Carpe Diem

THOUGHTS

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Nothing like a dose of Moonspell to set you writing, half to midnight. It was hard though, to put on music. I realized, that before this instance I have not touched my iPod in 2 weeks. That is heresy, and frankly I would not be surprised if it has ceased to exist. And it's hard, I reiterate to put on the earphones and play music that comes from from without rather than from the inside, where the sound reverberates within your ears rather than your heart.

Neil Gaimen's American Gods is a profound book. I shall not analyse it, neither shall I give it critique nor commentary. I do not know if it's popular fiction but the getthisbookorelse switch was turned on the other day and without prior knowledge or context I bought this work and have been devouring it as much as it has been devouring me.

Neil Gaiman's American Gods is about a journey. If I say anything else I might be crucified for mis-interpretation, and such is the value of the work. But yes, I think everyone (together now) can agree that it is about a journey. A man called Shadow's journey.

I have been on a journey. This year was a long one. I've done things that I have never, I didn't do things that I had..Good, bad, Dean's list -con Camp..

Why the hell did I write Dean's list con camp. They're meaningless. false gods. Duality shit.

Gaiman interjects expletives beautifully. I understand now, why expletives are called expletives. Because, accurate and selective use of expletives makes things clearer, brighter, easier to comprehend, and well, explicit.

The holidays are ending. Tommorow school starts and my life has to run on clockwork again. Excuse me. My life has to start running on clockwork. I have to start running again. The haze was a lame excuse to stop running and tommorow I have to start shoving everything else away except for what was that again, oh grades. and 42 points. and, oh life in general. I may allow myself to finish the book though.

Paddy Clarke HaHaHa.

I apologize for the seemingly pensive and sacarstic (seemingly?!) nature of well, whatever you see here, for I am merely adopting a cold, grey outlook to the cold, grey outside outside. The journey has ended and another is beginning, the holidays and honeymoons are over, the sky is overcast and the air smells of freshly brewed coffee and the aroma of education.

When I open my Selmer Paris case again in the coming months, it will be for the Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) IB Wind Orchestra. Not for Coast, not for the resident acsi jazz band whohasntdecidedaname, not for anyone.

When I look up again, all I can see are only notes splattered on a sheet and baton attached to a hand, moving as music does. Not my comrades whom the music is for, not a roaring crowd, not the Eagles who watch over us, not for anyone.

When I feel the music, I must remember to sit 'one-third of my chair', lest my posture is wrong and my minor third is three cents too flat. I may tap my feet, if circumstance permits. No spasming out on stage like caffiene on crack from New Orleans or enjoying life so much that holding notes become jazz. No dancing on stage, no standing up. Not for yourself, not for anyone.

When I look beside me, I would be seeing stoned faces in matching navy, blowing their faces off yet maintaining expressions that belie a death in a family. Nondescript. Not the rest of Coast, not Feli,Kwong or April, not people, not humans, not anyone.

I've said enough. It's getting late, school starts tommorow, I have some reading to do and I will miss these times, etched, like two ravens in thought and memory.

Delivered at 11:07 PM;

Friday, October 27, 2006

Ghostbusters

Yeah baby.

Espa!Ranza! Esparanza ranza!

Delivered at 11:36 PM;

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Dollar Got The Blues

Ladies and Gentlemen, I get frus alot by my musical mediocrity. And well, people make it sound so effortless and fun (see above) that I think I should just take it easy and just try to enjoy what I'm playing and arranging as they are too, or well, just die in a pool of mediocrity and the shadow of underachievement.

Delivered at 10:09 PM;

Monday, October 23, 2006

"I'm an Atheist, I believe life is essentially meaningless, however I feel music proves me wrong sometimes"

Delivered at 10:50 PM;

Condemn. I forgot my dream. I remember it was something akin to facing a mustachioed man in brown at the front of a wide parade square and there was a deafening shot when the man in brown raised a tiny pistol and killed someone. It wasn't me, because I clearly remembered collapsing to the ground in relief that well, it wasn't me. And the moral of the story is, The Nazis were totalitarian.

I'm currently looking at a site called " The Chords Page", written by this dude called Andrew Milne, and I'm attempting to learn some theory by myself tonight just for kicks and chuckles. I need it la, because honestly I'm wetting my pants over our jazz performance on thursday, and for the love of all things big round and fuzzy, I hope we do fine.

"In particular the major and minor triads are felt to be the fundamental building blocks of most harmonic music. There is something unified, something which is more than the sum of their parts, which seems to make these triads unique in regard all other possible forms.
Certain chord types also seem to exert a powerful tonal function, such as the dominant seventh and the augmented sixth chords, the diminished and augmented triads, and the major and minor triads when in second inversion."

go go go !

Delivered at 10:05 PM;

Saturday, October 21, 2006

I had a frightening dream last night. It was inspired, I believe to be by the Nuremburg Trials special that I caught on National Geographic yesterday. Like all of my dreams, it was incohrent and fantastical. But unlike most of my dreams, it was frighteningly real. And because I am about to run out of the door to go shop for Ethan's birthday present, I shall elaborate tonight. Apologies for the anti climax, and sorry to burst your buble(boo blay).

Delivered at 1:42 PM;

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

"It was only an 'opeless fancy,
It passed lika an Ipril dye,
But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred
They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!'

They sye that time 'eals all things,
They sye you can always forget;
But the smiles an' the tears across the years
They twist my 'eart-strings yet!"

Delivered at 11:21 AM;

I had two nosebleeds in school this year. In fact, they were the first nosebleeds I had in my life. Hmm. Must be the girls in IB. But anyway I've since developed a sense of paranoia whenever my nose itches andI swipe at it, suddenly stopping for fear there'll be a streak of scarlet on my hand. And well, it all goes runny from there.

So I was doing the last shreds of my second Math paper, when my nose itched again. Calculating the angle between the two vectors, if I remember correctly. So gingerly, I reached and rubbed my nose, immediately glancing at my hand afterwards. I know, it seems gross to have any interest in the tangible attributes of nostril secretion, but the last thing I wanted to have on my scalar products was well, blood. Accidental of all things. If I wanted to have crimson liquid on my Math paper I'd slit my wrist.

I got the shock of my life. There was this tinge of azure liquird on plam, something akin to the alien blood you see in those B movies and for an instant I thought the Math paper had really got to me. hahaha. It was the ink from my pen, anyhow, but for one moment I questioned my existence right there. Right there.

And then it dawned on me, like a voice from above bathed in white light and ambient music, that there are many uncertainties in this life. And sometimes you wonder who, or what you can place your trust in for a long time. But, I guess if the whole world fades away shrouded in shadow, and you're in the dastardly limbo of unknowing purpose, at least be comforted by the fact that you,

bleed red.

Delivered at 11:03 AM;

Monday, October 09, 2006

oh noes..I am char bor. Well relatively, at least. Gleaned from John's blog:

Your Brain is 60% Female, 40% Male

Your brain is 60% female and 40% male. Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female.You are both sensitive and savvy. Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed. But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve.

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Delivered at 6:04 PM;

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Anyway, I realize the importance of the gahmen doing away with EM3. This saves a million gazillion EM3 kids a lifetime of embarassment and feeling inferior to the EM1s nowsadays. What's my justification? It's not how lacking the EM3 students are, in fact I'd dare hazard a guess that they're perfectly normal. It's those kids at the higher echelons of primary education that we should be going omgwtfbbqymcamickeymouse about.

I went to the library today to start looking at my Business textbook. It was quite fun, I learnt some practical stuff, like how a company should price a product when it's entering a new market, which is either to "aim for market penetration", where the product attempts to obtain a foothold in the new market by giving slashed prices, or "skimming and creaming", marking up the price of the product for a limited time only due to its unique selling point.

gawd I love business.

Anyway as I was mulling over the advantages of Kit Kat introducing a curried flavour chocolate bar in the UK, I noticed to my left these two prepubescent girls. No, I didn't notice them. I noticed them. sheesh. I was just wondering what in the name of Tharman were these 12 year old kids doing in a study lounge filled with old people like myself with caffiene blood shot eyes when there's like PSLE tommorow and probably Care Bears on Tv, and PSLE tommo-

these girls were actually MUGGING.

I only started MUGGING when I was in YEAR GODDAMN FIVE.
that robber over there only started mugging when he was thirty and needed to feed his family!!!!

ahhh. I took another glimpse and it was true. The horrahhh. Their textbooks were written in Comic Sans, unmistakably primary school. For the record, I abhor Comic Sans font, especially in the newspaper or on TV, its unmistakably primary school. They were studying science, and I saw the semblence of a food web. I almost died, for a moment as I thought they were learning about trophic levels too, which I just did for bio exam a few days ago. But nah, it was those simplistic food chains. But still! So I went back to Curry Kat, and then I did a double take. I swear, on the graves of Newton, Einstein, Mendel and the HL bio paper masquerading as an SL one, that the girls, p6 mind you, started to talk about transpiration pull and tugor pressure.

That's nuts.

I peered at the elborate drawing of a plant transport system on one girl's foolscap, then I noticed, that the heading said Raffles Girls Primary School. Not so nuts perhaps, but it's still pretty insane. 12 year old kids mugging at a library for 9 plus hours on end..I couldn't even watch TV for 9 hours on end when I was 12.

Sigh. Sooner or later instead of teaching children that a four sided figure with equal sides is a square the world's gonna demand that they complete it.

Take a candle, light it. Peer into the darkness and silently shed a tear with me when that horror becomes reality.

A star man. Really A star...

Delivered at 10:32 PM;

Tears for rememberance, and tears for joy,

Tears for somebody and this lonely boy

.Out in the madness, the all seeing eye,

Flickers above us, to light up the sky.

Delivered at 10:32 PM;

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Sometimes, in between bouts of insanity and varying volumes of cackles, I wish, and desire for a brief moment, but long enough moment, that I was a member of the Maths Olympiad or Bio Olympaid club in school. Sniff. Then, then this final year examination would just be another warm up match.

I would actually be looking forward to the aforementioned papers just because I want more practice. That's gravitas. And in the same vein, I feel like crying now because I ain't, and I mean ain't doing Shit with my life..

Delivered at 8:47 PM;

Ever since I was a chewren, I loved the art of drawing. I say loved the art, in the sense that I'm totally captivated by the idea of transcribing an object in a place in time and space onto parchment and a two dimensional surface. Something in cognitive philosophy tells us our concept of reality is determined by how we envisage and percieve the world, and the ablity to draw, to capture an image of something alive and transform it into an amalgam of lines, circles, shades, hues and other things straight out od a design text book.

But the horror, is that I can't draw. For nuts. The only time I have been able to draw was when I was between the ages of 1 and primary one, only for the fact that it was cute, exciting and mandatory for a small kid to churn out squiggles and weird shapes in the name of art. Da Vinci would be proud. It's not that I'm not creative, or that I have zero motor skills, unable to hold a pencil without shaking it like a poloroid picture. I've been to art lessons, done that, bought the shirt, but bo effect leh! Wait actually art lessons are a tad oxymoronic if I may add. Something like Instructed Creativity, or Group tuition on individualism, that kinda thing. I digress, but the matter of fact is that I can't draw. It pains me deeply that the only visual art I can do is called Purity- White paper untouched by the scourge of art. Bleahhhh.

The worst thing is, that I can bloody hell see the drawing, completed, in my head. In my head..In my head...zombie..zombie... Sigh. Yeah, and over the years, I realized that this innate problem, does not just manifest itself in art, although more so here. In fact, I realized that I have a problem visualizing things. And no, I don't need help to cross the road, but rather, I have a very hard time trying to well, visualize stuff in my head from information on paper, the surroundings, or sometimes even the spoken word.Hmm. For example, I sucked BIG TIME at Tessalations(sp) in p5. Remember how in pri sch math they'd ask you to visualize the folding of a cube or sth? Did I kill myself trying to do that? Check. Also, I can never do stuff like "spell ________ backwards" without my hypothalamus bleeding for a bit. I think its a visual problem, that I can't visualize the letters and arange them back to front. Like I said, I can't draw, because I have trouble translating thoughts in my head, or objects in reality onto a piece of paper, and I certainly can't do those Big Art Attacks where the dude takes like friggin cloth, shoes and whatever they have over there and makes this picture of horses grazing. Wah. geksim man.

Oh yeah, thus I have huge problems visualizing 3D maths stuff, like Vectors. You heathen go " Just visualize la, Z is in space..so ya la.hahahaha loser." A slight exaggeration, but the truth is that I can't visualize stuff for shit.

Studying techniques too. Even if I'm given a "Bio Answers for SL Bio Paper One on Fith October 2006, Anglo-Chinese School Independent This Title is Bloody Long" book, I'd have to literally write everything out on paper to allow it to register in that bleeding cranium. Tis sad, for me and for a million rainforests out there, that I can't just read something and memorize it. Rather I have to write it out, do it hands on by myself, before knowledge is stored.

Thus I did what all good folks do when they have problems and need someone to confide in, I went to consult the internet, and my fears were proven. Whoanelly, I'm a kinesthethic learner *faints*. It says I learn things by doing them, be it writing out detailed notes or performing the skill or whatever. Actually, I kinda knew this already but since the internet said it it mut be tr00! Hence, for the 13261360167th time, I'm making notes for the bio syllabus which I did for common tests, a month ago, and half an hour ago. Human Impact on the Environment is my fault. Sigh, I wish I could just open Concepts and Connections, stare, drool, twiddle my thumbs, flip page, wash, rinse repeat, and go to the exam hall tmr getting my 7.

But life's cruel folks. And all this typing forces me to get back to some writing.
Indeed. Life's cruel. But I guess there's always a light at the end of the tunnel, 'cept for the visually inept 'me it might be the headlights of a train. Nah, we should think positive.Yes! "At least there's no tessallations!", I say, in a sudden organism.

Delivered at 4:34 PM;

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

I was unconscious, half asleep

The water is warm 'til you discover how deep

I wasn't jumping, for me it was a fall

It's a long way down to nothing at all

Delivered at 4:40 PM;

Sunday, October 01, 2006

" Deportation to Germany was an easy method of depopulating Eastern Europe, although at first, as Himmler admitted with regret in 1943, the SS allowed thousands of Russian prisoners of war to die of hunger and exhaustion instead of working them to death in Germany. "

Bummer. *pumps fist sideways*.

Reading something like that makes you wonder if you should cry, or, well, weep.

Delivered at 6:55 PM;