immersion in the arts

i'm on a facebook frenzy now. looking all over for contacts (friends) whom i've not added yet. kekeke.

why do people like to add more to their list? popular acceptance? haha. anyways i don't look for strangers. speaking of which i'm going to delete all the strangers who added me on facebook/friendster. they're just idiots looking for admirers.

>:(

btw, of which only one has attempted to get to know me better. unfortunately, she has no personality and just opens a convo by asking silly things that only your family would say to you and would be alright, actually heartwarming, because they're your family after all, but she's just a eff-ing stranger! example: "how are you? have you eaten?" ok, so i suppose you're my long-lost younger sister?

***

bad vibes aside!

today, i had a 6-hour long session with mari koistinen, a finnish choral pedagogist/conductor, who is by the way, the secretary of the panel of adjudicators at the tampere vocal music festival (not sure what that role entails, but it's a very important post nonetheless).

learnt and revised what i gather about conducting from watching mr kwei and especially mr toh. haha. oh, and i asked mrs koistinen about what she thought of asian choirs. she likes the different kind of tonal quality they have, and the technical abilities in terms of handling difficult songs, but would like to see more 'musicality' in them (as opposed to stiff mechanical delivery of music).

ah, interesting stuff. got to try my hands at conducting, though it was a 'group effort' thing, meaning the entire bunch of participants stood in front and conducted the same group of kids (i mean, the choir made up of sota students).

***

i'm currently listening to 'shall i compare thee to a summer's day' by nils lindberg. it's been looping for the past 3 hours...

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

i miss conducting. i miss singing.

i miss choir!

no. 4

i think this is a very special batch.

many are less privileged than i am (for that matter, most jc kids too). they're going through a lot in their lives. so imagine what ns is doing to them currently. cut off from the worldly personal issues they face outside, and with a greatly reduced 'salary' to support themselves and loved ones with.

but, they're bravely facing bmt and ns. not in a resistive manner, but (relatively) more receptive than what one might imagine. in fact, they are really matured. you can tell, you know.

it's more than just their age (they are at least 1 year older than me, much like platoon 3 sections 1 and 2 from my first batch).

like, from the way they behave. they don't really need thorough explanation for everything before doing. and they don't keep questioning! they're streetsmart and have a good dose of common sense. they're not a bunch of rowdy selfish people; they care so much for the people around them, it's sad that they can't be around for those people.

i hope i can do justice to them and help them along in bmt and hopefully, through their ns life and beyond. i can't say i'm any more experienced than them. i'm really privileged by s'porean standards.

it's a wakeup call for me, really. i've been mixing around with people who have complete families and have more than enough money to get by. i am this jc student with no working experience whatsoever. i'm just a stay-home geek, i guess! (well, to the average singaporean, my life IS probably geekish.)

i say, i welcomed myself to the lives of the REAL, average singaporeans when this batch came into my hands. and i hope i won't do anything wrong to them.

here's wishing all the best to this batch!

let's work hard together!

***

on a side note, i still miss my previous (02/08) batch. why so few (meaning less than 5) added me on msn/facebook??? damnit. (this isn't unprofessional, is it? ah, heck the 'professionalism'.)

i should have forced them to take down my h/p number. ARRRRRGH. it's very sad. they're really nice people, kinda my kind of people.

:'(

:'(






BAH!!!!!!!!! :'(

celebrate (3)

hi all,

doing some long-overdue updates all in one short, so i split the entire thing into 3 parts. scroll down for the other 2...

***

stopped by at james' place (my ex-recruit) for a plt gathering! this gang of peeps are really nice people, too bad we didn't have a lot of time to bond. not to mention the idea of not being their sergeant outside of camp has not sunk into some of them, so some uneasy(?) respect for the rank was around haha. yea, but i think they're fun people to hang out with leh.

eh, must keep in touch with me, ok?

anyway, played indian poker with a naughty forfeit... got rather high and the gang easily unshelled me of some of my (less private but still private) secrets lol. i think i made a fool of myself that night :$

the current batch is also quite good, i think they pick up things faster than my other batches, too. for some reason they're motivated enough to do things as well, which makes things easier.

ok, need to catch some sleep after staying up the whole night with ex-plt 3...

celebrate (2)

Image00134
Originally uploaded by cliff_au_yong

went on the flyer on my birthday... quite interesting, the structure of the ferris wheel and all.

ok, pics...









after all that, went to eat at seafood paradise (housed within the flyer complex) tried this very strong-smelling crab dish (has that dairy smell plus that crunchy leaf that you can find in those indian snacks) on reccomendation from a friend. the sauce was overpowering at first, but the more you eat it somehow the more you like it! goes perfectly well with fried buns.



and then there's this interesting starter dish, seafood soup in coconut. didn't think cocounuts could go with squid and prawn.



*nb: a few of the flyer photos shown here (not sure which already) were taken by my dad.

celebrate (1)

didn't have the time to type about raffles chorale's stellar results in poland/czech rep till now.

marvel.

1) VII International Felix Nowowiejski Choir Music Festival, Barczewo 2008, Poland
- Gold
- Overall 2nd
- Best Foreign Choir
- Best Nowowiejski's Work Prize by foreign choirs(Parce Domini)
- Best Contemporary Work Prize (Lux Aurumque, Ave Maris Stella)

2) Festival of Songs, Olomouc 2008, Czech Republic
- Superior Youth under 25 years old category: Gold, 96 points
- Sacred for Youth and Adult Choirs category: Gold, 99 points, Category winner, 1000 Euros
- Youth under 19 years old category: Gold, 100 points, Category winner, 500 Euros
- Negro Spirituals category: Gold, 100 points, Category winner
- Finalist (out of 6 choirs)

(i shamelessly copied the info from a junior's blog)

for an asian ameteur youth school choir, the results are astoundly good. of course, you'd expect good from raffles chorale :) but, the fact that they can tackle sacred western pieces as well, if not better than western choirs means something.

msg me if you want recordings of their sacred songs (taken illegally by yours truly doing their concert held last month)

end of 3rd batch...

i think i click well with this batch of recruits. possibly because they're similarly from jc? haha.

some of them are really rich! like, a fellow sect comm got the following as a farewell/thank-you gift: a football and... that GLOSSY RECTANGULAR NIKE SLING BAG! something that i will never be willing to spend on myself.

nonetheless, i thank platoon three, in addition, sect 1 as well, for their well-thought gifts of andes and yamyam chocolate (sect 1 and ke jun), and a copy of fhm (plt 3) ^_^ haha! they say it's supposed be for the 'beast in me', and some alternative reason O_o

thank you platoon three!

for my niceness, i kena-ed 'physical tormets' countless times after they pop-ed!!! @.@ namely the what-have-you infamous activity which created a small wave in the 'prestigious institution in the bishan-braddell area" 3 years ago. and, many-counts-of-4 of ramming against a tree trunk the wrong way round. an initiation into plt 4, by the newly 'christened' (promoted, rather) privates.

PAIN LA BODOH! >:(

thanks, platoon four. haha...

to you privates this may sound sad; i'm posting this from within camp. i'm really used to living here, however, so it's alright for me. only thing is that i'm afraid gss is ending soon with me still confined in tekong.

eh, send me pics taken today leh... you guys know my e-mail addy, right?

nvm... anyways, cliffUNDERSCOREauUNDERSCOREyongATh0tm41lDOTc0m

***

i realise it's no point to think too much or too deep. truth is usually ugly! and ugliness makes you sad. true, right?

but how do you attain a state of enlightment, or anything close to that, like the dalai lama? it's nearly impossible due to the seemingly conflicting conditions of nirvana. you got to empathise others without feeling the others' pain. you try your best to help but do not feel depressed because your efforts are not enough.

seems that nirvana-level beings subsist on two levels of the human/living realm: the societal and the individual. and the individual realm is quite often the dominating realm, though it doesn't come across as selfishness. see, a nirvana-level person helps people not because they want to collect more merit to better themselves. in addition to that, a lot of their time is probably spent on praying and chanting as well. they could have spent all their time devoted to just helping people, sacrificing their prayer time. ok la, depending on what they pray and the effects of the prayer. i suppose they do pray for a better world (in addition to hoping their own hearts and minds would be cleansed).

dunno la, this is coming from one who has limited knowledge about religion, actually. sorry if anyone takes offence at the above. i'm just curious to know how such a balance can be reached, and am in awe of beings who are at that level.

***

ok, till next time, see you people!

>:)

come next batch, i'll have a roof!

i.e. <>>>

i tell you, platoon 4's going to be the best ever platoon!

glitchless administration!

i'm going to work towards it, you can be sure of it.