there's something interesting about a person's name, i think. your identity, who you are. reputation reputation reputation! --it is a false most undeserving, or something like that. maybe that's all that might be left of me, huh. i don;t know i'm tired of all this its quite messy i just wanna get some beer and get high. studying can wreck ur brains, muahaha.

foo fighters rock
today was mad it had to rain just as i was about to go play tennis, ugh. the moment i went down, showers...bleagh.damn pissed. haha.
wrote some songs.

got an M+ for econs s. sigh. disappointing.

i'm tired man. tired tired tired.

Lord, all i want is to let You take control of my life, in every way, to worship You in my life. to experience Thee in some special way, to work through me, to make me stronger. to sense Your Spirit working through me, and not my will, but Yours be done. this i pray, amen.
sigh, just a simple request, to rest peaceful in the arms of the Almighty God suffices; no need for me to exert my will, or to concern myself about myself, i'd be happy to be in the background n let God take centerstage, and talk to Him, somehow. He is my Father, and i his child, and that is the best way it should be. and sin is just detestable and not an issue at all. ah. just wanna be like that. and just give thanks, coz all the good things in life are from Him and His plan will be sovereign in my life. so let it be. sigh. coming back to the people i knew. the ac family i long to be in again. and there with the whole presence of God and all that. be with me O Lord....I give You my heart...I give You my soul, I live for You alone...You are Holy. so change me, somehow.

being close to God is great, eh. wrote a Christian song yesterday, and it was nice and peaceful, a nice strummy one. today was headachy, which was really bad, until a nice nap alleivated much of the pain. but surprisingly my hearing was quite good, i could tell what an Ab was an what an F was.....for my r n b song, and happy, respectively...i was listening to bob the builder and decided to write some kiddy music, how's that? like, bob-bob-bob the builder...haha so spastic. nvm.
playing tennis with wen en and dalglish was quite a good work out, and so was haagen daas with jeremy. man i missed that place, haven't been there since like sec 4, when i grew all the fats. haha. no wonder.

I have just been sipping wine and savouring French bleu cheese while reading about the Jacobins, Robespierre, the killing of Danton and Herbert and Robespierre's own death, mixed with the joys of reading about the Cult of the Supreme Being and the absurd Mountains and temple of reasons, what a joke. what a socialist, extreme, radical, regime to herald itself in the early days of 1794!, that totaliterrian control of the populace, political and social uniformity that was to be demanded, and non-conformity would just mean death, and arrest, under the law of suspects and the law of 22 prairal. and fancy organising the calender into 10 day weeks, and reorganising the months and all into quaint french names like frimaire and brumaire and vendemaire, oh when incidentally napoleon treated people to a whiff of grapeshot. good revision, huh. sigh.

i slept at three. was just slamming the guitars just now and my my, how fun was it. simply riduculous fun...."oh, the next song is...it's a cover of..." as though there was indeed an audience listening to me and me nonsense. the fantasies of life.

my playlist looks something like this, now

system of a down: toxicity
system of a down: chop suey
big country: in a big country
linkin park: one step closer
linkin park: faint
incubus: drive

i don't know, lots of maddening thrash for a rubbishy interesting day.

hello everyone. must thank the singapore government for this little half-day we're going to have tomorow, which means i'm not going to school, and can enjoy just a bit more repose than usual. my life has descended into this rigorous lamborous routine of flipping through texts and doing math in a mechanical algorithm, saving only little portions here and there for any fancies of any kind, notably coming on to icq and listening to music and playing music and writing music and talking. ahhh but then we have to mug, haven't we.
i was mugging in the library french rev, and still haven't finished the terror..but i'm defintiely gonna try to finish it today....gotta start on napoleon before the end of tomorow, not mentioning thermidor. and origins of the cold war then beckons. how boring. sigh. only stopped by macs for some lunch at four with debbie, such a sad life isn't it. but today i wrote a pretty good song, it's a ballad, a boy-band style song but can be reintepreted with chinese lyrics, and it's pretty good, coz i haven't written a boy-band song in a long time, a melodic lovey-dovey song..it has been mostly rock, so i'm pretty pleased. ah well. small consolation, huh.
i don't know. probably it's gonna be hard for me to get a scholarship, huh? and now i'm too tired to really care, or think. bleagh

the thing is, we're all so mad we can't do anything about it. it's a rat race, and who knows when this will end? i hardly have time for any fun activities anyway. it's like, i can't smell, at all. i can't smell the rich aromas of my chocolate. it's just. oh. what's the next thing i've gotta reaD?

it's so weird. there just isn't any one online what happened to all of them? it might just have been a glitch, eh.
anyway this week has seen me traisping through numerous moods of all shapes and forms. mondays and tuesdays being sleepy and just not trying to think so much, till saturday, a massive drunken party complete with ping pong and touche, which is wonderful stuff, i must add, where everyone was talking and having fun, and me banging away on the piano till someone remarked something, but oh you can ask me privately...just some fast jazz, thats all--thursday was a bit the same, lots of pool, drinks, kilkenney especially.
am back listening to a bit more rock music, changed the guitar strings which was a really good thing coz now they're 10s and they sound a whole lot better, the strings dont' bend when you barre chords, unlike the slack 9s...coz the les paul can't support 9s anyway. there's been a whole lot of wonderful stuff out there. the linkin park and what nots. oh well. its maddening huh.
ahh ppl finally decide to get online. its a glitch.

oh the orchestral piece is doing okay...someone commented that the orchestral piece changes moods to quickly, and i partly agree...sigh it's just me you know i get really bored just keeping it happy, or repeating the theme again and again, sigh. ah well rigour is what's required, isn't it. so it's about the 5 min mark already, until the first subject, which is rather polka-like, but i'm stalling, really because there's hardly any motivation for me to keep it going, ah well.

i have to get down to doing work, argh. hopefully school will be fun?!

i do not create music, i merely discover the treasures that already existed.
holst is brilliant, the planets, the orchestration and everything, simply sublime, the differing tone colours and the sheer eclectism of it, the mysticism that flows through each 'planet', the jupiter hymn, the 5/4 time of mars, ah. syo. it was good eh.
i'm writing a symphonic tone poem now, just gathering little themes here and there: it's supposed to be a blueprint of a life cycle, from the unformed mass of youth to the rhythmic jazz of modern life, to getting old and dying: but it's only into the 2nd minute of completion. the thing about classical music is that you have to place much more thought into orchestration, into note placing, it's not just lyrics and chords, but the sounds are important, the consonance, the dissonance, etc. it's supposed to have basically 4 sections, with differing themes. hopefully its' good.

i still can't get over what happened but i believe You have a plan and may something good come out of all of this, according to Your glorious will, amen.

and i'm really tired now, it's nicer this way. just to rest. pure rest.

today was just surreal. it was heaney's 'funeral rites'. it was a four-foot box, one foot for each year. not in the mood to blog now. just pray for her soul. please.

i hate scotch whiskey i hate scotch whiskey i hate scotch whiskey my goodness how can one stand that filthy drink? ugh!

dinner partty was super super fun argh never got so high even without alcohol man haha...it was super cool. thanks dalg/dawn for the food yeah must be really hard work and like everyone else...was a brilliant atmosphere i guess. at least. yeah the fear factors the whiskey the long-dayt's journey haha. well. am like really high now argh too bad i'm a lil' sleepy also. thank you to all those pple: daryl/mich, cher, sida, gang, dawn/dalg, wen en, weian, rae. etc.... today was such an eventful day. woke up to play tennis still blurry eyed. went for jamming/auditions at jam club, which was okay...the bass playing was pretty funky i guess. i was improvising lots of crap for POD's southtown. and took the NEL to jelita. crap we must do this more

juST GET IN THE GROOVE! WAHHHA GET IN THE GROOVE! WAHHH GET IN THE GROOVE!

I have unearthed a Jill Sobule classic, 'Bitter'. it's so nice i'm listening to it over and over agian

I could slip I could fall
IN that mean and awful hall
With the other jealous bitches and the bitter grumbling men
I could sneer I could glare
Saying life is so unfair
And the one who made it made it coz her
breasts were really big

but i don't wanna get bitter
i dun wanna turn cruel
i don't wanna get old before i have to

i could bitch i could moan say i wanna be left alone
but that's not relaly true becoz i like my time with you
...

i don't wanna get bitter like you
you with the thoughts in your eyes
you with disdain for mankind
i was charmed now i wonder...


the thing is. i want to get bitter. it's a lovely pill to swallow to make you cry your guts out.

We can't change the things life has put in place for us. we have to fight for our lives. we can't change, we'd only distort.

I have been rather close to God the past two or three days and I think over the week. today was pretty good. last night's little message was really meaningful and the prayer was good and all that and everything today was fine, it was peaceful, it was God-centered, i felt free, not to worry what happens to me coz it really doesnt' matter. sigh. and then like everything was fine. i was happy. not as crazy as yesterday, yesterday was really really mad coz like everything was really noisy and hyper and stuff. today was more sedated, i did math, i worked a little, got back my B for lit and A2 for GP, and tried to make the best i could, making friends with people, talking to them nicely, etc. you know, i behaved like a Christian, at least for a while.

then all hell broke loose. don't know what i was doing. don't know what i was trying to do. just a meaningless struggle through eternity and space that had no real beginning nor end and was begging to be defined. it was begging to be shaped into some discernable form that i could embrace, or even make sense of, enjoy; instead it was a cesspool, a mess, going to guitar at 5.30, stoning around, you know, playing the piano, frustrated coz i couldn't write any songs, or at least i was compelled by my urge to write something for the piano coz i was playing 'YOu must love me' and the sound of the piano under my hands was just to marvellous not to write something for it, you know. and then guitar was just, ah well, by that time i couldn't have cared less. and even in CG it was a mess. pool was great, hadn't played in eons, that's what you call 'accumulated desires' i guess.


I'm a mess now. depressed. it's time to write more songs. ahh. great thats nice i can feel the tingles wiggling through my spine and sending me shivers down my back. it's lots of depressive manical music that you've gotta get yourself into to feel real, actually.
and besides, i've been writing pretty well ever since jamming on wednesday. wrote some Rnb song that is pretty soothing with the usual descending chord progs, two little pop-rockers: one's more laid-back with an ebuillient feel, the other's a little edgy, it's about us being 'lovechilds', a reference to something said in GP today, which i took down. hmm. gotta catch all these good phrases to use, huh.

okay. tomorow is the audition. i better not let my friends down.

sigh.
what's with the world .

An interesting thought: did you know the real just intonation scale had 3 different intervals besides semitones and tones? it's really interesting coz i din realise it. in fact, a major interval is like 208 cents, bigger than a tone interval that is 200 cents: while a minor tone interval is 186 cents or something, while a semitone is 112.
It's something like that
1-(major)-2-(minor)-3-(semitone)-4-(major)-5-(minor)-6-(major)-7-(semitone)-8

so like thats y u raise the 5ths, lower the 3rds *since you have to compensate for the smaller interval of the minor*, and lower the 6th (for the same reason) while raising the 5th, since the major is slightly bigger than the whole-tone. interesting huh. and was playing, jamming, on a fretless bass today, sigh, really difficult, playing some trust company and stuff for my friend's audition for some band competition. well done. i'm all tired, after SYF also, which we got silver for...well i'm not particularly disappointed, but ah well, what could have been, ahhhh. hehe nvm got to miss school so that was nice.

yeah.
okay good nites.

I have been able to savour some really interesting dreams over the last few days. and it's really uncanny. the dreams just seem like reality you forget which is which, and i'd rather have the dreams, really. it's been more eventful than this mundane life i'm living in. sunday's dream was about so many things, about sitting down in this big ballroom and meeting wen en while i catch the attention of a girl, let's just call her X. and later on we played some bball with some greats, and i got my name in the papers: i was the best full-season player. and after that it was off to a holiday, to this really big building with a lift that goes up and down, and different things appear at different stories. there were the houses at e top, a shopping mall in the center complete with shops galore, and we the lift to a floor, and then we found this little palace, or cathedral, and it was sunken into the ground, where only the sloping roof and the pedestral were sticking out. I was with another group of pple, let's just call them J, Z, V, etc. and we wanted to explore it...there were little stone carvings around, decorating the entrance. We decided to go in, but J's parents objected, and later they consented, but it was ominous, something was wrong. And I decided, be careful, any time we will leave.
So we enter the place, and found out there were many artifacts that seemed to have life, that could move, like pop-up and shoot some fire, ala harry potter, there was even a wailing corner with wailing noises. It was easy to like, step on them, to cast them down, and later on after having taken seperate paths we met at the exit to the hall. Some sages/councillors walked by, and J then got scolded, something that went ... 'who's the leader'? 'me'...'did you do anything, leading?' 'no'....J was then scolded for valuing political clout, over actually conjuring and defeating the other powers that had held my other friend hostage. Apparently he had entered the building earlier, but was unsuccessful, on the brink of death, sustained only by the food of another person, it seemed to be fish, but he refused, deciding to pass it back to her and her bf. And we were told by the sages that they loved the person, the 'man of wealth' (okay its jeremy....haha....aka pamelsh) and it was horrible to let him suffer....we magical people have to use our talents.

what a story from a dream. could publish it or something, man.

And on the way to school, we were late, I prayed that somehow we'd get to school fast, and miraculously, just as i thought, how nice it would be if all the traffic lights were to turn green, it did! suddenly all the traffic lights indeed did turn green and later on at ghim moh it was funny coz then i wanted the traffic light to turn red, and it did! well well.

---

Monday's dream wasn't as bad but some parts were really nice. was with M, D, and this gal called Y, and we were in this room and discussing life, and it seemed as though Y and I wanted to get together, you know, we were tentative, not knowing if we were indeed for each other, liking each other, that kinda thing. and it was so weird, coz we smiled at each other, yet, shyly turning away, it seemed tentative, like, we were trying to test the waters. haha. well. i think it was more than that, but i can't remember now.
and there was something about staying late at a cafe, eating something that looked extremely pale for like 3.80, with D and J, and in the end there was no bus left to go home, so my father had to come over in some car and fetch me back. quite uneventful, i guess, compared to yesterday's! there was something about a song that my bandmate and i were trying to write, some drug addiction song, with the phrase 'head' and 'instead', if i can remember, correctly.
wow.
---
School tody was nice, got a good vibe. mel and addy and sim and liang were all nice and bubblly, and my classmates too, i guess. hmms. pretty good.. too bad i din see any pretty gals. haha. but that's another issue.

Guitar SYF is tomroow, pray it'll be good. hopefully!

I have just seen the now-infamous video of RJC from an obscure website. well. i just have to say, what's the big fuss? it's just a small scolding, nothing really substantial, i'm sure that happens more often than not, it's not like the teacher threw the bag outta the window or something, or hit the guy or what. so really what's the big hoo-ha? of course it's a little overboard to scold the poor old guy like that, and well about the issue of putting it on the web, it depends on whether you define the classroom as a public place, or a private one. if it is the latter, there would be a violation of privacy, but what's so private about your classroom?

oh man. if something happens to him coz of this there will be an even greater hoo-ha. okay some white slips for bringing in a PDA and using it, that's legitimate, but he should not be a scapegoat for the school's need to win back some face, and a bloody-sunday like reactionary blitz on rights of students, and his welfare, just because some other pple happened to publicise what he put on his blog.

Funk is so cool. I'm listening to Run DMC/Aerosmith 'Walk this way' and it's such a classic. the riff just oozes sex appeal. and just now it was marvin gaye's 'sexual healing', and a little bit of prince's 'when doves cry'. my goodness. just the blues on a saturday night, huh? enough of that passe rock rubbish that cretinises you man.

Tennis today was brilliant fun, except for the rain. the funny thing was that i dreamt the day before that by the time it got to 4.00 it was going to rain, and true enough, it did. am i some sort of soothsayer or something? haha. anyway it rained here and there after half an hour and we couldn't really get to play: the rain stopped later on and we played for a bit more, we managed to get through two doubles sets, before it started raining again. sigh. never mind, i won all of them 6-0, 6-0, but of course, it'll be a much more different story if daryl were there. PLyaed squash and that was fun too. dinner was great. had rack of lamb spiced with mint sauce, while the rest had fillet, some seafood, pie, chicken, and sausages...and some lovely cocktails...i had a sex-on-the-beach with kahlua, others had zombie, some had island on the sun and what not...was quite fun and a nice way to end the week. thanks to jerald, hope there'll be more of that, would be seriously cool.

but today i was fishing out my KORG tuner manual and i found out something seriously cool...a new way to tune your guitar, so you can enjoy the benefits of just intonation instead of equal temparement, which is, seriously, the most ugly, stupid, tuning system there ever is. to take 2 cents off every 5th to make the circle complete is the most stupid thing you could ever do, since chords, harmony, doesn't ever sound like harmony any more. there isn't that shimmer, that resonance, that blend. something's just not right. bah. i think the tuning was much better last time, when i actually tuned the guitar to a chord, for instance G major--i didn't have a tuner then--and then i would sorta fiddle the notes in the chord until it was almost just-intonated, instead of it being equal temparemented--of course that chord sounded damn good while the rest were like crap. of course then you couldn't play any song, right? coz while G was perfectly just-intonated, C was rubbish, and so was D. no wonder it didn't work!
but now, i just realised...just tune it to E, and then barre! and you have the perfect solution. the KORG tuner gives you the position for a pure major 3rd or pure minor 3rd, so all one has to do is to retune some of the strings. E, no need, it's the root. for A, tune it up to the indicated mark, since it'll form B, the 5th, which has to be raised. for D, leave it. for G, tune it down, since itll form the third. for B, tune it up to the indicated, and for E, leave it alone. So you get a really nice chord for all the majors, and the minors dont' sound too bad as well: you have to barre, of course.

The truth is, we've been fed with equal temparement for so long, we've lost the knowledge of the beauty that music actually is. classical music, especially acapella, with the blend of voices, is really music in its purest form, where music simply blends and the harmonic overtones are fed nicely and blend in nicely and you can hear the shimmer of the overtones. especially during ac choir concert, my goodness, the whole auditorium was swelling with the sound of overtones. and only in that form can songs be truly appreciated. sigh. we should go back. js bach was wrong.

Everyone's getting so desperate about their lives now. their prelims, their A-levels, their universities, which to go to, bad common test results, et al. And i think we really have to put things into perspective. Yes, doing A-levels well is paramount in your education life: if you don't do it well, you've finished your education berfore uni on a low, and you might just miss out on a ticket to the train of success--a good university, and so on. However, yeah we can study and al that, but really please don't confuse your studying life with your actual life: you are more than your grades make you out to be. you've got a way-long life out ahead. you'll get married, get some pretty little kids, earn some bucks, drink some at a pub, listen to some music, get some love, hang out with friends, die, go to Heaven, if you believe in God, that is, and eternal life and so on....really there is no need to get all worried and desperate. yes, the time is short, but systematic revision should clear the little holes here and there?

i've been lethargic, a little sick, and very sedate and sane. been sober with songs like 'danny boy' and reading literature and thinking of victorian era age and the culture and all that, so not much pop these days, eh? scottish folk songs. haha. purvis dancing. well done.

but i really admire this little midi program called midicode that you can download (the demo) from www.midicode.com and it's really wonderful, coz you can access different scales that are in different intonation besides equal temperament: such as the just intonation scale, which is really quite wonderful, it's the pure form according to the chords, where the 5th is raised and the 3rd flattened and the 6th and 7th i think flattened slightly so that it forms the 3rd of the 4th and 5th chords respectively, and there are even javanese slendro and pelog scales! how accurate it is, i have no idea, but the fact that i can hear a chord properly without the buzz is good enough.

i'm trying to download some all saints and listening to garth brooks. what a great song.

Jamming today was positively brilliant...i played bass till my fingers are all aching and can't even type the keyboard no more. but it had everything, was super-fun. And it was like musical chairs: anyone could play anything....my band members, jon, and darren of course. we just switched from guitars to bass to vocals to drums, and seriously a whole lot of fun. played loads of numbers taken from a plethora of musical styles: american punk rock, to moffatts, to american indie rock like OLP and staind, to brit-pop of suede and radiohead...even some blues! how cool was that. even some original numbers: invincible, holiday, happy, nobody cares. it was good everyone just decided to have some fun and chill out after the terms.
class party was okay. played PS2 and had some dinner/ice cream, the usual works. and watching tennis: my goodness, roger federer was brilliant. he is a class act, with a classy touch, a brilliant one-handed backhand, and everything from the forehand, the serve-volley, the passing shot. talent incarnate.

listening to OLP now, wow. it's just inspiring and a great finale. thank you God i prayed it'll be fun. oh wells.
=)