partly because he

Here's an update to today's crunch day at Alliance Francaise - the National Piano and Violin Competition.
1st
Before I go on, here's a picture I took at home of my latest composition:


Now back to the competition. For the intermediate category, the finalists were announced today have 2 hours of performance from 6 participants, the youngest being only eleven.

If he wins first prize, I'll be in big trouble, partly because he won 1st prize just 2 years back in the Junior Category, and if he wins 1st prize again this year in Intermediate, it's simply amazing. But well of course the world is full of surprise, although I'm not betting on him winning the 1st prize. I'm betting on Zhang Aidi! Unfortunately Deanna didn't make it into the finals, but I guess life has to move on. I don't have much say in this, simply because I did not participate in the competition and I'm not feeling ANY kind of pressure.

After watching the Senior Category I felt regretful though, entirely because I thought if I participated I could have beaten all the current players. Surprise surprise, all the finalists are from the Raffles family. They are - Shawn Neo, Thomas Ang, Royce, and Jin Yu Jia (who's from RGS)

While waiting for another semi-finalist and Yu Jia to finish playing, Tiffany, Rafael, Shuqi, Yong Han and I were sitting around the tables near the huge staircase structure and we talked for an hour and a half...what a funny conversation I had. Probably one of the best and funniest group conversations I ever had in my life.

While we were at it though, news flooded in all the way from Esplanade Recital Hall to Alliance Francaise that the winners of the Violin Senior Category included Alan (Choo), who was 2nd, and Lee Ning, who was 3rd. There was no 1st prize - what a feeling of deja vu I get!

In any case, today was a highly intense day with all the competing, and I certainly look forward to Wednesday, day of the finals. It will indeed be another intense day, and you guys aren't going to miss any of it with me reporting!




__________________________________________

Food at Food Republic

My mum and I went to Food Republic (as per usual for the past 3 days) and we ate some good food there. Yesterday I ate a total of 6.90 for simply one meal. How terrible. I've never spent so much money at once for a meal (not including McDonalds) the food was good - fried rice, egg, fish coated with some sort of butter. Too bad I didn't take a picture of it. You guys might just be full of looking at the picture though.

I've decided to get a new skin because I thought the old one was rather cramped and hard to read.

Hope the new skin works for you people...

compositions and blogthings

I'm done with another composition! This one's Opus 3.

These are some pieces I've composed:

Tango Op.1
In Honour of Mr. Rajaratnam Op.2
Etude in D Op.3

There are many much more but I have yet to catalogue them. Meanwhile, I'm working towards a piano concerto to be completed before my 16th birthday. I have had both the motives I need and the second and third movements in my head already. Here's something from blogthings...

You Are a Pundit Blogger!

Your blog is smart, insightful, and always a quality read. Truly appreciated by many, surpassed by only a few

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

and here's another:

You Are a Peacemaker Soul

You strive to please others and compromise anyway you can. War or conflict bothers you, and you would do anything to keep the peace. You are a good mediator and a true negotiator. Sometimes you do too much, trying so hard to make people happy. While you keep the peace, you tend to be secretly judgmental. You lose respect for people who don't like to both give and take. On the flip side, you've got a graet sense of humor and wit. You're always dimplomatic and able to give good advice. Souls you are most compatible with: Warrior Soul, Hunter Soul and Visionary Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Ok here's cheers to one day over

Concert, Competition

Watched the NYSE concert yesterday!

I noticed some really good ensemble players, and of course good soloists, but all in all it was a satisfactory concert.

We started the concert off with a Haydn Quartet, the usual classical starter, and it was a starter for what was to come for the rest of the evening. I personally felt the tone was strong, although some of the harmonies turned out sounding wrong because of the not-so-solid bass line.

And then we had another quartet from the same period - Mozart's this time - this was a Secondary 3 quartet and their performance was up to standard. Pretty ordinary though, although I can put to blame some of the audience-cringing parts to the not-steady bass-line

There were performances that were really imbalanced and thus good, and some ensemble players stood out...Trio in D (played by Marie, Naijing and Melissa) was almost flawless, except for teeny-weeny snippets of slip-ups, but nonetheless they all were together on every beat. Structurally clear, stylistically correct, and organised and agreed-upon techniques.

Advantine - by Serge Lancen - being modern, was understandably dissonantal, and not by any fault of the performers. I was definitely not used to the suspensions used (not forgetting the consecutive perfect 5ths in 'Cherry Blossoms'). However the section with the 'Silent Night' motive was amazing if readers are reminded that it was a bass quartet performing this, and they made the best out of it although a lack of instrumental contrast was in front of them.

Earlier in the first half was a reminder of RV-RISE's Christmas Concert with Cao Yun and Elissa Wong playing Ave Maria (Ave Mart was a typo I suppose). A timely reminder that Christmas is coming!

Going back to the 1st half of the concert, the composition by Ho Chee Kong brought a new contrast to the classical music presented in this half of the concert, with three Chinese instruments and a cello. Nonetheless, for those classical ears out there who have rarely heard consecutives perfect 4ths and 5ths, this was the time to cringe. But I thought it didn't quite bring out the mood that the title was supposed to give - 'Cherry Blossoms'

Divertimento in E featured the Secondary 3 trio (Fiona, Kimyung, Audrey), of which I was given a very lousy image of a performance way before the concert started. However it turned out contrary to the performance I had in mind. I only wished they selected a different style to perform though, considering we have altogether 6 classical quartets and trios - none of the performers' faults though.

I noted a few good ensemble players, two of them from the last Quartet in A by Mozart - Koh Hui Lin and Joan Fun - the latter being Shangxuan's professed beloved and later denied saying he was joking but later saying that she was indeed his beloved and so on and so forth. But special mention goes to them because of their good ears, for ears are the second most important assets of the musician (after the fingers, look at Beethoven). Although there was a slip-up (I think) the second violinist and the viola quickly caught up and all was alright. The good ears were mainly related to their adjusting of tuning to the cellist (again). They did well to wrap up the concert.

Although Mr Sze wasn't here in Singapore to watch the concert, I'm sure he would have a positive overview of the concert also. But no bets given though.

A good concert to end a good day.

__________________________________________________________

Saturday, 8 December

I woke up terribly late this morning to miss half-an-hour of the quarter-finals of the Artist category! However when I first entered the theatre I heard an old favourite piece of mine (which I've already perfected to a degree that I was able to play the piece without any comments from Mdm Fang last time) - Allegro de Concierto! I thought I could play better than it though.

There was a solid rendition by a Shaun of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne in D minor, and there was something so fantastic about it that it didn't feel boring at all for roughly 20 minutes. Everything was there, except for him looking into the audience when someone made a sound. Maybe he thought that the judges had stopped him. In any case, his playing was solid, stylistically correct being one of the major factors in piano playing. It combined the beautiful contrapuntal style of Bach, and the virtuosity of Busoni, and I thought it was a perfect combination. Kudos to him! He got in to the semi-finals.

Of course I have to mention Andre Kwon, (No. 1), who performed my second favourite piece of Chopin (after Andante Spianato) - the 'Heroic' Polonaise! Yes and he got into the semi-finals too, expectedly.

I missed Han Ching's performance, but I know that she had 3 Liszt pieces in her competition repertoire, and her technique was brilliant. She made it into the semi-finals too.

The downside for the YST students was that Imma didn't make it, but I suppose the competition was pretty strong.

Tomorrow is crunch day, for it is the semi-finals of the Intermediate and Senior categories! Pretty big for me considering I can participate in both categories although I chose not to this year.

For those who have been asking why I did not join this year's Competition (which numbers a lot), I had:
1) YST audtion
2) New York trip
3) LRSM exam

Of which all of them were successful and I decided to take a break off my shoulders. So these are the reasons I didn't participate.

For now, let's all wait for tomorrow to come!

Headline News: Nebraska Shopping Centre Shooting kills 8

This blogpost marks an end to the past 3 days starting from Tuesday.

I was sent to my aunt's house for 3 days (because my mum was sick and couldn't cook) and 2 nights, and when it finally ended I went to watch the National Piano and Violin Competition, which I enjoyed.

The 3 days and 2 nights was lovely, and I have to thank my mum for letting me go there and my aunt for cooking good food! yumyum.

My time there was super relaxed, reading the papers in the morning, breakfast, playing games in the afternoon, swimming in the late afternoon,lunch, playing card games and computer also, watch TV, dinner, watch deal or no deal, computer games, composing (for me) in the basement, yu-gi-oh (some card game), a heavy game of Monopoly (till 1am), brush teeth, sleep.

Indeed a life of leisure.

I must finish my latest composition by January!

On to the competition, there was of course the good pianists and the not-so-good pianists. Some were fantastic, and of which I feel worthy to post here. Shawn Neo was one of them, his Liszt was polished and structurally clear, emotionally clear, and not lacking in technique.

His Liszt came in an 'entire package', the phrases were well-strung together, and he was sure of what he was doing. Odds are 2:1 he gets into the semi-finals.

Thomas Ang's 'the Lark' was controlled in terms of melody and pedalling, and he managed to create beautiful repeats of the melody. He will get in to, if tomorrow's contestants are not stronger.

I liked Nicholas (Ho)'s performance, although I cannot approach Hammerklavier with such a relaxed attitude because I have yet to play any late Beethoven sonatas, and I couldn't understand the fugue. Maybe there was too much pedal? There was hell lots of virtuosity in the Prokofiev, and his teacher had at the end of the piece give him the most applause...worthy of this virtuosic performance. He should get into the semis also though, but because of the lack of lyrical music (I was finding for diversity), he might face more competition.


So that pretty much rounds up the first day of competition for me, second official day of the competition. (I missed the Junior Category yesterday, but worth it since I was having some leisure time in the 5-storey houses of my aunties.)


Is it any wonder that I have 10 hits on yahoo.com under my full name?

Arsenal!

I am in the midst of an unhealthy addiction towards the Beatles. I suppose it is a musical addiction, for afterall I'm simply listening to their music. But it starts to get unhealthy when all you do is to stare at their music videos again and again...

On the sports side Arsenal beat Aston Villa 2-1! How happy I am to hear this news.

Here's a picture of the two strikers of my favourite team...


I noticed a few weeks back that there was an obvious trend in club-supporting.

The fanbase of Liverpool is generally high because of Liverpool's dominance in the 1980s...so we have all the adults supporting Liverpool. And then those who at my age follow soccer earlier will have Manchester United, because of their dominance in 1999, where they won the Triple (Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup) - Sorry girls and guys if you have no idea what I'm talking about. You can skip this part.

And finally there was the winning spree of Arsenal where they went unbeaten in 49 games in 2004. And I caught the football fever, supporting Arsenal.

I heard Aunty Eunice (living next door) play We Wish You A Merry Christmas yesterday night on the violin, and I did roughly 10 variations on it immediately on the piano (improvising). I think they (with her daughters) heard it, because they stopped playing their violins.

Will write something in the evening.

Meanwhile, shall I get a wordpress blog?

My Week

Concerning the online poll - Singapore won 15-1, which isn't really fair in my opinion, when this is a Singaporean blog with predominantly Singaporean readers. We shall wait for the results in January from the ICJ.

I am playing my own composition during studio class on Monday after a discussion with my piano teacher - it was a piece composed for my class assignment in the musicology class, and so I'm playing it.

We had the party yesterday! There was plenty of food for starters - spaghetti, two huge steamed chickens, ice cream, one cake, grapes, strawberries, drinks, and snacks like Nachos, Pringles.

The chickens were really American, the reason being that they were dry on the outside, so tender was the meat, and not forgetting the juiciness of it. Very tasty, the chicken. We were literally taking chunks of the white meat, and later in the night (which lasted till 12) we had to put it on the middle of the living room table and take off chunks of it and finish it up.

Games were not forgotten of course, and we played 15-20, Blind Man's Bluff, and Pictionary. My team won! (Consisting of Irwin, Hanching (later Akkra) and me) Miss Hahn said it was unfair since we had two native speakers and one super alert person (Akkra)

We beat the rest in the end, and it was pretty fun, with Mr Kawai Shui around.


Party aside, I took notice that almost every Saturday now in the World section there is mention about global warming, and I hope it has destroyed all thoughts of it being fake or hoax. Even then, I don't think that should now be the problem, because we should be focusing more now on how to stay alive and save the planet.

On the more phoney matters - I have received no more than 5 smses and calls this entire week - for a period of time I suspected I had yet to pay my phone bill (which were confirmed to be true) but the messages still didn't come until yesterday at the party when my dad sent a message during the party.


To more of the academic side, I got next year's literature book - Gulliver's Travels. Can't wait to improve my literary skills and of course my writing skills. Gulliver's Travels is good read though, after you read between the lines - sometimes he's amusing, but then you realise that there are darker representations and things that he wants you to understand. Of course, that's why we call them satires. Especially the part where he peed on the Lilliput Emperor's Palace in order to quench the fire, but got accused of treason (?)

I have yet to talk about my trip to Malaysia from Tuesday to Thursday though - met my cousin's daughter, wrote 2 chapters of The Wonderland of Music, altogether being 8 pages of foolscap paper. Planning to transfer them onto Microsoft Word, and do some heavy editing.

Probably some composing to do in the late evening, melodic minor scales, and my composition - Tango for Audiences and Piano

Letters you would never write - Chapter 1

To my Dearest Friend whose Name is Unknown,

Yesterday I woke out of bed to find my neck hurting. It must have been me waking up on the wrong side of the bed --

(How was I to know that it was the wrong side of the bed? Even if I had woke up on the right side of the bed, I would still have my neck hurting. But if it really was the right side, how could it have hurt? Afterall it was the correct side of the bed that I woke up on, unless I meant that it was the 'right' side, in which the opposite would mean the left side. Therefore in order to avoid any pains of the neck, we could simply sleep still, and not sleep onto any sides. But I suppose it was a fact that we turn in our sleeps, and we do not simply remain at the same spot (middle) of the bed, unless we suffered a case of rigor mortis, which would mean we were dead. If we did suffer a case of rigor mortis when we were asleep though, that would mean that we would not get up on any side of the bed, which would mean that the possibility of getting up on the wrong side of the bed and having the neck hurt would be reduced to zero! Upon heavier considerations though, it would be an impossibility to wake up dead, or in other words, wake up while already dead. That would mean that we have to take a risk of getting out of bed on the right - I mean, correct - side of the bed. It should be necessary that we do together a calculation of how many times we take these risks.

Supposedly I lived to a ripe old age of exactly 70 and slept every day of the year, I would be sleeping a grand total of:

70
x365
____

25550

That would mean that we would be taking 25550 risks of waking up on the wrong side of the bed! That is simply unacceptable, for taking too many risks in life simply does not pay of, my Friend whose Name is Unknown) -- I was glad though when I found your baskets of flower lying outside my door. Thanks for the gift!

Love,
Jonathan

dragonboating, earthquakes

In no mood at all to write any essays on pop and music and religion.

That's because I've been entirely hooked on Beatles's music - it's like taking drugs. But it's legal :)

Recently Life actually had a small segment saying that from next year onwards, the Beatles will go online! So we will be able to download their music legally from next year onwards! After exactly 50 years, (the Beatles did their recordings about 1964-1970) we get to hear their music - not on LP, not on CD, but online!

My dad says he used to have the LP vinyl records but he had to throw them away later.

Grr.

Very dark morning, the clouds seem to have gathered for a discussion above us, very soon they will fight and some cloud will start peeing, and putting into consideration all of them will follow suit, and then we will have to take out our umbrellas.

The past few days have seen the death of 5 Singaporeans - the talk between mothers after the PSLE topping of 294 - RIP to all the 5 dragon-boaters.

In any case, unfortunately, the talk is directed to who should be blamed for the tragedy that happened. Apparently the Singapore team had completed the race already before they decided to go for another leisure ride.

Because of this, some point to the boaters themselves for the decision. And then it appears that some/all of them did not put on their lifejackets to make it easier for them to row the boat.

The fingers point to the president of the dragon-boating association also. Personally I think we should stop the blame-game and get on with the solutions to deal with such problems in the future.

It's not that easy in reality though - some people fail to see the main problem.

Indeed, that makes life more interesting, but interesting leads to the death of people.

Alright, off with the philosophical talk, now to some of the bigger problems.

What can we say when there's been wildfires in California, earthquakes in Indonesia, typhoons in Philiphines, drought in Africa? At last there's no more talk of terrorism and Middle East, now it's all about Mother Earth' fury on us.

An interesting point to note, all of the presidents who have supported the Iraq war or supplied it with coalition have fallen - George Bush is now a sitting duck with nothing to do, John Howard has been replaced by Labor, Tony Blair is now gone, replaced by Gordon Brown. Is this a curse of the Iraq War?

In my English EOY essay I did state that people who supported any form of war would lead to no good.

Back to Mother Nature's fury, some will cite it to the end of the world (we're still waiting for the megaquake that will hit Indonesia), some will say it's probably for all the wrongdoings humankind have done to the Earth. Maybe it's natural considering the last generation had caused so much environmental problems.

Now this generation has to take all the faults - at least we're doing something to turn back.

Concert over, Batman begins

Thank you to Fiona and Audrey for coming to our RESERVED concert - it ended today at about 3.45pm.

I don't know how to describe it, except I only know that every concert I've been in I've enjoyed, and this concert is no exception - we have the responsibility to produce good music for the audience, and I've thought so for myself.

Meanwhile, 'Batman Begins' begins! It starts at 6.45pm, and Singaporeans should be watching. Imma glue myself to the TV now.

This shall be done while I fill in the fingerings for Bach's C minor fugue.

See you ;)

8.15-10.15 Bach's C major fugue! from Well-Tempered Clavier

I'm done with it. Tomorrow I'll move to C minor.

the Petra Brancha dispute

It's been exactly a week since I last scored five goals at a RISE soccer match. Tomorrow I shall attempt two things - an overhead scissors kick and if possible, a header.

I'm thinking Ryan's "my first header".

Recently in the news there has been constant reports about the progress of the Singapore-Malaysia court case in the International Court of Justice. In case some of you out there still do not know what is happening between our neighbour country and us, we're currently fighting over sovereignty of Petra Branca island, or as what the Malaysians call it, Pulau Batu Puteh.

This Thursday morning, I read a newspaper article about the lighthouse dispute, and this time the focus was on - ok first things first, if you are Singaporean, turn to page 4 of Home today. I'm racing against time because I'm hoping you guys don't miss out before the blogpage shuts down.

Ok in short, a blog which Malaysia had relied on to present its case to the International Court of Justice contains chunks from Wikipedia. The posting on the blog was made on Nov 9, before Malaysia presented its case before the ICJ. The only change that the author of the controversial blog had made was to use Pulau Batu Puteh Lighthouse in place of Cape May Lighthouse in the Wikipedia article.

Here's a screenshot of the blog:


(You can see Jon Koh's blog on one of the tabs)

In any case if you want the link to it, here it is - www.leuchtturm3.blogspot.com

On his blog, there has been lots of comments coming from netizens everywhere, and of course several political attacks. Some even link him to the Malaysian government.

I shall not give a full political overview of the situation, but I'll tell you in short what's wrong with this.

The blogger has basically lifted two entire paragraphs from Wikipedia, and Malaysia, the other nation claiming sovereignty over Petra Branca, has relied on this blog to argue its case. The problem is that Malaysian's legal eagles have been chided by Malaysians themselves for relying on an entirely anonymous blog (considering leuchtturm is not a normal name) that has shown up for plagiarism.

Malaysia has cited the blog as the source of a photograph it produced last week in an international court, to show Pedra Branca's supposed closeness to Johor. This led to a Singapore blog writer called Simplyjean to analyse this blog, thus leading to ultimately, the discovery. So what Simplyjean found was that the author of leuchtturm had actually lifted chunks of text from Wikipedia, whose contents can be edited by anyone.

(The past 2 paragraphs have been paraphrased from the Strait Times article, if anyone of you are thinking why the grammar's so good.)

In any case, it's amazing how in front of the International Court of Justice, Malaysia can rely on a blogpost (that's one amazing thing itself) that has been plagiarized (the even more amazing thing) from Wikipedia (the most amazing thing).

Also, in case you didn't know, all the links found on the webpage are all linked to Wikipedia itself, and the link named Pulau Batu Puteh Lighthouse actually links to Cape May Lighthouse. A show of stupidity?

It may seem as if I'm exaggerating, but I would like to say it's such an embarrassment for such a nation like Malaysia.

I shall shift your attention to the comments from the netizens for your reading pleasure, and if you are lazy to type in the URL yourself.

Comments about the post from netizens
____________________________________________________________________
Fudge said...
Well, you want to know why the anger? Let me clue you in, buddy. The main reason is that your blog post apparently made a fool of a soverign nation's government at the ICJ. Who wouldn't be pissed right? Please don't feign ignorance, pal. If you're really interested in this region, you would have known how much of a monkey Malaysia was made of with credits to your blog.

Next, apparently, your wiki links don't work! Instead of going to Batu Puteh Lighthouse, it goes to Cape May Lighthouse. And please, also, since you claim to be an "outsider", how come you know about Batu Puteh? The dispute started well a year ago, so why only blog now?

Flowing Stream said...
-_-;; Aiyah, Malaysian in-house political tactics cannot be used outside of Malaysia lah.

Malu leh...

ICJ somemore. =.= M'sia in big shit if Blogger kena subpoenaed to reveal ID of "leuchtturm"... which I think SG is trying to do right now.

Habis-liao the case if go on like this. Contempt of court.

Haih...



600K Peanut said...
hmmm... play innocent? your trick will only works if all the ICJ judges are M'sian and also the court is in M'sia.

The one who planned using this photo, his IQ must be damn low, i would say retarded.

You are in fact, not helping your country but malu them in the whole world. I believe you should have follwing the case closely, did you see a lot of foreigners there as well? These peoples are not cleaners nor hawkers, they are many lawyers and journalists.

Conclusion, your innocent photo has caused damage to your country claim to those islands.


sungimann said...
Dear Fudge,

It is not leuhchtturm's fault that Malaysia was made a monkey. Those responsible to present the evidence at ICJ should have done their home work properly instead of copying blatantly from the net.
(what they are admitting)

If you want to be pissed, be piss for the sloppy job done.



(here's the hint of conspiracy)

The said...
/// I have been interested in lighthouses since I was a little boy. ///

Are you still a little boy - which explains a lot?

If you are not a little boy now, why do you wait so long before you translate your interest in lighthouses into this blog?

Can you shed some light? Or is your lighthouse shrouded in fog?



Saturnvship said...
Relax, bloggers. Take it easy. We all know the answers already. Go easy...

To leuchtturm,

I have questions for you,

"My family travels a lot across Europe when I was a kid and I got to see many lighthouses in various countries."

How did the photo of Pedra Branca (Horsburgh Lighthouse) get in if you travel across Europe?

How did you get the photo when you claimed that you do not know anything about Singapore and Malaysia?

If you are really avid in lighthouses, you would have alot of photos of lighthouses in Europe loaded in the blog, instead of a lone photo of Pedra Branca - not handsome lighthouse, isn't it?
Pedra Branca is located in Southeast Asia - far away from Europe... interesting...

More suspicious - using the name of Pulau Batu Puteh instead of common name - Pedra Branca known to British and Dutch since their empires times.

Back to International Court of Justice hearing on Pedra Branca island dispute, it is really very very embarrassing to everyone that the photo was taken from a blog and used to present in the international court in Hague.

Reputation of a country is at stake.



In fact netizens are quick enough to have already located him, although I'm not sure whether it's true or not. Here's just one of them:

Inix said...
From http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation

I believe you're from Puchong, Selangor, which is around 20 - 30KM away from Malaysia's MFA.
Latitude - 3.0170
Longtitude - 101.6170
City Code - MYSLPUCH
City ID - 18746

HAHAHA.. OWNED!




__________________________________________________________________

I thus end my blogpost here. I will be setting up a poll though, on who do you think will win the legal case at the ICJ. I suppose this entire blogpost has been rather biased in the sense that I'm afterall, a Singaporean and I would be writing in a prejudiced style. Themis without her blindfold!

ride from my house

Let me start out from yesterday's events.

I went for dinner with Mdm Fang, my mum, Aidi's mum, and Aidi at Orchard Road, where we went to Crystal Jade Restaurant. (pardon my spelling) And we had some really good Chinese food there, like (I'm not joking Fiona) hot friend prawn coated with egg yolk. Gosh I just realized that you hate both food and they actually combined it :X LOL.

Ok this is turning into a conversation with myself. Ahem.

Back on topic, there was also dumplings, and there was one which was filled with soup and you were supposed to burst it in your mouth and savour the soup. But I didn't know that for the first dumpling and I placed it my mouth, and when I popped it, the soup was damned hot.

So you could imagine, trying to shift the soup around in my mouth because it was burning -.- and I simply couldn't swallow the dumpling because it was so hot. That counts as stupid.

The second one was better. Because I was prepared, and before I placed it in my mouth I popped it. And all the soup came out onto the plate. Sounds like blisters to me (urgh)

We chit-chat and ate for 2 hours, from 7-9pm. When we left, Mdm Fang went on her way and the 4 of us were left. Aidi's mum suggested shopping, so my mum actually followed. But anyway we took the MRT to Choa Chu Kang, and there was this time when the train actually stopped in the middle of no where.

I asked Aidi how occasional does the stopping train occur, and she told me 1 in 20 rides.

Then there was this voice which said, "The train has stopped due to a track fault."

But I'm kind of surprised it happened to my train, and especially since I took the train very rarely, I guess somewhere something was finding for me, and it found my train, and it said "There you are. Now the train you're in will stop."

Got back safely at about 10.30 though.

But things weren't going to get any better. The next morning I woke up at 7am for my VCH rehearsal with RISE and RV, and lugged my cello with me (and my mum) to the MRT. The LRT (Light Rail Transit) ride from my house to Choa Chu Kang was ok, with the squeezing and everything. My first taste of morning jam.

Now you should see, the problem is this - recently the government has went on blitzkrieg and activated tons of ERP (Electronic Road Pricing) gantries all around Singapore, especially heading towards the CBD (Central Business District). This has I supposed, caused a distinctinvely fewer amount of cars hitting the roads, and thus less jam. (Fewer people are able to afford the ERP pricing, and for rich people who view my blog, 50 cents is quite alot. Add $1.50, and $2, and that's my lunch money gone)

But where do all the workers go instead of their cars? They take public transport. Which means more people taking public transport. Considering the congestions in the trains before, now with all these people not hitting the road anymore (I'm one of them), you can imagine the jam.

Now put my cello into the picture. It wasn't really much a problem though, but with all the people staring at my cello case, I thought it could have just turned red hot and explode. Anyway, I would like to first mutter a few curses to the Government for this, but afterall I'm ready to squeeze in with the morning crowd if it means cleaner air for the Earth.

Personally I don't see any other solutions to this morning crowd problem, but I have to admit it's very vulnerable to terrorists. Talking about terrorists, the securities had to check my cello case at Raffles Place this afternoon, and they opened the cello case up to check the contents.

Did I have to play it to confirm that I was a musician?

of soloists and accompanists

When I was having my afternoon nap just now, my chain of thoughts snapped to something about music - this time it's about accompaniment.

I shall talk specifically about piano accompaniment. For those who visit my blog and don't understand about piano accompaniment, basically it's about a solo(one) instrument being accompanied (played with) by the piano. So the piano provides (gives) the basic harmony. For a piece of music. Duh.

Ok jokes aside, for years in the classical music scene in Singapore (or maybe globally), I've noticed that some (and I would like to emphasize he word 'some') accompanists simply practise for one rehearsal with the soloist before a performance. What I'm trying to say here is that they simply don't have enough time to practise well and hard enough to give a GOOD performance for our audience.

I believe it's not just the accompanist's fault. The soloist also need to provide the accompanist with enough time to practise the piece!

Let me give you an ideal picture of what should be the case: Hongrui and I have an item in the chamber concert. He passes me the score 3 weeks before the concert so that I have enough time to practise! (the notes are pretty easy) He also practises and when we get together about 1 week before the concert, we can play it properly.

Now the problem here is, sometimes soloists over-estimate their accompanist's ability and they provide a not-so-good performance on stage. Will you, as audience, enjoy the performance? They certainly did not practise hard and well enough.

Here's the example:
My friend pays a very high amount of money to a professional accompanist, passes him the score one day before the concert, practise it with the accompanist (who is sight-reading), takes the score back, gives the pianist the score on the day of the concert itself.

Maybe the pianist is good enough, but it's simply frightening to see them sight-reading on the stage and it is obvious the pianist does not have the capibility to notice everything (harmony change, tempo, pedalling, tone control, articulation, depth, sound production) other than the notes! Maybe a little - but seriously audience are these what you want to hear?

What I suggest to all soloists are that you have to be responsible and allow your accompanist to practise his music, and that both of you are responsible to bring good music to the audience. Of course, another word I learned from Mr Sze - desire. Remember, every concert is your best concert!


Here's another joke I heard from a friend in university - he was accompanying someone inside the conservatory but was paid to accompany someone outside, and he actually admitted to me that he didn't practise much for the music with the uni student but did (lots harder) for the one that provided him money.

At first I really didn't mind. Now I'm a little tweaked, but money still rules 90% of the world though. However my point here is please don't let money run everything? The audience want to hear good music - we should not simply practise hard for the performance that provides us money. We should try our best to work both pieces to close-perfection!



Ok now for comments on the tagboard, if any from soloists and accompanists.

pretty imba

RISE camp rocks! As I always say after one. The highlight for me were the basketball court soccer game and Zhiyi's night game.

Well for the soccer game I scored 5 goals, Hongrui scored 5 goals, Adriel scored 2, and this brought the total for the cellos to be 12. Since it was a cellos against the rest, it was Adriel, Hongrui, John Lee, Matthew and I against the other non-cellists.

I thought my playing improved, so maybe it was a good point. Anyway we finished the game 12-2. Hm. Pretty imba.

And then at night we played Zhiyi's night game, although I thought it was too complicated for me to understand and play, because it was so da Vinci code and codes and more codes...well but partly I told my team to take a relaxed approach and we lagged so much that the gamemasters allowed us to cheat...

Oh yes and then this morning we had the Sec 4 farewell, where the Sec 1s to Sec 3s sang the song 'Remember' composed by both Kaicheng and I...with string quartet...Good job guys for making this camp successful!

Of course, we have to say 'farewell' to the Sec 4s, but I guess the three Sec 4 cellists will be a little hard to part with...! But we have to move on with life, and life is all about moving on.

So that's all for my postcamp post, see you soon!

studio performance

Going to RISE camp tomorrow morning. I have a performance later at the orchestra hall! Will be doing Griffes, so now I'm basically practising and relistening to the recordings, and listening to the Naxos version to get some sparks of inspiration.

Will join you guys tomorrow!

each of them

look who's here look who's here!

Over the past few days since the start of Novemeber I've only posted 3 times. That's nothing comparable to October's.

Anyway I've had my lesson on Griffes and I'll be performing it on Wednesday during studio class!

I'm looking forward to it although I still have lots to work on it, especially my voicing. Currently, I'm doing three pieces at the same time (Griffes, Debussy's Etude, and one of Bach's fugues) This evening I spent 1 hour trying to figure one page of fingering for Bach. Have to work on both hands seperately to correct the voicing and the like.

Yesterday I borrowed four books, each of them great in their own way. The first book, a piano technique book, is titled Famous Pianists and Their Technique by Reginald R. Gerig. It's entirely on technique - wrist, arm, finger, shoulder positioning, relaxation, and the people who give their insights would be people like CPE Bach, Mozart, Hummel, Beethoven, Chopin, Lizst, Couperin, Debussy, Rubenstein. So there you have it, a book entirely on technique.

So far I've a hundred pages on it - 1/5 of the book.

Another book I borrowed was on The Inner Game of Music, talking about how to improve performance and the like. And the other two? 2 volumes of analysis on Beatles music.

There you have it!

maggi mee

sweaty and stinky! I've just came back from rehearsal - later in the rehearsal we played with the choir. So for me it ended at about 1. Legs are pretty tired too, thanks to the soccer. Will go to YST at 6 later for scales.

Waiting for my maggi mee to be done.

I don't think I would be posting much nowadays! It's the holidays and you guys should be giving me a break. But I'll post whenever I want to though. like now?

debussy today

Apparently with this huge amount of time to spare I've decided to spent it on searching for piano videos on YouTube. This one has caught my ear...



Debussy's Reflets dans l'eau (Reflections of the Water)

Check out his other videos - 4-hand performance of Debussy's Petit Suite. Beautiful, I must say.

In any case being presented with hours of free time allowed me space and time to think of my dream home...But I'm not going to post it here. Because I realised that will expose too much of my thoughts! :O -.-

But there will definitely be a grand piano somewhere. (someday)

various

Roti prata and Chi Kueh for breakfast. And, very full.

These days have been a bore - borrowed a philosophy book (Music and Society - the Politics of composition, performance and reception) from the music library.

It's a pretty windy bright Sunday morning. There isn't anything that I wish to do now...maybe play a game or two. I'm quite bored actually. Should I read a book? Should I think of something to type about?

No one really blogs MUCH nowadays.

What are the things I look forward to?

1. Piano lesson
2. RISE rehearsal
3. Visit my grandmother
4. Soccer in RISE
5. Next concert

You can imagine how fun piano is to me if I look forward to every lesson -.-

So have I got the job I signed up for at Singapore Symphonia??? Bryan Choong have you gotten any calls?

4-hand class, books

(On a side note, this is the 100th post)

I don't care I'm going to mug very hard for Literature next year so I can win a book from Miss Chew! That's because I've never got my own storybook for 5 years on already...I mean, the books are either being borrowed or unreturned from the library. (Shhh)

And the rest of the money are usually spent on music scores, theory, history books. How nice will it be to have a storybook of your own!

We did some 4-hand sight-reading this evening with the freshmen gang at class, some Dvorak and Brahms. Moved away from Mozart already, but Aidi and I still have to do Mozart 3rd movement.

Dr. Hecht celebrated his Halloween birthday!

Other than that I'm kick-starting the RE project for next year already. Better get together with Hongrui, Bryan and Ben Low for the project...