The RJ rugby team lost to ACJC again, but this time they fought their guts out, their spirit, their 'gryphon strength' morphed in a show of collective determination, and it was mere inches, just two points. What if raihan's penalty had gone in, instead of scraping the bar? What if our conversion had gone in? Such questions could never be answered, and its pointless to ask 'what if'. But the RJC rugby team deserves great respect, for against the odds they pushed and was centimeters away from winning. They kept on going. 13-3. all the way back to 13-11.
Sigh. its sad, isn't it.
Still, it was great going back to the ACJC side. walking around, seeing the people that you grew up with for four years around you, walking to them, shaking hands, talking about how's things been, or just a simple hiez haven't seen u around for ages, and just feeling like you actually belong. It was nice. I'm always plagued by insecurity anyway, when in RJC, its as though they've grown up in RI and this is the natural progression and one's just an import. The difference was really quite clear.

crap. i don't think i'll be able to write a romantic love song anyway. never mind. wrote something today....need some lyrics.

I guess i shall start going back to being myself again. Its been so long away. so long.
okay
seeya

life is so complex, and why can't it all be more simple? it's stifling how we can't ever get pleasure back. happiness. bliss. call it whatever you like. we're escapist, somehow, a tendency to transcend the mere ordinary into something magical. let's stop thinking for a moment.
that's right.
and we'll fly away with our instincts.

It's sad the way some things have to happen. How there is suffering in the world. for those who know what i'm talking about, then join my thoughts, if not forget it. but I believe God is in control and no matter what hope is so important. But her suffering is over now, and God definitely has a plan to allow suffering, doesn't He.
nostalgic and it's kind of mad. i want summer and all the fun, but then when it's summer and having fun i miss the nostalgia and autumn. what's wrong with me. there's always a clash between the person looking for artistic liberation and mindless happiness. that's the complexity of life, isn't it.

but i was kinda mad today. laughing in that gay hippie manner. swinging around. acting cool. that's the life you'd love to lead. of sweet warmth and bliss and effervescent laughter. haha.

I like saturdays. The day had been so sunny, it was nice seeing the trees bask in the warmth of its glow, and how everything was bright and cheery, travelling over the benjamin sheares bridge looking over the coast, wow, Singapore actually looked like a sea-side garden city, and on the keppel viaduct looking over to the ports and the bustle of it, which was nice. it was in the morning, too, not too hot, at least. it reminded me of sydney and its cosmopolitan air: it's the urban life, with tall buildings and a kind of spaciousness that comes from those tall buildings. and simply stevens road is so upmarket and bourgeois: there are condos and clubs everywhere, and is like the inner reaches of a city, the areas where slums have failed to reach and posh cars roam the street.

How can i write about romantic love when I've never experienced it before? Writing broadway musicals and so on and the complexities of love. Maybe when I'm 30 I could write about it, but when you're 18 you're into rock and roll. It's only natural, isn't it?

The AC choir was, in one words, fantastic. Words can't even begin to do it justice. It is listening to the swell of harmonious voices--like choirs of angels,--and hearing the sound of silence that floats over the air. It was ethnic, oriental, mystical, with the discernable sounds of folk-song and Latin masses. I even managed to write tunes amidst the silence, and with each new swell of voices comes new colours. It was almost a spiritual cleansing, a purging of unhappiness and uncleaniness, an a refinement to beautiful thoughts. Thank and praise God for music. It's a beautiful thing, it really is. There are some times when I've begun to believe that again. Thank God for that, after all the crap that's happened before.
It's wonderful when you meet up with AC friends again, like on the MRT: old chums you've never seen for years and suddenly they're back in sight and the old memories return. It's relaxing, it's fun, there's a perpetual grin on my face, it soothes you and the unhappiness and all that stifling is gone, but what is natural and good is left. It's like swinging around on the MRT and no one bothers about you and you won;'t let anyone bother. we're all happy, there isn't anything unhappy left about. we really can control our thoughts and feelings. It's so exciting and fun and the jokes are so warm and gentle and there's a warmth about it. people actually smile and it's not because they're sarcastic or sardonic or what, it's because they really love to smile.
It's nice, smiling. just a simple thing?

:

Kenneth and Danielle's wedding was one of the sweetest most beautiful things you could ever witness: love in a nice, sweet, not-too-saccharine but still meaningful nevertheless, form. We were roped in to play in the ensemble for him and was it rather exciting. Practise at Declan's house on Thursday and Friday was nice: shared in the jokes of the chamber pple, got to know some of them better and all that, and the playing was rather interesting as well. it was a nice break, sort of. But that was just the appetizer: the main course really started off at the church of the Holy Cross in clementi where the two of them were solemnized in marriage in the Catholic fashion: it was rather weird for me but it was so happy and nice for them. so sweet, at least. they'd make a very sweet couple, i could tell you that.
We proceeded on to the Fullerton where it was all grand and stuff and really it makes very good memories: the walls are familiar, the people change all the time. the press room where the actors were in, and the chamber people walking around to and fro from the ballroom to the holding area, we set up the equipment, did some sound tests, got real tired, cracked some jokes, waited for the party to really get going. Got a lil' high on the shanghai surprise and all that and it was nice to see Mrs Perry and she told me Mr Purvis was coming and that was a surprise as well.
So the evening's entertainment went: the dancers came out in their full force and we played 'zui ai ye shanghai' and it gradually progressed into the jaclyn song of 'since i met you': what was nice was the entertainment at the tables eating our food and the cute teddy bears and all that. ken even gave us angbaos which was very very generous of him, ah well, we should've been the ones giving him stuff, after all we already got to eat! soon the romantic part came with the second walk-in acccompanied by a delightful string section of the ensemble, and later on it was so nice seeing kenneth play 'whens' a request a proposal' to danielle, 'wo yuan yi wei ni' (sung by someone else), and later on kenneth to sing his proposal song: will you marry me. you could see danielle slowly melting away into tears as it was just so, so sweet, and all. i just wanted to cry, but i'm a guy. it was. oooohh. and ken was just like a little boy all of a sudden.
'little boy of mine' was funny and that song is rather sticky in your head: later on was the finale and all the yum sengs and all and i had to do a rather long improvisation since they took so long on it but i'm quite happy with it my fingers didn't start going gluey and sticky all of a sudden. ended off with a bang. i hope everyone loved it.

so dinner was over, but now was where the real entertainment really started. we took photos with danielle and her beautiful tiara and crystal-studded wedding gown, cracked more jokes and being high from everything, to the astonishment of mrs perry. later we stumbled to the hotel rooms and just was like a high party, ken got some wine and we had some drink alright. absolut vodka from the larder mixed with virgin pink, yuck. haha. all their old-school friends were in the wedding suite so we were content to have our own little gathering in the spare room. but oh well it got a bit boring. decided to waddle down to the singapore river for a nice little walk, the black raiders of singapore, before i had to go back home. ah well. so much for a night, but it was so fun.

God bless them.

i'm tired.
but honk when you're horny baby.

haha

It's great to be nice in a world of social relations. where one doesn't need to think so much. everything is in the middle. moderate. Being thankful to God for each little thing since really He doesnt' owe me anything.
if it seems a stupid thing to say, mebbe it is, or mebbe its hard to relate to.
people are nice people after all.

i hope so.
we're all trying to do our best.
all the highs must invariably be accompanied by lows. mebbe i just want to be myself in a quiet peaceful life.

Wrote an interesting piano-based song which I felt was pretty good, but then again I always feel the songs are good until the next day, when they then sound like crap. But this one will probably last a while. I wrote lyrics for a chicago-styled song that was written(tune) some time back also.

But jamming at darren's again was fun. haha. it's like a re-emergence into consciousness. I'm content and I don't need to be so high or so low but the middle's a nice place to be. Music is nice and a day of music and rhythms and beats is even nicer. Vertical horizon and all. lovely stuff. YOu know, music's fun. just being fun and letting it out. and I've started singing again, and appreciating the lyrics and how they all fit into a song and the emotions and all. performing and emoting.

sorry i'm not being articulate.

you know what is blogging a good idea after all. sometimes i feel it's really bad because one can never relive it and then the blog just makes one want to remember it and sometimes we're walking around with our eyes on our back.

It's amazing what a dash of bacardi and bourbon cola can do to sedate oneself, and calm the nerves and still the ever-moving fibres. It's so relaxing, feeling the breeze on my face.

How can we come to see God if we still persist in remaining big, in remaining ourselves, in keeping us full of that pride and arrogance? Let's be small little me. We're too small and insignificant anyway to change the ways of the universe. We can't move a tree by ourselves, not to mention arrange the stars. We're price takers. So please remove it. Insignificance is wonderful since the pressures of being so 'big' and thinking oneself as being so big is too burdensome for me to endure.
And I have to realise that, since everything becomes so much better. I can focus on God without focusing on myself. I can converse and be interested in others without being interested in myself. more of You and less of me.Because we don't see the real meaning of this life, being ignorant. All our riches are filthy rags.

And I've realised that our most minor flaw that we tend to overlook easily might be our biggest stumbling block.

--

Really I was extremely burnt out today, having had a full full day of all-sorts-of-activities, from lots of music practice to SATs1 plus cell group and worship yesterday, which meant lying in bed was a joy to behold, and boy can't I wait to go back there. I started dreaming, though, of people again, of my old AC life, of being kiddish and boyish, of a computer gaming shop that frequently emerges that is housed in a building that looks like Cineleisure, [which is often paired up with a paragon-styled building], of being with AC pple, running around orchard and all that, of going out, of doing all sorts of crazy things, of even doing standing-broad-jump for NAPFA tests and trying to raise the knees (which didn't really work), hanging out with my friend's class, and running around with girls.
Oh well. what a crazy life. What a crazy dream. That's what I wanted it to be anyway, but now it's gone, gone, so long.

The world's so big anyway and so complicated, and it's impossible for one to understand everything, so I'd rather just observe it from afar and see the little differences and similarities of it all, and be just a little speck in the great scheme of life.

Watched X-man 2 yesterday, with ac friends, for some mindless fun and prancing around in Orchard, which was nice and cool, of course. left me with a smile on my face.
Today was a perpetual state of dreaminess, where the mind is left frozen and the eyes droop and the bed is snug and warm. It's hibernation, where the soft strains of 'somewhere over the rainbow' fill the air. Can't get too excited. The notes don't have that lightness about it, but tends to hold. if you know what i mean. It's being relaxed and letting myself wind down and restore the energy sapped away from yesterday's party-in-orchard-road.
I'm really trying desperately to write a musical-like song, where the notes fill a nice pattern, and is memorable and easy to sing. Just need a spurt of melody to start it and it'll be fine, but that's the really hard part. I just don't want drums. No drums, no guitars, none of that rock-pop thing. but i want pure melody and pure sounds.
I'm really torn between the rock/pop world, where the mind thinks of the chords behind it along with the melodies, and the song-song world of music, where the melody is the primary thing, and in one's brain the melody line is followed dogmatically, and the rhythms are simple and all. I'm trying to crossover now but it's really difficult, because all of my life it's been listening to the radio, and really i'm just 18 and it's crazy for me to live and dream and feel like a 40 year old. It's all about exuberant fun now, not all that mature meaning??
The rock/pop world gives me a smile, while the song-song world gives a clear mind. which one is more precious?

Okay i'm crazy. pple wont' be interestd anwyae. i got a new phone btw. its a 6610 not bad... k nvm.

here's some songs I've been listening to, haha.

sarah connor: skin on skin
50 cents: in the club
avril lavigne: losing grip
portishead: sour times
audioslave: like a stone
eve cassidy: time after time

all great tracks. indicative of my state of mind right now.

Monday was a mess though it started off nicely but it faded away into a mess of thoughts. What's wrong with me, still trying to be a writer. It's never enough, the patterns, the music, the contours. I need something else real badly.

Today was alright. i haven't got anythign to say really, though portishead was good. had a real nice long nap and felt awfully good after that...think i should do that just almost everyday: its wonderful how well you feel after that. everything is nice and a lil' hazy, music has a halo around it, and jazz is sublime.

I'm falling into oblivion. Please save me.
Nobody reads these posts anyway.
I'm tired of trying to be special, we're all so mundane, and maybe when we grow older we'd realise how stupid we all are.
This is just a release. It's such a powerful one. I just had to write, didn't I?

Please tell me how I can be used by You I have no idea give me some assurances and some signs. Your strength is made perfect in my weakness, but I'm still going on trying to be someone? I'm still trying to write a proper melodic song after so long, so long. I want people to sing without going all energetic about it, but maybe I can't do it. maybe I'm trying too hard. I'm trying to talk and laugh but I can't. But this is such great release. It's better than sex, not that I know how it feels anyway. i suppose i'd never.

i'm going crazy. but does anybody care. nobody's online anyway. this loneliness. inertia creeps. nobody's on the sms. haven't got a clue what they're doing with their lives. loneliness. the doors are shut and you're groping for the holes, just to escape. escape.

Such a mess. radiohead might ease the pain.

haha.

Stayed at home today coz the flu bug came to me, and was pretty unproductive except for finishing the new song I've just written, which is the musicalesque one. Honestly I'm pretty happy with it, matching or perhaps surpassing my high standards...I'll post it on the web once I've written lyrics to it. This song has a rather enchanted air to it, being a lil' romantic like all musicalish songs, and has some semblence of emotion, that differentiates it from all the other trash I've been writing.
It's great to spend hours on the piano. One gets into this very musical mood, where the notes ring out loud and clear, and the harmonies are distinct; Where we get into the music itself, we speed up/slow down just as required, there's an elegance about the touch, etc. I was playing my old Mozart song that I had to perform for the exam long ago, and I realised how much more I understood the sympathy, the pathos, the sweetness of the melodic parts, in addition to the brilliant parts. At least now I'm playing it with some maturity that I didn't have last time. Which brings me to realise that its really a growing process, this piano-playing thing. It's great, I'm finally getting my touch back.

I told you we'd go back to normal after monday, and it was rather mundane, I'd say. I think I grew a lil' closer to God again, and I've become introspective, a little more, at least. Music's flowing through my veins again, I suppose. The Band concert was not bad but the auditorium it was in deserved better, since every wrong note was articulated so clearly, according to ms chen. haha. Oh well.
I'm quite pleased with the two songs that I just wrote today, one an extension of an earlier song. pretty good stuff. I'm feeling musical now, after sitting on the piano for 2 hours and pressing away at the keys and slowly appropriating all the musical notes into my brain.
I'm real tired. Having a lil' bit of flu, it better not be SARS. Pls God don't let it be SARS. Ah well. good night.

There's something wonderful found in pure, unbridled, spontaneous Energy of ebullient enjoyment, childish laughter, such joyful happy fun: life is that good and that brilliant. It's the life. There is no need for philosophies of life to dictate what in essence is living: no system could encapsulate the joy and energy of the human spirit. There's no need to read into the connotations about what someone is saying. people are all just friends and love and are happy for each other. There is no need for too much thought. It's just liveliness, spontaneity and fun.
Damn I missed that. It's been gone for too long, lost in all that psuedo-literary crap and all that. Argggh.

Today was really an encapsulation of what had been missing for too long: it was my birthday and I didn't expect much, but things worked out just right, just like I prayed it would. Wonderful. lots of 'happy birthdays' and shaking hands n some hugs and a nice lil' card from mel/nic and just a nice friendly cheerful atmosphere going on around. Later on became even more 'siao' especially in the canteen where i was just loud and boisterous, illuminiated by torrents of pure energy. Torrents.
Dinner was pretty good: at fish n co where there was quite a lovely farm-house setting and boosted by lively conversation, preceded by pool of course which was not bad. sigh why can't I pronounce 'souffle', argh. haha. Bakers' Inn's 'souffle' was a nice introduction to the wonderful world of that fluffy egg pudding, having real good texture and taste complemented by the vanilla. i suppose everyone enjoyed themselves a bit, though it was a lil' premature they had to leave by 10 for some physics test but I guess I was too tired anyway, sedated by sips of tequila and curacao.

Thanks, Lord, things went out fine, and help me to have just that simple faith of a child in knowing You will do everything for me and I just have to receive it whole-heartedly and trust in You. It's times like this that you realise that God can change things in a really subtle and different way. It's not just a mental shift but a whole dimensional change, if only one'd trust, and I'd just hope I won't forget too quickly, like I always do. Silly me.

It's just warmth, really. Warmth.

Ah well. I'm tired now. The whole day's been great and it's been fun. Thanks for making it memorable. the chummy ol' quek. lil' ben. strange wen en. intoxicating jeremy. ws and guoliang. thank you.
Okay the blog's rambling now. See you. tomorrow will be back to normal.

I'm in this weird state where dreams usurp real life: my dreams depict reality very strongly, and the rest of the time awake is left trying to clutch these dreams that appear but for a moment and then disappears. In other words I'm approaching a dream-like state of consciousness, where images are hazy and impressionistic, the keys are flat, and everything is in this approximation rather than requiring the burden of a concrete exact notion of everything.

There was even a dream where I wrote a song, in my sleep! There was even a tune, which I remembered had some As and some Gs, but unfortunately, I've forgotten the whole tune! Darn it. It'll have been pretty cool to be writing a song in your sleep. I really wanna record: heard the hotties' rendition of 'in my place' and the quality was quite outstanding really. Apparently they've got a new program in place, some digital recorder, and seriously everything's much clearer now. Oh well. Got a latest theory about why songs sound so different, perhaps its the instrument one uses to compose: piano songs tend to be more logical, and more interested in these logical chord progressions, with inversions, sequences, and the lot. Also probably the rhythms tend to be more regular, and the chord changes tend to be more frequent, with 2 chords in a bar, and perhaps with more repeated notes, that represent the piano pressing the notes. On the other hand, guitar songs tend to be more interested in riffs, in instrumentations, or in repeated chord progressions with more imaginative melodies fitting into the framework of the chord progressions that repeat. In other words, the distinct feature of a song written on guitar is probably the melody and all that, since the chord progressions are pretty much the usual guitar progressions you get around. I write most of my stuff on the guitar tho, and the tempos and everything are so, so different...
I have no idea what I'm writing, really...

I've turning 18 tomorrow, and chances are, it's gonna be a sucky day. i never enjoy my birthdays anyway, unless things happen to change so drmatically this time around. The fact is, you're so obsessed with trying to enjoy yourself that you try too hard, birthdays are such an arbitrary construct giving me so much pressure to want to enjoy it, which is ironic 'coz I never enjoy it. In fact I dont' think I've enjoyed any of my birthdays except for the singing and clapping hands and all that, 'cuz you want the day to be special and more often than not u're left disappointed. In fact I'd rather let life surprise me, to find joy in the most unusual of days, in this context. Like Wen en put it, "anticipation is often defeated by reality." quite true quite true. Life is ironic anyway. Its God's way of reminding us about our real place in the world in a humourous sense, I guess.


Oh and my pool's getting better, too. The secret, really, is to get behind the ball to shoot. Haha.

Listening to sun yanzi now. Chinese music and english music are again two totally different constructs, but that's another issue...

Instead of viewing rationality and religion as being opposed to each other, where we are gradually evolving into human reason being the highest level in a form of humanistic ideals, indeed both are really just ways of viewing the world, to understand it. They are different frameworks for us to work in: rationality asks us to question, to seek, to find answers in human methods, while religion teaches us to seek methods of the supernatural. It is a whole transplant of mindset, rather than a shift in perspective. After all the ancients didn't really care much for rationality and reason simply because they were not educated enough, and that's why they attached spiritual significance to objects: 'fetishism' in the terms of George Eliot, and soon came the organised religions, as we all know, like Christianity. Perhaps these new ideas signify the emergence of the human race as being able to lead and rule the order of the universe.

I am slightly doubtful if that can ever be a reality. The universe is just too complex and mysterious: there are just far too many things outside the realm of the human that we can't control at all, not to mention dictate. The recent SARS virus is a case in point. Weaknesses, fears, irrationality, all point to the fact that perhaps this 'humanism' based on the notion of the imperfect being is not as wonderful as it seems, an ideal though it may be. Why then are we so scared of death if we seem to rationally be able to control everything?

We can't. we're all fallible anyway, and the sooner we realise this the better. I've seen people become happy because they've realised the need for some spiritual order 'coz the rational humanistic order satisfies not the inner souls. And that's why God will never be dead, as Nietzche famously put it a century ago.