i have no more wooden pencils

when you mug, you put stuff into your empty brain. that's easy.

when you compose, you draw stuff out from the same empty brain. that's depressing

stay strong hongrui, stay strong

mr gooi's email just killed all my hopes of survivng prelims.

i need some fixing too

um my uncle who's a technician fixed my laptop somehow, so here i am again D:

thankfully my laptop got fixed, since it has sibelius inside and i need to use it to notate and edit my compos. the school's laptop with sibelius crashed 3 hours after i used it for the first time.

starting from last saturday, i had 4 super inefficient technique composing days, the ones which I just stone and try to write something but fail ): Today (wednesday) was slightly better, i wrote half a technique, but there's still so much more to be done.

i'm getting really frustrated and stressed. 1 more texture technique and 3 more timbre technique to do. Plus I still have my free compo which I need to edit 2 more variations. Everytime I feel frustrated I snap the wooden pencil I'm using into two. Now I see more than ten pencil halves on my table and i'm running out of pencils to snap.

i really want to clear all my techniques by week 10 ): why am i always the last person in the entire school to start mugging for exams D:

Firsts and Lasts

I had many firsts for tuesday's concert :)

First time I sold more tickets than I was allocated (and I didn't even send mass emails. ha thats proof that they don't work)

First time I received pre-concert cards and gifts.

First time I recieved flowers that had more than 1 stalk! x) And it was my first sunflower too :)

First time somebody came up and gave me flowers onstage after my performance :)

First time somebody shouted "bravo!" after my performance. (thanks yinger's aunt! ^^)

Ah best, the concert itself was the very first time me, mich and evan ran through the piece without stopping.

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I had a really shitty afternoon after being told that certain sections of my piece were banned from being performed. I really hate it when this kind of things happen. You put so much effort into the piece only to know 5 hours before the concert begins that several important parts are going to be cut, and your work is deprived of being performed in its entirety. It seriously sucks. And to me, something else hurt me more than that.

(I had a terrible afternoon, and I'm really sorry if I offended anybody, especially Benni and Jerald. Sorry Ben! Just treat it as if I'm preparing how to greet in NS, I'm usually not like that.)

I can honestly say that I did not had the mood to perform anymore after being told that sections of the piece were banned, but I must say that the eventual performance, though not as good, still went pretty alright. I still had a pretty memorable night, and I really had to thank a lot of people for this.

1. Mr Yu, for coming into the dressing room and encouraging me to go on with the performance.

2. Michsoh! For staying by me and going through the score many times before the performance to make sure that that one eventual run-through was a success. And it was (:

3. Evan! For patting me on my back and encouraging me (: It really helped. Both you and Michsoh are awesome people and the performance wouldn't have been possible without you 2.

4. Michtan! For trying to rescue me when I was lost. I thought of that incident and it made me smile :)

5. Wanchien! Thanks so much for you carefully crafted present and touching note. It spurred me on when I felt down.

6. Yingying and Hongbin, for coming down to watch, and for buying the flowers :D

7. Johnyu, for giving me the flowers on stage, and that hug. I was really really touched :) Thank you so much.

8. All other my friends who came down and support, Brent, Haiyan, Kenneth, Xuewen and Renyue! :)

9. The awesome audience, especially yinger's aunt x)

10. Everyone else who also helped to encourage me and made me better, like Bon, Jon koh, Benwee and more.

I'm really thankful for all these friends around me, especially the ones I don't often see a lot, like Wanchien, Yingying and co, Renyue and John Yu. Haha I just realised that all of them can play the cello. And all of them are either currently playing in COs or have played in them in the past. Haha one thing that I find about CO people is that they really 讲义气！(Y) You guys are awesome. Thanks so much coming, and for all your gifts x)

The Music guys are a fantastic bunch of people, and Im glad the concert ended pretty well. The finale was boomz x) And for several of us, tuesday's concert might have been the last concert in our entire life. Whether that will apply for me.. I am still contemplating.

But one thing is for sure, this is probably going to be my last blog post on this blog this year. My main computer crashed in June, and my laptop just crashed 2 days ago. I'm using my sister's laptop now, but she's flying off to China in a week's time, so I will no longer have a computer available at home :)

Ok thats it for this year then. All the best everyone for prelims and As :)