IT'S OVER~! =)

Reaching there soon

Two papers down, one more to go on tmr morning..
Doubt anyone have experienced such tight exam schedule since A-levels..

And my horoscope for today:

There's so much going on that you can't figure out exactly where to start. You will have to gather your strength if you want to make it over the last hurdle. A project you thought you had finished still needs some more work. A little self-discipline will help you to reach the finish line

Wow. How accurate. Must chiong one more night..
And one more morning to an eight-month break. =)
Will miss seeing the people ard school..

Daily Routine

- Breakfast + Quick scan through the newspapers. Go straight to the comics after a while.
- Travel to school. Mug + daydream on the way.
- Find my usual spot at SMU library, level 3. Mug.
- Mug.
- Mug.
- Breaks in between for lunch and dinner
- Mug.
- Pause for daily dose of Red-bull.
- Mug.
- Travel back home. Feel annoyed by the daily repeats of 911, 80's show and the local police drama.
- Bath and mug till I fall asleep.

Seriously, sounds like the old SAF advertisement which featured a guy whose monotonous life routine was made into a movie.

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Had my first paper today. Only 3 more to go.. Whee...

I Concede.

When working through a past-year exam paper, I realised that most of the questions set in the papers are stuff mentioned by Prof in class, NOT written in his lecture slides, and NOT found in the text-book. Works fine for me for the first few lectures when I paid attention. 世界末日 for the remaining lectures when I stopped paying attention. And my project groupmates paid even LESS attention in class than I did. I concede defeat.

Spotted Outside the National Museum

I think there was an event going on in the National Museum last night, which explained the crowd of relatively well-dressed people around school. I was on my way home in a bus when I spotted a foreigner wearing a cape (a superman cape that was bright red) walking towards the road. He looked at my bus which had stopped at the traffic junction outside the museum, and did a superman pose. Wow. Got to admire these forigner for their courage and spontaneity.

He then took off his cape, folded it, stuffed it into his pants in front - not the pockets, and non-chalantly flagged for a taxi. All these in the view of the passengers who just saw him do the pose. Again, wow.

__________

Today's the first day in ages when I tried studying at home. Can't be helped. The thought of me carrying my big bag of textbook + laptop through the heavy rain is more than enough to dissuade me from going out. However, what happened at home in the last 20 minutes justified my decision to study outside over the past weeks.

1) Lightning strikes caused two blackouts in the last twenty minutes.
2) Murphy's Law: A neighbour has to start doing DIY work today. Thus, I have to tolerate the drillings and hammerings.
3) I'm still blogging when I should be studying.
__________

The most effective marketing campaign

Spotted outside my school library over the past few afternoons were 'red-bull ladies' distributing free red-bull drinks. Just when we needed red-bull most. Definitely a plus for red-bull's brand image among SMU students.

__________

And finally, WHY THE HELL IS THE LIBRARY / SCH SO CROWDED with students!? Seriously, we need more space.

@#%@#$%#%

This is the last time I'm ever going to work in an all-girls group.
Not going to discuss the incident online. All I could say is that it is an extremely unpleasant (note: euphemism-in-use) experience. Argh.. Going to find some ways to vent my bad mood (+ any negative feeling associated with anger) away..

Half-hearted Blog Attempt

I intend to blog today, but my left hand hurts like @%$#%, and there's an irritating mosquito whizzing around in front of me as I type this. Next time then.

__________


Plans for the upcoming weeks - a couple of project deadlines, presentations, quizzes, assignments, oh the usual. Conflicts during project meetings, maybe. Sleepless nights, definitely. Then the exams.. 4 more weeks to break!

What a Beautiful Friday Morning!

And I just failed my driving test.

What amazed me more was I was actually able to laugh it off. Haha. True, my heart and pocket felt the pain of paying more for the next test (@#%#@%$&#^$%, #@$%#$,#@%#@%@#%@%, @#%#@$%#@%), but I'm generally feeling fine. In fact, I felt relief that everything is over, at least for now.

The first omen of doom came when I stalled my engine before I even started off on any station in the circuit. Oh well, that's another story for another time. Yet, I'm surprised I smiled when that happened. Might have pissed the tester off then. Maybe it was because I was amused by how it happened in the first place. Or maybe it was because I was able to accept the possibility of failure.

This was so unlike other tests I had taken before. PSLE, interview process for SMU, presentation for COMM101, etc. Recalled that I was usually very nervous, with my heart pumping so hard and fast that I could hear it above anything else. Yet for today, it was nothing like that. I smiled each time I committed a mistake, thinking that 'oh well, fail already, just as well.' I think that was what allowed me to perform better.

To clarify, it wasn't a bad driving experience. Lost some dumb marks which resulted in 8 more points than I could afford to give away. Again, it was another story. For now, it is about how I liked the way I proceeded with the test.

You have to enjoy the experience when you are doing something. No point worrying about my driving skills if it sucks to begin with. The additional worries will not help in improving all that in seconds. Just go in and do your best. If it is good enough, good. If not, well, just accept that consequence(i.e. the failure). I like this attitude. I supposed it is human, hence alright, to fail (well, also not all the times of course). In the past, I was nervous before as I felt the pressure to be perfect or to do well. For example, I had this notion to memorise my speech and be word-for-word perfect for a presentation. Now, just heck it and go with the flow. Have to trust that something good will come out eventually, as long as you have made your preparations. Accepting failure seems to help me free my minds off the contraints and pressures, allowing me to perform better. More importantly, it helps to remove that irritating sense of nervousness.

At least something good happened for me this week. Managed to secure my internship doing finance in a mnc's regional centre. The interview process was somehow similar to what I experienced for driving today. In any case, I shall finally get to throw away any other non-academic distractions and focus on martingales , black-scholes, income tax act, and Prime Taxi. Woohoo!

Late for Morning Classes

Being late for morning classes is becoming more of a habit for me lately. Just on Tuesday, I woke up at 8am to rush for an 8.30am class. I did not think much of the reasons until this thought struck me as I was trying to wake up this morning.

Phone Alarm went, "We have all the time in the world... Time enough for life...To unfold.. All the precious things love has in store.. "

Maybe that was why I always snoozed my alarm for at least 1/2 hour. It is an incredible and beautiful song (We Have All The Time In The World) by Louis Armstrong. I set it as my alarm ring tone since last December. I think it's the psychological effect of listening to the same first phrase every morning which caused me to develop my tardiness for morning classes. Enough of excuses said.

__________

Last lesson of the week ended today and I welcome yet another break - the Mid-term recess. Kind of a misnomer as this is, as usual, more of a period to catch up with project work instead of taking a real break.

Days after the Chinese New Year break weren't as hectic and stressful as previous semesters. The difference could be attributed to the relatively much lighter workload that came with only 4.5 modules, and no more band practices. 'Highlights' of my life in the previous weeks include:

Week 7 (starting 18 Feb)
- Wed: Finished my case study write up on Zara Fashion + journal for PH module.
- Tues: Watched a few presentations by Steve Jobs. Once again, moved by his speech given at Stanford's Commencement 2005 where he talked about seeking for the things you love to do, and possessing the faith in your life events that they will someday lead you to where you are happy to be.
- Tues: Learnt parallel parking for the first time, when I had only learnt normal parking one week ago! Not that I was good at that. Think I'm beginning to develop serious doubts and losing confidence in my driving instructor's ability to guide my through my pass on my first try.
- Mon: Gave a presentation which obtained good reviews from the prof (Yay!). Grades ka-ching! Oh yah. One group member forgot totally about the presentation and wore casual. Wth.. *See below*

Week 6 (starting 11 Feb)
- No project meetings this week. Wow! Quite rare.. Wahaha.
- Finished case study write up on Apple Inc. Which was why I was inspired to view Steve Jobs presentation. He and his team from Apple are really brilliant innovators.
- Finished FI assignment
- Tues: Learnt parking for driving for the first time.
- Mon: Presentation postponed. Just as well. A miscommunication with my group members left me the only one wearing casual attire. The rest wore business attire. Wth..

Lunar New Year

Happy Lunar New Year to all~!

Been slacking too much over the Chinese New Year break.
Think I need to find a very compelling reason to motivate or to push me into shifting into higher gears.

And I think I slept too much too. To the extent that I can actually remember the 3 different dreams I have in one day. My last nap today wasn't intentional though. Read a fixed income text which sent me swiftly to ZzzLand.

Now, I'm working on a stupid part for my BP presentation on the coming Monday. It taught me a lesson not to be late for meetings again. Arrived just in time to hear the next meeting's agenda and receive my assigned question which turned the toughest in the case studies. "Make a brief comparison between ISO certification and Singapore Quality Class certification". WTF. There's no text for it. Have to slog through the ISO website and SPRING Singapore website and to make sense of the massive amount of information presented to me. Learnt quite a fair bit of interesting stuff which is useful for business management in the future. However, the fact that I have already spent 3 hours on something which I have yet to complete is depressing. Not to mention I have already come across information which can easily answer the other questions.

Ay Caramba~!

And it was over in a flash.

Come to think of it. The concert time is even shorter than our usual rehearsals, which could go on for up to 3 hours.

This is the view from my seat.



Well, it did look kind of intimidating. In fact, I should feel a bit intimidated, considering that this is my first formal performance playing an euphonium. Surprisingly (and fortunately), I didn't.

Maybe because this was what I actually saw all the time.



This was also the first when I didn't get the chance to look at the audience. As a percussionist, you would definitely, at some point of time, have the luxury of time to scan through the audience slowly, and observed your fellow band members. As a wind player, I found myself looking at the score + conductor almost the entire time.

It also helped when I couldn't really notice the audience's presence once the lights were dimmed. In some concert halls, it would seem almost entirely dark in front. It felt exactly like a rehearsal, where you played to an empty room, except that you had the pressure to play everything right.

More importantly, all the hard work placed during the intensive practices made sure I do not feel nervous for the performance. Tmd. Practised until so hard, averaging 12 hours each week. Just want to heck care, and play to get it over and done with. Just kidding.

I did feel confident that we (and I) would pull this concert off. And we did - with a bang. Maybe there were a few glitches but no human is perfect. Encore cries sounded a bit like 'planted' ones. In any case, I felt good and proud after the performance. Personally enjoyed the extended applauses we received after our major works and the more entertaining pieces. Hurray!

Darn. Forgot to take one of myself with my instrument. Oh well.
More (selected) photos coming right up, once I get hold of the ones taken by others. Should be plenty to get hold of, considering the extended photo-whoring sessions we had after the concert.

Concert's tomorrow

I believe this concert will turn out to be the best in my university band life, for many reasons. For one, I was so moved by what we played for Malaguena and El Camino Real during our rehearsal. Goose pimples quality (It only occurs when I hear something really good).

More importantly, it feels great to see how the band has grown since I first joined it in Sept 2005. To see how people from my batch remain passionate about music and the development of the band. And to see how we manage to attract and bond with more people within our Symphonia family.

Concert is tomorrow. For some weird reasons, it feels just like any normal school days to me. There is no stress or anxiety in me over what is going to happen tomorrow. And yah, I have not even checked if I have the attire for the occasion. Heck care. I'm just going there to enjoy myself, and hopefully, as a band, we can draw the audience into our mood.

Would this be my last concert? I don't really know. But right now, I'm enjoying myself too much to say no to that question. Ay Caramba!

Argh.. Need an Outlet

Think I should blog about happy things.
Well, there are half-completed drafts for two long entries which I can't seem to find the time to complete. They are happy stuff. However,I just want an FA1 XIE4 outlet now.

ARGH!

Don't worry. It's not really the I-want-to-kill-myself type of sianz. Just a it-is-irritating-yet-I-am-forced-to-confront-the-problem-at-home sianz. It's about something that has already happened for some time, and I'm forced to confront it now. Wish I never have to confront such issue in life. Definitely never again in the future.

__________


On a happier note, our symphonic band concert is approaching. I'm playing euphonium for the first time in a formal concert. Previous ones were public performances. All my hard work into practising it is finally paying off. Getting a nice tone and playing more musically nowadays. Music is pretty exciting. Love the latin theme for this concert. Playing pretty hot stuff in our repertoire. Believe it will be one of the concerts which I enjoy most and feel most accomplished.

Btw, tickets are on sale! Lai ah! Lai ah!