music

i found out through facebook and from word of mouth that many of my choir friends are still musically active. university a cappella group members, band (rock/alternative) members, cast/crew in musicals etc.

and what about me? who's supposedly *quite* musically inclined. most of my abovementioned friends aren't planning to go into any music business, or have permanently shelved that idea (that's sad but it's reality).

to think i used to dream of becoming a musician! really, in this aspect i'm horrendously under-achieving. too lazy to do anything about it other than to dream, either. is this a reflection of my life? :O being in a position to do great things but not taking even a single step towards realising it?

i hope i'll pick up some courage and motivation to do some serious music in the near future... maybe being part of a band, or composing/arranging music.

tiring!

having to wake up at 5.30am every day takes its toll on me! on the bright side, i hope my natural sleeping pattern reverts to what it was during my school/army days due to this week of 'training'.

chatted with many ex-teachers this week :) quite nice to stay in touch with them. i guess teachers are truly nice people (else why do they want to teach?) so talking with them is always quite a nice thing.

oh! my access card allowed me to enter staff rooms on either side HAHA! hm, does that mean i can use the teachers' lounge on the other side XD

second stint in the same school: next month...

boys are naughty!

one of them recommended 'teenage workbook', a novel by adrian tan to me! and asked me to read a certain paragraph. best thing, the book can be found at the school's library. haha! 

a childhood dream fulfilled

TODAY!

I DID 3 PERIODS OF RELIEF TEACHING!

I CHATTED WITH EX-TEACHERS!

I HELPED OUT WITH MY SCHOOL CCA!

a big dream of mine, fulfilled. to be a teacher (lol!)

i had that aspiration a loong time ago? since primary or secondary school, i think. i thought about how i would ask the class to file their worksheets in the exact way i liked, like essays under the first divider, handouts in the second, tests in the third etc. (one of my primary school teachers was very particular about filing). 

half my dream came true when i became a bmt instructor. i don't know if it is cool because it's ego-boosting, but it was certainly nice to help and guide so many people. then came tutoring (which can be rather tough, if you are very eager to help the student). and now! i'm a teacher! role reversal, one of my ex-teacher says.

ok, need to log off. i have to wake up at an ungodly 5.30am to get to school on time! O_o how did i survive my secondary school days, i wonder.

what is wrong with them people?

it started of with my ever-insecure friend who wonders if going overseas for further study is truly better than being in a local university, and mind you, he secured a place in a prestigious faculty which many hanker for but few make the cut.

and so, he's been sharing with me, he has been trawling the world wide web for opinions regarding this tacky issue. and showed me the following links:

http://theintellectualsnob.blogspot.com/

http://talkbackdev.stomp.com.sg/forums/showthread.php?t=50197

http://theladymelissa.blogspot.com/

oh, elitists! read their blogs if you like, to find out how how self-centered they are. 

honestly, my grasp of english isn't on par with either lady melissa or the intellectual snob (ok, so she admits to it). i mean i can understand what they're writing, just that there's the occasional hard but common word which i never can be bothered to check its meaning, and i don't have the writing flair. 

i'm not keen to launch an offensive - waste of my time. just a glimmer of my thoughts, because it kind of swished away too fast for me to type it all out haha! (oh man, i suck.)

elites need to stop overlooking the fact that it's not that easy to climb up the social ladder (yes, i do know what social mobility is). it's like long-term karma - you work damn hard as a noodle seller with only lower secondary education and save up enough money to fund your child's education (hopefully your child is hardworking enough). assuming your child does make the best out of your finances, he gets a decent degree or a certificate, decent meaning 'alright' and not 'wow' like 'hpvsm' (harvard princeton yale stanford mit. who created this acronym?), he can have a hopefully better working environment and a better job. then, his kids - third generation, i think many of us are in this generation? - have access to better things like tuition and enrichment classes.

that's all fine and dandy to me. but what happens when issues complicate matters? a working parent in a poor family passes away, poor parenting creating delinquents, or someone in the family has kidney failure? 

where to get the money? how to discipline and rein in the child? how to save your family member who's dying of cancer? no money, no talk. and money comes from intellectual capital which can be gained if you have money. life's not that easy for most.

we cannot forget, of course, the change in mindsets of the people! the rather educated second generation have different values pertaining to how the kids should be brought up etc. than the first generation. which brings up another point, that those values can be translated into money. a disciplined person, for example, will be far more likely to succeed in life than one who is not, all else being equal.

the wealthy and the educated must have very different values which they hold dear to as compared with the non-folks. explained simply.

and regarding the brain drain, what do you think will happen if singapore had a university for the elite? i'm sure the government could create that if it tried, given its track record. 

you're going to have under-enrollment because we only have a population of 4-plus million. and that's unprofitable and hard to sustain. you could try to increase enrollment of international students, and following which you'll get dissent from your citizens who will cry unfair. we only have so many people and so many universities, you know. you want singapore to become a mere education transit hub?

i suppose it's not a crime to comment, but given their high status in society they could try making singapore a better place for everyone and not be selfish and keep all their intellectual capital to themselves (protectionism to preserve their elite status?). it's like having money and not using it!

hello? return to planet earth, live in the real world with real people and real happenings. it's the sad case, many 'elitists' intermingle, so their social circles are very different from the real demography. the wealthiest live in landed property, take private transport and work at the top levels of a company, with a nice office to themselves. not to say that they don't interact with people from other classes, they do. when they went to school (even then, that's quite skewed) or public areas like restaurants and shopping centres. 

haha! maybe they perceive the average pedestrian as another 'object' in the cityscape. you know what i mean, like, each person is just a chink in orchard road and you just don't care and mind your own business.

and that's the same for anyone else who's walking behind you - we're all little specks of carbon and water in this vast world. unless one is the president of some organisation/country/anything to that effect, we're all pretty 'dispensable' and 'indispensable' at the same time, in some way :)

average?

rather relaxed, if very slack, days so far.

wake up damn late (between 9 and 10am), breakfast, go online to facebook and check mail. do random things like playing the piano, reading the papers/magazines and mugging for a driving theory test, tutoring the occasional student, going out to buy groceries with mom or for other random things and observe my surroundings. come night, exercise a little bit (i think it's not enough, need to step this up), shower, doodle on my sketchbook, sleep. and i'll almost definitely snack from 11pm to - goodness - 2++am because my sleeping habit is as such now... that's quite a bad thing.

i'm adapting so well to being slack, i want to live like this for ever!!! how different i am now, compared to my school days when i would be a total wreck during the school holidays because they were so boring.

joke of the week: one of my sec4 tuition students thought i was older than my current 20-going-on-21 years old, not because i look old (phew) but! because i'm WORKING!?

he: oh, so you're as old as my brother [i know his brother's 21 years old too]

i: ya la, then?? (amused) do i look that old...

he: no la... cause you're working, ma...

LOL!? urm i won't consider tutoring (as in giving private tuition) as a proper job haha. rather underachieving, if that were to be my life career? i'm still not financially independent, though. my 'income' is still way below national average and if i have to rent an apartment for myself and pay the utility bills and provide all of my food and etc. i'll need welfare assistance.

anyway, what made my day today was to see old shophouses/apartments around farrer park mrt! i think it's really cool, to live in one of those quaint, outdated buildings. narrow apartment, grilled windows, damn small-radius spiral stairs!, balconies with zero privacy because there's no walls... i think the idea of a small house appeals to me right now because i'm single?

i think singapore has a strange way of conserving things, those shophouses are in the middle of a busy street and is surrounded by hdb blocks and other new developments.

speaking of being single. thanks facebook, for allowing anyone's personal details to be publicised. -.-

i see more and more of my friends already finding love at this age. i check random dudes/dudettes and many of them are "in a relationship with so-and-so". the breaking news is replete with numerous innocent (99.9% of the time)/sweet/beautiful/romantic/'LALALA' (to be sung as in minnie riperton's dolphin notes in 'loving you') couple photos, it's the online pda (public display of affection), but without the physical, touching bits (damn, nothing juicy to see)! 

i'm outdated! 21 and still single! help!

i actually wanted to change my display picture to something tongue-in-cheek to pretend that i'm attached, too! (so that i think i'm still normal? lol?) like, a photo of myself kissing myself, or like, resting my arm over another person's shoulder who turns out to be me etc. 

yes, i'm in love with myself, i'm happily single, yes yes! (consolatory words to self...)

***

ok, so apart from that failing aspect of my life, i'm pretty happy. listening to her new album, and for the first time, the lyrics as well (never cared about listening to a song's lyrics before) makes me happier.

for example, 

Oh my lover's gone away
Gone to Istanbul
Light as a feather
I lie on my bed and flick through TV channels
Eating Godiva
I'm smoking my days away reading old e-mails
In my old pajamas
What a day
Me muero, muero, muero

lol, so random! i guess that's the sort of life i'm living, hurhur.

no! this is not the average life. this is a damn good life!

i'm unique!

a quick check on facebook verified the above statement.

there's only one person in the world with the my first name + last name (surname) haha :)

i suppose that makes it very easy for people to search for my profile online, that's possibly the only bad thing about being the only such person in the world - no anonymity! like how googling 'utada hikaru' will invariably show anything about the japanese star.

listen to her new album! it's no. 1 on the daily oricon charts lol.

the up-side: long lost friends will find it too easy to find me! if they can recall my surname, though - i'm sure almost anyone can.

is having a unique name really that good? well, to me, the fb search i did just gave me some sort of ego boost (warped!)

but i find my name a little too long! my english name's a bit antiquated; my surname doesn't register on some people's minds, and they call me 'mr. au' instead. but it's quite nice to be referred to as 'au yong', like how people call each other by surname. better than one-syllable surnames!

but add a 'mister' to it and it sounds too long! oh well, i have to get used to it.

mrs koh said that 'au yong' has a nice, fierce ring to it, good to play the role of a strict teacher HAHA. i think, it's cause it sounds like a japanese surname to some! maybe it invokes images of tough japanese soldiers in khaki-coloured uniforms during world war 2.

i am mean!

i overheard my dad talking to my younger brother, and being the nosey me, went to check it out.

"哇，你的手[臂]粗过我的!" (your arm's bigger than mine! remarked my dad)

actually that's very untrue. my dad's still bigger than either my brother or i. but anyway...

dad: "one of your arms is larger than the other..."

me: !!!!

i asked my brother to stretch his arms forward, underside up.

and! YES his right arm is obviously larger! like, 1cm in diameter larger? he practises too much badminton with one hand alr...

he's a male crab HAHAHA XD

i love my cca

From Myself_JooKoon_ChoraleVE09

rjc's ve xix!

:D:D haven't had this much fun in a long while.

soaking myself in the atmosphere, saying 'hi' to old friends - juniors/teachers, being in the midst of frisky and warm teenagers lol. i was memorised, oops, i mean mesmerised (new rj joke) by the performances. i love the small groups ahh! and of course the best is still PUNCH HAHAHA! yayy. i feel chorale love haha.

oh, here's something amusing:

From Myself_JooKoon_ChoraleVE09

yes, they spent money on changing the font. in less than 5 years.

who put the word 'fun' in 'raffles institution' haha!

i suppose the change in font (from something like times new roman to this) is to reflect the change in internal governance in the school? and to symbolise a vibrant school culture (times new roman in caps is traditional!).

wonder why it isn't taken down yet? maybe the teachers like it too! :D

chinese!

ok the following is scary! i found this while trawling wikipedia

it started when i googled the name of the now famous all over facebook lady who sang 'twinkle twinkle little star' in the major indian styles (amazing and yet funny), then a friend showed me a vid of a hmong singing a cheena song in well, the hmong dialect. then i went to google 'hmong' and found myself reading this:

Transliteration and romanization

Chinese characters do not unambiguously indicate their pronunciation, even for any single dialect. It is therefore useful to be able to transliterate a dialect of Chinese into the Latin alphabet, for those who cannot read Chinese characters. However, transliteration was not always considered merely a way to record the sounds of any particular dialect of Chinese; it was once also considered a potential replacement for the Chinese characters. This was first prominently proposed during the May Fourth Movement, and it gained further support with the victory of the Communists in 1949. Immediately afterward, the mainland government began two parallel programs relating to written Chinese. One was the development of an alphabetic script for Mandarin, which was spoken by about two-thirds of the Chinese population; the other was the simplification of the traditional characters—a process that would eventually lead to simplified Chinese. The latter was not viewed as an impediment to the former; rather, it would ease the transition toward the exclusive use of an alphabetic (or at least phonetic) script.

OMG THE COMMUNIST PARTY COULD HAVE DESTROYED 4-5000 YEARS OF CHINESE CULTURE! 

WHAT IS WRITTEN CHINESE WITHOUT THOSE PICTOGRAMS?

well it would be MUCH easier to learn it [pinyin], i guess. it's currently the best way, after writing it out on a tablet, to input chinese characters on the computer, imo! but it would be impossible to understand single words or short phrases unless the pinyin is unique. 

but it's quite good that they decided to simply chinese characters. it'll take too long to write an essay if we wrote in 繁体... imagine half the words having the same number of strokes as the word 繁.

i can use one word to describe that... it's "ARRRGH!"

and i suppose the written chinese is like egyptian! especially older words because the chinese used to have a SINGLE character for EVERY POSSIBLE thing until they (thankfully) gave up and joined characters to form 'words', e.g. 幽默 (two characters!) means humorous. how cool is that, man.

imagine the chinese syllabus. will never end one lor! most of the lesson would be just to recognise 40 000+ words (the average chinese college student recognises about 40 000 to 60 000 words). never ending 课文 zomg!

so cute!

the simple, happy lifestyle? :)

Saturday

From Random stuff Jan-Feb 09

these are my latest additions to my growing media library.

as of now, i have ALL of her albums, even exodus (ok, but i don't have precious aww.) and ALL of her videos except her 20th birthday recording (rare) and utada united 2006 (still expensive). as you can see from the pic above, i have uh1, uh2+uhu (her mtv unplugged concert), uh3, uh4 and budokan 2004 ^_^

beside all that utada (standing) is ken hirai's 10th anniversary concert dvd! the most damn expensive thing over here, it still cost me $20+ bucks after the discount!

the rest are all just as good stuff: neil sedaka, lenny kravitz, russell watson (he sings 'classical' pop - that cd in the photo is in big band/jazz style), REM, coldplay, U2, and the supremes (very famous yesteryear group).

my current mp3 collection is mostly female singers - utada, shiina, joanna wang, the corrs, stephanie sun, f.i.r, etc. this [gains from the shopping trip]will readjust the gender imbalance in the mp3 player lol. 

omg, spent $173.something in total!! i console myself by thinking that i'll sooner or later buy most of them anyway, so the 50% discount offer was well worth it. but then, i wonder, could i have found these at second-hand cd shops, i.e. cash converters. there's one at ang mo kio and another somewhere in jurong east. it's really hard to find what you want there, though. good stuff are either never sold for cash or are already bought by someone before you. one should seriously consider going there to look for old releases - i was lucky enough to find the corrs' mtv unplugged album and in blue. bought them for about $4 each!!!!!

anyway, the 1 hour long multimedia art thingy is very thought provoking, although the impatient people will probably not like the beginning. i think a single note was struck on the piano at regular infrequent intervals for what seemed like eternity, within a pitch-dark room (i couldn't see mr gooi, who was sitting inches from me). well, which is what the show is kind of about. how long is considered long? i think that part probably took 10 (agonising) minutes, or maybe more or less?

if the impatient can survive the initial part, the rest of the work is very good to watch as well. the dancer moved in reeeaaaallllyyy slow motion, allowing the single light cast on him and the accompanying shadows, formed by the dancer's build, to morph into different forms (the dancer's muscles are extremely toned!) 

then suddenly, the dancer became this amorphous thing that went mad. then just as suddenly, he snapped out of it, which elicited laughter from some. that is probably the most obvious reference to the theme of the work, 阈 (pronounced yu4, damn rare word, can.)

i like the play of lights, which came on and off at various places at different times. i often did not notice a light going on or off because it was controlled so well, so slowly. that's seriously damn cool.

the music which accompanied the dancer and lighting, no, i've used the wrong word. sometimes the music takes center stage instead of the dancer? rather, the three elements (lighting, dancing and music) both complemented and were individualistic in their own ways. very cool.

the other great thing was that there's a post-concert dialogue with the artists :D of which the guy who started this all happened to be mr gooi's friend and mr gooi started shooting him many questions regarding the work haha. i had so many questions to ask, but didn't ask most of them except "what is liminality", to which he said it was a good question (yay). his explanation for that question sort of answered my follow-up questions, still in my head then.

wow, he's compared with erik satie and ryuichi sakamoto! what he does for a living looks (sounds? haha) really cool. maybe i can try doing this in future :]

squeal!

http://www.utada.jp/news.html

MORE PREVIEWS OF HER ALBUM!

ok this album is going to get fairly good sales + reception, if america can give her a chance. stop playing her songs at midnight and start playing them on primetime!!

THIS IS THE ONE

yayyyyy~

WOW day

will post something more substantial soon, when i have more free time.

today's seriously WOW. apart from waking up (and still having) puffy eyes - i feel the mass whenever i look downwards - i raided sembawang music store for 50% buys (although i wonder if they inflated the prices before they slashed it. hm.), then watched some damn cool multimedia work involving light, looping piano tracks and a dancer at the substation with mr gooi and kwan rui :D:D:D

YI HAN, YOU ARE THE BANE OF MY FINANCIAL WELL-BEING! (or blame it on myself. lol.)

掌声鼓励鼓励...

my h2 maths student scored a 'b' for her a levels!!! :D

considering that she got a sub-pass in her mid-year exams, and got a 'd' for her prelims, that's fabulous. and i only tutored her from late july to end october.

i attribute her success to herself, really. she's so outstandingly hardworking during the few months i tutored her; i could feel her steady and fast progress through the weeks. she would drill herself on topics she wasn't sure, and would be very focussed during the tuition. then, whenever she had to grab some materials from her room, she would scamper up the stairs and return back to the table in double quick time! very standard one, i go to her place to solve her questions on the spot (i must be quite crazy to be able to solve *most of the* h2 maths questions, albeit at a damn slow pace, 2 years after hitting the books!)

if you're seeing this (i doubt so haha), congrats to you, once again :D

how i wish all of my other students are as conscious of their urgent situations. if they are to get to where they want to be. then they won't be dawdling around and take their own sweet time to grab the book, or take out their pens... i always have that urge to tell them to hurry up, but never did in the end. how much time would be saved, anyway? it's just that the action sheds some light on their attitude towards the exams :O

but come to think of it, maybe they don't really wish to get a perfect score? or that they don't really know how far they are from the required standard, hence they don't think they're in dire straits. actually they're not in dire straits, yet. but it'll be quite late to stoke the engines after the mid-year exams. and i have to bury them with work before their school teachers do.

-_________-

this year i got 2 o level students, hopefully i can push them to get a1s. but deep down inside i know it's gonna be very very hard hahaha. but it's still not impossible! if they put in as much effort as my star student mentioned above, can be done!

i have my doubts...

1. ... that i'll ever do anything that's major and musical or theatrical :( just seen some friends' photos of their university's production of beauty world, am so amazed. no, not that my friends could do all that (2 were from punch, 1 was from drama in secondary school), but that they got the golden chance to do something as fantabulous as a full-blown musical. acting, singing, dancing all together!

i suppose school's the only time when the average kiddo gets to be part of a public performance, because no average adult would channel his time and efforts into something which might not sustain his basic lifestyle (money), and i guess to book the venue first requires some proof that the performance is of some standard. how to find enough people to do something like that.

but, i confirm can't do that in university :'( unless i change course la! which is slightly tempting 'cause i'm still fearing that i'll be below average before then lol.

2. ... that i'll survive the 4 and more years. so scary, to see blogs such as fivefootway, archidose, spaceinvading, designtavern and archsoc. then you see my blog. stark difference!!!

DO I HAVE THE APTITUDE!?

(ok, i guess i'm too damn lazy to learn a webpage language to make my site nicer looking. but i don't know - i never tried - to design something that looks so european-ly artistic in an artsy, non-sequittor, tangentially irrelevant but still cool sort of way.)

and reading articles from archsoc (by this dr garry fella who's overqualified in various fields including architecture and sociology!?) unsettles me. articles such as "why architects don't like people" (i like talking with people!!!!), "why architects are flashy dressers" (i'm not flashy!!! although i wish i could be hmm), "surviving architectural school" (this article is scary), and "how happy are arch students" (4th least happy students!!!!! good grief. but thank goodness i didn't choose engineering AHAHAHA - which i could have done.)

gatherings from this website:
a. i'm not born to be an architect, 

b. i don't think, behave or even look like one, and
c. i will DIE in architect school

LOL. watch me... (yiwei, don't watch. my designs will be bad for the eyes!)

having said all that, though, i'm having a ball of a time gazing at and poring over the abovementioned websites, picture books and magazines of pretty buildings and interiors (and doing nothing much else apart from eatsleepshit-ing every day).

whatever the case, i think it's still going to be a fruitful experience, whether or not i come out of it alive! (i'm probably mad)

***

random: i just got reconnected with my st. anthony's primary school ex-classmates!? i thought having two of them as my jc classmates (or three, if i counted the class which i was in for the first 3 months), one of them adding me to msn and meeting another one at a mutual friend's birthday party are already damn coincidental. or maybe it's fate?

it's 2.10am now and my email's updated with facebook messages, still.

is singapore more connected than i thought? wow...

wait, that brings to mind, how did my friend, who transferred out of saps along with me and many others, manage to find back the rest? random facebook searches, i suppose? come to think of it, my childhood was in the era when handphones were still uncool (pagers, anyone?) and the average primary school kid did not need to use the internet. how could you have found your lost contacts? er, call their house number?

ahh, i lost the contact number of my best saps friend. he actually remembered me leh, in primary 4 or 5 he asked me out to go on a zoo trip with another friend. in primary 6 he phoned me to ask about my psle score. but i lost the scrap of paper with his home number scribbled on it :P and he never called me since primary 6 (aww)

khoo yu?