Double Whammy

Right. I had most certainly lost my favourite ring again, the one Ching bought from her NZ trip years ago, and a plastic ear stud that I wore on my second earhole. Okaasan found the back part of the earstud minutes ago from my bed. Haha! I can not believe my things are going missing. Third time lucky? I hope not. LOL!

Anyway, it is time to tell you about my day(s). We had Aural yesterday afternoon. Daddy drove me to the street before Mayo Street, which is along Jalan Besar, and I walked to school from there. He did not know that he could had dropped me off outside Prinsep Street instead as he thought there was not a right turn into Rochor Canal Road available even though I tried to explain it to him. (He was avoiding the ERP as he does not have a CashCard.) Haha! He stopped at that street and Okaasan went out to scout around. (Yup. She came along for a spin.) Now he knows. Aural exam was much better than the test. We were provided with only a piece of manuscript paper that time. Thus, we had to pick out the appropriate time signature for the questions EW played on the piano. How horrible. Naturally, I failed. This time round, EW gave us a proper piece of exam paper, with the questions, inclusive of both the key and time signatures written out. I managed to get the Melodic dictation done, saved for the second last bar which was a whole mess, because EW played the melody five times. Yay! As for the second question, Rhythmic dictation, I was and still is a complete failure at it. I had only complete the first bar which was partially correct. Drats! As for the Harmonic dictation, may God bless me as I was really tikam-ing through out. What was a little worrisome was when EW made a red mark on the top of my paper when he went around checking out aural homework. You see, I did not know that we had to complete another four pages and so, when I got to school and found out about it, I had only managed to copy the last two pages, in the hope that he would not check the other last two, which he did. So, there went at least 2% of my overall marks. Sigh…

I am so tired now. All thanks to having both Harmony and MoA exams on the same day, which happened to be today. It was a pure double whammy. Thank God those two were not one after the other or else all of us would be very much dead. Instead, we had a 3 over hours worth of break to continue with our MoA mugging. I managed to complete both questions for the Harmony exam as I was very much panicking during the final minutes. Unfortunately, I believe there is some mistakes with my modulations/tonicisations. Aargh! Forget it. What was done is done. If I was asked each paper was a killer, I would pick the MoA one. It was neck-aching, back-breaking, mind-numbing, brain-freezing, eye-straining, butt-iching (yah right!), finger-cramping (if there is such a word as ‘cramping’), heart-wrenching, tear-jerking, highly-irritating piece of paper. Wow… So, you are finally done with all the adjectives. Funny. Haha. I skipped the essay question that was worth 40%, which I had only wrote a sentence some time later, and headed straight for the other 60%. And it was because of this 60% that caused me all of the above adjectives, especially the horrible question on the matrix and the score “analysing”. Sigh… It was HORRIBLE. Just by basing on the 60% portion, how am I going to pass the exam??? I thought I had made a huge blunder because the notes in the score looked like an Inversion of some kind. So, I checked it against the matrix that we were suppose to construct using the given twelve tones. Which I did and I was so STUPID as to think that those sets of tones were different from the Prime original. AAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH…!!!!!!! HOW COULD I BE SO STUPID??? IT WAS PRIME ORIGINAL THROUGHOUT THE F***ING PIECE!!! AAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH…!!!!!!! And there I was, sitting in the examination hall/Recital Hall, panicking like crazy all thanks to my brains being in over-drive mode.

Truthfully, never in my life have I felt so much for my examinations. Never. What is more amazing is that my current feelings are on the brighter side as compared to last week, even though it is now the examination week. For this whole week, especially after the history exam, I am feeling confident. Maybe it is because I know that God, Jesus, Mother Mary, Gong-gong and Ma-ma, my guardian angel and Blessed Barre are all with me. Maybe that explains why.

I have Ethnomusicology later in the afternoon and I have yet to study as my time was taken up by the KWLA journals that RK wants us to do as part of our MoA portfolio. Thank God we all will not have this module any more come next semester. Therefore, the journals are our only tickets left in order to pass. May God bless me that I will pass this module. Heaven only knows how I am going to mug Ethnomusic later after I awake, especially with what little notes I have of the semester, including those from last year’s Gamelan studies. Sigh… It was a very bad idea to upload the lecture notes onto the Yahoo Group as these prevented us all from entering, making us wait for an “invitation” from TM. Well, I am off to bed now as I seriously need to sleep. My eyes were trying to keep open throughout the day. My poor eyes…

After Ethnomusicology, it will be full steam a head for my Piano practical! Choo-choo!!!

Article: 10 Reasons Not to Go to Mass

My dear readers, you should know by now that I am a Catholic. I would like to share this little article that I had received from a mailing list I belong to. However, please do not turn your pretty eyes away from it and think that it is for only Catholics to read. It is not. It is for all Christians as I believe this “problem” exists in other branches of this One Vine. I shall be updating on my day-to-day problems soon. Take care and may God bless.

10 reasons not to go to Mass
(and one really good reason why you should)
Gregory F. Augustine Pierce

This article is forwarded by http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/catholicpriests

OUR FIRST TWO KIDS, a twin boy and girl, began their college education this fall, and their younger brother will do so next year. This has caused my wife and me to think about why young adults should go to Mass, even after they leave the weekly supervision and cajoling of their parents. First, here are some previously used reasons that I don’t think will fly with them or others of their generation:

1. Go to Mass because we do or because we said so.This worked somewhat when they were younger and living under our roof. There is no reason to think it will work now. In fact, it’s time they make the decision for themselves about religion and spirituality— just as they are making other important decisions about their lives and just as we had to make this decision for ourselves way back when we were their age.

2. Go to Mass because the church says so or because you might go to hell if you don’t.The church doesn’t have a lot of credibility with our kids right now. Some of that is self-inflicted by the church itself, and some of it is because the church is getting hammered in the values department by both the secular culture and the religious right and left. Most young adults aren’t going to go to Mass because a pope, cardinal, bishop, priest, sister, brother, or layperson tells them they should. They just don’t believe in a God who would send them to hell for eternity because they skip a Sunday or two (or even 50) every year.

3. Go to Mass because God wants you to. There is a lot of evidence to support this reason, including the Second Commandment and the teaching of Jesus. Unfortunately it suffers from the same conundrum that a lot of religious imperatives do: Who knows the mind of God? This is a circular argument to our kids. In order to buy that they should go to Mass because the Bible says so, they have to believe the Bible in the first place. Not only that, they have to believe the Bible pretty literally, which leads to lots of other questions.

4. Go to Mass because the community needs you. I actually try this one a lot, and it is not bad from my 58-year-old perspective. It is clear that the church needs all of us to attend Mass as often as possible because that is what makes our communal efforts viable and successful. While this reason to attend Mass seems compelling to me, it is not to my kids. They view the church as “our” institution right now — and will continue to do so until they make it their own — and they feel very little responsibility for sustaining, building, or even continuing it. Perhaps they will in the future, but as a starting place, it is a no-go.

5. Go to Mass because you need a community. At least this reason focuses on the needs of our young adults rather than on our needs. As mature adults, we recognize the need for community in our lives, and the Catholic Church and its Mass is one of the main communities we cherish. For my kids, however, this is not so true. While they may feel a need for various communities, they are not so sure that church is one of them. They’ve got their family, they’ve got their friends, they’ve got their sports teams, they’ve got the Internet, and now they’ve got their new college communities. Why do they need a local parish — especially if it is not the one they grew up in — as another community?

6. Go to Mass because you like the music or the homilies or the worship space. This may work with some young adults, but not mine. Not that our parish doesn’t have good music and homilies and worship space, but in and of itself these are not good enough reasons for them to get out of bed on Sunday. And who knows what they are going to encounter in their new surroundings? I hope that whenever and wherever my kids go to Mass they have a good experience. But as a reason to go to Mass, it is pretty thin. In other words, the lack of good liturgies is a good reason not to go to Mass more than it is a reason to go to Mass.

7. Go to Mass because it makes you feel good or holy or peaceful. But what if it makes you feel bored or anxious or resentful? If we are going to argue with our young people that they should go to Mass because of how it makes them feel, then we run the risk of having them throw that reason right back in our face. Sometimes Mass does make us feel good. But it is an old, familiar, formulaic liturgy that often does not lend itself to warm, fuzzy feelings, especially for young adults. Sometimes we have to work at getting something out of Mass, and if we don’t admit this, our kids will see right through this rationale for Mass attendance.

8. Go to Mass as a refuge from the world. Certainly at times in their lives — when they or their loved ones are ill or depressed or dying or going through some awful crisis — our children will need a refuge from the world, and we hope that the church will be there for them. But to identify the Mass as a refuge from the world is to ruin it for all the other times in our lives when things are going well and we are fully engaged in the world. Young adults generally are not looking for a refuge from the world. For the most part, they love the world; they can’t get enough of it. It’s religion they are trying to avoid!

9. Go to Mass because you’ll need a place to get married or help raising your own children. They’ll figure this out when they reach that place in their lives and not before. It’s actually a terrible reason to get them to go to Mass now because marriage and raising children is the last thing on most of their minds (and most parents would like to keep it that way for a while longer). The idea of long-term self-interest is almost an oxymoron for most young adults, and maybe it should be. They are looking for a good reason to go to Mass now, not five or 10 years from now.

10. Go to Mass because you’ll be sorry if you don’t. If this is the best reason we can come up with to get our young adults to go to Mass we ought to be ashamed of ourselves.
Now for my one compelling reason for young adults to go to Mass. This is the one that I am trying with my three college-age children, and I’ll let you know in four or five years how it works.

I am pointing out to my children that what they are searching for is a guiding principle, what I call a “mission worthy of their lives.”

I tell them that the church has such a mission to send them on, the very mission on which Jesus of Nazareth sent forth the original disciples. That mission is to make this world a better place, a place more like the way God would have things. I then tell them that they need two things in order to accept and carry out this mission. They need a community of believers to send them forth on the mission, and they need that same community to go forth with them to help accomplish it. That community could be the church, specifically the local arm of the church that we Catholics call the parish. And that community should be already committed to this mission. We already have a liturgy to celebrate and promote it. That liturgy is called “the Mass,” which can be loosely translated as “the sending forth.”

Test this reasoning with some young adults you know. In fact, test it with yourself. Are you interested in a mission worthy of your life? Is making the world a better place such a worthy mission? Are you willing to be sent forth on that mission each time you go to Mass? Do you need a community to send you forth, to go with you, and to be there when you return? If so, then you too have another reason to go to Mass on a regular basis.

Gregory F. Augustine Pierce is the author of The Sending Forth: Spirituality for Catholics in the World of Work, to be published next spring by Ave Maria Press. This article appeared in the October 2006 (Volume 71, Number 10; pages 22-23) issue of U.S. Catholic.

Exams are in the Air: 1 Down, 5 to Go.

Woohoo!!! History exam is over!!! I am over the MOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNN… …!!! !!! WHEEPEE!!! !!! Well, it is not as if I am going to get myself a distinction in the subject. Nooooo… I am happy that the two questions that I had prepared for came out for the exam. Yes, yes. I only prepared two instead of four questions like I had mentioned last night. Heaven is kind to me by telling me to focus on those two questions instead of the other two. Too bad to Charles that only one of his two “spotted” questions was asked. Hahaha! Evil…

And so, I would like to thank, which I already did on the bus home, Father God, my Saviour Jesus, Holy Mother Mary, my guardian angel, my Gong-gong and Ma-ma, St. Patron-Saint-of-Hopeless-Cases and Blessed Nicholas Barre for praying for me. Please continue to pray for me and for all my other classmates that we will at least pass all of our exams.

“To God be the glory,
Great things He has done.
So love we the world
that He gave us his son…”

Let me just give a short account of what I did since I last posted.

I had my notes and texts in a semi-circle before me on the floor. As I could not focus, I went to sleep at 12:15am, setting my alarm clock at 3:05am. Unfortunately, the lazy me got up to switch off the alarm when it rang before falling asleep again. The next time I awoke was at 3:35am. There and then I decided to sleep till 4:05am. Sadly, I finally woke up at 4:33am. By the time I sat down to prepare my question 2b, it was already 5am. Thus, I spent a jolly hour preparing that particular question till the end before hugging my huge cushion to sleep sitting on the cold hard floor. I woke up again at about 7 to do somemore revision but had difficulty keeping my eyes open. Sigh… Typical. Anyway, what happened to the other question you said you were preparing? Oh, that one. Well, I had it completed on Saturday afternoon. Haha! Dots… -.-” And there was a heavy morning shower before I was completely awake. A good omen? Depends on how one inteprets it. Hahaha!!!

I am feeling rather sleepy now. And so, before I fall asleep early tonight, I had better practice for my piano practical exam as I have a lesson, the final one, with Ms Lim tomorrow morning. I certainly do not want her to shred me up into little pieces. Another thing I am to accomplish is to get my Aural homework and at the least, half a KWLA journal done.

Here is my exam time-table:
27 Sep. Wed – Aural
28 Sep. Thurs – Harmony & MOA
29 Sep. Fri – Ethnomusicology
04 Oct. Wed – Piano Practical

Ja-ne!

Exams start tomorrow!!!

Here I am, blogging, instead of fully concentrating on the preparation for my history exam which is to be held tomorrow. It is a good thing I am in my room now instead of being infront of the telly, subjecting my delicate ears to such torture by those two crooning away on Singapore Idiots. Oops! I mean Singapore Idols. Do not get me wrong, my dear readers. Those two are good, in their own genres, but the entire idea of a singing competition that is no longer about talent just does not sound right at all!

Sigh… Why, oh why must we go through such things???

I rather do more assignments than to have an exam. In fact, I rather the weightage of the assignments be more than that of the exam. So, the entire thing, including the presentations, will look something like this: Presentations 40% Assignments 40% Exams 10%. Hopefully… Someone should suggest this to the next board meeting. Anyway, back to my lamentations. WHY???!!!

As Enx said in her blog entry, I shall say the same. There is not enough space in my brain for 5 essays, and so, I shall memorise 4 and may God be kind to my poor soul. Sigh…

Here’s a short list of what had been happening in my life, especially my school life:
21 September Thurs – Handed in Harmony portfolio. Performance Practice Viva Voce Assessment. A Year 1 girl and myself did not talk much as most of the talking were done by two seniors. May get a pass only. Did some Evaluations on Lecturers in the computer lab after the assessment.
22 September Fri – Brass exam. Passed and shall not talk about it as it will only break my already fragile heart. May get a C if DS moderates the result quite nicely, since he did say that no one got 90%. Returned the cornet. Like Enx, I felt rather sad even though I am not a professional or a great cornet-”lover”, much less a “liker”. I felt quite “empty”. Full of question marks over that one. I know. But it feels as if there is something missing…
23 September Sat - Oniisan and The Usagi got into a serious quarrel, and the reason behind it all is causing Okasan to fume like a dormant volcano and Otoosan to rant like a stream of flowing lava.

Well, I better get back to work. There’s 2 1/2 essays to squish into my head before I sleep, Aural homework to complete by Wednesday 27 September and 6 KWLA journals to complete by Friday 29 September 6pm.

Start of Study Break

Well, here I am. Sitting here blogging because I am suffering from writer’s block. Do not think that term is applicable to writing concert reviews. Oh, whatever… Two reviews left while the other two had somehow exceeded the “word limit” by more than a 100%. Sigh… I simply dislike writing reviews, especially when I am not allowed to write “grandmother’s stories”. Sigh…

In response to complaints made with regards to my entries being hard to read due to my lazyness and ineptness in choosing colours, I am terribly sorry. Thus, the colours will be done based on a trial-and-error effort. I hear the groans. Muahahahahahahahahhahahahahahaha…!!! Whatever, Marie… Whatever…

Right. Enough of those craps. After posting this, I shall make my way to the washroom to get ready for bed. As for the two remaining reviews, I shall get them done in the morning by hook or by crook. All the best to me.

For your information, today is the start of our week of Study break. However, most of us will be trudging back to school over the week to attend extra lessons and to hand in our assignment portfolios. All of these done in the days leading up to our semestral exams which starts next monday. Sigh… Wish me luck!

Adieu!

Flowers…

As you all have no doubt notice by now, unless some person is quite blind, I changed my blogskin. FLOWERS!!! Beautiful flowers… Lovely…

In four hours time, the students and some of the staff at NAFA SPA will be on stand by; getting ready for our “End of Semester” Concert. This time, we will all be involved in performing Mozart’s work; a Mass, a piano concerto and an excerpt from an opera. We heard that not one but three, THREE, school choir will be attending the performance. Thereby, it will be more than likely a full-house tonight. And so, most us are wearing black.

We had a harmony group presentation in the morning. The team did not do that badly, but we could had done better. Got a B in the end. *sigh…*

Enx and I are now sitting in the school’s library, both at the computers. Obviously, I am typing away here while the Cuttlefish Neko is doing something with her harmony portfolio content page.

Right then. I shall try to get some sleep as we will all be standing through out the entire performance of the Great Mass in C later.

Ta-ta!

My Misery…

I am so sorry for not writing for such a long time. Actually, it has been only five days since my last entry. Anyway, things, particularly one, were not looking my way since I last wrote.

Wednesday, 6 September 2006
The day of our History (Pairwork) Presentation. Before that, Enx and I were having a splendid fight online at some unearthly hour. My feelings for her hit rock-bottom when she told me that her printer was not working. It went lower when she ‘confessed’ that she was too lazy to use the other printer which was in the living-room. What made things even more difficult was the fact that my laptop had to have some sort of glitch even before I had things settled. Thus, I was waiting damn f***ingly patiently for it to reboot until it came to a point where I took out the battery and put it back in again. That was the same concept as switching off the main power point of a normal personal computer. I got another bout of angry-ness when she told me about some point in my part of the notes. A good thing was that she ’suggested’, not ‘insist’. God bless her… The notes/hand-outs were finally done by 7.30am. I went to bed, for an hour, after that.

The presentation was quite interesting, in the sense that we, Enx and I, played a game with our History tutorial group. We planned all these before hand. Unfortunately, we should have let the group hear an extract of how the two main pianists’ styles of playing were like before we played the ‘Guessing Game’. That was the cause of our great downfall… Good Lord… Why was I so stupid as to not include some sort of background infomation of the pianists??? Why, why, why???!!! Stupid, stupid, STUPID… It was only when I was going through Shaun’s and YR’s presentation notes that I realised that missing part. I was horrifically disgusted with myself… RK told us that our presentation, on the whole, was almost an A, which in my opinion (not too sure about Enx’s) was a far cry from Juls’ and Char’s.

Friday, 8 September 2006
My first few practices in the morning went well, and that was the only time I practiced before Piano class in the afternoon.
It was my turn. I went up to the piano, Steinway, no less, and played Chopin’s Etude Op. 25 No. 2. It was the same one I played the second last time. I could not believe things went wrong. I tried to amend the situation but it just got worse. Slip notes, locked fingers, horrible pedaling, the works! I was dejected. When I got back to my seat, I nearly cried. In fact, tears were threatening to spill over. I hated myself. It was the most horrible and terrible performance I had put on. Good Lord… I was so annoyed and irritated with myself and I still am whenever I think about it. While seated there, I very much wanted the ceiling to fall on me, or else to have a hole open up and swallow me. I was gloomy… Miserable… And, did I mention annoyed, irrtated and f***ing angry??? No??? Well, I was angry too.

Today, 10 September 2006
I attended a concert at the Esplanade Recital Studio this afternoon with many others from school. The first part was Schonberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, which was in German. The actress/narrator was sprechgesang-ing through the whole 21 poems, with music accompaniment. I have no idea how to describe her style. However, I managed to fall soundly asleep through all the screeching. Amazing. The second part, thankfully, was a hundred times more bearable than the previous even though the poetry was rather weird. Francis Poulenc’s Le Bal Masque was more melodious and definitely shorter, lasting only 20 minutes as it contained only six parts including 4 poems, unlike the other one which lasted for an hour.

After that, Char accompanied me to the MPH Bookstore over in Citylink Mall. We went walking around the area before we parted ways; she was heading back to the Esplanade to meet the others before going home for dinner while I was headed for the busstop near City Hall to get home.

By the way, Enx ‘disappeared’ after the first half of the recital to go ‘walking’ with ShuHan and Ivan. Char and I came ‘across’ a trio of waving monkeys at the Thai Express Restaurant while we were walking in the Esplanade/Raffles City direction. Naughty little Enx…

I have come to realise that I tend to use vulgarities when I am hitting the bottom of the ocean. Sigh… Somehow, I find relief in ’saying’ those words. Actually, it is the only word which you can tell just by reading all the above.

Well, there is so much work to do and, as usual, I am not in the mood to be hard working. Procrastinating. That is what I am doing now. May Mary pray for me that I will stop being this way.

Looks like I will have to make a trip back to the Esplanade tomorrow so as to settle some little problem with one of the DVDs I borrowed the last time. It seems like all the other items were returned without a glitch except for this one. Thankfully I checked my library account status after Enx told me that she accidentatly forgot to return a CD to its case before returning. So, the empty case is sitting in the library while the CD is at home with her. That cuttlefish of a cat… Anyway, back to my problem. If all my other borrowed/returned items were cleared, why is it there is one which did not? Hmmm… Something fishy is going on… Oh well, looks like I had better check my stuff before I hammer the library for having such a f***-up system. There I go again…

Stupid Cockroaches!!!

Well, hello! I am totally awake at such an hour, sitting here before the computer typing and listening to Schubert’s Moments Musicaux D. 780, trying my hardest to get something typed for the history presentation this coming wednesday, which happens to be, let me see, hmmm…. TOMORROW!!! So, yes. I finally managed to get out of bed at 7am even though I told my partner that I would be up at 4-, 5-, 6ish. Congratulations to me… I somehow thought that Baka Neko would have thrown her computer at me, if that was even possible. All the same, it was quite scary. *shudders-at-thought-of-computer-flying-from-Serangoon-to-Joo-Chiat-to-hit-me-on-the-head…*

It finally rained at around 4am. Before that, the weather was all hot and humid causing not 1 but 6(!!!), SIX mind you, digusting German cockroaches to come flying into my room. At first it was 4, which was already bad as it was, and then another 2 had to fly in, which happily made it worse. Yippee!!! So, there I was, at 11pm-ish, killing 6 cockroaches with one side of my pink house slippers. If you care to know, I washed the slipper after killing those b*****ds. By the way, I have nothing against Germans but, evidently, I have something(s) against all cockroaches. *shudders-at-thought-of-flying-smelly-cockroaches…*

Well, I better be getting ready for P.S or else do some more of the history stuff.

Cheerio!