Baby, when the lights go out

Just a teaser.

More to come. Be patient.

25th Oct, Part 2: Ain't Misbehavin'

We were drained of energy from practices, exhausted from the long drag of classes, to the point that our legs felt like giving away if we so much as lift either off the ground, which explained Zalina’s annoyance during rehearsals. “My God! That is NOT walking! That is the shuffling of a barbaric non-music society! FUCK OFF, FUCK OFF!” Some of us giggled “Try the stage again!”

10 minutes later.

“God, I swear! If you fuckers don’t sing up, I seriously WILL throw something at you!” But as she was hollering, she was already picking a coffin-shaped box and began firing candies at those suffering from restlessness or verbal diarrhea, namely Emma and gang. She squealed with joy while Emma shrieked in pain as one of the Halloween sugary delights met a bull’s eye right on his forehead.

God, I swear, I’m going to miss her choir classes. The theatre games, the mambo lessons, the contemporary vocal techniques, the screeching and swearing the pulsing liveliness of the class (compared to the corpse-dead ones I had for the past 4 semesters) and, of course, her. The other 2 choir lecturers were so…rigid, by-the-book, boring that even your watch provided more excitement than them. And I love lecturers with perfect English. Trust me, that way, their lessons, and attempted jokes, actually made sense.    

Anyway, today’s choir concert was the most screwed up concert in history. Prende la Vela was a disaster. I hadn’t gotten around viewing the video my bro took of us, but I bet we sounded more like the monstrous gurgling of some wide river than the sensual voices of a half-trained contemporary choir singing a Latin American song. Hallelujah and Ain’t Misbehavin’ were better I guess.

But whatever. I had more fun than I ever thought possible for a choir performance (more so during rehearsals since I didn’t need to worry about my dress slipping down with every little movement then). Plus, everyone looked special and stood out as a choir as well as individually, AND we didn’t appear like, in Zalina’s words, a huge black mass of nothingness on stage.

Sigh. 2 more semesters of morbid clad-in-black UNDERCLASSICAL choir, since my horrendous vocals wouldn’t be able to get me a place in the contemporary elite choir. FML.

Top: Chien Hui, Hsiau Wung, Hui Yi, Ee Ling

Bottom: Huay May, me, Shu En, Jia Wen, Sheena

Both group shots credits to Eunice Gee

Kar Yen and Huay May

Irene and Kar Yen

Chu Ying and me, photo-bombed by Hueyuen

Rebecca, aka Rabbit, and Jia Wen

Li Ling

Hooi Ching

Jie Ying, Minji and Rachel

Rachel, Audrey and Eunice

Eugene Koh, aka Laughing Gor

The May 2008 intakes, with some intruders

Derene and Seong Seong

25th Oct, Part 1: Que Sera Sera

Funny how, since the moment I woke up till that very second before my Jury, I had been going about things slowly. And deliberately so. I took my time dragging my ass out of bed; took my time preparing and cooking lunch; took my time shuffling through the first floor in a sloth-like manner in finding an unoccupied piano room to practice; and took my time making myself comfortable at a table in the cafeteria for the long wait.

And when Mr. Willy opened The Door to signal my turn to plea my case before the court, I mean, to be juried, it was as if time was pulling a GOTCHA on me. What. Wasn’t it just half an hour ago when I came to sit at the waiting area? How could it be a freaking hour and a half already?!

“So you’re playing Desafinado: A Little out of Tune, huh? How out of tune will it be? Should we give the piano a kick before you start, so that the off-tune sound would fit the piece?”

I just gaped while the 2 lecturers chuckled to themselves. Good God.

For some reason, my tempo kept increasing and I struggled to pull the reigns and tuck the speed back into a safe, steady zone, giving my heart this lurching feeling for the first 15 minutes, like I was riding a wave. Maybe it was the weight of the stares from the 2 jurors sitting barely a feet away to my left, or maybe time was taking its sweet revenge for my defying it.

Then came my final song; the ensemble piece.

Which was fine till Simon poked his head around the doorway of The Jam Room and went, “Hey, can I come in and watch?”

Hell no.

Tok Khon was saying something around that line but my teacher was like, “But I haven’t even seen my own student played in a band before.”

And before my brain could actually make sense of the situation, Simon grabbed his bag and was sitting there behind the 2 jurors and giving me the thumbs up. Double you tee eff?!

But the weird thing was, the song actually turned out more smoothly than I thought possible, despite the shaking of my hands. Even incomprehensible was, I felt sort of calmer, slightly more settled and confident, not that anyone could tell, not from my drained face. Hmmm. And Simon seemed to be nodding when I was done.

Not that my mind was ingesting that, it was busy singing FREEDOM.

Results? Que sera sera.  

How far we've come

When people say, bring out the inner child in you, they meant unleash it for a couple of hours, ride along with your childish temptations and extricate yourself from the adult world to breathe a little. But for Ah Gan, Simmy and Kit Teng, maybe Rou Yen too, it took on a whole new definition and dimension. Hmmm…how would I describe their eccentricity AND doing it justice? It was like they were POSSESSED by each of their inner child. Yes, that’s right. Especially that Chao Gan. Other than occasional glimpses into her serious self during some parts of caroling practice and her professionalism on stage during MBE, she has been sanctioned, by all of us, as NOT SANE.

Which probably explained why it was my stomach that felt more exhausted from all the laughing, rather than my thighs, that should have collapsed after having the walk of our lives shopping gave us. I couldn’t remember what we laughed about, or at, even as we were leaving the building for the train station, trying to outrun the drizzle (and did). Not that it mattered, it helped burn some fats like those I got from the McD chocolate ice-cream and soothe the nerves before the inevitable wind-up on Monday.

But that wasn’t the most astonishing thing, me laughing that much (since the worst image was me literally gasping for air for laughing so hard and hyena-like at something me and Eu Chern, or any of the Sluts, said). Oh no. It was my spending more than 250 bucks, half of it on cosmetics. I could feel the beam of silent pride shone upon me through the break of clouds beneath Eu Chern’s Shopping Heaven. Maybe even Amanda’s nod of approval. AHA.

Not that it changed my aversion towards generic shopping. If anything, I think it heightened it. Good thing we had in mind of what we needed to get and the strict specifications. For me, shopping has only 3 steps: make a list (as specific as possible), choose the item and then get the hell of out there. Besides scouting for knick knacks, rare and quirky accessories and clothing at bazaars or indie stalls (or whatever term you use), I have no interest in shopping. In fact, generic shopping pisses me off. Ugh. The tedious sifting through of clothes… *makes a face*

Anyway, today’s trip to Sungai Wang had been unexpectedly a blast. It was kind of like my first day with BRATs, you just had to accept that you were the oldest (semester-wise, in this case), the oddball, the sore thumb sticking out, of the group and open your mind up and be free of any judgmental thoughts, then just plunge into getting to know the people around you. Of course, it had been harder back in June, cuz the kiddos BRATs were mostly 16 or 17, way younger than I am, and coming from different states, races, schools and backgrounds, I struggled to find common ground. But I had always pride myself with being open minded, so I took a deep breath and dove in. And now, not only I have been keeping in touch with that bunch of Cats, but also learnt that bridging the age-gap is not impossible after all. It is simply the matter of taking the first step, because that is always the hardest.

So I took the tentative first step again, this afternoon. Sure, lunch was kind of awkward for me, since everyone there, except me, listen to Chinese songs and was singing along to them. But like Delia from the book ‘The Truth about Forever’ always says, well, at least I knew where I stood, so things could only get better. And they did.

I mean, I may never be one of them (and life isn’t about fitting in, not all the time) but at least I was assured that the days we would be spending in Genting would turn out okay. Everything was going to be okay. I just have to stay open, come what may and not lose my head (or lose it, in their case). 

Photos (and the editing) credit to Rou Yen (:

Pei Ling, Xing Yi, tentatively normalGan, Rou Yen

Emily, me, Simmy, Kit Teng

I have a CHOCOLATE ICE-CREAM, y'all!

I believe the world is burning to the ground

My band's Thorn & Roses, if you haven't been attentive to my previous posts. Shame on you.

*Looks to the sky with a melodramatic sigh* Why Kashmir, God, why?!
Oh wait. Since I'm quite sure the Power Above does not relish in misery and torture....
*Eyes Justin and Juan instead* Of all songs, pray tell, why Kashmir?!

Apparently, our perspective, of being a disastrous failure last Friday, was a deception. It probably sounded oh-so-good-I-just-pee-ed-in-my-pants, to them. Or that we did sound screwed up to their eager ears but still at a fixable level that was worth taking a shot at.

To some of you disgruntled Facebook citizens: Yes, I AM grateful and appreciative of the fact that I'm once again given a chance to perform in the concert, after a much missed prolonged absence. God knows how hard I was wishing for the opportunity during that semester with Band 11.

It's just that, by being chosen, we would have to fulfill the do-or-die requirement of playing the song perfectly without scores, which is highly daunting, especially for a well-known, thus unavoidably anticipated, song like that. Not to mention it being over 8 minutes long.

Have they forgotten about our awesome Toss the Feathers (there was once one of my ex-band's assessment songs got chosen, not one from the finals)?

I suppose Take the 'A' Train evens things out for me, the way Kashmir's lighter (in the sense of the number of varying notes) bass line compensates for the former's walking one, not that it's making Jia Wen any more relieved.

Band 6: If we don't get the freaking songs memorized in time, I'm sure we'll figure a sneaky way out >:)
But promise we'll enjoy ourselves on stage. And during practices.
We have an extra 2 weeks to be Thorn & Roses, so let's go crazy!



The repetitive nature of the song does NOT help. If anything, it makes it all the more confusing.

We came. We saw. We conquered.

We, the Sluts, are the: 

Archons of Awesome  

Barons and Baronesses of Blinding Brilliance

Counts and Countesses of Caprice

Dukes and Duchesses of Dazzling Divinity

Emperors and Empresses of Efficacious Eccentricity

Feudal lords of Fabulous

Gods and Goddesses of Glamour

Heirs and Heiresses of Hellish Hysteria

Imperials of Idiosyncrasy

Jurors of Jaunty

Kaisers and Kaiserins of Kinkiness

Lords and Ladies of Lust

Marquises and Marchionesses of Mesmerizing Magnificence  

Knights of Notoriety

Omukama of Oblectation

Princes and Princesses of Prerogative Perfection

Queens of Quintessence

Rajah and Ranee of Resplendence

Saints of Spontaneity

Tyrants of Temptation

Underage rulers of Unerring Ubiquity  

Viceroys and Vicereines of Vivacity

Wizards and Witches of Wondrous Wisdom

Ex-conquerors of the X-Factor

Yamtuans of Youthfulness

Zacks of ZzzZZzzzzZzzz

I wanna get lost in your rock n' roll and drift away

“Band 6, it’s your turn! Take the stage! And your clock starts….NOW!”

My heart was eerily calm and my mind at peace; no pounding beats at my temples; no deafening gush of blood against my ears; no fluttering in my stomach. I didn’t understand it. Quiet confidence? But my fingers had another story to tell. Somehow there was a dark sheet of panic that blanketed the glow of assurance I was experiencing internally, which was wrong. It was supposed to be the other way around, either I hid the turmoil within me or equalize what little faith I had in myself so that my expression wouldn’t betray me and make me appear unprofessional.

But as it was, everyone could see I was freaking out. Heck, I think the whole band was freaking out. So much for the gazillion practices we had on the 3 accursed songs. What made the performance worst was, saved Black Orpheus, the tempo for the other 2 was off the roof. It was as if we were late trying to ‘catch’ the ‘A’ Train to Kashmir and we had to race along the tracks to hop back onto it. My planned solo went haywire, the impressive symmetrical-diminished scale-running notes I had memorized got meshed up into a desperate glide across the keys.  

And as our final assessment, not to mention last take to the stage for the semester, wore on, our expression got more strained, faces got paler, eyes got wilder and fingers became knotted up and tripped over each other like drunkies. I was THAT close to OH MY GOD-ing when I pressed a string of wrong notes during Kashmir. In the end, I just bit my tongue and did a high pitch scream in my head.

I think our relief was glaringly obvious when we completed Kashmir. All of a sudden, we had these HUGE grins on our faces, where it should have been present throughout the performance, and madness-induced giggles. WOOHOO. Modern Band Ensemble 5 was history!

The giddiness of tasting the teaser of freedom….till I saw Simon. What the. I nearly swore. Okay, I don’t mean it in a bad way. It was just that, I knew I played like SHIT on stage, especially the last song, halfway through which I had to switch patch coz the brass one sounded off. And I was practically reading off the score note by note coz at some point, my brains decided to die on me. AND I THINK I stuck my tongue out a little when I banged the wrong notes – a BIG NO-NO on stage. Plus, my forehead had SOMEONE PLEASE SHOOT ME NOW COZ I SUCK LIKE HELL written across it.

Screwing up performances during classes was one thing; doing so in front of your Major lecturer would be suicidal. At least I thought so. Aha.

But all he did was stretched 2 fingers across his mouth and smiled. LoL. He was referring to my stoned look on stage. And when I asked, he only commented on my not smiling. HAHA. Still, all I could remember was my misplaced notes and beats, messed up sections and the resonating ‘SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT’ in my head. Oh well. I could ask more during the upcoming lessons but I don’t think I would want to relive today’s finals anytime soon.

Anyway, back to my previous elation. WHEEEEEEE! The end of a grueling term (only MBE could officially mark it so) and health-deteriorating anemic nights. Hallelujah. And for the first time, we pray that we would NOT get selected for the concert. Imagine memorizing that entire Arabic part in Kashmir, and the unavoidable extra practices. Ugh. We had ‘fun’, in a twisted sense, and that was what mattered, wasn’t it?

I can’t wait to hang out with you guys after my, and Jia Wen’s, Jury, coz then our conversations would revolve around something other than band songs and arrangements and quizzes and all that depressing stuff.

Cheers, Thorn n Roses (:

I miss this band already =[