SEASON FINALE!

Okay, I haven't been updating regularly.

Yes, this blog is dead, and shall remain dead.

It shall rot in the abyss and never to be heard from again!

Or maybe?

Anyway, real reason is, I'm REALLY busy these days. I guess the blog has got to come to an end for a while. :(

Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. :D

TILL NEXT TIME! :)

I'm tired and it is time to rest

I knew I would burn out eventually.

Juggling multiple commitments is pretty tiring.

Mytailisonfire didn't make it through the Temasek Idol (TI) auditions. I'm not exactly disappointed because I mean after all I didn't think we sounded fantastic. Besides, TI is very much a SINGING competition, they should have just kept it that way. And not getting in basically means I have one less responsibility to hold.

The strange thing now is Owen (one of the semi-finalists of TI) may intend to get us to join him as a backing band for him when he plays "Sway" or "Fly Me To The Moon".

We're going big band style man, I'm looking forward to it. But that's of course only if Owen makes it to the finals.

Well, it's CNY now and I'm really thankful for these days to rest and recuperate.

The past few days have been OGL meet-ups, and I haven't been shouting properly. (Projection of voice comes from the diaphragm, which I haven't been doing correctly) Seems like NCC and drama do teach you some useful stuff. :P

I'm running for clan master for Nyrah this time. I wasn't too keen at first cause I figured I won't be able to manage my time well enough. But since things have been going the way they have been, I guess I'll just run for clan master to see how it goes. :P

Nyrah has strength in numbers, but definitely not the loudness. :/

We're the size of Blazon and Orexus combined, and yet we hardly sound any louder than they are.

COME ON NYRAH! I personally think we can Orientation 2!

And did I mention Gamma won Road Run? Yeah I was really ecstatic about it.

I mean after all, when they announced the overall champions for Road Run, I was like:

"Aiya Beta is going to win this for sure."

And I would have been right, right? I mean after all, they won 1st, 2nd and 3rd for the male category for JC level. :/

So when they said Gamma won, I guess everyone was overjoyed.

You could really see the disappointment in Beta house though, I guess they really thought they could win.

S-U-C-C-E-S-S!

Ah well, I'm lazy to blog further.

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone out there!

Pfft.

Jam with Mytailisonfire was...okay I guess. We scraped playing The Donnas' "Take It Off" and Pearl Jam's "Last Kiss" because apparently the range is way too high for Farid. :/

Oh well, so we're doing "Wherever You Will Go" by The Calling. Cliche song, but oh well what to do. The chord progression was really simple and it was a song Farid was comfortable with singing. We added our own touch to it, just to keep the song interesting. And we're too lazy to come up with a second song, so we're just going to go there and improvise something if they ever ask for a second number.

Met up with the CG 19/07 for some fun and just hanged around Suntec. I ran into Ryan, my guitar senior, and Carrie and Shi Hui. Gee, small world eh?

Well, most of them had to leave early. So I just hung around with Jerome, Nicholas, Gywnneth and Janice. I had my brunch/dinner (I didn't eat for the whole day) while they sat around and played taitee.

Hah, they were so afraid of being accused of gambling, so they were really careful as to where they could play taitee. Hahaha.

I ate at New York, New York. I decided to give myself a little treat (after the very busy weekend). Heh. Good food for once, muahahha.

Anyway, this week and the subsequent week is going to be busy as hell. The good thing is, after that I can slow down the pace of my work with my bands.

To Jonathan/Justin/Reagan/David: Not sure if you guys will ever see this, but I think I'll have to retire from playing with you guys after March 17th. I think I'm starting to feel the effects of juggling my social life, school/homework, and music. Playing in multiple bands is kinda tough. :/

And since Mytailisonfire is purely a side project, I'll retire from playing in it when the Temasek Idol contest is over.

So yeah, but until then, we'll see to it again.

That's all for now, gotta go finish up homework. :/

Go Green Day!

It's 3am in the friggin' morning and I can't get to bed. Pfft. Not really a bad thing considering I have some stuff to accomplish.

I'm jamming with Mytailisonfire for the TI auditions tomorrow at Tiet Studio. Gee, to be honest I'm not entirely looking forward to it. :(

But then again, it is highly unprofessional to say you don't want to play for a band anymore just because 'you don't feel like it'.

As they say, the show must go on.

Speaking about upcoming gigs, Diorama and FourEncounting is set to play at my school (TJC) for the PAE bash on 23rd February. So to students in the PAE for TJC, do look out for us! :D Gosh, I think I'll really need a shitload of stamina to play that show.

Hm, and Calvin informed that we might be playing on Tuesday. More details to come.

And there's a CG 19/07 outing tomorrow too! Ahh I hope I can make it there.

Anyway, so today was Go Green Day! Hahaha, it's like one of those mass CIP programmes that schools organise these days (think Beach Cleaning and stuff like that).

We had to carry loads of newspapers and clothes. Not exactly very tiring though. And it's a good chance to bond with your classmates. I learned about some random stuff that I would have never uncovered unless I asked. Like the fact that Hui Yun once kissed a girl, Shi Hui wears contacts (honestly I thought she had perfect eyesight) amongst other stuff. I also realised the block 124-128 part of Bedok North Street 2 is really ulu. Most of the units have doorbells that don't even work. Or no doorbells at all. :/

Haha, we made this joke that perhaps the doorbell is like beyond the normal human hearing range. It probably rings such that the dogs can hear. And when the dogs hear the doorbell they bark. And when the owners hear the dog bark they realise someone is at the door. Roflcopter.

Well, I woke up in the morning and walked to the bus stop (Mum and Dad weren't at home cause they were overseas). At first I was like, "Hey wait a second, where's all the secondary and primary school kids?".

"I mean, I know the J2s are arriving later, but the bus stop shouldn't be THIS empty!"

Only then did I realise that it was a Sunday. Lollerskates.

So when I got to school, we had to go to our civics venues and tell our civics tutor our L1R5 score and stuff.

About 4/5 of the class of 19/07 are 9 pointers and below. I think the rest got like 11, 12 and 13? So sad to say I guess some of our classmates will be leaving TJC.

Similarly, those who got like 6, 7 points are considering VJC too. :/ With the exception of Alex of course, cause he's stuck with the ExCo SCIP. Heh.

Is it just me or is there something so attractive about VJC that everyone wants to go there?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I know Victoria is a great school. My sister joined VJC with 14 points and left with straight As on her 'A' Level certificate.

I mean, I have nothing against those who intend to leave TJC. VJC is perhaps a better place for them, so I'm not complaining.

To Jareth and Fann: I know I've been complaining about how I dislike those hypocrites who said they would stay but are deciding not to now.

I guess I'm selfish to say that.

I guess that I'm finding a reason to STAY in TJC. There is no 100% guarantee that I'll get into VJC, but I can be persuaded to at least put VJC as my first choice and try for it.

And perhaps you might ask, "What's the reason for staying?".

And the reason is loyalty, and not turning your back on others.

When I got into TJC, I said I would stay. I told several friends I would. I told the SYF people in guitar that I would stay. I guess everybody else who got into TJC said that too because they probably knew they wouldn't do any better for the Os and perhaps they knew they wouldn't do any better than they did for prelims.

And then surprise surprise, tons of people getting 7 or 8 points. Some even 6.

It is understandable why people want to go VJC. I guess everybody has a reason for doing so, some more justifiable than others. Despite whatever is said, people still put academic studies as a top priority. Getting into a good school is important for most people.

This isn't a case of 'dude, my friends are in TJC, I want to stay', this is more of valuing what I say.

I suppose nobody really gives a shit whether I stay in TJC or not, but I think what matters is that I KNOW and value what I said.

People these days say things without meaning it.

I can try and put VJC as my first choice and you know, perhaps I might just get in. Unlikely, but it is possible.

But what would I be leaving behind? I would be blatantly stabbing people in the back. I'll be leaving the guitar people to have to search for a new contrabass player and I'll be leaving all my friends who I told I would stay.

And big deal if I move to VJC, I don't really stand to gain anything. Sure, it's a lot nearer to home. Not sure if the girls are hotter. :P But VJC's guitar ensemble may not be better than TJC's guitar ensemble, I would have to stay back to make sure I can catch up with lectures and tutorials, I have to remake new friends. And orientation is going to feel like...orientation all over again. :/ I really wanted to be leading orientation the 2nd time, not being part of it like the start of the PAE period.

I'm being fickle minded. :/

Oh well, 2 more days to consider.

I ought to make up my mind soon. :/

SEVEN

I scored a 7 for my L1R5 for my Os. :D

Practically screaming like an idiot when I saw that I was one of the top 50 students in TK. WOOT!

It was fcking scary man. The school enjoys taking a piss at students by showing who got straight As and what shit.

They started by showing the straight As students (Roshni, Huijin and Sophia are the top 3 students of TK for your information), followed by those who got 7A1s, 6A1s etc.

When it reached the 5A1s slide, naturally the L1R5 of the candidates were in ascending order.

And I saw Darwin's name there and his L1R5 was 11 already. And I was seeing a bunch of names with 8, 9 points for their L1R5.

I mean, I told myself that any L1R5 score less than 9 would be an achievement. Anything more would be a disappointment.

So of course, when I didn't see that slide I was really depressed. :(

AND SLIDE 5! HOLY MOTHER OF ALL BOMBS!

I SAW MY FRIGGIN' NAME ON THE SCREEN!

SEVEN POINTS. FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I was cheering like a little kid. Derron, who was next to me was cheering before that cause he managed to get 8 points. :D

On the whole, 4A did extremely well. We produced tons of 6, 7, 8, 9 pointers. :D

Hip hip hurray!

I'm proud of my school.

And I think the combined humanities paper was rigged. Cause I got an A1 for that. Muahhaa.

Overall, almost everybody I know in TJC did fantastic. Ryan got 7 too, most of my classmates in CG19/07 got 9 points and below. Gernaine, Joanne, Fann Jialiang, Jareth all got 9 points or below as well. Leon got 10, but it's okay cause he can deduct 4 points from CCA and from the PAE. Elliot is a DSA student so he's staying. Jit Rui got 8 points so he can stay too. :D :D :D

And I'm glad most of them are staying. Haha, especially all the TK people and my classmates. :D
I shall go on to label those people defecting to other schools as disloyal scumbags. Hmph. :/

I'm glad Ryan is staying too, cause I really want to carry on beatbox and bass jams with him!

It's awesome to be able to jam with Ryan. Really let's me explore another level of funk and hip-hop.

Speaking of which, Ryan has finally got the input jack converter so that he can try out beatboxing on my amp. Bass amps probably work better for beatboxing since they carry the lower registers much better.

I've been leaving my amp in school for some time now (since the string ensemble performance which I screwed up quite bad, lol). I might be jamming with Ryan once again on Tuesday. But we'll see to it again.

Speaking about jamming, the performance for Ben and Jerry's yesterday night was GREAT! :D

Thanks to everybody who came down, which probably includes Justin and Jonathan Boon, Khia Peng, Leon and friends/family, Emma's family, and Calvin/Emma/Hafiz's friends from RP.

We played Plush, Aeroplane, Creep, Chasing Cars, My Sharona and Gel. Haha, Jonathan was laughing when we started playing Creep. (Inside joke, lol.)

My Sharona was played like we were on steroids. Super fast and stuff. Haha. Aeroplane was much better as compared to the previous time we played it at the gig at Bukit Panjang.

Emma's drumset was reeling back quite a lot, so during her drum solo she had to pause and go like:

"Wait arh, need to adjust pedals."

The drumset's quality was pretty bad so at least Emma brought her own gear.

Leon said it was a great set! Haha, glad you enjoyed yourself man. Khia Peng was astounded by Hafiz's ability to hold notes. Kudos to everyone! :D

Our next upcoming gigs will be on February 23rd at TEMASEK JUNIOR COLLEGE'S PAE BASH! :D Gosh I can't wait, I'm sure it's going to be a blast.

Life in TJC has been wonderful. All I need to start doing is start making more friends. :/

I feel like I know so little people in TJC that it gets boring sometimes.

All right, that's all for now. I gotta go off and blog on the class blog and do homework.

And write to my angel and mortal. MUAHAHA!

HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY AHEAD!

Cheers! :D

Bee-zee-bee-zee

Okay! The past week has been really busy.

Practice with the Chamber (String) Ensemble on Tuesday, audition for Guitar SYF on Wednesday, long day of studying on Monday and Thursday, homework to complete...blah blah blah.

Nonetheless, a very productive week indeed! :D

Yesterday was awesome, we started practice for SYF already! Only four of the J1s were picked for SYF (me being one of them).

In case you're wondering, I'm playing the contrabass guitar. Yay! I'm absolutely in love with the instrument. Heh. The tone and feel of the instrument is great! :D However, I got a blister on my thumb from playing it today. Rahh.

The contrabass guitar is like a regular guitar just tuned one octave lower.

So actually it is a bass guitar...

With 6 strings.

So actually it is like a 6 string electric bass...

Just that the strings are tuned EADGBE, not BEADGC. :D

Yeah yeah, okay I shall stop amusing myself. Pfft.

So I headed to school for practice (again) with the String Ensemble today. Everything went pretty well and despite my minor role, I would say I'm impressed with the playing of the ensemble members. Kudos to each of you! :D

We're playing a setlist of theme songs and classics so do check it out.

Our performance is on the 6th of Feb during lunch break at 12.40pm at the TJC auditorium. Admission is free so do come and take a look! :D

And I just realised that I have maths tutorial at that time of the day...

Hmmm, I wonder if I'm allowed to leave? :/ Ah well.

The month ahead looks REALLY busy.

Let's see...performance with the String Ensemble, gig at Ben and Jerry's with Diorama, TalentQuestX finals at DXO with Diorama, gig at Sentosa with FourEncounting (not confirmed though), SYF practice for guitar, and not to mention homework and school. :(

And it has been announced that the guitar concert will be held on May 25th! Like zomg, that's a day after my birthday? -.-

Rahhh, oh well.

I can't wait for the results for the Os to be released soon. Rumours say it should be next friday.

Damn, I so hope I can stay at TJC.

Okay, I'm lazy to blog further. :(

Take care all!

Gernaine thinks lollerskates are cute.

I realised I'm getting lazier and lazier somewhat as the days go by.

Not that it is a bad thing or anything, just that I've always been used to getting homework finished on time and not having to rush at the last minute.

I didn't finish my Chemistry supplementary exercise questions yesterday because I decided to just finish it today. (I have a 50 minute free period till guitar practice after my final lesson anyway)

Well, yeah so it worked out. Still, I feel I ought stop procrastinating so much. :/

I shall finish homework tomorrow before the OG outing at 5pm and I shall blog before I go to sleep today. :D

Anyway, today wasn't so bad. I've signed up for the Temasek Idol with Farid on vocals, Jit Rui whacking out the beats and Leon on guitar.

While we originally intended to include Elliot and Benjamin so we could do blues-rock stuff, Jit Rui thinks 8 bar blues stuff is a little boring. :/

I agree that's true somewhat, but still good music is good music. :)

Well, to be honest I'm not really looking forward to it because I'm somewhat skeptical about the organisation of the event.

To begin, I was somehow led to believe that TI was purely a singing competition whether you're joining as a group or solo.

The SC people called me up to inform me that 'there isn't any promises' as to whether they can get the equipment. Although in my opinion they are most likely able to get it, who knows?

Not that I have anything against playing in school-based performances, but it tends to suck sometimes because of bad sound and bad organisation. :/

I still recall Talent Search when they miced Jit Rui's kick drum but the mic channel wasn't even turned on. :/

Pfft. Oh well.

Anyway in case you're wondering, I named the band Mytailisonfire. It was completely random, but in case you're wondering where I got the name, think Charizards and Alexisonfire.

We're intending to play The Donnas' "Take It Off" and Pearl Jam's "Last Kiss". We need two songs for the auditions anyway, so we're just settling with these two first.

Hm darn, now I hope Calvin and Emma decide on the songlist for the TalentQuest X finals soon.

So guitar practice today was pretty okay. The bunch of us who could play and sightread went outside of the InnoSpace room to practice playing "A Whole New World".

I had to play rhythm because I learned the rhythm parts accidentally. :/

Haha, joining guitar ensemble is pretty good because I feel like I can finally sightread for once. Not to mention it really exposes you to stuff you normally won't try playing or even listening to.

After some practice we had some interaction session with each other. Moon says I have a lack of coordinaton which probably explains why I was the only person who had to do forfeits twice. :/

Oh well, after guitar I met Cheng Ying in the canteen and it was pretty cool. We did some violin/guitar jams which I thought sounded pretty okay.

We played stuff like Stand By Me, Fly Me To The Moon and just a range of pop songs or whatever could pop into my head at that point of time.

Classically trained people are a strange lot indeed.

They range from being really bad to being nothing short of impressive.

Like this guy from String Ensemble who is the concert master, his hearing was top notch.

While to be fair I played really standard chord progressions for him to improvise over, I was impressed when he started improvising over my basslines. :O

Kudos to you all! -applause-

TJ has so many talented musicians that I think it's just amazing. I'm looking forward to practicing with the string ensemble people on Monday and Tuesday.

I'm helping them out with their cover of Chrono Cross's main title Time's Scar. I'm providing the bass part, Jit Rui is handling percussion and violins and piano will do the rest.

I think it'll sound pretty rad. :D

Gee, and I can't wait to try collaborating with Ryan too. His taste in music is really good too. He introduced me to this hour long track full of grooves and beats that will get stuck in your head for days.

Well that pretty much wraps up today. I'm off to blog on my class's blog.

Take care!

Randomness

I realised this is a good way to blog when you're feeling lazy :/

1. Gig at Ngee Ann Poly was pretty good.

2. Crowd was boring, as usual. :/

3. I'M IN GUITAR CLUB! :D

4. Econs is like the best subject ever.

5. I think when you're in Singapore, the six degrees of separation hypothesis holds true. :/ Go figure. Heh.

Ah dammit. I shall head back to finishing up homework.

Blah.