Sigh. Why do things always happen this way. Its the small little details that matter to me and they NEVER EVER work out. WHY!? WHY ME?
I'm just so hurt all the time now. Thank god i at least have adriel to talk to if not i think i'd die of sadness and boredom and.. well i'd just die. Some people just get all the luck in the world. Me? I try my best and get nothing. It happens in everything. Results, life, whatever you can think of.
Well, i suppose blogging ain't for think kinda stuff. WOO. EMATH TEST TOMORROW. I am SOOOOO happy. Yay. =.="
I FORGOT TO DO MY CHINESE HOMEWORK AGAIN. !$&%. PLUS, i forgot to bring back my geog textbook, so there goes the TYS questions due tomorrow. I am seriously screwing up my school work!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can't wait for tuesday. Lester - LUNCH!! we go eat smth else this time.
Oh, I was learning bloodseeker today. There was about like... 1.. 2 .. 3... 4- 1. yes 1 game that i didnt screw up. Thts good enough for today. I only played 3 games anyway. Lol.
EH ccs is getting not so suck anymore!! :D Today his pudge wasn't so bad! OMFG i better learn to learn heroes faster if not ccs is gona own my ass in DotA next time. AND THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN! Ccs.. I WILL PWN YOU ONE DAY!! :D
Anyone have any idea what ventrilo is? Dar is asking me to join and i duno WTH it is. o.o
January 28, 2007
& here, i present to you.. John's good deed.
It was a balmy Sunday morning and john was taking a stroll around his estate. He turned his head and saw a couple frantically trying to get someone’s attention. He walked over and they immediately told him their plight. Her cat was very sick and while they were on their way to the vet, a ferocious dog chased her up a tree, their cat was so stricken with fear that it did not dare to come down. They were worried that it might be too late for her by the time someone came.
They begged him to help them and would not take no for an answer. John knew that it was a dangerous task and that only he could decide the fate of the poor cat. So, plucking up all the courage in him and with a determined look on his face, he climbed up the tree steadily but surely. Beads of sweat rolled down the owner’s foreheads, was it too late to save their cat?
Finally, John climbed down the tree with the cat safely in his arms. They all heaved a sigh of relief. They thanked John profusely, hugged their kitten tightly and rushed of to the vet. When he went home and recounted the day’s events to his mother, tears of joy rolled down the ecstatic mother as she hugged him. He had done her proud.
Later that day, John got a phone call, it was the couple. They told him that their cat had indeed been saved. John was elated that his efforts had not gone to waste. They thanked him more and even offered him a generous sum of money for saving their cat. John shyly turned them down because to him, the reward is knowing he had done a good deed.
The next day, to his enormous surprise, he was featured in the Newspaper. Later, he found out that a reporter was nearby and saw everything had happened. From this moment on, John knew that no good deed goes unrewarded.
Now, that was written by my sister. Pretty good for a p6 dont you think?
They begged him to help them and would not take no for an answer. John knew that it was a dangerous task and that only he could decide the fate of the poor cat. So, plucking up all the courage in him and with a determined look on his face, he climbed up the tree steadily but surely. Beads of sweat rolled down the owner’s foreheads, was it too late to save their cat?
Finally, John climbed down the tree with the cat safely in his arms. They all heaved a sigh of relief. They thanked John profusely, hugged their kitten tightly and rushed of to the vet. When he went home and recounted the day’s events to his mother, tears of joy rolled down the ecstatic mother as she hugged him. He had done her proud.
Later that day, John got a phone call, it was the couple. They told him that their cat had indeed been saved. John was elated that his efforts had not gone to waste. They thanked him more and even offered him a generous sum of money for saving their cat. John shyly turned them down because to him, the reward is knowing he had done a good deed.
The next day, to his enormous surprise, he was featured in the Newspaper. Later, he found out that a reporter was nearby and saw everything had happened. From this moment on, John knew that no good deed goes unrewarded.
Now, that was written by my sister. Pretty good for a p6 dont you think?
January 21, 2007
Oh, & something for all to read.
Hi. I found this quite meaningful, so something for yall to read.
When I came to Cleveland and joined The Orchestra, I was eighteen years old,
and I thought I was a finished product. Now I had arrived. All the hard work
was behind me.
You know how it is at ten when you think you'll never get beyond the first
position, at thirteen when you can't cope with ten minutes practicing
before school and two hours after it, at sixteen when you're working 25
hours a day for the big competition, and then, for me, at eighteen. It was
all over. Finished. I had A Job.
And how little I know! It was only the bare beginning. It is so easy in
music to forget that we are doing something we love. Sometimes it's easy to
forget that we even love it as deeply as we do. It's so difficult when
you're young that, with as much passion as you have, it seems impossible to
imagine ever playing well enough. It's so difficult as you get older to
realize that this feeling will never go away.
I am fifty now. The young students I played with at summer string camp are
fathers and grandfathers. And I am still touched and amazed when playing
with distinguished colleagues of my own age to realize that, as well as
they may cover it up, they shake with stage fright before walking out, and
sometimes even in performance. The doubts, the insecurities, the anger at
the space between the dream and the achievement: these never go away.
There is never a moment in music when you can say, "This is it. Now I have
arrived." It is a journey with many stops. There are frustrating pauses,
whirlwind acceleration, and sometimes, just a sense of having got
seriously lost.
I see now how ironic it was for me that only a year after I got to Cleveland
with the feeling that I could now sit back and enjoy things. that I had the
worst time of my whole musical career. It seemed to my old colleagues -
many of whom were still in music school then - that I had it made. I had a
regular salary (enough to keep a man and family, after all) and I with
only myself to take care of. I had concerts all over the world with one of
the greatest orchestras of all time,. who, from the outside, could possibly
have guessed the desolation and emptiness that I felt. Was it all for this?
Was this the magic? Here I was on the third stand, never heard and never
noticed. I felt invisible - it began to feel like a boring, terrible, slow
death. Forty years of this, how was I to endure it?
The problem was, of course, the total lack of a good, true education. In
those early days, I never listened to my colleagues. I just stared at the
page and played along with everyone else. One of the herd. Then one day,
George Szell, clearly frustrated beyond belief at my donkey-like
sleepwalking, told me to stay back during the intermission of a rehearsal.
He grabbed my right arm and started to play as I should play out. It was a
terrible, terrible noise, but the passion was there again, the commitment.
He was furious with me. He barked at me: "You don't contribute. You don't
know anything. You're not prepared. You just float along down the stream.
You never know how the music goes." It was a tirade - and it amazed me. It
had simply never entered my self-pitying state that this could all be my
fault. That if I was bored, it was because I wasn't trying hard enough.
Music isn't boring; people are.
So he told me about studying the score, about practicing music not just
technique; about learning to hear the rest of the music... to study
beforehand the architecture of a piece, the lines weaving through it in all
the individual instruments. Above all, he dared me to have pride again in my
playing. It wasn't to be the old pride - narcissistically and aimlessly
self-delighting in the trivia of instrumental playing. But to get immersed
into the whole psyche and personality of a composer. He taught me respect
for the creative force behind a great piece of music. He taught me respect
for my fellow musicians: bullied and scorned by him, I was forced to open up
and listen to the great musicians who surrounded me. I was over-awed by a
horn sound that my wretched cello could never match; a clarinet legato that
defined the word for me at last; the silvery shimmer of beautiful flute
playing. George Szell opened my ears to the musical inventiveness of fine
oboe playing. He taught me humility and, through it, he brought me joy.
It's so interesting for me to look back. When I was made principal cello of
The Cleveland Orchestra, I was probably the same age as most of you. Many of
my friends then, I still see and play with. Or, actually, not too many.
That's the rub.
When I went into the orchestra, most of my old Juilliard and Curtis
classmates wrote me off as solo material. That was me out of the fray, out
of the running, for a lifetime. There were big talents, big stars-to-be,
and I was no longer counted among them. Or, perhaps, never was. And I would
have put my money on other cellists than I for a solo career, quite frankly.
There are people I can still see in my mind's eye who seemed incandescent:
tall, good looks, flashing fingers; the right mentors; competition winners;
stunning self-confidence. And most of them - if not all of them, actually
- you wouldn't have even heard of. I had no idea at twenty-one what a
long, long journey it is.
The key is simple: You just have to keep going. It isn't a competition;
it's only about yourself, about one practice day after another, about
keeping going, and above all, forcing yourself to understand that you never
understand it all. The English have a term which I have just discovered.
It's called DINTISM. "How did he get that job?" I asked about a
colleague. "Oh, dintism," came the answer. Dintism? It is (it was
explained to me) by sheer dint of doing it. Of doing it, with all good
will and effort day after day, year after year. Of not giving up.
I'm often asked whether or not I get bored of carrying the Dvorak Concerto
around the world. Bored? They must be joking. I, who thought I knew
everything I needed to know about the Dvorak Concerto when I was twenty, am
still discovering new things every single time I play it. I hear someone
else play it and that goes for my students too, and in their
interpretation, I'll hear a phrase, a note, an unfamiliar turn of musical
gesture, and there will be a new discovery for me.
I'll never forget my encounters with Marcel Moyse, the legendary French
flutist, at the Marlboro Festival. In his eighties, he kept tripping over
his words in his passion, his eagerness to tell you of a piece of music. As
much toil and work as music demands - it is also our brush with
immortality. I heard Pablo Casals play when he was so old that his fingers
and technique could hardly be recognized as good cello playing - and yet,
it was the most moving and dynamically powerful music-making you can
imagine, so alive was the soul, so strong the belief in the music.
What, you may ask, has all this to do with you who are just about to go into
the world? Well, I am here as a scout. I am here to report back on what it
looks like down the road. And I can tell you that the journey at the
beginning, and the journey to the end are no different - music is one and
the same journey, and it always continues.
I meet young musicians in their early twenties who are already turned off;
they're bored; they're cynical. "It's all politics," they'll say. But
I met them thirty years ago, too, like that - and those are the talents who
disappeared. Only the music remained, and those who in delighting in the
music; in never failing to find refreshment in it; who rejoice in their
gift, those are the musicians who have lasted, whose way has been lit by
this special lantern of our art.
It's hard to remember that now, perhaps. Most students I know graduate with
the full weight of student loans on their shoulders, cars in need of new
transmissions and gearboxes, rent that's due, freelance jobs far and few
between.
But I came here today to say, "Keep going." Magical things have happened
to me. Magical things have happened to many of us, and we're all
surprised. I have colleagues who are much older than I who teach at The
Royal Academy of Music in London, and I feel the bond of being in this
amazing and magical circle together. They don't have the international
chances that I do - but the music, and the delight in it, is the same.
Franz Schubert is dead, but his music is alive. It almost breaks my heart
that I never knew him. But what truly breaks my heart are the musicians I
meet on my path who are alive - but somehow dead.
Go out and join the living.
Joy and good fortune to you all.
When I came to Cleveland and joined The Orchestra, I was eighteen years old,
and I thought I was a finished product. Now I had arrived. All the hard work
was behind me.
You know how it is at ten when you think you'll never get beyond the first
position, at thirteen when you can't cope with ten minutes practicing
before school and two hours after it, at sixteen when you're working 25
hours a day for the big competition, and then, for me, at eighteen. It was
all over. Finished. I had A Job.
And how little I know! It was only the bare beginning. It is so easy in
music to forget that we are doing something we love. Sometimes it's easy to
forget that we even love it as deeply as we do. It's so difficult when
you're young that, with as much passion as you have, it seems impossible to
imagine ever playing well enough. It's so difficult as you get older to
realize that this feeling will never go away.
I am fifty now. The young students I played with at summer string camp are
fathers and grandfathers. And I am still touched and amazed when playing
with distinguished colleagues of my own age to realize that, as well as
they may cover it up, they shake with stage fright before walking out, and
sometimes even in performance. The doubts, the insecurities, the anger at
the space between the dream and the achievement: these never go away.
There is never a moment in music when you can say, "This is it. Now I have
arrived." It is a journey with many stops. There are frustrating pauses,
whirlwind acceleration, and sometimes, just a sense of having got
seriously lost.
I see now how ironic it was for me that only a year after I got to Cleveland
with the feeling that I could now sit back and enjoy things. that I had the
worst time of my whole musical career. It seemed to my old colleagues -
many of whom were still in music school then - that I had it made. I had a
regular salary (enough to keep a man and family, after all) and I with
only myself to take care of. I had concerts all over the world with one of
the greatest orchestras of all time,. who, from the outside, could possibly
have guessed the desolation and emptiness that I felt. Was it all for this?
Was this the magic? Here I was on the third stand, never heard and never
noticed. I felt invisible - it began to feel like a boring, terrible, slow
death. Forty years of this, how was I to endure it?
The problem was, of course, the total lack of a good, true education. In
those early days, I never listened to my colleagues. I just stared at the
page and played along with everyone else. One of the herd. Then one day,
George Szell, clearly frustrated beyond belief at my donkey-like
sleepwalking, told me to stay back during the intermission of a rehearsal.
He grabbed my right arm and started to play as I should play out. It was a
terrible, terrible noise, but the passion was there again, the commitment.
He was furious with me. He barked at me: "You don't contribute. You don't
know anything. You're not prepared. You just float along down the stream.
You never know how the music goes." It was a tirade - and it amazed me. It
had simply never entered my self-pitying state that this could all be my
fault. That if I was bored, it was because I wasn't trying hard enough.
Music isn't boring; people are.
So he told me about studying the score, about practicing music not just
technique; about learning to hear the rest of the music... to study
beforehand the architecture of a piece, the lines weaving through it in all
the individual instruments. Above all, he dared me to have pride again in my
playing. It wasn't to be the old pride - narcissistically and aimlessly
self-delighting in the trivia of instrumental playing. But to get immersed
into the whole psyche and personality of a composer. He taught me respect
for the creative force behind a great piece of music. He taught me respect
for my fellow musicians: bullied and scorned by him, I was forced to open up
and listen to the great musicians who surrounded me. I was over-awed by a
horn sound that my wretched cello could never match; a clarinet legato that
defined the word for me at last; the silvery shimmer of beautiful flute
playing. George Szell opened my ears to the musical inventiveness of fine
oboe playing. He taught me humility and, through it, he brought me joy.
It's so interesting for me to look back. When I was made principal cello of
The Cleveland Orchestra, I was probably the same age as most of you. Many of
my friends then, I still see and play with. Or, actually, not too many.
That's the rub.
When I went into the orchestra, most of my old Juilliard and Curtis
classmates wrote me off as solo material. That was me out of the fray, out
of the running, for a lifetime. There were big talents, big stars-to-be,
and I was no longer counted among them. Or, perhaps, never was. And I would
have put my money on other cellists than I for a solo career, quite frankly.
There are people I can still see in my mind's eye who seemed incandescent:
tall, good looks, flashing fingers; the right mentors; competition winners;
stunning self-confidence. And most of them - if not all of them, actually
- you wouldn't have even heard of. I had no idea at twenty-one what a
long, long journey it is.
The key is simple: You just have to keep going. It isn't a competition;
it's only about yourself, about one practice day after another, about
keeping going, and above all, forcing yourself to understand that you never
understand it all. The English have a term which I have just discovered.
It's called DINTISM. "How did he get that job?" I asked about a
colleague. "Oh, dintism," came the answer. Dintism? It is (it was
explained to me) by sheer dint of doing it. Of doing it, with all good
will and effort day after day, year after year. Of not giving up.
I'm often asked whether or not I get bored of carrying the Dvorak Concerto
around the world. Bored? They must be joking. I, who thought I knew
everything I needed to know about the Dvorak Concerto when I was twenty, am
still discovering new things every single time I play it. I hear someone
else play it and that goes for my students too, and in their
interpretation, I'll hear a phrase, a note, an unfamiliar turn of musical
gesture, and there will be a new discovery for me.
I'll never forget my encounters with Marcel Moyse, the legendary French
flutist, at the Marlboro Festival. In his eighties, he kept tripping over
his words in his passion, his eagerness to tell you of a piece of music. As
much toil and work as music demands - it is also our brush with
immortality. I heard Pablo Casals play when he was so old that his fingers
and technique could hardly be recognized as good cello playing - and yet,
it was the most moving and dynamically powerful music-making you can
imagine, so alive was the soul, so strong the belief in the music.
What, you may ask, has all this to do with you who are just about to go into
the world? Well, I am here as a scout. I am here to report back on what it
looks like down the road. And I can tell you that the journey at the
beginning, and the journey to the end are no different - music is one and
the same journey, and it always continues.
I meet young musicians in their early twenties who are already turned off;
they're bored; they're cynical. "It's all politics," they'll say. But
I met them thirty years ago, too, like that - and those are the talents who
disappeared. Only the music remained, and those who in delighting in the
music; in never failing to find refreshment in it; who rejoice in their
gift, those are the musicians who have lasted, whose way has been lit by
this special lantern of our art.
It's hard to remember that now, perhaps. Most students I know graduate with
the full weight of student loans on their shoulders, cars in need of new
transmissions and gearboxes, rent that's due, freelance jobs far and few
between.
But I came here today to say, "Keep going." Magical things have happened
to me. Magical things have happened to many of us, and we're all
surprised. I have colleagues who are much older than I who teach at The
Royal Academy of Music in London, and I feel the bond of being in this
amazing and magical circle together. They don't have the international
chances that I do - but the music, and the delight in it, is the same.
Franz Schubert is dead, but his music is alive. It almost breaks my heart
that I never knew him. But what truly breaks my heart are the musicians I
meet on my path who are alive - but somehow dead.
Go out and join the living.
Joy and good fortune to you all.
Heartache.
Hey! I'm back again. sorry for the long period of time betw my last post and this one. Dammit so much school work.
So lets see. How many weeks have passed? 2/3 weeks? Alot has happened since Christmas. More good times than bad, thank god.
Things that happened:
1. School started. - HELL BROKE LOOSE in my life. The workload is OMGWTFDIE. However, I'm trying my best best best to cope with it. So I hope it works out. However, I can't seem to get it into my head that I SHOULD BE STUDYING FOR THAT DARN CHEM TEST NOW INSTEAD OF POSTING. The total idea of chem totally repels me from all the notes and TYS and whatever. UGGHHHH.
2. I went for PhilYouth Auditions! - & wow. Totally screwed up man. Screwed until cannot screw more. But WTH i still got in. I LOVE MISS LEONG! ♥
3. I got a new phone! - Its a Nokia 7390. White & pink! This is the black and brown one. But mine's loads nicer (:
4. 17th Jan was Max's & Ccs's Birthday! - Spent another boring and loooong wednesday at school. Then I went over to Max's place after he was done with band. Brought along Takopachi and 2 Fondants from taka! Hope it made him happy. Went with Max's mother & brother to Sushi Teh to have dinner. :D It was YUM. Oh oh and since his dad couldn't make it, I went over the next day too and they brought me to Lawry's for dinner. Trust me, I haven't eaten anything so expensive in my LIFE. But it was DAMN cool.
5. Guitar Hero 2 came into my life! - and now all this time, I'm SO obsessed about rock songs, esp the ones from GH2. & from GH2 i found a new favourite song! BEAST & THE HARLOT - AVENGED SEVENFOLD!
Haha & now, some random things. Like pictures of Max's noticeboard & the weird stuff i drew
there :
<--DOIS drew this! I thought it was cute. & poor keith.
<--- pure vandalism. & isnt the cheese cute!
<<>
<<>
Okaaay! Thats all for today. When i get more pics I'll post them! :D
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