Woot. I think I have joined the likes of Shiling in idolising the Archery National Team. Haha.
Some of the seniors came to coach us today in school; namely, Jennifer, Benson, and another girl whose name I think is May. I think they're all Nat Team members. Most of the seniors seem pro enough to be Nat Team to me, though. :P
Good news: Jennifer said that while she was watching me during the competition, she noticed that my form is good, and my bow arm is very strong (eh? really?? :P).
Bad news: But my release is bad. That's not really anything new though. I've known that there's a problem with my release technique for a long time, but I've no idea how to correct it. Most probably coz you can't see the way you release. :P
Good news: Benson came over later and helped elaborate on some of the stuff that Jennifer was coaching me with. AND NOW I FINALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT HE WAS TELLING ME ABOUT TWO MONTHS AGO!! :P
Bad news: Benson's technique makes my shoulders ache horribly. But then again, that's sort of a norm here, haha. So nothing new. :P But his technique does make things feel more... right, so to speak.
So, after that short but rather productive training session, headed off to Expo to do my shift, selling candles for charity. Arrived early, while Kelvin Si and (year 2) Clement were still doing the last leg of their shift, and man... they sold a damn lot of candles for a weekday. Must've been Clement's friendliness and his networking skills; Kelvin's too, although I think, with Kelvin, to a lesser extent. :P
Was feeling really horrible with my flu and sore throat (yes, unfortunately it's confirmed, I *AM* sick now), and I really didn't want to get up and ask a whole lot of mostly selfish, apathetic people to please be generous and help the poor and that it's only $2 a candle so won't you please consider?
So, I sat at the table and watched the cashbox for a bit while Denise was mostly out there pushing sales. However, I can never sit still for very long when I'm doing this sort of charity/flag day kinda stuff. Don't ask me why; I'm not very sure either. Maybe it has something to do with collecting money, albeit that the money isn't really going to be for me. :P
So, I got up and went to help her, but I didn't dare stray too far from the table since the cashbox was really just sitting there in plain sight, so I figured that we'd need a third person to watch the cashbox at least, and Denise wanted to go buy something to eat, so one person couldn't really handle the booth, anyway.
Called Ivan, since he said that he was going to drop by and help us, anyway, and take note of this: when I called, it was about 4 pm, and he said okay, he'd come down right then.
Apparently, waiting for the bus and the bus ride to Expo from Tampines takes around two hours, because by the time Ivan reached Expo, it was just past 6 pm.
Denise screamed her usual greeting (for him) when she spotted him: "Piece of shit, you're FINALLY here! Took so long!!! From Tampines only, leh..!!"
And he replied saying something about having just woken up when I called; I didn't really hear the rest of what he said, but I think we can extrapolate from the first sentence.
We'd sold about 76 candles by the end of the day, although the last one and a half hours of our shift was spent scratching silly things in the fake-snow decorative frosting on the glass pane of the building, and with Ivan and me using the pamphlets to smack Denise on the head for her random, silly, giggly comments.
I've found that fundraising stuff is always more fun when you're doing it with the right people; preferably people whom you know and are comfortable with. I know that's probably the way it is with almost everything in this world, but I think with fundraising events, the good company always plays a big part in your not getting too depressed at being rejected so often. :)
Sunday, December 12, 2004
AAS Shoot is over!! Yay...! :D
So now I'm DAMN tired and sleepy and feeling slightly flu-ish thanks to the damn lousy weather over the last three days while I was out in the open, and also probably because it's kinda cold over here right now, where I live.
Seriously, the weather was terrible. AAS's Jurong range is, for all effects and purposes, a temporary range, coz DM Archery had to relocate there temporarily while SAFRA moves from Bukit Merah to bloody TAMPINES of all places. Nothing against Tampines, but it's just damn FAR from ANYWHERE!! So, since it was a temporary range, there wasn't really adequate shelter, and the all the tarpaulin that they'd managed to string up as shelters just sloshed down a whole lot of water at some points during really heavy rain, when it just couldn't hold all the water anymore.
So it went on like that for two and a half days; it started raining halfway through sighting on Friday, then it rained after the first half of the standard class shoot on Saturday, and then on Sunday, it rained before we even got started and rained AGAIN when the whole thing had ended.
Shitty weather; when it rains, it's damn cold, and then when it stops, it's warmer than ever coz when the sun comes back out, you've got all the humidity to deal with, what with all the puddles of water, and plus, the range is set up on an old tennis court, and tennis courts reflect a HELL of a lot of heat.
With all that crap, I won't be surprised if I fall sick. But I seriously hope I don't. I have NEVER been sick more than once in the space of one year. For that matter, I've never been sick more than once within the space of THREE years. I generally have a better constitution than both my sisters; why, I'm not certain. All I know is that they're supposedly allergic to a lot of things that mean nothing to me, and that they both had plenty more infections and whatnot than I did while they were growing up.
So what usually happens for me is that every three years or so, when a new kind of flu virus develops, someone in my household will catch it, and I'll invariably get wind of it (literally); I'll be sick for a few days or so, but nothing that I can't get rid of with a little running around. After that, I'm back to normal, and the "three-year-cycle" repeats itself. I don't want to break my record! I know what they say about there being a first time for everything, but really, I believe that "first time" can wait till I'm out in the working world and I can finally make full use of the all-powerful "Medical Certificate". :P
All that aside, AAS Shoot was fun... except for some casualties.
Casualty number one: as early on as before the second end, Jianwu suddenly shouted over to Rayner that Imy's eye was bleeding. Rayner, myself, Angel and Huiting immediately rushed over to Imy's lane, where most of the juniors had already crowded along with some of the judges, and we found out that she had a cut just above her eye, and that it wasn't her eye itself that was bleeding. Was pretty damn scary though; when I first caught a glimpse of her, she was pulling away the tissue that she'd pressed to her eye, and it came away with a splotch of red on it. Apparently, while retrieving her arrows, she'd accidentally walked into the arrows on the lower target face, and the nocks cut her, I suppose. They sent her to the nearby clinic and she returned later, quite all right and they let her make-up the ends that she'd missed.
Second casualty: well, okay, maybe not really a "casualty", but close enough. During the second half of the standard class shoot, Rayner almost dropped his bow, but managed to catch hold of it just in time; sweaty palms. Being in the lane just next to him, I exchanged a wide-eyed glance with him that said "Thank goodness..."
But then, just as we shot our arrows for that end, someone else's bow actually DID fly out into the shooting area and land on the floor. When the end was over, we found out that it was Jianwu's. Jianwu's another case of sweaty palms, and in this case, the other half of the sight had gotten bent when it landed on the ground. He was lucky that it was just the screw on the other end, and not the sight itself.
Anyway, one thing I learned: it's easier to get stressed in team events than in individual events.
All the seniors warned us about getting stressed because of so many people watching us and whatnot, but really, throughout the individual shoot yesterday, I didn't feel a thing. I felt nothing from the time I set up my bow, right up till the time I shot my last arrow.
We realised later that, really, you hardly notice the "audience". Because when you're shooting, you concentrate mostly on the target board, and even when you load an arrow, you'll turn back, but you'll just be looking at the arrows as you take one out, not at the "audience". That is, if you turn back at all. Some people don't turn back.
Speaking of the "audience"; one odd thing (among others) that the other juniors and myself noted yesterday was that in archery, almost ALL the spectators are also competitors. I.e: they're watching to see how well/ badly you do.
It's also another "quiet" sport; make too much noise while shooting's going on and some group of people will definitely make a loud shushing noise.
It's different from things like golf, though; in archery, you have the time to mingle around and talk to your fellow compeitors (if you want to) while you're collecting your arrows and taking your scores and when you're not shooting. Although I suppose this doesn't really apply in most professional competitions; like say, in the Olympics-- they've people to retrieve their arrows and take their score for them, and I doubt that they waste any time on idle chit-chat.
Also, given that the archery cirle in Singapore is relatively small, it's almost like everyone knows everyone else. To start with, given the small pool that they can draw from, there're archers from the national team in almost every tertiary institution. We have Alvin and Kenneth (and probably some other seniors that I'm not aware of..), SP has the SEA Games silver medallist (think his name was Albert Loh), and so on. Then, at these kinds of competitions when everyone mingles around, everyone gets to know someone knew and check out the competition all at the same time; Weizheng and I were already taking note of the hotshots that NTU fielded, during the awards presentation.
One thing that amused me to no end in this competition however, was one of our seniors, Benson, this guy who always sounds really experienced and wise with his advice (and it works), and his twin brother.
We never knew that Benson had a twin brother till Friday, when we were at Boon Lay Interchange waiting for 178. We were all hanging around just outside the queuing line, when Benson, another guy who looked freakily like him, and a girl came up and stepped into the line.
It took a while for most of the juniors to realise that they looked almost exactly alike.
So I went up to Khim Nyang and asked if that was Benson's twin or something and got a nod in return; they are, in Shiling's words "so disgustingly alike, I can't stand it".
They dress the same way: they wear the same shorts, the same shoes, wear identical pairs of sunglasses; their hairstyle is the same, and their hair is even dyed the same way in the same colour.
The only way we could tell them apart at first was by the shirts that they wore.
See, Benson's from NUS. His brother's from NTU. So all you had to do, from Saturday onwards, was look at the shirt to tell if it was Benson or his brother you were looking at.
The fact that the two of them are from rival schools here is just part of what made it all so amusing for all of us; on the first day during the open class shoot, Benson and his brother somehow got allocated to the same lane-- Benson was on target 2B and his brother was on 2D. For the juniors who stayed to watch the seniors shoot, we were somewhat fascinated by the continuous string of yellow and red hits that the Benson twins (what we came to call them, since we didn't find out his brother's name till the end of the first day and it was getting rather tiring to say "Benson and his brother" all the time) and some of the other archers were scoring. Especially people like the SEA Games silver medallist on target 14B, whose three arrows almost always looked like ONE thick arrow from where we were. That's how damn tight his grouping was. O_O
The next day, in the standard class knockout shoot, Rayner was up against this guy from NTU, and they were in Lane 16, the rightmost lane. Now this is the funny part. What happened was that while they were shooting, Benson was on the left, behind Rayner, coaching him and telling him where to shift his aim to, and on the right, his brother, Henry, was doing the exact same thing for the NTU guy. I would've dropped to the floor laughing if it hadn't been a serious distraction at that time. :D :P
After that, in the open class knockout shoot, the twins ended up pitted against each other, so they were both shooting at the same time, in the same lane, and I'm telling you, from the far end of the range, the similarity was once again absolutely stunning. I mean.. wow. Really freaky. I actually wanted to go over and see if the atmosphere in that lane was slightly different from all the other lanes, since they're brothers and all, haha. But when I saw the crowd and the mess of bowstands and bows that I'd have to pick my way through to get to Lane 7 (their lane), I decided against it.
Then, standard class team event. My team was next to an NTU team, and we were in Lane 16. Rightmost lane, so guess what happened?
Yep. Repeat of the standard class knockout shoot. Benson was giving encouragement and so on to myself and my teammates, Shiling and Angel, while I could hear Henry doing the same to the left. Only way I could tell who to listen to was by listening to the direction that the voice was coming from, hahaha.... :D
Remember how I said that I found the team event much more stressful? That's because with the individual event, whatever happens is your problem; if you shot badly, that's your problem; if you shot well, then good for you; in a team however, shooting badly means that you pull the whole team down. There's the pressure to perform there. And what's worse is that you really CAN'T panic, or you'll make the rest of your teammates panic as well, and then everything really will go to hell.
Shiling was working herself up nicely no matter how much I tried to calm her down the whole day, and Angel kept talking about getting "butterflies" just before the event started, so bloody hell, despite how badly I wanted to scream at someone (I specifically had the NTU people in the next lane in mind), I had to make nice with the stupid stress bug and smile and keep telling them to relax and cracking lame jokes because me panicking wouldn't have done anything. I'd probably have worked myself into a fit if I'd got started down that road, anyway.
Boy did it come back full force when we started the first round; I'd agreed to be the last shooter since I shoot quite fast and I didn't think that I'd get stressed as easily as the two of them. What happened was Angel went first, and her first arrow hit the red in the upper target face.
That may sound like a good thing to you.
Not when we'd decided beforehand that Shiling would take the bottom-left target face, Angel would take the bottom-right face, and I would take the top face because I don't fare well with a low target face.
This means that Angel's arrow had gone off, and now she'd have to aim for the upper target face, which means that either way, I was stuck with shooting a lower target face.
Then Shiling went, and she was so stressed that you could see it. All the seniors were clusted around, and even myself and Angel were telling her to relax, and above it all, Benson's voice was ringing out, constantly telling her to "man man lai (take it slow), relax, focus".
It got to the point, however, that I was twiddling with my arrow fletches while my gaze was alternating between her and the clock. I could hear my own heartbeat while the clock merrily counted down from 70+ seconds to slightly over 60 seconds.
I had about a minute to shoot 3 arrows, with a triple-face target, which none of us had trained with before! ARGH... was so gonna panic right then and there.
Surprisingly, that first end of mine was all right; scored an 8 and a 7, but my last arrow missed and landed in the upper target face, right next to Angel's first arrow. Found out later that Angel and I had aimed at the same place, and our arrows had both gone off.
My final end was bad though; 3 Ms. And the final score was 108; the NTU team next to us got 120. Considering that we were only 12 points away, that's all right, I guess. But when you consider that if I'd actually scored something that last end, our score would've been higher and we might've been higher in the rankings.. maybe even high enough to go on to the next round... well, that just sucks, really.
And since that NTU team went on to the finals, we probably *were* close enough.
Oh well. No use thinking about that now... next competition is January 29th! Training, training, training... :D
So now I'm DAMN tired and sleepy and feeling slightly flu-ish thanks to the damn lousy weather over the last three days while I was out in the open, and also probably because it's kinda cold over here right now, where I live.
Seriously, the weather was terrible. AAS's Jurong range is, for all effects and purposes, a temporary range, coz DM Archery had to relocate there temporarily while SAFRA moves from Bukit Merah to bloody TAMPINES of all places. Nothing against Tampines, but it's just damn FAR from ANYWHERE!! So, since it was a temporary range, there wasn't really adequate shelter, and the all the tarpaulin that they'd managed to string up as shelters just sloshed down a whole lot of water at some points during really heavy rain, when it just couldn't hold all the water anymore.
So it went on like that for two and a half days; it started raining halfway through sighting on Friday, then it rained after the first half of the standard class shoot on Saturday, and then on Sunday, it rained before we even got started and rained AGAIN when the whole thing had ended.
Shitty weather; when it rains, it's damn cold, and then when it stops, it's warmer than ever coz when the sun comes back out, you've got all the humidity to deal with, what with all the puddles of water, and plus, the range is set up on an old tennis court, and tennis courts reflect a HELL of a lot of heat.
With all that crap, I won't be surprised if I fall sick. But I seriously hope I don't. I have NEVER been sick more than once in the space of one year. For that matter, I've never been sick more than once within the space of THREE years. I generally have a better constitution than both my sisters; why, I'm not certain. All I know is that they're supposedly allergic to a lot of things that mean nothing to me, and that they both had plenty more infections and whatnot than I did while they were growing up.
So what usually happens for me is that every three years or so, when a new kind of flu virus develops, someone in my household will catch it, and I'll invariably get wind of it (literally); I'll be sick for a few days or so, but nothing that I can't get rid of with a little running around. After that, I'm back to normal, and the "three-year-cycle" repeats itself. I don't want to break my record! I know what they say about there being a first time for everything, but really, I believe that "first time" can wait till I'm out in the working world and I can finally make full use of the all-powerful "Medical Certificate". :P
All that aside, AAS Shoot was fun... except for some casualties.
Casualty number one: as early on as before the second end, Jianwu suddenly shouted over to Rayner that Imy's eye was bleeding. Rayner, myself, Angel and Huiting immediately rushed over to Imy's lane, where most of the juniors had already crowded along with some of the judges, and we found out that she had a cut just above her eye, and that it wasn't her eye itself that was bleeding. Was pretty damn scary though; when I first caught a glimpse of her, she was pulling away the tissue that she'd pressed to her eye, and it came away with a splotch of red on it. Apparently, while retrieving her arrows, she'd accidentally walked into the arrows on the lower target face, and the nocks cut her, I suppose. They sent her to the nearby clinic and she returned later, quite all right and they let her make-up the ends that she'd missed.
Second casualty: well, okay, maybe not really a "casualty", but close enough. During the second half of the standard class shoot, Rayner almost dropped his bow, but managed to catch hold of it just in time; sweaty palms. Being in the lane just next to him, I exchanged a wide-eyed glance with him that said "Thank goodness..."
But then, just as we shot our arrows for that end, someone else's bow actually DID fly out into the shooting area and land on the floor. When the end was over, we found out that it was Jianwu's. Jianwu's another case of sweaty palms, and in this case, the other half of the sight had gotten bent when it landed on the ground. He was lucky that it was just the screw on the other end, and not the sight itself.
Anyway, one thing I learned: it's easier to get stressed in team events than in individual events.
All the seniors warned us about getting stressed because of so many people watching us and whatnot, but really, throughout the individual shoot yesterday, I didn't feel a thing. I felt nothing from the time I set up my bow, right up till the time I shot my last arrow.
We realised later that, really, you hardly notice the "audience". Because when you're shooting, you concentrate mostly on the target board, and even when you load an arrow, you'll turn back, but you'll just be looking at the arrows as you take one out, not at the "audience". That is, if you turn back at all. Some people don't turn back.
Speaking of the "audience"; one odd thing (among others) that the other juniors and myself noted yesterday was that in archery, almost ALL the spectators are also competitors. I.e: they're watching to see how well/ badly you do.
It's also another "quiet" sport; make too much noise while shooting's going on and some group of people will definitely make a loud shushing noise.
It's different from things like golf, though; in archery, you have the time to mingle around and talk to your fellow compeitors (if you want to) while you're collecting your arrows and taking your scores and when you're not shooting. Although I suppose this doesn't really apply in most professional competitions; like say, in the Olympics-- they've people to retrieve their arrows and take their score for them, and I doubt that they waste any time on idle chit-chat.
Also, given that the archery cirle in Singapore is relatively small, it's almost like everyone knows everyone else. To start with, given the small pool that they can draw from, there're archers from the national team in almost every tertiary institution. We have Alvin and Kenneth (and probably some other seniors that I'm not aware of..), SP has the SEA Games silver medallist (think his name was Albert Loh), and so on. Then, at these kinds of competitions when everyone mingles around, everyone gets to know someone knew and check out the competition all at the same time; Weizheng and I were already taking note of the hotshots that NTU fielded, during the awards presentation.
One thing that amused me to no end in this competition however, was one of our seniors, Benson, this guy who always sounds really experienced and wise with his advice (and it works), and his twin brother.
We never knew that Benson had a twin brother till Friday, when we were at Boon Lay Interchange waiting for 178. We were all hanging around just outside the queuing line, when Benson, another guy who looked freakily like him, and a girl came up and stepped into the line.
It took a while for most of the juniors to realise that they looked almost exactly alike.
So I went up to Khim Nyang and asked if that was Benson's twin or something and got a nod in return; they are, in Shiling's words "so disgustingly alike, I can't stand it".
They dress the same way: they wear the same shorts, the same shoes, wear identical pairs of sunglasses; their hairstyle is the same, and their hair is even dyed the same way in the same colour.
The only way we could tell them apart at first was by the shirts that they wore.
See, Benson's from NUS. His brother's from NTU. So all you had to do, from Saturday onwards, was look at the shirt to tell if it was Benson or his brother you were looking at.
The fact that the two of them are from rival schools here is just part of what made it all so amusing for all of us; on the first day during the open class shoot, Benson and his brother somehow got allocated to the same lane-- Benson was on target 2B and his brother was on 2D. For the juniors who stayed to watch the seniors shoot, we were somewhat fascinated by the continuous string of yellow and red hits that the Benson twins (what we came to call them, since we didn't find out his brother's name till the end of the first day and it was getting rather tiring to say "Benson and his brother" all the time) and some of the other archers were scoring. Especially people like the SEA Games silver medallist on target 14B, whose three arrows almost always looked like ONE thick arrow from where we were. That's how damn tight his grouping was. O_O
The next day, in the standard class knockout shoot, Rayner was up against this guy from NTU, and they were in Lane 16, the rightmost lane. Now this is the funny part. What happened was that while they were shooting, Benson was on the left, behind Rayner, coaching him and telling him where to shift his aim to, and on the right, his brother, Henry, was doing the exact same thing for the NTU guy. I would've dropped to the floor laughing if it hadn't been a serious distraction at that time. :D :P
After that, in the open class knockout shoot, the twins ended up pitted against each other, so they were both shooting at the same time, in the same lane, and I'm telling you, from the far end of the range, the similarity was once again absolutely stunning. I mean.. wow. Really freaky. I actually wanted to go over and see if the atmosphere in that lane was slightly different from all the other lanes, since they're brothers and all, haha. But when I saw the crowd and the mess of bowstands and bows that I'd have to pick my way through to get to Lane 7 (their lane), I decided against it.
Then, standard class team event. My team was next to an NTU team, and we were in Lane 16. Rightmost lane, so guess what happened?
Yep. Repeat of the standard class knockout shoot. Benson was giving encouragement and so on to myself and my teammates, Shiling and Angel, while I could hear Henry doing the same to the left. Only way I could tell who to listen to was by listening to the direction that the voice was coming from, hahaha.... :D
Remember how I said that I found the team event much more stressful? That's because with the individual event, whatever happens is your problem; if you shot badly, that's your problem; if you shot well, then good for you; in a team however, shooting badly means that you pull the whole team down. There's the pressure to perform there. And what's worse is that you really CAN'T panic, or you'll make the rest of your teammates panic as well, and then everything really will go to hell.
Shiling was working herself up nicely no matter how much I tried to calm her down the whole day, and Angel kept talking about getting "butterflies" just before the event started, so bloody hell, despite how badly I wanted to scream at someone (I specifically had the NTU people in the next lane in mind), I had to make nice with the stupid stress bug and smile and keep telling them to relax and cracking lame jokes because me panicking wouldn't have done anything. I'd probably have worked myself into a fit if I'd got started down that road, anyway.
Boy did it come back full force when we started the first round; I'd agreed to be the last shooter since I shoot quite fast and I didn't think that I'd get stressed as easily as the two of them. What happened was Angel went first, and her first arrow hit the red in the upper target face.
That may sound like a good thing to you.
Not when we'd decided beforehand that Shiling would take the bottom-left target face, Angel would take the bottom-right face, and I would take the top face because I don't fare well with a low target face.
This means that Angel's arrow had gone off, and now she'd have to aim for the upper target face, which means that either way, I was stuck with shooting a lower target face.
Then Shiling went, and she was so stressed that you could see it. All the seniors were clusted around, and even myself and Angel were telling her to relax, and above it all, Benson's voice was ringing out, constantly telling her to "man man lai (take it slow), relax, focus".
It got to the point, however, that I was twiddling with my arrow fletches while my gaze was alternating between her and the clock. I could hear my own heartbeat while the clock merrily counted down from 70+ seconds to slightly over 60 seconds.
I had about a minute to shoot 3 arrows, with a triple-face target, which none of us had trained with before! ARGH... was so gonna panic right then and there.
Surprisingly, that first end of mine was all right; scored an 8 and a 7, but my last arrow missed and landed in the upper target face, right next to Angel's first arrow. Found out later that Angel and I had aimed at the same place, and our arrows had both gone off.
My final end was bad though; 3 Ms. And the final score was 108; the NTU team next to us got 120. Considering that we were only 12 points away, that's all right, I guess. But when you consider that if I'd actually scored something that last end, our score would've been higher and we might've been higher in the rankings.. maybe even high enough to go on to the next round... well, that just sucks, really.
And since that NTU team went on to the finals, we probably *were* close enough.
Oh well. No use thinking about that now... next competition is January 29th! Training, training, training... :D
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Okay, shooting was way better today. 159 for ten ends of 3! Yay!! Passed.. haha. But there's no grouping whatsoever. So within one end, the score is highly polarised. My first arrows tend to be really shitty, either scoring in the white or black or M, and then the last arrow will land in 10, 9 or 8. Weird, isn't it. It'd make more sense the other way round.
Anyway. Sighting tomorrow. AAS admin are a bunch of mentally incapacitated morons. With less than five days before the competition, first, they change the scheduling of events, then they change the timing of those events, and THEN, they change the nature of the events themselves, from 20 ends of 3 arrows to 10 ends of 6 arrows. At least I think it's 10 ends.
It better not be TWENTY ends of 6. I WILL DIE. My arm will drop off and in the midst of writhing in its death throes on the ground, will be spitting venomous curses at me for overworking it to its death.
Watched "Blade Trinity" today with Ben and Zhan Tao after training. Don't ask me why I did that. None of the "Blade" movies are my usual fare; in fact, I've never watched the first two. Maybe I just needed something brainless to do. And maybe I wanted to see a compound bow in action too. Haha. Think it was the same with the two guys too. :D
I mean, for about the first half-hour of the movie, we were only mildly interested in the proceedings; then came along Jessica Biel and this really fancy weapon which looked like a bow, but where the string was supposed to be, there was this thin, bright blue band of light; like a laser, really. And all three of us got really animated and excited about how cool her "bow" looked-- we found out later that it wasn't a bow, but some unique weapon that'd been specially developed for use against vampires, coz that blue band of light is really UV light. Which vampires are.. um, allergic to. You know. Sunlight and all.
Oh, but later, there came this scene where Hannibal King's saying that he "can't shoot around corners", and she responds with "I can", and all three of us were like "Oh, yeah, compound bow.."
And she whipped it out, with a skillful jerk of her arm, unfolded it from its collapsed state, loaded up the arrow and fired.
Whoa. Fun. :D
Seriously, the highest points of the whole movie for us must've been when she was shooting. With the bow, that is, not with the guns. Of which there were plenty, I assure you. Expensive things too, since they all apparently had silver bullets.
Later after the movie, Ben and I were even debating about a scene where she shoots a series of arrows through a sensor which detects their speed, and slowly, the speed of her arrows starts to get faster; she goes from 274 feet per second to 320 feet per second.
We were debating the possibility of increasing the speed at which the arrow travels; something which obviously isn't possible unless you pull back further on the string, but the thing is that your draw length is supposed to be constant. So I figured that the only way that you could control the speed of the arrow would be to tighten or loosen the strings; something which I figure would have a greater effect on a compound bow than on a recurve bow.
On a compound bow you'd have to tweak all those gears and such, while on a recurve, all you can do is twist the string to shorten its length and in so doing, pulling the limbs further back.
Here's something to help with your visualisation:
Diagrammatical representation of a compound bow
Compound Bow
Compound bow with stabiliser; the stabiliser is the rod which you see extending from the lower part of the bow.
And here's the bow that I use in archery: the recurve bow, so named because its limbs curve away from the archer, and which is supposedly harder to master than the compound bow.
Diagrammatical representation of recurve bow with V-bar and side and central stabilisers
Wooden recurve bow. This is the kind that I use. These don't come with (or need) a stabiliser. In this picture, the sight is not present on the bow.
Metal recurve bow. This is the type that my seniors use, replete with V-bar and side and central stabilisers.
And Jessica Biel has muscles, man. You can see it really clearly in the movie, but more towards the end when she's fighting off the bad guys and she's wearing this tank top. Specifically, it's the muscles in her upper arms and back, around the shoulder blades. Must be all the archery training. :D
And Ryan Reynolds as Hannibal King was a riot; he was verging on being another Jim Carrey half the time with his strange jokes and funny behaviour and expressions, but I loved his quick wit and humour.
The film didn't have much in the way of a storyline (hey, what did you expect??), but it was worth the $6 to see that wicked compound bow and watch Hannibal King's character.
Anyway. Sighting tomorrow. AAS admin are a bunch of mentally incapacitated morons. With less than five days before the competition, first, they change the scheduling of events, then they change the timing of those events, and THEN, they change the nature of the events themselves, from 20 ends of 3 arrows to 10 ends of 6 arrows. At least I think it's 10 ends.
It better not be TWENTY ends of 6. I WILL DIE. My arm will drop off and in the midst of writhing in its death throes on the ground, will be spitting venomous curses at me for overworking it to its death.
Watched "Blade Trinity" today with Ben and Zhan Tao after training. Don't ask me why I did that. None of the "Blade" movies are my usual fare; in fact, I've never watched the first two. Maybe I just needed something brainless to do. And maybe I wanted to see a compound bow in action too. Haha. Think it was the same with the two guys too. :D
I mean, for about the first half-hour of the movie, we were only mildly interested in the proceedings; then came along Jessica Biel and this really fancy weapon which looked like a bow, but where the string was supposed to be, there was this thin, bright blue band of light; like a laser, really. And all three of us got really animated and excited about how cool her "bow" looked-- we found out later that it wasn't a bow, but some unique weapon that'd been specially developed for use against vampires, coz that blue band of light is really UV light. Which vampires are.. um, allergic to. You know. Sunlight and all.
Oh, but later, there came this scene where Hannibal King's saying that he "can't shoot around corners", and she responds with "I can", and all three of us were like "Oh, yeah, compound bow.."
And she whipped it out, with a skillful jerk of her arm, unfolded it from its collapsed state, loaded up the arrow and fired.
Whoa. Fun. :D
Seriously, the highest points of the whole movie for us must've been when she was shooting. With the bow, that is, not with the guns. Of which there were plenty, I assure you. Expensive things too, since they all apparently had silver bullets.
Later after the movie, Ben and I were even debating about a scene where she shoots a series of arrows through a sensor which detects their speed, and slowly, the speed of her arrows starts to get faster; she goes from 274 feet per second to 320 feet per second.
We were debating the possibility of increasing the speed at which the arrow travels; something which obviously isn't possible unless you pull back further on the string, but the thing is that your draw length is supposed to be constant. So I figured that the only way that you could control the speed of the arrow would be to tighten or loosen the strings; something which I figure would have a greater effect on a compound bow than on a recurve bow.
On a compound bow you'd have to tweak all those gears and such, while on a recurve, all you can do is twist the string to shorten its length and in so doing, pulling the limbs further back.
Here's something to help with your visualisation:
Diagrammatical representation of a compound bow
Compound Bow
Compound bow with stabiliser; the stabiliser is the rod which you see extending from the lower part of the bow.
And here's the bow that I use in archery: the recurve bow, so named because its limbs curve away from the archer, and which is supposedly harder to master than the compound bow.
Diagrammatical representation of recurve bow with V-bar and side and central stabilisers
Wooden recurve bow. This is the kind that I use. These don't come with (or need) a stabiliser. In this picture, the sight is not present on the bow.
Metal recurve bow. This is the type that my seniors use, replete with V-bar and side and central stabilisers.
And Jessica Biel has muscles, man. You can see it really clearly in the movie, but more towards the end when she's fighting off the bad guys and she's wearing this tank top. Specifically, it's the muscles in her upper arms and back, around the shoulder blades. Must be all the archery training. :D
And Ryan Reynolds as Hannibal King was a riot; he was verging on being another Jim Carrey half the time with his strange jokes and funny behaviour and expressions, but I loved his quick wit and humour.
The film didn't have much in the way of a storyline (hey, what did you expect??), but it was worth the $6 to see that wicked compound bow and watch Hannibal King's character.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Am back. Avoided blogging for the past few days because, 1) I was too damn lazy, and 2) my arm hurt like all hell.
I haven't touched my bow for a whole month. The result of that is that now my shooting is absolutely disgusting, and my bow arm is not as steady as it was before the exams. And lack of practice means disuse of the usual group of muscles. Which then equates to pain in the shoulder blades and back muscles.
Yes, if you didn't know, when you pull back on the bowstring, you're supposed to use your back muscles, not your upper arm muscles. It's a strange, complex thing, but the way it works is that, although you'll be pulling the string back with your middle three fingers, your fingers and arms are relaxed; the only tension is in your back. Confused? Well, it's easier said than done, anyway.
I find myself once again confronted with the irony that my holiday is more packed with activities than a normal month during term time. It happened during the mid-sem break too, if you're wondering about the other time. This in itself is very bad; not just for the stress factor, but also because this means that now I can't go out and work. Damn it.
Went for that scholarship talk for SPH's Journalism Scholarship on Monday. Think I stand an okay chance. Seriously hope I get it. If not, I don't think I'll be around NUS for much longer. But, sucky thing is, that they need the transcript of my first sem's exam results. And when are results going to be out for first-years?? Effing 26th December, that's when. That's almost three weeks away!! I need to send in the application ASAP, damn it...
My sis tagged along when I went for the talk; were only about 50 people in attendance, and I felt so old suddenly. I mean, despite the fact that I'm only a year older than the rest of the interested applicants, I didn't feel that way. Maybe it's something to do with how Uni is a pretty far cry from JC life, man. Or maybe I'm just thinking too highly of myself.
Anyway, my sis and I arrived at the venue early; half an hour early to be exact, because I wasn't sure of the place and so we left the house really early, but later we found the venue much more easily than we expected, haha.
So while we were hanging around waiting outside the room (ballroom?), all the people slowly started streaming in, and my sister and I started bitching about some people; there was this particular petite girl who had on a lot of make-up and a lot of wavy hair falling just past her shoulders; the amount of hair she had just made her face look damn small. And she was wearing these tight black pants and a skimpy, loose top with spaghetti straps, and heels.
She had this strange way of walking and this really overdone look which just really set my sister and I off.
Me: (upon seeing her) What the hell.
Sis: (upon noticing said objection of my negative attention) Er.
Me: Why the hell is she walking like that?
Sis: A bit too much make-up, yeah? And she walks like Brenda Wan, man. Eugh.
(Brenda Wan is a teacher in our secondary school who, when she walks, swivels her hips from one side to another in a rather exaggerated manner.)
Me: Are you kidding? She's worse than Brenda Wan. Brenda Wan's ass just migrates from the east to the west and vice versa within the space of a single step; this girl-- it's like when she takes one step, her hips go from left to right and her body goes up and down as well; does she think she's walking on springs or what??
Sis: Think she can't wear heels.
Me: And her head looks huge on her body, man. Like lollipop syndrome. And Ally McBeal. Maybe she's bulimic. Or anorexic.
*Sis gives me distasteful look, then looks at said weird girl again, then looks as if she agrees with me, but doesn't say anything. End of short bitch-fest*
I think it was just the fact that it was relatively early in the morning then; early morning air has a strange effect on my brain cells. Renders them completely useless, I tell you. And even after that, for the rest of the day, they remain half-concussed. Explains the way I am, doesn't it.
Went to school for training then. God, I just pissed myself off. 103 for ten ends of 3?!?! WTF?!? And what the HELL kind of disgusting score is 1-1-M?!?!
SHIT.
So gonna die. But heck. It's only first competition, anyway. Don't expect to go very far. But must note it down for future reference; even when they're exams, must stay in shape. Khim Nyang says that if you don't shoot for two weeks, you lose your form. Well, guess what, most of the juniors haven't shot for almost twice that long. I know I haven't.
But, at least now there's some kind of hope, haha. Coz Rayner's in my team now! And Rayner is damn good; he gets things like 234 for ten ends and he still thinks that his score sucks. *Facepalm* Rayner....
Also, I have discovered the miracle that is muscle relaxant cream. Or gel. Well, okay, it's gel. I was rummaging in my mum's cupboard on Tuesday night to find something for the muscle ache, coz I was so worried that if it persisted then I wouldn't be able to train properly.
So I found the muscle relaxant, and am now a happy bunny. Because after I applied it, it didn't hurt anymore! By "it" I mean my arm, not the gel.
God bless the person who invented muscle relaxant. And if he's dead, well, I hope you grant him sainthood. He saved my arm, if nothing else.
Just exaggerating now. You can ignore me. :P
I haven't touched my bow for a whole month. The result of that is that now my shooting is absolutely disgusting, and my bow arm is not as steady as it was before the exams. And lack of practice means disuse of the usual group of muscles. Which then equates to pain in the shoulder blades and back muscles.
Yes, if you didn't know, when you pull back on the bowstring, you're supposed to use your back muscles, not your upper arm muscles. It's a strange, complex thing, but the way it works is that, although you'll be pulling the string back with your middle three fingers, your fingers and arms are relaxed; the only tension is in your back. Confused? Well, it's easier said than done, anyway.
I find myself once again confronted with the irony that my holiday is more packed with activities than a normal month during term time. It happened during the mid-sem break too, if you're wondering about the other time. This in itself is very bad; not just for the stress factor, but also because this means that now I can't go out and work. Damn it.
Went for that scholarship talk for SPH's Journalism Scholarship on Monday. Think I stand an okay chance. Seriously hope I get it. If not, I don't think I'll be around NUS for much longer. But, sucky thing is, that they need the transcript of my first sem's exam results. And when are results going to be out for first-years?? Effing 26th December, that's when. That's almost three weeks away!! I need to send in the application ASAP, damn it...
My sis tagged along when I went for the talk; were only about 50 people in attendance, and I felt so old suddenly. I mean, despite the fact that I'm only a year older than the rest of the interested applicants, I didn't feel that way. Maybe it's something to do with how Uni is a pretty far cry from JC life, man. Or maybe I'm just thinking too highly of myself.
Anyway, my sis and I arrived at the venue early; half an hour early to be exact, because I wasn't sure of the place and so we left the house really early, but later we found the venue much more easily than we expected, haha.
So while we were hanging around waiting outside the room (ballroom?), all the people slowly started streaming in, and my sister and I started bitching about some people; there was this particular petite girl who had on a lot of make-up and a lot of wavy hair falling just past her shoulders; the amount of hair she had just made her face look damn small. And she was wearing these tight black pants and a skimpy, loose top with spaghetti straps, and heels.
She had this strange way of walking and this really overdone look which just really set my sister and I off.
Me: (upon seeing her) What the hell.
Sis: (upon noticing said objection of my negative attention) Er.
Me: Why the hell is she walking like that?
Sis: A bit too much make-up, yeah? And she walks like Brenda Wan, man. Eugh.
(Brenda Wan is a teacher in our secondary school who, when she walks, swivels her hips from one side to another in a rather exaggerated manner.)
Me: Are you kidding? She's worse than Brenda Wan. Brenda Wan's ass just migrates from the east to the west and vice versa within the space of a single step; this girl-- it's like when she takes one step, her hips go from left to right and her body goes up and down as well; does she think she's walking on springs or what??
Sis: Think she can't wear heels.
Me: And her head looks huge on her body, man. Like lollipop syndrome. And Ally McBeal. Maybe she's bulimic. Or anorexic.
*Sis gives me distasteful look, then looks at said weird girl again, then looks as if she agrees with me, but doesn't say anything. End of short bitch-fest*
I think it was just the fact that it was relatively early in the morning then; early morning air has a strange effect on my brain cells. Renders them completely useless, I tell you. And even after that, for the rest of the day, they remain half-concussed. Explains the way I am, doesn't it.
Went to school for training then. God, I just pissed myself off. 103 for ten ends of 3?!?! WTF?!? And what the HELL kind of disgusting score is 1-1-M?!?!
SHIT.
So gonna die. But heck. It's only first competition, anyway. Don't expect to go very far. But must note it down for future reference; even when they're exams, must stay in shape. Khim Nyang says that if you don't shoot for two weeks, you lose your form. Well, guess what, most of the juniors haven't shot for almost twice that long. I know I haven't.
But, at least now there's some kind of hope, haha. Coz Rayner's in my team now! And Rayner is damn good; he gets things like 234 for ten ends and he still thinks that his score sucks. *Facepalm* Rayner....
Also, I have discovered the miracle that is muscle relaxant cream. Or gel. Well, okay, it's gel. I was rummaging in my mum's cupboard on Tuesday night to find something for the muscle ache, coz I was so worried that if it persisted then I wouldn't be able to train properly.
So I found the muscle relaxant, and am now a happy bunny. Because after I applied it, it didn't hurt anymore! By "it" I mean my arm, not the gel.
God bless the person who invented muscle relaxant. And if he's dead, well, I hope you grant him sainthood. He saved my arm, if nothing else.
Just exaggerating now. You can ignore me. :P
Sunday, December 05, 2004
WARNING: There is an obscenely HUGE amount of jabble about band stuff in this post. As a result, non-band people may find the first half of it boring. You have been warned. Now read on, anyway. :D
Yesterday's Band Festival Concert must be the BEST band concert I have EVER been to in my LIFE!! :D
*Squeals just thinking of it*
All right, maybe the beginning was a little slow (although there was this girl drummer on the snare drum in the Bach Festival Band whose roll technique was DAMN good; you couldn't even hear the individual strokes, man), but it got better as the evening progressed.
Rossini Festival Band. When I saw that their first song was gonna be Steven Reineke's "Rise of the Firebird", I was really looking forward to it; I hadn't heard that one before, and was thinking that if it was anything like his "Fate of the Gods", that'd be something. Sadly, the piece didn't last very long.
Explosive but short; it ended before I could even really get the feel of it! So sad... :(
Then there was this Chinese-y piece that they played called "Feng-Yang Hua-Gu".. which translates as "The Flower Drum of Feng Yang" (don't ask; I don't know what on earth that is). Only thing worthy of note here is that Cornelius was playing the Chinese drums! Which I think are supposed to be the focus of the piece. And Cornelius is a fellow CJ Band kid (basically means he's my junior), so ha. :P
Soon Aik and I were looking out for all the CJ kids throughout the concert, lol.
Hm... Wind in the Willows (Rossini band's last piece) by Johann de Meij is also quite a lovely piece. Liked the first movement, "The River", better than the second, "Ratty and Mole"; "The River" had a more... hm, emotional quality to it, I think. It's the kind of piece which has that kind of reflective quality about it, although "Ratty and Mole" really did remind me of those Sunday afternoons when I was much younger, sitting on the couch and watching "Winnie the Pooh and Friends", followed by "The Wind In the Willows". :D
Strauss Festival Band's "Suo Gan" was lovely... it's a Welsh lullaby, although when Soon Aik and I first saw the name of the piece in the programme, we thought it was a Chinese piece, haha.. :P There was an amazing French horn soloist here though; to quote Soon Aik, during his solo in this piece, it sounded like "a lady was singing". AND there was a beautiful English horn solo as well; the cor anglais looks damn difficult to play, and it sure sounds like the sound quality of it is hard to perfect, so this English horn sounding just so amazing is something that I really had to applaud the guy for.
Thing is, it's by James Curnow, and I'm fairly sure that he composed another piece that I love, but I can't remember what piece it is! Something in me believes that it's "And The Multitude With One Voice Spoke"-- which is the first band song that I ever loved-- but I'm not sure!
Aaron Copland's "Variations on A Shaker Melody"; a quiet but lively piece which I enjoyed very much, the theme of which is the melody used for the song, "Lord of the Dance". This song has to be the only band song that I've heard where there's almost NO percussion; throughout the performance, I only saw the timpanis being struck twice (near the ending). And perhaps it's also worthy of note that Imran was on timpanis then. And yes, Imran's another CJ kid. :D
Finally, Liszt Festival Band, which Pam's sis, Anne, was in. :D Their conductor was a Thai, so Soon Aik was very excited; she's Thai too. Well, half-Thai, since her father's Indonesian.
They started off with "Firestorm", which got a few giggles from all over the auditorium; not because of the song, mind you-- there's nothing funny about "Firestorm". It was more because the conductor, Lt. Prateep Suphanrojn, is rather short, and as the piece begins with an explosive, loud note, he did this really big, jerky flourish to begin it, and everyone was giggling at how comical that action seemed on someone of his size. :D
Sadly, "Firestorm" was also rather short, although I think it was more enjoyable than "Rise of the Firebird"; then there was this march that he'd composed himself, which he'd named after his family name: "Suphanrojn March". Nice piece, but I'm not really one for marches, so was rather glad that it was short. :P
Then, what had to be the BEST piece of the evening which made the whole concert really worthwhile: "Krisda Piniharn", a Thai piece which he'd arranged.
This piece was everything that I love in a concert band piece and so much more; it was engaging, enjoyable, emotional; it swelled and dipped in what seemed like all the right places; it just completely carried me off with it.
And it just got even better from there. :D
"Magic Beams" which was composed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej; it was a step down from "Krisda Piniharn" in its intensity, but nevertheless still absolutely engaging. Soon Aik said that it sounded better in a full orchestra (which most pieces do, I'll admit), coz Lt. Suphanrojn's arrangement had a lot of snare drum parts in it, and Soon Aik said that it didn't sound as smooth as it does with string instruments.
Speaking of which, I did notice that the pieces that he chose to perform had a lot of snare drum activity in them.
Their last song was "Orient Express", which hey, is an absolute classic, and I loved every bit of it. Especially loved how the percussionists got all the sound effects of the train's movement just right; the whole song was just this smooth, gradual, continuous building of the melody, and it all reached this perfect climax at the end; I LOVED IT, geez, need I say more?!? :D :D
Oh, but the most amusing thing of all was that everyone loved the Liszt band so much that they ended up performing TWO encores for the audience, and at the end of the second encore, the lights immediately came on; I think the organisers were worried that we'd ask for another encore, haha...
We saw Alvin and Miss Soh down in the front block of seats during the interval, so myself, Soon Aik, Wai Lun and Wei Jian went down to say hi and chat a bit; Brother Paul came up to us towards the end of the interval-- he's as scary as ever, man. Haha. Although he looked older, since he'd just had his hair cut and a lot more white was showing in his hair. Poor guy. Must be all the stress back in CJ.
Funny thing is, he remembered Wei Jian and Soon Aik, but not Wai Lun and me, haha. So when I mentioned that we were all from the same batch and that we'd only graduated last year, he got this really surprised/ shocked look on his face and looked semi-worried. Haha. Maybe he was concerned that his memory was failing him. :P
Miss Soh commented that Wai Lun and Wei Jian looked different, and well, yeah, they do. It's the miracle of NS. :P
The most dramatic case of it was with our senior, Kenny; he was rather plump when he was in CJ, but when we saw him the next year, he'd shrunk to about half the size that we remembered him being. O.O He's now very scrawny. Shocking, to say the least.
With Wei Jian and Wai Lun, well, it's just filled them out pretty well. Specifically, Wai Lun's forearms are now about twice the size that I remember them being, although everything else is still the same. He's still mine and Pamela's "small boy". Haha. Although he has grown slightly. Not by much though. I'm still taller than he is. Hahaha.... :D
Wei Jian's chest is broader, but I didn't notice that till Miss Soh pointed it out; I probably didn't notice the change coz I still see him every week for alumni band. But yeah, when she mentioned that, and I gave it some thought, I realised.. yeah; Wei Jian isn't as scrawny as he was back in CJ.
Well, maybe not "scrawny" per se... Wei Jian was DAMN skinny in CJ (still is), but back then he was all wiry muscle and long limbs (STILL is, damnit); now it's like.. there looks like there's slightly more flesh, if you know what I mean, haha. It looks like there's more substance to that body, now that his chest is broader, haha..
Was looking at my jie's blog just now, and saw all those pictures of cars.... O.O Woot.
But no piccies of my own dream car there, so all of you, feast your eyes upon this most magnificent beauty of all beauties:
Maserati Spyder
And from the back...
My ideal model of a Maserati Spyder would be a darker blue than this; prussian blue. Note the "Maserati" reflecting off the hood of the car in this picture. Something about that is just.. damn.. sexy. :)
I've loved the Spyder since the day my cousin taught me to appreciate cars; it's Ferrari incarnation is all right, it's one of the few Ferrari cars that I could actually like-- I don't like most Ferrari models because Ferrari tends to have these large engine "vents" in the hoods of their cars, which, for me, just spoils the whole sleekness of the car.
For comparison's sake, here's the Ferrari Spyder:
Ferrari Spyder; looks good, but nowhere as sexy as its Maserati cousin. :)
After the Maserati Spyder, my second fave is the Maserati Coupé. Yes, I happen to be obsessed with Maserati's cars, but my obsession stops at the aesthetics and its speed and horsepower; I don't go that far in depth. :P
Maserati Coupé
Yet another Maserati Coupé; but this picture shows just what cars like these were made for. :)
Now wasn't that fun. I just spent about an hour gushing about band stuff and cars! :D :D A complete waste of time, but it feels damn good. Wasting time is probably therapeutic or something. :P
Yesterday's Band Festival Concert must be the BEST band concert I have EVER been to in my LIFE!! :D
*Squeals just thinking of it*
All right, maybe the beginning was a little slow (although there was this girl drummer on the snare drum in the Bach Festival Band whose roll technique was DAMN good; you couldn't even hear the individual strokes, man), but it got better as the evening progressed.
Rossini Festival Band. When I saw that their first song was gonna be Steven Reineke's "Rise of the Firebird", I was really looking forward to it; I hadn't heard that one before, and was thinking that if it was anything like his "Fate of the Gods", that'd be something. Sadly, the piece didn't last very long.
Explosive but short; it ended before I could even really get the feel of it! So sad... :(
Then there was this Chinese-y piece that they played called "Feng-Yang Hua-Gu".. which translates as "The Flower Drum of Feng Yang" (don't ask; I don't know what on earth that is). Only thing worthy of note here is that Cornelius was playing the Chinese drums! Which I think are supposed to be the focus of the piece. And Cornelius is a fellow CJ Band kid (basically means he's my junior), so ha. :P
Soon Aik and I were looking out for all the CJ kids throughout the concert, lol.
Hm... Wind in the Willows (Rossini band's last piece) by Johann de Meij is also quite a lovely piece. Liked the first movement, "The River", better than the second, "Ratty and Mole"; "The River" had a more... hm, emotional quality to it, I think. It's the kind of piece which has that kind of reflective quality about it, although "Ratty and Mole" really did remind me of those Sunday afternoons when I was much younger, sitting on the couch and watching "Winnie the Pooh and Friends", followed by "The Wind In the Willows". :D
Strauss Festival Band's "Suo Gan" was lovely... it's a Welsh lullaby, although when Soon Aik and I first saw the name of the piece in the programme, we thought it was a Chinese piece, haha.. :P There was an amazing French horn soloist here though; to quote Soon Aik, during his solo in this piece, it sounded like "a lady was singing". AND there was a beautiful English horn solo as well; the cor anglais looks damn difficult to play, and it sure sounds like the sound quality of it is hard to perfect, so this English horn sounding just so amazing is something that I really had to applaud the guy for.
Thing is, it's by James Curnow, and I'm fairly sure that he composed another piece that I love, but I can't remember what piece it is! Something in me believes that it's "And The Multitude With One Voice Spoke"-- which is the first band song that I ever loved-- but I'm not sure!
Aaron Copland's "Variations on A Shaker Melody"; a quiet but lively piece which I enjoyed very much, the theme of which is the melody used for the song, "Lord of the Dance". This song has to be the only band song that I've heard where there's almost NO percussion; throughout the performance, I only saw the timpanis being struck twice (near the ending). And perhaps it's also worthy of note that Imran was on timpanis then. And yes, Imran's another CJ kid. :D
Finally, Liszt Festival Band, which Pam's sis, Anne, was in. :D Their conductor was a Thai, so Soon Aik was very excited; she's Thai too. Well, half-Thai, since her father's Indonesian.
They started off with "Firestorm", which got a few giggles from all over the auditorium; not because of the song, mind you-- there's nothing funny about "Firestorm". It was more because the conductor, Lt. Prateep Suphanrojn, is rather short, and as the piece begins with an explosive, loud note, he did this really big, jerky flourish to begin it, and everyone was giggling at how comical that action seemed on someone of his size. :D
Sadly, "Firestorm" was also rather short, although I think it was more enjoyable than "Rise of the Firebird"; then there was this march that he'd composed himself, which he'd named after his family name: "Suphanrojn March". Nice piece, but I'm not really one for marches, so was rather glad that it was short. :P
Then, what had to be the BEST piece of the evening which made the whole concert really worthwhile: "Krisda Piniharn", a Thai piece which he'd arranged.
This piece was everything that I love in a concert band piece and so much more; it was engaging, enjoyable, emotional; it swelled and dipped in what seemed like all the right places; it just completely carried me off with it.
And it just got even better from there. :D
"Magic Beams" which was composed by King Bhumibol Adulyadej; it was a step down from "Krisda Piniharn" in its intensity, but nevertheless still absolutely engaging. Soon Aik said that it sounded better in a full orchestra (which most pieces do, I'll admit), coz Lt. Suphanrojn's arrangement had a lot of snare drum parts in it, and Soon Aik said that it didn't sound as smooth as it does with string instruments.
Speaking of which, I did notice that the pieces that he chose to perform had a lot of snare drum activity in them.
Their last song was "Orient Express", which hey, is an absolute classic, and I loved every bit of it. Especially loved how the percussionists got all the sound effects of the train's movement just right; the whole song was just this smooth, gradual, continuous building of the melody, and it all reached this perfect climax at the end; I LOVED IT, geez, need I say more?!? :D :D
Oh, but the most amusing thing of all was that everyone loved the Liszt band so much that they ended up performing TWO encores for the audience, and at the end of the second encore, the lights immediately came on; I think the organisers were worried that we'd ask for another encore, haha...
We saw Alvin and Miss Soh down in the front block of seats during the interval, so myself, Soon Aik, Wai Lun and Wei Jian went down to say hi and chat a bit; Brother Paul came up to us towards the end of the interval-- he's as scary as ever, man. Haha. Although he looked older, since he'd just had his hair cut and a lot more white was showing in his hair. Poor guy. Must be all the stress back in CJ.
Funny thing is, he remembered Wei Jian and Soon Aik, but not Wai Lun and me, haha. So when I mentioned that we were all from the same batch and that we'd only graduated last year, he got this really surprised/ shocked look on his face and looked semi-worried. Haha. Maybe he was concerned that his memory was failing him. :P
Miss Soh commented that Wai Lun and Wei Jian looked different, and well, yeah, they do. It's the miracle of NS. :P
The most dramatic case of it was with our senior, Kenny; he was rather plump when he was in CJ, but when we saw him the next year, he'd shrunk to about half the size that we remembered him being. O.O He's now very scrawny. Shocking, to say the least.
With Wei Jian and Wai Lun, well, it's just filled them out pretty well. Specifically, Wai Lun's forearms are now about twice the size that I remember them being, although everything else is still the same. He's still mine and Pamela's "small boy". Haha. Although he has grown slightly. Not by much though. I'm still taller than he is. Hahaha.... :D
Wei Jian's chest is broader, but I didn't notice that till Miss Soh pointed it out; I probably didn't notice the change coz I still see him every week for alumni band. But yeah, when she mentioned that, and I gave it some thought, I realised.. yeah; Wei Jian isn't as scrawny as he was back in CJ.
Well, maybe not "scrawny" per se... Wei Jian was DAMN skinny in CJ (still is), but back then he was all wiry muscle and long limbs (STILL is, damnit); now it's like.. there looks like there's slightly more flesh, if you know what I mean, haha. It looks like there's more substance to that body, now that his chest is broader, haha..
Was looking at my jie's blog just now, and saw all those pictures of cars.... O.O Woot.
But no piccies of my own dream car there, so all of you, feast your eyes upon this most magnificent beauty of all beauties:
Maserati Spyder
And from the back...
My ideal model of a Maserati Spyder would be a darker blue than this; prussian blue. Note the "Maserati" reflecting off the hood of the car in this picture. Something about that is just.. damn.. sexy. :)
I've loved the Spyder since the day my cousin taught me to appreciate cars; it's Ferrari incarnation is all right, it's one of the few Ferrari cars that I could actually like-- I don't like most Ferrari models because Ferrari tends to have these large engine "vents" in the hoods of their cars, which, for me, just spoils the whole sleekness of the car.
For comparison's sake, here's the Ferrari Spyder:
Ferrari Spyder; looks good, but nowhere as sexy as its Maserati cousin. :)
After the Maserati Spyder, my second fave is the Maserati Coupé. Yes, I happen to be obsessed with Maserati's cars, but my obsession stops at the aesthetics and its speed and horsepower; I don't go that far in depth. :P
Maserati Coupé
Yet another Maserati Coupé; but this picture shows just what cars like these were made for. :)
Now wasn't that fun. I just spent about an hour gushing about band stuff and cars! :D :D A complete waste of time, but it feels damn good. Wasting time is probably therapeutic or something. :P
Thursday, December 02, 2004
Okay, listen really carefully. You hear that??
That's right. There's nothing. It's absolutely quiet.
Because my sisters are both in school at their respective CCA camps!! And I'm the only one home!! Woohoo!! Well, 'cept for my parents, of course. :P
Yay... Taufik won Singapore Idol. Really, it makes sense. All the Olinda fans are most like extremely incensed after she was voted out, so they'll definitely be voting for Taufik. Not to mention those who quietly supported Olinda (or who were at least anti-Sylvester) but never voted; they'd probably be motivated enough to vote for Taufik. So even if Sylvester did have unspeakably large numbers of rabid, extremely rich fans, they'd still never be able to beat the large number that they're up against.
Yesterday's shopping proved fruitful. :D And my goodness.. I never knew that Ben's fashion and dress sense was so... WHOA. Your friend's right, Ben. You are a closet metrosexual. I mean that in the most complimentary way possible, because I have zero fashion/ dress sense.
And "The Incredibles" was really funny!! I especially loved the character, that woman- what was her name... Edna, that's it. I loved her, man. She was just so funny, what with her extremely short stature and her conversely high opinions and almost-French accent and behaviour and the frequent "dah-ling" in her vocabulary.
But Dash was so.... ngh. Quicksilver ripoff, much??
I may not be an avid fan of the entire comic/ cartoon series, but if anyone so much as belittles the Maximoff twins, they usually end up suffering my wrath. Which is that they usually end up facing a complete rundown of the history of the Maximoff/Lehnsherr twins, replete with reasons as to why they rock and why other characters just can't compare.
Dash was a Quicksilver ripoff, right down to his "permanently-wind-blown-hair" haristyle. Come to think of it, you could add his fast-talking, obnoxious attitude to that too.
One of my pet peeves is when some people say that Quicksilver's just someone who has an attitude problem and who talks and runs fast; so compared to his sister, the Scarlet Witch, he's just useless.
Think about this: he talks and most probably thinks faster than the average human, given the speed that his body functions at. Given that, his intelligence is also most probably exponentially higher than that of a normal human being. Thirdly, because of all that, he has plenty of reason to mock "slower" folks because a) they just can't keep up with his speed of thinking/ talking and b) he literally leaves them in the dust.
And last but not least: don't bullshit me. You'd probably behave in much the same way if you could do all that.
And now, I shall proceed to flood all of you with completely brainless yet highly amusing things which I found in Ivan's archives early this morning. :D
(Note the underlined bits here; they're freakily accurate, I think.)
20 Questions to a Better Personality
Wackiness: 56/100
Rationality: 40/100
Constructiveness: 50/100
Leadership: 48/100
You are a WEDF--Wacky Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you a Menace to Society.
Well, whether you're actually a menace depends on how you choose to channel your energies. You chew your fingers and have an addictive personality. Properly guided, you can be enormously productive--otherwise you run amok, stir up trouble, and generally have a hell of a good time.
To your friends, you are a source of relentless entertainment. You often get into trouble, but you almost always find a way out. You are strangely popular and feed off others' energy. You live hard, seize the day, and although your more sober friends would like to see you settled down, you generally have fewer regrets and better memories than they do. Your tenet is that, at the end of the day, one regrets only what one didn't try. You are right.
You could benefit from outside help in balancing your highs and lows. Or perhaps cutting back on the caffeine.
Of the 62705 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 4.8 % are this type.
(THOSE LAST TWO UNDERLINED SENTENCES ARE *ESPECIALLY* TRUE. :D :D :D)
20 Questions to having a Better Family
Your score as a human being is 60.
This makes you like The Simpsons.
This score isn't so bad. There's hugs and kisses at the end of the day, no matter if they're cynical or sandwiched between comments about how wide your ass is getting. You haven't beat your parents -- you joined them.
The bright side is you have a lot of stories to share, and living through all this malfunction means you're perfectly equipped for dealing with all the asshats in the real world. After your experience with your family, you'll be starved for a new one. Thus you'll love your in-laws, who'll love you back.
All right, that wasn't really flooding, but well. It's my blog. Nyah.
"You haven't beat your parents -- you joined them."
Now that is an abhorrent thought.
I do not wish to turn out anything remotely like my father. Taking on some of my mum's personality traits is all right, I think, but for the love of all things sacred in this world, please; not my father.
"feed off others' energy"
Yeah. I get high just by being around people whose company I enjoy. I get high on a lot of strange things that people wouldn't get high on, I think. Good company being one of them. Friendly atmosphere is another; laughter as well.
But, feeding off others' energy... if you look at it another way, once the people are gone, that leaves me pretty much nothing. It's something that I've always found laughable, in a very cynical kind of way. I have a love-hate relationship with my ability to maintain a variety of "faces" for different groups of people, depending on how well I know them or how close I feel to them.
People like me are commonly called "hypocrites".
I prefer to call myself (and my compatriots) "cynical and very wary of the deep-seated instincts of human nature".
For one thing, I love (yes, you read that right, I love it) the fact that I can lie to anyone's face and they wouldn't be the wiser for it. I love the fact that my face can convey an entirely different emotion (even the extreme polar opposite) from what I'm really feeling. I love the fact that most people can't tell what I'm thinking or feeling. I love the fact that the face which I present to most of you is probably a significant barrier against the likes of the less-desirable ways of the world.
On the flip side, I hate it because it reminds me that I cannot ever seem to be one person. I hate it because it scares me sometimes, just how many people I can be and actually keep track of all of them, because then I wonder if I'm going to spend the rest of my life doing this. And then I wonder what it'd be like if I didn't do this, which only scares me even more; I can't see a life without the other "faces" that I can slip into-- and that scares me all over again.
By now, you probably think that I'm a severely maladjusted, insecure individual.
You're most probably absolutely correct.
One bad thing about holidays means that it gives me more time than usual to think. I think too much, and half the time, about things that people don't usually ponder in their free time. Come to think of it, I even think about this stuff when I am supposed to be busy.
It's a sad way to live your life, second-guessing everything and looking for something that you fear may be present in everything, but it's the way that I live mine, and I've got used to it. On the bright side, however, I'm probably the kind of person who wouldn't take friends for granted, given that I spend a large part of my "thinking" time worrying about keeping them. It isn't that I have little faith in them; it's more like I'm afraid of doing something irrevocably wrong that will drive them away.
This semester, given that Pam and I only take one module together, you have no idea how much time I spent quietly obsessing over my worry that we were going to drift apart because she seemed to be so much closer to this new group of friends that she'd found in her OG and I couldn't seem to make any time for us to just hang around together.
Sometimes I worry that my silly behaviour will just put some acquaintances off; acquaintances which I would very much like to keep as friends. Sometimes I worry that, being decidedly more "out of the loop" and "blur" than most people, I'll lose touch with the people around me.
But most of the time, I worry that the people that I'm close to will start to dislike the way that I am. It takes a lot (I feel) to put up with my silly behaviour, frequent bouts of spasticity, and the violent mood swings that are supposedly common in someone of the Cancerian zodiac.
I worry that people like Denise and Xinyan may find me tiresome after a while; I worry that many people might find me too "loud"; I worry that some of the girls may find me too "un-girly"; I worry that Ben and John and Ivan and all the rest of my guy friends may one day just grow entirely sick and tired of indulging my idiotic behaviour-- Ivan especially, given how so far, he's the most indulgent of all my friends with my aforementioned idiocy (to the point of even playing along at times), and how it probably takes a lot to tolerate me.
Like I said, it's a sick way to live your life like this, but hell. You get used to it after while. This way of treating worrying almost like a hobby will most likely also result in me living about 30 years less than everyone my age, but what the hell.
In the last few months, I've started talking to some of my JC friends on MSN again; the guys that is-- I haven't seen them around or heard from them very much since they all enlisted.
But something that I noticed is that, for those who know, they still think that I'm hung up over a certain someone. In actual fact, I've moved on. I think I used to feel something for him, but that seems like too long ago and I don't remember anymore.
And now that we're all out of CJ and he's in NS and we don't even see each other that often anymore, aside from the occasional get-together, well, I suppose distance makes a good dulling factor, with good ol' Time itself being complicit. Right now, I don't look at him the same way that I used to; he's just a friend now, one that I probably get along with better than most, given that there are some personality traits that we share, but that's all he is at the moment, and I can say quite confidently, that it's likely that's all he'll ever be in my life.
One thing that's been a constant in this arena of my life is that any guy whom I've ever taken a liking to is always either already attached or already has his sights on someone else.
I suppose, with my kind of horrible luck, that isn't going to change any time soon.
There's an odd little something which I puzzle over every now and then, however.
There was a period of time last year during which my J2 class thought that I'd gotten attached because I seemed "happier". (This seems to be happening all over again right now..) At least, that's what Meiji told me when I asked her how the rest of our class had come to that conclusion.
And at the same time, I decided to test out some of the perceptions which I think people have of me. When I told her that I know I don't seem like the type who'd have a boyfriend, she agreed. So I asked her why.
And she replied that I seem too independent to ever look like I want or need a boyfriend.
Strangely enough, "independent" isn't a word that I would use to describe myself, but when I told Denise about this once, she agreed: I put forward a very independent image.
It's enough to make to make me wonder.
Am I too "different"? Or are you the one who's looking for too much of the "same"? Am I the one who's lacking or are you looking for too much?
I talk and I wonder if you listen. I know you hear me, but I wonder if you listen to what I'm saying. And I know I make my friends laugh, that's something I take pride in if nothing else, but when you laugh it means much more. It means you understand, it means you get the joke, but I still wonder if you heard me right.
And when we sit together, it isn't comfortable, but it isn't completely unbearable either. We could sit for hours and not say a word, and it would stay that way: not comfortable and not really unbearable. Because there's a funny sort of space between you and me; even if we sat with our shoulders and legs and feet touching, there'd still be a funny sort of gap between us, like you were keeping space warm for someone else.
Someone whom we both don't know yet, but you're keeping their space warm for them anyway. And I wonder sometimes if perhaps I'm standing right between your eyes and so you just can't see me.
And all your friends give us meaningful looks and talk about how you're a really nice guy and how they can't understand just why you're not attached yet. And then they tell me when you're not there, that they think that we look good together. And I laugh and joke, but never tell them that it doesn't seem like you think so.
When you say "hi" to me, there's a strange flicker in your eyes; you definitely can't see it and I'm not even sure if you know if it's there, but I notice it, I do, and it seems to me like I'm only the yardstick of your dreams. It seems that you look at me and see someone else like me, only better; the someone whose warm space remains nameless and who is me and everything more.
I wonder sometimes if you think or dream about that someone better and I wonder what you see. Do you see someone prettier? Do you see someone more demure? Do you see me, but with a different face and a different body? Do you see an image of something genteel and appealing to the eye, of something that will smile at you and make you feel as one so fortunate as to have stumbled upon a treasure that you do not deserve?
Do you dream and wish for someone with whom to share every quiet moment, to share a backwards sort of hug, where someone leans back against the other and their arms are linked somewhere around their middles; to share the sort of comfort and freedom where you could lie down in their lap and no one would pay too much mind; where you could fall asleep on their shoulder and anyone who saw would smile and simply move on; where you could speak of them every second of the day and everyone else would smile and nod understandingly, indulgently, and be happy for you; where you could sit with them for hours, shoulders, elbows and hands touching, with your fingers intertwined and your legs dangling and crossing over the other's at the calves?
I do.
No one sees this, of course. Least of all you.
J'aime et j'espère.
I love and I hope. Because perhaps that's all it ever will be.
That's right. There's nothing. It's absolutely quiet.
Because my sisters are both in school at their respective CCA camps!! And I'm the only one home!! Woohoo!! Well, 'cept for my parents, of course. :P
Yay... Taufik won Singapore Idol. Really, it makes sense. All the Olinda fans are most like extremely incensed after she was voted out, so they'll definitely be voting for Taufik. Not to mention those who quietly supported Olinda (or who were at least anti-Sylvester) but never voted; they'd probably be motivated enough to vote for Taufik. So even if Sylvester did have unspeakably large numbers of rabid, extremely rich fans, they'd still never be able to beat the large number that they're up against.
Yesterday's shopping proved fruitful. :D And my goodness.. I never knew that Ben's fashion and dress sense was so... WHOA. Your friend's right, Ben. You are a closet metrosexual. I mean that in the most complimentary way possible, because I have zero fashion/ dress sense.
And "The Incredibles" was really funny!! I especially loved the character, that woman- what was her name... Edna, that's it. I loved her, man. She was just so funny, what with her extremely short stature and her conversely high opinions and almost-French accent and behaviour and the frequent "dah-ling" in her vocabulary.
But Dash was so.... ngh. Quicksilver ripoff, much??
I may not be an avid fan of the entire comic/ cartoon series, but if anyone so much as belittles the Maximoff twins, they usually end up suffering my wrath. Which is that they usually end up facing a complete rundown of the history of the Maximoff/Lehnsherr twins, replete with reasons as to why they rock and why other characters just can't compare.
Dash was a Quicksilver ripoff, right down to his "permanently-wind-blown-hair" haristyle. Come to think of it, you could add his fast-talking, obnoxious attitude to that too.
One of my pet peeves is when some people say that Quicksilver's just someone who has an attitude problem and who talks and runs fast; so compared to his sister, the Scarlet Witch, he's just useless.
Think about this: he talks and most probably thinks faster than the average human, given the speed that his body functions at. Given that, his intelligence is also most probably exponentially higher than that of a normal human being. Thirdly, because of all that, he has plenty of reason to mock "slower" folks because a) they just can't keep up with his speed of thinking/ talking and b) he literally leaves them in the dust.
And last but not least: don't bullshit me. You'd probably behave in much the same way if you could do all that.
And now, I shall proceed to flood all of you with completely brainless yet highly amusing things which I found in Ivan's archives early this morning. :D
(Note the underlined bits here; they're freakily accurate, I think.)
20 Questions to a Better Personality
Wackiness: 56/100
Rationality: 40/100
Constructiveness: 50/100
Leadership: 48/100
You are a WEDF--Wacky Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you a Menace to Society.
Well, whether you're actually a menace depends on how you choose to channel your energies. You chew your fingers and have an addictive personality. Properly guided, you can be enormously productive--otherwise you run amok, stir up trouble, and generally have a hell of a good time.
To your friends, you are a source of relentless entertainment. You often get into trouble, but you almost always find a way out. You are strangely popular and feed off others' energy. You live hard, seize the day, and although your more sober friends would like to see you settled down, you generally have fewer regrets and better memories than they do. Your tenet is that, at the end of the day, one regrets only what one didn't try. You are right.
You could benefit from outside help in balancing your highs and lows. Or perhaps cutting back on the caffeine.
Of the 62705 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 4.8 % are this type.
(THOSE LAST TWO UNDERLINED SENTENCES ARE *ESPECIALLY* TRUE. :D :D :D)
20 Questions to having a Better Family
Your score as a human being is 60.
This makes you like The Simpsons.
This score isn't so bad. There's hugs and kisses at the end of the day, no matter if they're cynical or sandwiched between comments about how wide your ass is getting. You haven't beat your parents -- you joined them.
The bright side is you have a lot of stories to share, and living through all this malfunction means you're perfectly equipped for dealing with all the asshats in the real world. After your experience with your family, you'll be starved for a new one. Thus you'll love your in-laws, who'll love you back.
All right, that wasn't really flooding, but well. It's my blog. Nyah.
"You haven't beat your parents -- you joined them."
Now that is an abhorrent thought.
I do not wish to turn out anything remotely like my father. Taking on some of my mum's personality traits is all right, I think, but for the love of all things sacred in this world, please; not my father.
"feed off others' energy"
Yeah. I get high just by being around people whose company I enjoy. I get high on a lot of strange things that people wouldn't get high on, I think. Good company being one of them. Friendly atmosphere is another; laughter as well.
But, feeding off others' energy... if you look at it another way, once the people are gone, that leaves me pretty much nothing. It's something that I've always found laughable, in a very cynical kind of way. I have a love-hate relationship with my ability to maintain a variety of "faces" for different groups of people, depending on how well I know them or how close I feel to them.
People like me are commonly called "hypocrites".
I prefer to call myself (and my compatriots) "cynical and very wary of the deep-seated instincts of human nature".
For one thing, I love (yes, you read that right, I love it) the fact that I can lie to anyone's face and they wouldn't be the wiser for it. I love the fact that my face can convey an entirely different emotion (even the extreme polar opposite) from what I'm really feeling. I love the fact that most people can't tell what I'm thinking or feeling. I love the fact that the face which I present to most of you is probably a significant barrier against the likes of the less-desirable ways of the world.
On the flip side, I hate it because it reminds me that I cannot ever seem to be one person. I hate it because it scares me sometimes, just how many people I can be and actually keep track of all of them, because then I wonder if I'm going to spend the rest of my life doing this. And then I wonder what it'd be like if I didn't do this, which only scares me even more; I can't see a life without the other "faces" that I can slip into-- and that scares me all over again.
By now, you probably think that I'm a severely maladjusted, insecure individual.
You're most probably absolutely correct.
One bad thing about holidays means that it gives me more time than usual to think. I think too much, and half the time, about things that people don't usually ponder in their free time. Come to think of it, I even think about this stuff when I am supposed to be busy.
It's a sad way to live your life, second-guessing everything and looking for something that you fear may be present in everything, but it's the way that I live mine, and I've got used to it. On the bright side, however, I'm probably the kind of person who wouldn't take friends for granted, given that I spend a large part of my "thinking" time worrying about keeping them. It isn't that I have little faith in them; it's more like I'm afraid of doing something irrevocably wrong that will drive them away.
This semester, given that Pam and I only take one module together, you have no idea how much time I spent quietly obsessing over my worry that we were going to drift apart because she seemed to be so much closer to this new group of friends that she'd found in her OG and I couldn't seem to make any time for us to just hang around together.
Sometimes I worry that my silly behaviour will just put some acquaintances off; acquaintances which I would very much like to keep as friends. Sometimes I worry that, being decidedly more "out of the loop" and "blur" than most people, I'll lose touch with the people around me.
But most of the time, I worry that the people that I'm close to will start to dislike the way that I am. It takes a lot (I feel) to put up with my silly behaviour, frequent bouts of spasticity, and the violent mood swings that are supposedly common in someone of the Cancerian zodiac.
I worry that people like Denise and Xinyan may find me tiresome after a while; I worry that many people might find me too "loud"; I worry that some of the girls may find me too "un-girly"; I worry that Ben and John and Ivan and all the rest of my guy friends may one day just grow entirely sick and tired of indulging my idiotic behaviour-- Ivan especially, given how so far, he's the most indulgent of all my friends with my aforementioned idiocy (to the point of even playing along at times), and how it probably takes a lot to tolerate me.
Like I said, it's a sick way to live your life like this, but hell. You get used to it after while. This way of treating worrying almost like a hobby will most likely also result in me living about 30 years less than everyone my age, but what the hell.
In the last few months, I've started talking to some of my JC friends on MSN again; the guys that is-- I haven't seen them around or heard from them very much since they all enlisted.
But something that I noticed is that, for those who know, they still think that I'm hung up over a certain someone. In actual fact, I've moved on. I think I used to feel something for him, but that seems like too long ago and I don't remember anymore.
And now that we're all out of CJ and he's in NS and we don't even see each other that often anymore, aside from the occasional get-together, well, I suppose distance makes a good dulling factor, with good ol' Time itself being complicit. Right now, I don't look at him the same way that I used to; he's just a friend now, one that I probably get along with better than most, given that there are some personality traits that we share, but that's all he is at the moment, and I can say quite confidently, that it's likely that's all he'll ever be in my life.
One thing that's been a constant in this arena of my life is that any guy whom I've ever taken a liking to is always either already attached or already has his sights on someone else.
I suppose, with my kind of horrible luck, that isn't going to change any time soon.
There's an odd little something which I puzzle over every now and then, however.
There was a period of time last year during which my J2 class thought that I'd gotten attached because I seemed "happier". (This seems to be happening all over again right now..) At least, that's what Meiji told me when I asked her how the rest of our class had come to that conclusion.
And at the same time, I decided to test out some of the perceptions which I think people have of me. When I told her that I know I don't seem like the type who'd have a boyfriend, she agreed. So I asked her why.
And she replied that I seem too independent to ever look like I want or need a boyfriend.
Strangely enough, "independent" isn't a word that I would use to describe myself, but when I told Denise about this once, she agreed: I put forward a very independent image.
It's enough to make to make me wonder.
Am I too "different"? Or are you the one who's looking for too much of the "same"? Am I the one who's lacking or are you looking for too much?
I talk and I wonder if you listen. I know you hear me, but I wonder if you listen to what I'm saying. And I know I make my friends laugh, that's something I take pride in if nothing else, but when you laugh it means much more. It means you understand, it means you get the joke, but I still wonder if you heard me right.
And when we sit together, it isn't comfortable, but it isn't completely unbearable either. We could sit for hours and not say a word, and it would stay that way: not comfortable and not really unbearable. Because there's a funny sort of space between you and me; even if we sat with our shoulders and legs and feet touching, there'd still be a funny sort of gap between us, like you were keeping space warm for someone else.
Someone whom we both don't know yet, but you're keeping their space warm for them anyway. And I wonder sometimes if perhaps I'm standing right between your eyes and so you just can't see me.
And all your friends give us meaningful looks and talk about how you're a really nice guy and how they can't understand just why you're not attached yet. And then they tell me when you're not there, that they think that we look good together. And I laugh and joke, but never tell them that it doesn't seem like you think so.
When you say "hi" to me, there's a strange flicker in your eyes; you definitely can't see it and I'm not even sure if you know if it's there, but I notice it, I do, and it seems to me like I'm only the yardstick of your dreams. It seems that you look at me and see someone else like me, only better; the someone whose warm space remains nameless and who is me and everything more.
I wonder sometimes if you think or dream about that someone better and I wonder what you see. Do you see someone prettier? Do you see someone more demure? Do you see me, but with a different face and a different body? Do you see an image of something genteel and appealing to the eye, of something that will smile at you and make you feel as one so fortunate as to have stumbled upon a treasure that you do not deserve?
Do you dream and wish for someone with whom to share every quiet moment, to share a backwards sort of hug, where someone leans back against the other and their arms are linked somewhere around their middles; to share the sort of comfort and freedom where you could lie down in their lap and no one would pay too much mind; where you could fall asleep on their shoulder and anyone who saw would smile and simply move on; where you could speak of them every second of the day and everyone else would smile and nod understandingly, indulgently, and be happy for you; where you could sit with them for hours, shoulders, elbows and hands touching, with your fingers intertwined and your legs dangling and crossing over the other's at the calves?
I do.
No one sees this, of course. Least of all you.
J'aime et j'espère.
I love and I hope. Because perhaps that's all it ever will be.
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
My exams are finally over!! Yay!!!
Now, as Khim Nyang put it, I feel somewhat lacking in the way of a life. :P
Especially since I've been mugging since week 11, so I've probably been depriving myself of an active social life for three weeks more than everyone else, haha. Not that I had a really active social life to begin with, so... meh. What am I talking about. :P
So, what am I doing here in the Arts Club Room blogging when a sane person would go out straight away and indulge in something brainless and frivolous to destress?
Well, yesterday my kor said that we'd decide on something to do over lunch after the paper, but he met his friend outside the MPSH today, and well, I guess he'd already decided what he wanted to do, so yep. He went off with his friend, so I decided to go shooting instead (grossly out of practice), but changed my mind later when I found out that no one else was shooting anymore... :P
So. Change of plan. Khim Nyang mentioned that Charissa, Ben and Zhan Tao were going to watch "The Incredibles" later in the afternoon, so I called Ben up; met him for lunch and then he went off for his last paper. We're gonna go to Orchard later after his paper to do window shopping, I think.
At least, it'll be window shopping for me; he actually does want to engage in retail therapy-- think he's buying a pair of pants or something.
Oh yeah... I've gained a "jie" (older sister) and a "jie-fu" (brother-in-law) now, haha.
Yesterday, was studying Genes and Soc at Forum with Ivan and his friends; met his other godsister-- so, by virtue of the fact that Ivan is my "kor", Rachel is now my "jie" (coz she's a year older than me) and her boyfriend, William, is my "jie-fu", haha.... :D
So fun! I never engaged in all this "extended family" stuff in JC or secondary school or anything, you see. I'm grossly deprived of a social life. Haha.
Was quite fun studying with a whole lot of Genes and Soc people; managed to sort quite a few of the things that I didn't understand and when I got home, I stayed up till 2.30 am to finish watching all the interactive CDs that were on the net for our use; I'm so glad I decided to watch them. After watching, went straight to sleep.
And today's paper was quite all right. :D I wanted to leave early, coz I finished the paper and checked it by 10.44 am. Then, upon glancing at my answer sheet, I noticed that I'd forgotten to shade the circles for my matric no. And by the time I was halfway through shading, the clock hit 10.45 am; no more leaving the exam hall within the last fifteen minutes of the paper.
Damn.
Oh well. It's all over, anyway. :D :D
Shall now wait patiently for 3.00 pm to roll around so that I can go out and breathe the air of a free person and soak up the care-less atmosphere of Orchard Road.