Start of Week 4.

Right. I have been quite lazy, in the sense that I did not blog on friday, or saturday, or even sunday. There. I just admit it. RK is slowly killing us with analysis. Nothing special here. Ahhh… That is where you are wrong, my friend. The special thing here is that we were finally told exactly what to do on thursday and that the presentation is on this coming thursday. How wondrous… Sigh…

I am now in the school’s library listening to Brahms Piano Quartet in G No. 1 Op. 25 while blogging/surfing the net. What a good little girl. Hahaha… *dry laughter*

I simply cannot blog about a whole lot of stuff that happened last week as I could not remember clearly what exactly happened. All I know was that Enx and I spent quite a lot of time in libraries. The past week was a blur. *Nods head.* Yup. It certainly was a blur. I only remember what happened over the past 3 days. Let us give you, our dear readers, a summarized version of the events.

Friday. Brass class at 9.15am. DS told us that he would not be teaching us any longer because he had accepted a post as Music Teacher in a government school somewhere in Serangoon Central (near Enx lives) starting on Monday (today!). So, RA would be taking over for the next few lessons until he secures a Brass teacher for us. Found out this morning that Brass lesson this Friday will be at 2pm instead of 9.15am. RA’s doing. Aye, and Julia was really pissed because she has to reschedule her piano lessons but enough of that. Back to Friday’s events. RA told us that he would get more cornetts for us. No surprises here as RA is trained in the trumpet and cornett. It was a rather depressing lesson for me and Enx as we could not blow out that stupid F note!!! Aargh…!!! I can hardly wait to get my hands on that cornett as I want to practice or else I do not think I will pass this module. And it is rather tempting to disturb the neighbours when I do practice. Muahahahahaha! Evil… So, yea. We had Chamber Choir after that. JT was down with Flu-Ver (flu plus fever), as Albert said, and he took over conducting for the day.

(to be continued…)

Week 2: Down.

Good gracious me! What now? You are back! What do you mean by “You are back?” Of course I am back. In fact, I never left! Ok, ok… Whatever… Anyway, it is less than 2 weeks for us to get some pieces of music ready for the history assignment. Are you talking about the programming of a concert thing that RK wants us to do in essay form? Yes. Sigh… Are we dead… Ooooh… We? I thought it was only you. *grins evilly* *rolls eyes heavenwards*

So, what have you been doing this past week? Hmmm… Let me recall…
Guests arrived on Saturday evening. Took them out to the Botanic Gardens on Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, it rained, and soaked my canvas shoes to the core, and I did not have my camera with me otherwise there would be plenty of photos of the pretty flowers there.

Monday. Ethnomusicology in the morning followed by Chorus. Was late by nearly 10mins for ethnomu. Started work on new performing piece for Chorus/Orch concert. Doing Mozart’s Great Mass in C. It’s quite challenging. Char and I were having a little “picnic” while standing there during practice because of two reasons: 1. We were hungry and 2. We were bored as Angel and Hui En had graduated and are no longer around there to “entertain” us. Sad… By the way, we conquered the last row!!! Muahahahaha…!!! *thunder and lightning effects* Siao! After that, I went off to my brother’s place to help Mummy take care of Nat because she was not feeling well. It was fun yet tiring to look after him, even though it was for a few hours. He came over to me with his Chinese song book (er ge), wanting me to read to him, or so I thought, but he was more interested in looking at the colourful pictures than concentrating on the words. Well, what did you expect? He is still a baby, for goodness’ sake! Yah,yah… Fortunately for me, I managed to sneak in a nap while he was playing on the floor beside me.

Tuesday. Woke up early for Ms Lim’s class at 8. Nearly 55% of yawnings took place there while she was demonstrating some technique. Oh well… This is the only time available for piano lessons. Was nodding off during Harmony lecture. Could hardly keep my eyes open for the entire duration of 2 hours. Went straight to Kor’s place after that, but that was before buying lunch i.e. packet rice for Mummy and me. Did the same as yesterday with Nat, including the nap. Muahahahaha…!!! Siao…

Wednesday. Went to the library in the hope of finding some Tintin comics to read. Sadly, I could not find a single book as they were all borrowed. Damn… Instead, I borrowed an Agatha Christie. Ms Marple and Poirot? Yes. They are so cool! Yes. Let me read! *sigh…* We ARE reading it now. Oh… I forgot. Heehee. Sigh… Silly girl…

Thursday. Packed-like-sardines Day. Nine to Six. Did not bring Aural book as I thought that EW would not use it, which he did. So, I did all those usual stuff using a piece of scrap paper for the rhythmic dictation and a piece of manuscript for the melodic dictation. I found the melodic part to be very easy as the melody was rather straight forward, with mostly accented notes. I think Charles has a serious hearing problem as he could not write out the melody after hearing them. You do have something against Charles, do you not? Haha… You know me so well.

Friday. Today. TGIF!!! Yes. Did some taking apart and cleaning of the brass instruments. Enx and I shared a cornett to clean. All of us managed to make some sound when we “blew” into the instruments. Not bad for beginners, except for Juls and ZQ as they already had training in brass and/or wind instruments. It was quite fun. Ended early like last week. The smell of brass rust lingered on my fingers even after I had washed my hands with soap. Ewww… Had Chamber Choir after that but it was sectionals. Hate sectionals. I had lunch with Enx at Subway after choir. We did not have Piano Studies in the afternoon and so, we both decided to do some things for our assignments. We got the scores photocopied but because of the number to be done, on my suggestion, we spent nearly two hours walking around Plaza Singapura, especially Spotlight, before heading back to collect the scores and to school to ask RK some questions regarding our work. After that, we went off to the school library to return a book and then did some research on Schubert’s Moment Musical. Went off to Bras Basah to buy a small notebook for a Brass Class assignment. We had some trouble with the sensors at Popular even though I carried those confounded NAFA library books way above my head. People were staring at us… We went to the cashier to get those stupid books scanned. Damn bloody problematic. Yeah. Crossed the road to the bus stop at about 6:20pm and finally got home at 7:05pm.

Well, another day has come and gone. So fast and so not good. Sigh… I think I do not have anything else to mention. Wait! What? Did you mention the fact that Enx is back from her church retreat? No. *taps foot expectantly* Alright. Enx is back from her 3-day church retreat in Batam. She came back for lessons on Thursday. For more details on her retreat, check out her blog. Satisfied now? Yup. Satisfied. Dots.

Ok. I am off to sleep. Got things to do in the morning. Good night! ‘Good morning’ you mean. Yeah, yeah. Good morning!

1 Week Down. How many to go?

Here we are at the end of the first week of school, taking a nice break of two days a.k.a. weekends before going back there.

RK has already started on adding pressure/stress on us all by telling us about our assignments for both history and analysis. Why was I not surprised? JY started teaching immediately during the first lecture. Thank God he did some ‘revision’ using the second year harmony book. (Please note the irony of the situation.) EW nearly ‘killed’ us all during aural class by doing two 3-in-1 exercises; melodic, rhythmic and harmonic. Aye, he is our aural teacher. Damn…

For today, we met our new ‘lecturer’ for Brass Class, DS, a not-really-young guy, about Kor’s age, who reminded me of one of my fellow classmates, Samuel. We, as a class, ‘crapped’ about some stuff when we had to introduce ourselves to our lecturer and did nothing serious. As a result, we ended early. I was a good little girl today as I spent the time practising Chopin’s Etude while waiting for Chamber Choir to begin. Yes, surprise, surprise, I am in Chamber Choir, together with those 3 girls and 2 guys; Enx, Juls, Char, ZQ and LH. We have to practice for a trial run for choral scenes of an opera. The performance will be in the second half of July, leaving us with slightly more than a month to get things ready. We had Piano Class with both the year 1s and 3s of the Teaching course and we met the new piano teacher/lecturer that I told you about the last time, Dr Ernest Lim. He is in charge of Piano Classes on Fridays, with occasional visits from Mrs Phua.

Eight people; students with quite heavy bags due to just-arrived history books, went for dinner at an Italian restaurant in Orchard and the bill was slightly enormous even though the ‘host’ refused to let us know (I saw the bill). Thank heavens the ‘a little something(s)’ made up nearly half of the bill. Jose is no longer studying with us here in NAFA. But, hopefully he will be able to get a job here instead of going back to the Philippines. Well, we head off to the nearby Coffee Bean for desert and talk instead of staying in the restaurant. (We had 2 regular pizzas and 2 plates of pasta among us. I now know how squid ink pasta and Parma ham taste like. Heehee! The pasta tastes quite like the usual pasta. Nothing fantastic really, except that it had a bit of sweetness to it. As for the Parma ham, it was quite salty. That explains why the pizza had some leafy veggie/herb-like greens on top of it i.e. to even out the taste of the saltiness.) By the time I got home, we left at the same time, it was already 10:45pm. The trip was quite fast, considering I took a service 16 at 10pm from Orchard to Old Airport Rd before transferring to my good old and trusty service 33. Well, Enx, myself, Char and ZQ ‘bumped’ into Jose at the Esplanade library this afternoon. What a small world… I hope that he will get a job here soon. I am sure many will agree that he is a very nice guy, who is a real gentleman e.g. opening doors for the ladies, never opening his presents/gifts in front of his guests, etc.

Right then. I am off to brush my teeth, wash my face and get ready for bed. Simply put, I am going to log off real soon.

‘Nights!

Must get my buzzing technique right.

Year 2, Semester 1. BRING IT ON!!!

Right. School has started. The timetable has been issued and it is terribly screwed. I have to get myself to school by 9 in the morning for 3 days and the remaining 2 days is by 11am and finally end school at 6pm almost everyday. How fabulous. I had to think of an available time for Principal Study and had to settle for a Tuesday early morning timeslot. Damn sad. The next school holidays will be in October. Four months to live through. Sigh… I cry…

This first week is Settling Down Week. Things have yet to go into full-drive but they will when next week comes.

Remember the problem I had mentioned in my last post? Well, Ms Lim settled the matter for me and, yippee, I am studying under her. I am happy in a way. So, I had my first lesson of Year 2 this early morning, becoming her first student of the day and that will be the arrangement until the end of the semester. Let us wait and see whether there will be any major changes in the timetable for the second semester… Hold it, girl! What on earth are you thinking about? Second semester??? The first one has just began, not ending any time soon and you are already talking about the second one??? Good grief! OK. Fine. I shall concentrate on this one first. And that was my other voice speaking. I am going insane. Anyway, Ms Lim had me started on Chopin’s Etudes Op. 25, No. 2. The piece is four pages long, very boring but simple enough as there are mostly repeated phrases. But what I am more concerned about is the speed that I will eventually have to perform at. Oh bummer.

Well, less than 52 weeks aka a year to squeeze in 32 weeks of school. How on earth are we going to do that without having our hair turning grey? Beats me. Sigh… Let me live a day at a time first, OK? I do not think I can handle an onslaught of whatever-work that the lecturers have in store for us poor beings called students.

My life is rather boring right now. Ir0nically, I am quite happy about the way it is now. No relationship problems because I am not in any relationship with any male. Therefore, no heartaches, no tears, no laughter and no joy with a male. Which is good. Psycho. I beg your pardon? You are pardoned. Very funny. Haha. My toes are laughing. So are mine. Because we share the same toes. You seem happy that there is no male about your life. Kindly remember that I have God, Jesus, my dad, kor and nephew in MY life. -.-” What I mean is, you do not have a boyfriend and neither are you interested in any male! Are you a lesbian??? Complete dots to you. You know as well as I do that I am, or we are, totally straight. And tell me, why on this blessed earth do you want to subject yourself to torture by a male when at this point in life, at 18 years, your life is rather uncertain, you do not know what He has in store for you, and you are slacking so much that it affects your studies so badly as reflected in your recent results??? Answer me. Point taken. Good and keep it that way.

Do you remember there was a time when I wrote about me being “addicted” to Korean films? Well, I am now hook on the songs. I bought an album of complilations this morning from Bugis Street on my way to school. Haha!

Oh well, I am going off soon so as to get my laptop’s battery recharge.

Do you know that we did not play Maple Story for most of the recent hols? Incredible.