Sunday, March 22, 2009
@7:32 PM
INTEMPO 2009, Violin Exam
Intempo 2009 ended on a high note with Instant Concert, a highly spirited encore piece. Looking back, I have to say it wasn’t exactly easy for a band to adapt to our new music director in a short duration of 3 months. But we made it, and performed all the same like how we did under the tutelage of Mr Tan; our techniques and musicality remained. I’m grateful to Prof Ho for his guidance and patience in the past few months during our concert preparations. :)
I’m not sure what our last ticket sales count was, but I was truly glad to witness the positive turnout for the concert. At the very least, the stall seats were packed, and some of the audiences had to sit at the grand circle seats. The ticket count might not have hit a thousand but such audience attendance is already commendable, considering the fact that the tickets were not selling well prior to the concert day. Well, I guess a good number of people turned up at the last minute, which is…great!
More importantly, I would like to thank my cousin, Xiuning for her support, and for bringing 2 of her friends along to boost my ticket sales. :) I would also like to thank Lai Yee and David for their continuous support, Daniel, Jieying, Ee Yan and Hui Yan for their presence and gifts and rare audiences like Sheila and Jasmine for the cute smiley flower which brighten up my day. Truly truly appreciate them for forking out their time to watch the concert at UCC.
On a different issue, I was happy and relieved to hear that Ganbee passed her Grade 1 Violin exam with distinction! A pleasant surprise for both of us, cos we made a little blunder at her third piece, and she told me that her sight-reading was bad. In any case, she scored 134 marks out of 150, which is really good! Although I am only her piano accompanist (somemore, an inexperienced piano accompanist), I am truly happy for her achievements.
I learnt, that a simple act of helping a friend in need, without asking for any monetary return can be so rewarding. :)
Yearn for the days of innocence
Saturday, March 14, 2009
@9:18 PM
FYP DONE. :D
Till the very last minute, Gaby and I were still fighting against time to edit and format our FYP. Oh well:X
Whatever it is, we had finally handed in our 9 months' worth of hardwork! Hooray! =D So to speak, I'm unofficially graduated!!
But for the past 2 weeks, I had been working on our project intensively, especially 2 days prior to our project submission when I had to sacrifice my beauty sleep, again. Argh. I almost fell asleep while driving home yesterday night after nie band practice. Luckily, Ian insisted on accompanying me home in my car to make sure that I was home safely. Thanks dear! :D
Well, our first draft was quite bad. I felt so ashamed with all the eye-sore grammatical mistakes, making our paper look so sloppy. :X Obviously, we did our work in a rush. :X The worst thing was we had to re-conduct our regression due to some 'unrealistic' results (in a sense). As a result, we had to re-write all our analysis. :X Oh Gosh. Imagine how demoralized we were when our prof was reviewing the draft with us.
However, we were fortunate to have such a caring prof who helped us edit our work and gave constructive feedbacks on how we could improve on our draft. :D We were really grateful to him :D After our submission, we even had a good chat with him in his office for like an hour plus. =P
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My first post-FYP activity was shopping spree at Suntec with my 'twin', Xiuning. There was a crazy Body Shop Sales up to 70 percent! :D Bought quite some facial products =D Unfortunately, I had to witness the unglam side of Singaporean ladies, pushing one another to grab their beauty products and cutting queues at the cashier counters. *shake head*
Yearn for the days of innocence
@9:17 PM
Our dear supervisor, Prof Tan and I
Yearn for the days of innocence
Friday, March 06, 2009
@12:29 AM
Sorry Dear :( :(
Im going to miss His first ever syf. :( :( :( Argh. Zillion apologies, dear! I had clean forgotten about it when my mom asked for my availability for the tour. My fault :( :( :(
:( I may not be there physically to give you my support, but Im mentally right beside you to wish you all the best for the competition and silently pray for the positive outcome. Im sure you and your band CAN do it :)
JIAYOU! :)
By the way, yup! Im heading to Korea for my grad tour in April. Haven't been travelling with my family for awhile. I thank my parents for organizing and sponsoring the trip for me! :) :)
Yearn for the days of innocence
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
@11:13 PM
A Breather, Finally
Great! We're FINALLYYYY done and handed in our first FYP draft to our supervisor today. YaYYY!! A call for celebration!
Quote and un-quote from my FYP partner:
3 months ago, it was a mess of raw data.
2 months ago, it was a bulk of processed data.
1 month ago, it was a vague outline with insignificant regression.
1 week ago, it was a rush to finish.
2 days ago, it was a real panic of data mistake and rewriting.
1 day ago, it was a lot of rushing and running
Today, I felt so proud when printing and binding and holding our 60-page FYP :x I never thought I could feel that proud of anything. I never believed I could handle that much of regression and number. What a feeling!
Cheers to us, Huili :* We did it =)
Indeed! *a pat on our backs* =P
The 60-page worth of draft deprived me of my beauty sleep, nevertheles. But it will prove to be extremely worthwhile if our efforts pay off =D The verdict will be out on next mon. Im keeping my fingers crossed. :X
And I have to mention that my supervisor is super duper nice. (Not bcos of the ugly incident. He's a nice prof from the start). Gaby and I felt really bad to keep him waiting at his office till 7pm yday only to receive a thumbdrive for our draft. (We're supposed to hand in a hard-copy draft yday evening but we didnt make it in time to print it out.) Though his daughter was waiting for him to knock off, he still invited us to his office for a chat on our progress. The best thing was he gave us an additional grace day to polish up on our thesis and hand it in to him this afternoon. We were sincerely thankful of him.
Though it's a group work of 3, there are technically only the 2 of us working. We prepared the entire draft without any contribution from the third member. It was a long story. But we chose not to kick her out of the group. Anyway, it was already too late then when we wanted to. Oh well. I shall take it as an act of kindness from us to accumulate good karma.
However, Im glad to have found an excellent working partner whom I've learnt alot from! We belong to the efficient and diligent lot of people =P
Side Note: A crude joke I've learnt on post "n*u prof stabbing incident";
F-Y-P stands for Finish (off) Your Professor.
Yearn for the days of innocence
Monday, March 02, 2009
@2:50 PM
FYP WOES
I've never burnt midnight oil for all my Econs projects. FYP is an absolute exception. I stayed up the whole of yesterday night rushing out the unfinished parts. Only managed to catch some winks of sleep this morning at 7.
We are supposed to hand in our draft today.
But! ARGH. Who asked me to spot a mistake in our data in the middle of of night, and realised that our significant regression results turned out to be a 'deceit'. It left Gaby and I pulling our hairs the whole night, trying to find a solution to the problem. OK. I have just worked it out. Not as good as the previous results, but..at least they are all presentable enough.
I asked my supervisor for one day grace. He is really kind enough to give us. But! We must really really hand it in tomorrow!
Can't wait.
I dont exactly like working deep in the night when everyone is sleeping, and the house is in dead silence. But fortunately, Joe Hisashi's melodious music of animes like Ponyo, Howl's Moving Castle, Mononoke etc accompanied me throughout the serenity of the night. In fact, I have been listening to the songs contains in "Joe Hisashi in Concert 2008" these days while I was working on my FYP. I was and still am totally swept by the beautiful seamless music made by the 600 strong musicians and the talented soloist singers on stage. The concert inspired me so much that I feel like taking up violin lessons and hopefully be pro enough to be part of a sumphonic orchestra. Hah. Wishful thinking.
I side-tracked too much.
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Speaking of FYP, I was rudely reminded of the double tragedies that took place in ntu this morning;
A final year Engineering student stabbed his supervisor and thereafter, slit his own wrist and jumped to his death at S1.
The incident left me dumbfounded, completely. I never expect such thing to happen in my own school and what's more, the student is also doing his FYP like I am. Though I know neither the student nor the teacher and that I was not in the crime scene, I remain ultra disturbed by the tragedies, probably bcos it's something quite close to heart.
FYP can't be that stressful to drive such impulses right?!
I sympathized with the family of the deceased and the injured lecturer.
Yearn for the days of innocence
@2:47 PM
*GRINZ*
Resolved.
All parties are happy :D:D
Never underestimate the power of love! :D:D
Yearn for the days of innocence
Thursday, February 26, 2009
@1:30 PM
Deep Thoughts
I think I need some form of release, somehow.
It's been some time since I felt so troubled like this, and maybe, unhappy.
A matter of perspective, I would say.
But we chose to cling on to our beliefs.
Whatever it is, I don't want to be distracted from work, especially right now when I am into the last two crucial weeks of my project.
I need to focus. FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS.
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Unexpectedly, I was invited for a job interview. According to the HR, I was 'handpicked' to the first round of the recruitment process. How true is that I don't know. But it felt good to be classified as the cream of the crop in your area of academia.
Anyway, I rejected the offer.
Yearn for the days of innocence
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
@6:06 PM
FYP and Music Exam
The deadline of our first FYP draft was delayed.
PHEW!!!!
The original deadline was this Friday. I almost couldnt breathe rushing out my project. Not that we didnt start early. We ran into many problems with the data of our regression nevertheless. Finally we produced some decent resgression results. But the deadline was pressing near.
We have to hand in two drafts before the final piece. Our first draft will due next Monday, and the next will be the following Monday, and then the final work two weeks from now.
This is so exciting. OMG.
Side-tracking, I'll once again be entering the ABRSM examination studio next Thurs. Nono, I am not taking my Piano Diploma or Clarinet Grade. I'll be a piano accompanist for Ganbee who's taking her Grade 1 Violin exam =) A wonderful experience awaiting. We have been practising hard for the past few weeks. Hope it works, or rather, it must work! Best of luck to both of us =P
Yearn for the days of innocence
