoons. argh... it's the weather but then when the aircon is on i'll be so comfortable i'll fall asleep. so what am i supposed to do?! hahaha...

got this quiz from proko's blog:

Your score as a human being is 88.6. You are close to ideal. So close, and yet so far. Amusing, really, to watch someone squirm so close to the vaunted ranks of perfection and still remain so very, very ordinary. It is all one can do to keep one's ingratiating smile from polluting one's perfect face.Actually, one recommends you take the quiz again and lie a little.

erm. okay...???

super bored... waiting for yahoo to attach my files to the email and it's taking such a long time! sounds so unlike me... hahahaha i used to be less impatient. well, shall take the waiting time to blog so that it doesnt go to waste. hahahaha... knowing me, i'd probably waste my time sleeping again anyway! =)

today's recital was okay. finally. it has always been bad or very bad. for the teachers, this is the best they've heard from me. for me, it's not the best i've played... but it's the best recital so far. finally my running notes are not screwed... i became more confident after clearing the first "danger zone"... hahaha, that's just something that nags at me the whole time i play. whenever i'm reaching someplace where something always goes wrong, my brain will remind me that i'm approaching the danger zone. but of cos there were still many slips... though i found them more amusing than disappointing. not sure if that's good, i'm supposed to be very disciplined and get all the notes right, right? but i really dun think i should let slips affect my mood, they are just mistakes that i have to accept and correct i guess. there's still room for improvement! there always is. i just hope this recital is enough to make up for my abysmal guzheng recital. sigh. it was so horrendous.

after recital i recorded it on md... but when i reached home i realised that the programme i use (OpenMGJukebox) doesn't transfer tracks from the md to the computer unless the track was originally moved into the md from the computer. argh... what a waste of time. shall go to school earlier to figure out some other way to record the recital. ok, my files are done... going to do my harmony for tmr's session. *groan* though i dun mind harmony, i dun really think i can stand sitting through a four-hour harmony session!

the very first thing i have to blog about today is the irritating zap shop uncle again. felt like slapping him this morning... i tried to collect my copy of tchaikovsky concertos so that i can bring it home whilst i have lesser things in my bag. but the uncle stubbornly refused to let me collect it unless i collect emily's copy too... ok, if he's scared we'll just leave the copy there and not collect forever, i can understand. but what made me super pissed was that he started nagging about how mep always gives him lots of things to photocopy, and how we always leave scores there and don't collect. argh... u're opening a zap shop leh... dun want to zap for us we can always go somewhere else lor. and the tchaikovsky is the only thing i left at zap la, the rest are not mine and he just nag at me for them! and then he started complaining about how he has to wait for ms kang to collect the printing costs from us. as if we'll never pay him... argh. stupid man who totally has no brain... dunno how to run his business well.

the compo session with philip tan was great. more inspiring ideas and not as many mind-boggling questions as john sharpley. the weird thing is that previously he said he can't find the four-note motif my variations are based on... and now he doesn't seem to have a problem with that. he said i should just do minor changes to variations and then start recording. erm, which he said should probably be done by using the kontakt player to save as audio file since it seems very hard to perform the piece... which i agree. hahaha. by nevertheless i'm still going to try asking miss ching and miss gan if they want to help me play it, if not then ask gerald to help me ask his teacher and her sis. or else ask esther and jue ru if they still want to try practising it... and last choice would be kontakt player lor. just dun want to give up any chances to record live cos i may never get a chance to record my string work due to lack of players, and the jazz is so crap that i can't be sure if there would still be time left for recording after i finally finish it like who knows when.

just finished editing the variations... i think it has met my minimum standard, i still have lots of dissatisfaction towards it but i guess i better spend more time on the other two. i'm stuck at the jazz cos if i leave it as it was, it has no direction. if i want direction, i have to almost re-do the whole thing but i dun think there's time. as for my third compo, the more i edit the weirder it sounds... bleah.

ok, shall spend less time blogging and more time on the compos. time is running out!