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Showing results for tags 'reality'.
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'Cap'n! What gives? We don't care about your jar o' dirt or money, we just wanna see the ship!' The aforementioned man, in his leather hat, billowing white shirt and tanned pants, swayed slightly aboard the ship, and took another swig from his bottle of rum. 'You,' he started, staggered slightly and caught himself from tumbling overboard, 'ain't steppin' on this deck.' 'We don't want your ship either,' the other girl beside the first one added in. 'Ya ain't comin' up.' 'Well, watch us!' The first one headed towards the bow of the ship, with Captain Jack Sparrow in his infamous swaggering following in tow. 'No ladies aboard the ship! Ged away from my ship!' The short-haired girl merely grinned as she found grip on the seawater-slicked rope that tied the ship to dock, and started the arduous climb up. Arduous, it definitely was, but it was going to be worth it, for all of the Captain's grumble and fury. And did we make it? You betcha. Yes, I love to pull off jokes. That above, ya see, belongs to a traditional and old-fashioned ship of the old that was wrecked, studied and rebuilt. It is the Swedish ship, the Gothëborg. And it looked sweet. One could've almost imagined being aboard the Dauntless or the Black Pearl. All it needed was some redecoration. Yesterday after school, I hightailed out of the MRT station and found my twin sister waiting most impatiently for me. We both planned that we would board the Gothëborg and tour it, nevermind the drizzle that had started a while ago. Making our way up the steep and slippery metal gangway, we found ourselves on the ship deck, slightly crowded with other visitors who milled and took in the gaping sails that shifted noticeably against the grey sky above - and promptly had raindrops on our face. We found the deck most interesting, interesting as we took in all the ropes that led from deck to the sails, masts and the crow's nest. I suggested that we could climb them and reach the crow's nest if we tried, but my sister immediately disagreed. We went below deck, which was air-conditioned - much to our surprise. A video was playing from a projector about the ship's voyage before it docked at our country, and what the crew did on the ship while it made its way across the big blue. Wandering through the mess, we found large cannons stationed at the cannon windows, much like what we saw in Pirates of the Carribean. A picture nearby revealed that they were real - unmistakable smoke rose from an open window on the picture. The cannons were fired as a farewell as the ship left Guangdong, China. Heading topside, we decided that making a trip to the upper deck would be a good idea - but the ways were blocked by the crew being briefed by the brass. Meanwhile, we busied ourselves taking pictures for other visitors who wanted a memoir of their visit - my sister did the shooting, I did the waiting. When the crew finally split to their tasks, we took the chance and clambered up the steep stairs. Our father, a naval enthusiast ever since he worked on a cargo ship, remarked that when stormy weather came, the crew would be hurrying up the ropes to the sails and running up and down the steps to the upper deck to secure the steering wheel. It would take at least four men to hold down the wheel and steer it in worse conditions. So when we found the steering wheel had a location below deck, we thought it was a pretty wise idea of the ship-makers '- until we found the outdoor steering contraption. The drizzle started to worsen and the steps grew slippery, so we had to call our run through the Gothëborg to an end and disembarked. 'Oi.' Captain Jack looked up the mast to the crow's nest, busy trying to keep his men away from the main mast and not to look up. The two girls were up the mast and in the nest, the long-haired one having nicked a stray spyglass from somewhere that was later discovered to be his quarters and was currently putting her grimy fingerprints all over it. He wondered if it was a good idea to cast off right now and receive two new crew members for free. Then again, maybe not. Knowing women, maybe not. Up above, twin and twin stood shoulder to shoulder, one with a spyglass trained on the horizon and the orange-tinted clouds of the sunset. 'Do you think Jack Sparrow'd like his telescope back now?' She paused and looked back at her sister, 'I don't think so.' And both waited for the large orb in the sky to disappear into the sea, before making the climb down the ropes and to the galley, possibly to the steering wheel along the way and maybe the captain's quarters to see what else the nice captain had to play with.
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<dd> is sick. <dd> got the flu bug. <dd> does not like it. It's terrible being sick, no? It started yesterday when I suddenly felt warm in an air-conditioned chapel. No idea how or what happened. When I got home, I promptly passed out on the sofa. When I woke up later, I felt like freshly roasted chicken. Mother told me that I was getting high fever, and packed me off to the doctor's. Lately in hometown, it's been raining and sunny on an inconsistent rate. Days altered between hot and cold, and I suppose that triggered the flu season. Mum had it a few days before me and my twin sister caught it. It's going to go down the family, and none of us are going to like it. Especially when you're given a medical cert for two days and you've got hardly any fight in you to protest, and only loads of used tissues as ammo. Argh... forget it. I'll just knock out... and sleep. Yeah, sleep sounds good... real good...
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HAPPY NEW YEAR! The Internet's slowly gaining speed. By the end of the first week of 2007, it should be completely back to normal. And that's when school kick starts again - with more than a test waiting for me and assignments to complete. So I would spend my first week of the New Year chowing down on my work. It does take a lot of kick out of the New Year, but with the celebratory feasts going on, it's hard not to forget. So, here's to another year on BZP. A revamp would be underway, I hope. The newbie blogger isn't so newbie anymore. But, as rarely as they appear in my blog posts, I'm tempted to put up one emoticon for this post... just for this one for such an occasion... -<dd>
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Just a quick update as I skip around doing nearly everything that's to be done: Holidays have arrived, as of last Friday. I can't wait for the real holiday spirit to hit, though. I haven't really felt any Christmas vibe around. I've been hurrying back to poly to handle an assignment where studio time is mandatory for a grade. Unfortunately, being the arranger/producer/lyricst of the group had burned me out. I had to pig out on a Japanese hamburger lunch to get some life back into me today. This had to be one of the hardest studio days I faced. The piano and drums went out of sync and repeated tries to mend it met failure. I don't think I can catch a power ballad with what we're doing, but at least a fusion song. And that's still something. Monsoon season has arrived. News of floods keep popping out, especially of the florist area near my home which (most unfortunately) was on low-lying area. I saw Christmas trees floating into the backs of trucks and cars, guided by the workmen of the shops. Orchids and flowers that survived were quickly moved out, but some were really gone. The floods were also bad to the traffic - a cab ran a little too far ahead in the aforementioned florist area and got stuck in the drain canal! I also noticed fishermen flocking to flooded areas and catching carp and other kinds of fish. Talk about taking an opportunity. Sound crew work is still going on. It seems to me that the other guy has all but dropped himself out. I'm the only one behind the mixer now, if you don't count the commentator. DJ Club is finally in full swing, and today I touched the black shiny record. I was surprised to find that you have to touch the disc lightly to move the heavy turntable. Rubbing and scratching did not start easily for my classmates and I was not going to make a fool of myself on my first time on the set. I took mental note of all errors and good points made by my classmates but after a very short time of experimenting, I did not kill 50 Cent as badly as my classmates did. However, the teacher made it a note that we should not go too fast with learning and the sets - he must have known that I was too eager. That's it for now. *pop*
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As I looked into the window of the building, I watched a group of five boys smiling and laughing, watching the television screen that showed a game of Counterstrike in progress. One would have easily mistaken them easily as normal kids. However, I was in the Assisi home, looking through the window of the children’s playroom. Those boys had cancer. Returning from my walk in the quaint garden the day care sported, I sat down beside my grandmother and her friends, watching a variety show about old folks singing karaoke and mainly sitting back to enjoy what enjoyment they could receive from the lady croaking on the screen. The Assisi home was having a dinner and dance to celebrate the lighting of the Christmas lights. Neither of my sisters were able (or did not have the interest) to look after my grandma, so I offered to do so. The Assisi home was a single-storied open-air building, with only sections of the building sectioned off with air-conditioning. The television at the front proved to be the item of most interest and entertainment value of the old folk. I, however, took no interest of the crazy Chinese drama of scheming men and uncaring women and instead took to my laptop. It seems that my state of writing torpor was starting to change for the better. I could write this blog post. I added a little more to the draft of the epic chapter in mind. It’s still hard to chew out much. Once I get this brain-freeze done and over with, I’m re-writing that epic chapter. There are volunteers who come to visit the old folk, and they’re really nice people. One gave my grandmother a hi-five as she passed by, another had a nice long chat with my grandmother and her friend – and she was a tai-tai. The area here is buzzing with activity, volunteers and helpers going past the sitting area with boxes, or food stuff (due to the evening activity) and the occasional volunteer, while the old folks relaxed in plush leather chairs to watch the telly. After a while of chewing on my epic chapter, I decided to see what the children area was like. I walked in – and was promptly told to leave by a volunteer in there. Well, not in a harsh manner but politely enough. She explained to me that the cancer children could react to certain germs and things people could bring in, so they try to live in as sterile an environment as possible. So I peeked in from the window once more, this time observing what they had from afar. They had bulky desktops on the desk tops, and I found two Xbox consoles, with some games by the side which I could not identify. These unfortunate people were living lives which they know that may not last long. The children live from day to day, but they don't really know or care about the illness that plague them. They still walk, talk, laugh and cheer each day. But, from a normal person's point of view, it's bittersweet to see all the luxuries and goodwill gifts laid out this Christmas, for them. It may be their last, for all anyone knew. Returning from the second trip out, I was in time to notice the elderly preparing to move out, a volunteer guiding my grandmother. But I was not letting any volunteer look after my grandmother tonight. It was my duty to do so. Thanking her and her bronze afro, I let my grandmother take hold of my arm and led her outside to the front lawn.
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Somehow, someway, I had no idea how it happened but I was dragooned into being part of a two-man audio crew for my church’s dance ministry, which was presenting three dance items. Part of the reason was that my little sister was one of the dancers, and the other part was that I was educated in this field while the rest had to adjust to it and were stuck with boundaries they were not comfortable with. I was worried that I was stuck with some old stickler who would want his way and not listen to me. The church ministries were more popular with the older generation, the youths preferring to gather with their own kind. Save us two oddballs and a few others who have joined this Christmas production. It turned out that my partner was a dude with black, grey and white hair (in his forties I bet). We greeted and he went right on to explaining what the mixers were and what was connected to where. I, however, stepped in and calmly set up the system to work. After getting to know each other better and on terms with how we worked, we proceeded with the full dress run-through. The choreographer had done well with the song selection, picking contrasting pieces for the three different dances. At the mixers, we started the song and the dancers leaped into action – literally. The dancers had the challenge to leap and power their way from the doors of the sanctuary to the altar, a far distance that was definitely more than a stone’s throw. They managed to do it, though. Lil’ sis whined about sore muscles all the way home. I discovered, two songs later, that the CD player (or more likely CD burner) was not cut out for the job of playing the CD. We booted up the laptop and used that to play the CD. We were finally toggling tracks, unlike the burner which could not. I’m not joking that the songs were great. In fact, I found myself singing along at some point in time, but I was doing more ad lib than singing the actual words. The middle-aged flag bearers turned around and one piped up, "You’ve got a nice voice!" I remained quiet for the rest of the practice. A few more practices would occur before the first doom’s day performance day at another church which is holding an en masse performance, and the city shopping hub. I can’t wait, but I’m not really a part of this thing! Ah well, I’ll just have to see what happens.
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Some plague had hit the shores of my sunny little island. Somehow, by some unforseen reason, a flu bug is roaming the island and claiming many as its victims. I happened to be one unfortunate soul of the batch, along with at least five other classmates and my lecturers, and a couple of others too. I passed it on to my buddy, and just today three more victims were down with sneezes. What’s more, I have been assigned to be a leader of a group this week – THRICE. I was chosen as the group leader of my DJ sub-group, conveniently grouped as all the girl members of the club. The feminine attendance is a small eight compared to the thirty-odd masculine members. I was chosen as the group leader of my Debate module group. A presentation is due tomorrow and my throat’s nearly gone. What’s worse, I’m in a group of one girl and three boys and the three dudes assume that I have everything for the argument planned and thought out, so all they have to do is to follow my orders. Even if it’s a members-bully-the-leader scenario, it benefits me to ‘use’ them in case my voice gives way, and I can monitor everything they’re putting up and saying and have greater control. It’s much better than sticking me with members who would put up a power struggle. I was chosen as group member, for the last time, for a science presentation about vocal production and it’s due tomorrow. Thank goodness the group’s small, consisting of my buddy Kath, a dude called Raymond with a good head on his shoulders and me. We’re going to attempt a Magic School Bus © style ‘trip’ through the throat and vocal chords. I am going to be Miss Frizzle! And it seems that I’m the only one who has finished both presentations, and my groups. Word has it that the others are stuck in power struggles or laziness, so they’re waiting for the worst. You wouldn’t catch me doing that though, savvy? I care for my marks too much. My illness has been fluctuating like a mad ticker since the doctor’s Medical Cert. It was making me hack for an hour, not hack the next and return to my hacking spree the next. I hope it doesn’t go worse. My appetite went bust and had to eat a sugar toast (toast with butter and sugar) for dinner. Grandmother made it for me, with Grandfather’s butter! She really challenged the head of the house, but the dragon lady is never easily fazed. All right, I have to knock out. Or else, tomorrow… well, I hope it doesn’t happen.
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After my saxophone lesson, I went to the adjoining music store to tinker on the keyboards and the electone on display. Why? Refer to my previous post. After the emotional letdown from the exam, I wanted to get some confidence back. The way to do that, as I found out, was to improvise freely or to play songs that I was comfortable playing with, like an icebreaker. When I turned on the large musical machine and struck a note, to hear a rich sound of strings as the default preset sound, I felt familiarity sit into me and it calmed me greatly. Before long, I had switched the electone to an entirely different selection of sounds and was doing a rendition of ‘Wonderful Tonight’ with ease. From the corner of my eye, I could pick out people watching me play. A little boy watched me and listened to my rendition of the famous theme from ‘Smoke on Water’, and insisted to his mum outside the store that he wanted to stay a little longer. "Wha… Not bad, not bad!" As I ended my song, that Mandarin comment came from my left. I glanced to see a – tai-tai? Tai-tai, in Singlish, essentially means ‘a rich wife who does not have to work and can play all day with her other tai-tai buddies, attend dinners and parties, and…’ I think you get the gist. "Eh, can I ask you a question?" I let her go on, taking in the sparkling baby blue eye-shadow that matched her equally blue sweater, and the golden necklace that dangled down from her neck. She propped her large bag on her raised knee (which was really un-‘tai-tai’ like) and took out a large book. Pieces clicked together and I nearly fled until she drew out a slip of paper from the book and stowed the large and frightful thing away. "I see you can do the ‘boom-cha-cha’ with your foot and hand. Can you show me how to do that for this song?" A few new puzzle pieces came along and fitted themselves in. I just found out the new hip-and-happening activity for the bored tai-tai. Taking up a music instrument. I agreed to help her, and let her sit next to me on the bench while I gave her piece a read-through. A piano score for an electone student? Queer. As I warmed up and played it a round, the lady was watching with interest but soon flipped out her hand-phone and rang someone up. I thought I was playing like a fool for her entertainment. Then again, were all ‘tai-tai’s terrible? I don’t think so. So, when a second tai-tai, this one in gold and brown and her afro-like hair bouncing as she came up next to me so I was sandwiched between the two rich ladies and the two of them talked most animatedly that one had found a girl who could teach them how to play that song they liked, it was reasonable to guess that the lady in gold was the lady in blue’s good friend. I explained everything in broken Mandarin, but they understood. Demonstration helped greatly, but it did draw a bit more attention than I expected. As a breather, lady in blue told me that her daughter could play the piano and she held a diploma in it. But, piano being an absolutely popular child instrument and parent-attraction (I remember being paired up with the piano and hating it), it was little wonder. I knew many parents who brag of children with that diploma at the age of fourteen, maybe thirteen, and know a few of those in my course and here was another. Back to the story. They then asked me how long I played the electone for. I started from Primary Five and did my exams dutifully till this year, roughing it out to seven years. They thought I had a lot of experience in the field, especially when I’m a youth and they were in their thirties or forties. I hastily disagreed, and they were laughing as one started up the electone next to the one I occupied. "Hey, can you teach us or not?" I felt a snag coming in. Lady in gold supported lady in blue’s suggestion immediately, saying that in the adults electone class, the teacher was going too fast for them to catch up and they were lost in the accompaniment of hand and foot. I nearly choked. "Where do you live, ah?" Deciding that safety came first, I gave a very vague location that was still far from home. "Eh, my house near yours leh! You can come and teach us!" Hurriedly, I sought a solution and found one quite easily, and it was not a fib. I told them that I had a lot of work to do from school so I was bogged down on my free time. "No lah, can teach here Saturday morning, what!" The next reason came out quite easily. I spent my Saturday mornings at saxophone class. The ladies were far from done. "Try lah! We will pay you and you can help us!" That was tempting, considering their wealth, but I had to decline. And worst comes to worst, you have to pull out the trump card. "I can’t, I would need my mother’s permission and I honestly don’t think I have the free time." The ladies stopped pushing me after that, but before they could ask for my number, they packed up their bags and hurried off to the studios for their electone class. For some odd reason, I really didn’t know why, I was chuckling. To myself or to the awkward situation that had breezed past me just now, I couldn’t tell. (I discovered that M-Word doesn't help you deal with grammar errors at all, no matter how you configure the settings here and there. Argh!)
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The electone exam was a disaster in the making. If there was any time Murphy’s Law could have kicked in, it was in the exam. It always happened to me, every time I step into the exam room, I get a nervous breakdown of some sort. Old mistakes disappeared, but new mistakes would occur. Scales that were perfect would fumble to a halt. Sight-reading, it was a mess from the start and would still be. It was exacerbated when the sight-reading score was hand-written with fat notes that I could not decipher clearly. I was playing halfway when the score was removed from my sight. Aural test, however, never failed me. I hope that would raise my score a lot. I would not lie to say that I felt so… emo… after that. I told myself many times that I would not freak out, I could not let myself freak out as I did two grades back and nearly scraped by. I told myself, I was determined to do something good with my seventh grade. I freaked out. Gawsh, why did I even freak out in the first place? I have been trying to console myself after that episode. Chocolate ice cream helped a lot, and a nap proved to be a better treatment. I felt less bitter when I wake up. My mother, who accompanied me to the exam centre and heard me play, said that she was certain that I would pass. She could not hear any slips. That was true: I covered up my mistakes by not going back on them and playing on, and she was not reading the scores. Well, what else could I do now? “It could have been better... and it could have been worse.” Listening to: Grandma's Cantonese Opera playing in the background
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Listening to: Dave Grusin – Peter Gunn Theme Well, I feel the brain juice coming back, but how I got it back is some story. Today, I wasn’t feeling so jolly, but at school that promised to change. I started every morning in the school canteen, laptop booted up and running amok in BZPower, FanFiction, and the sort. Well, I turned my morning tune to Enya tracks, lulling and ambient mood music selected to start my day on a positive note, then turned up some ‘good feeling’ pop. To this writer, music is part of her fuel, other than imagination and a good deal of thinking and in-brain movie screenings. So, when this girl realized that the lesson for today involved listening to a lot of music, good music as it was the lecturer’s personal collection of music, she was over the moon. And when Henry Mancini came on with his Peter Gunn Theme, with a really sweet piano playing and a bass-and-saxophone ad lib that rocked my socks off, well, I was trying not to hop out of my seat. Everyone agreed that Henry Mancini rocked. After that was the lunch break, and when I returned to the lab ahead of my buddy I found techno music thumping out of the bass-boosted and superior quality speakers in the lab. I was not the only one partying. Three girls from our class caught the drift, turned down the lights, used the rainbow-coloured screensavers of the Macs around us as strobe lights, and we bounced up and down for short periods of time before breaking down in laughter. The DMAT girls were going mad. When the lecturer returned, he blinked at us as we promptly halted mid-hop. The rest of the class poured in, eyes blinking at the four girls in the middle of the lab, but it quickly dissipated as the lecturer told us the next activity of the day. We went to the studios (remember the pictures? They’re a page back) to learn about editing in a new software system. Both lecturers had a knack of choosing songs. The first song was commented by my witty lecturer as a song of tears. Why? The lyrics’ most distinctive line was ‘Baby, please don’t cry’. And it was in Chinese. How my Thai-Portuguese lecturer figured out those words was all right, but if he knew how it was supposed to be portrayed, he would’ve known why most of us collapsed onto the floor in giggling fits. The second song he chose was even more hilarious. It was a recording of a fellow student, who was singing this in Chinese: ‘Who said that I don’t have a girlfriend? Who said that I don’t have a boyfriend? Who said that I don’t have a girlfriend? Oh yeah, uh-uh, it’s you!’ And someone took the liberty of recording over the words with his own rendition, in English: ‘I feel like eating ice-cream Because I feel like eating ice-cream But right now I am fasting. So I cannot eat my ice-cream!’ None of us had a poker-straight face. There was a lecture coming up next so everyone headed off for their lunch – save I. I was about to leave when I heard heavy metal blaring out of the next door studio’s control room, through the padded walls and doors. I had to check out who was in there. Madcap Joanne and her pal, Wan Yi were rocking away to someone’s song project and that person had made a rough and bleeding heavy metal (and two of the three madwomen who partied with me earlier on. Third one was Rain.) However, I was able to tolerate this onslaught of intensity. It sounded muffled to me, and it was at least a bit harmonious. In the adjoining room were three of the boys trying out the drums. I noticed, somehow, that when one of them was smacking the drum set, it was in time and the same drum piece with the song. Joanne noticed as well, and she piped up about her find – well enough that the other side heard it. All glanced up to see, and we three hid from view. The next studio was occupied as well, and it turned out to be fellow friend Grace teaching two of my classmates Joshua and Chloe how to play the drums. The grand piano was all for the taking. So I sat down, and started to tinker a little. Hey, with electone exams just eight days away, I want to touch and play the black and whites a lot more now. When I looked up, ‘a little’ had turned into a ‘long while’, and Mandric the ace pianist had come into the room. He and Grace seemed to have agreed to a jam session, and it seems, by the way Mandric was looking at me, that I’ve been invited to jam with two of the best players in town. I honestly felt like walking out, but the two of them started before I could say a word. I was obliged, but it did not feel… comfortable with me. I did not know how to jam for nuts, for I didn’t know what key Mandric was jamming on the keyboard and Grace was going at an incredible speed. Figuring out that the first key was a G major, I played something that made the entire jazz feel simmer away into a happy euro dance item, and it just sounded strange to me. Neither of them was complaining. That was good. Then Mandric changed the tune to a blues shuffle, and I tried to keep up. He was randomly tapping keys on the ebony and ivory, I could not figure out just what he was doing, and I was already smashing the grand piano. I know it’s a sin to envy, but I envied Mandric and Grace for their skills at their instrument. They seem to have their timing and their skill naturally, while I struggled to sit into the jam without falling out of sync. But he looked over to check, and highlighted to me that he was playing a blues key I did not know, and showed me the notes. I learnt something new today. When I got a hang of it, he struck a note and Grace did a drum roll, and I gingerly tapped a few keys on the ivory. With a little daring, I played a trill, and it grew in span much to my delight. For an hour, we three jammed. I jammed. I finally was able to jam. When the lecturer popped into the studio and called us back, I was the first one out. Even if I was finally able to jam, I was not confident about my skill at it yet. I was always a solitary player, and felt more comfortable being one. And all these happenings got my brain juice flowing back into my head. Add in the fact that I was able to blog about this entire day too. I’m glad to say that I’m content.
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The test is over, and I am glad to say that I over-burned my brain studying but held my head and brain upon my shoulders to do the paper. However, due to the test, the following classes for that subject were cancelled for the week to let the lecturer mark the papers. That subject would have taken up most of our time for today's lessons. It was a void of at least seven hours now. It was more than I could ask for. I needed it to complete the big REMT and MIDI assignments. Cubase, the Virtual Studio Technology programme I was supposed to use for both assignments, was only accessible in school, and I needed all the time I could get to work on my projects. Once I hit the computer labs, I sat down to work. Maybe I should deviate to telling you all what the average computer station is for the DMAT student. It is a Mac. Yep, a Mac. The latest one, the Mac OS X. Connected to it via an USB cable is a keyboard, but technically, it is a note-input controller. It has a pitch bend, modulation, and volume controls, that mainly for technical work. I sat down at the computer, booted up the Mac, opened up my file, and tackled the assignment. After five minutes of staring at the computer, I realised that I was in deep trouble. I had a mental block. I did not panic. I did not throw my arms up in the air in frustration. I realise now that I could have done those and receive a little assistance from fellow classmates who slaved at theirs and got somewhere. I, on the other hand, was stuck at creating a percussion instrument, and trying to figure out a composition, but neither was done. What a bummer. Moreover, I was only into my first hour of seven. When it came to lunchtime, all that I did was to play the keyboard with the installed synthesizer, trying my best to wheedle a little sliver of inspiration from my mind into my fingers. You could guess that the effort was fruitless. As time slowly moved, I sat and thought for a good long bit. How was I going to overcome this sudden block in the mind? Three hours later, I was still sitting at the computer, absent-mindedly tapping a key. When the fourth hour passed, I was close to giving up. My fingers still on the keyboard, I let my fingers tap whatever key they were resting upon. Strangely enough, there was a short melody played. I tried again. I realised that I finally had a piece of inspiration to work on! I immediately triggered the ‘Record’ button and began to play. D major, nothing fancy, just a simple chord progression. I was happy. I was finally getting somewhere. When I had that in, I looked at the screen and thought again. The block returned. Unfortunately, it adhered itself firmly into my head, and there it remained all the way until the last hour. At least I had something in my assignment. Something small, probably five seconds worth to add to a three-minute ambient instrumental. As I packed up for the next class, my new friend Serene approached me with the offer to work together tomorrow on the same assignments. I took the offer immediately.
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To make myself feel good about today: T: +4, -5 Things: REMT (Recording, Editing and Mixing Techniques) = DONE MIDI (MIDI and Synthesis) = DONE EIC (Effective Interpersonal Communication) = DONE MUST (Music Theory) = 1/4 done ET (Ear Training) = DONE ACTS (Acoustical Science) = yet to start studying CRS (Critical Reasoning Skills) = DONE SS3 Entry (You should know what this means!) = An idea blooms. Electone Exams Practice = Sight-reading is still down the drain. If you did a fair juxtaposition between yesterday's entry and today's, nothing much changed, except that REMT is out of the way. Eh, don't get me wrong. I did good things today - helping others in the studio. I'm proud to say that I can wield that large control interface fairly well. Others panic and seek the lecturer's advice, or more likely go on a wild chase through the school block looking for one person. Maybe that's why I've been 'hired' by three classmates, (three aspiring, talented in a 'way-more-talented-than-I' way and creatively-inclined) to do their live recordings for them. I just realised that, ya know. I'm no bragger... I promise you guys (and myself) pictures of what I spent at least four hours in today, and the acclaimed Land of Frost and Pain a few entries ago. And now, I realise that for some odd reason, a couple of my classmates have been approaching me with questions and asking about my progress. In fact, for the three days that E-learning has plagued me with, I have a classmate who messages me and asks me questions each consecutive day without fail. My good buddy is doing the same, but she's been at it longer than the former has, so that's fine. And now, three others have approached me. I don't have the words 'TUTOR' imprinted in bold and underlined on my forehead, but this is a little... scary. Tomorrow, I've been 'hired' to do one more recording session, for a really talented classmate, and a few minutes ago I've stuck myself with a promise to help a fellow classmate to find a way through a tough spot in one of the e-learning assignments, as well as to supervise her recording session. The former classmate also asked me to help him with a few questions. I'm not popular. I'm an impromptu e-learning tutor and producer! (I should start asking for fees!) Tomorrow, my brain will FRY. So off to bed I go, or else I'll cover my head in oil and hear the sizzle. Dare ye look at my random and mediocre spriting skills?
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So the count goes... T: +3, -6 Things: REMT (Recording, Editing and Mixing Techniques) = 3/4 done MIDI (MIDI and Synthesis) = DONE EIC (Effective Interpersonal Communication) = DONE MUST (Music Theory) = 1/8 done ET (Ear Training) = DONE ACTS (Acoustical Science) = yet to start CRS (Critical Reasoning Skills) = DONE SS3 Entry (You should know what this means!) = An idea blooms. Electone Exams Practice = Sight-reading is down the drain. There's PROGRESS! And... *points at MUST* Then again, there's de-progress. Today, a bombload for that topic was released. A new task was given to us, one of epic proportions. We have to do COMPUTERIZED NOTATION! Clicking in notes... one... by... one... And what's the song they've chosen for us to work on? HAPPY BIRTHDAY! (In F Major) And did ya know it's copyrighted? Meh-seh-heh... I don't care if I don't use emoticons in my posts, but I'll put up one... one specific one that reflects my mood perfectly.
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Recently, I've been given a whole lot more responsibilities, tasks and the sort. A lot more than I bargained for, really. I'm now part of a Student Portal Conceptual Design committee in the polytechnic, or the school in the polytechnic. I don't know how the teachers picked me to represent DMAT, but here I am. The Creative Writer's Club gave me a bit of news: It's not really a club, it's really an informal gathering - for now. Decisions are being made whether it would be a club or not. It seems that I may be put into a position. Next E-Learning week, I'm returning to school - twice - to see to studio recordings. Today, I did the same. Andre wanted to record his vocals for his REMT assignment song and Cheryl was using a short period of time before that for her own vocals. I had hopped in after lunch as Andre sought my help, and ended up helping both Cheryl and Andre. All the way through Andre's session, I was wracked with pain. Abdominal cramps had plagued me all day, and it was in that period of time when I faced the brunt of the pain. It was so bad that, when the rest of the gatherers (people popped in to watch Andre and me work. Serene and Rain, and her boyfriend, and there was Raymond and Teck Hui and Grace...) had moved into the recording studio, I knelt on the floor in the control room, hiding behind a chair, trying my best not to grimace and groan. I don't want to be mistaken as a martyr. I tried my best not to complain, I just stated that I was in discomfort and that was that. It annoyed the life out of me, though. And did I tell you that the room was cold? I had to step outside for a breather. Two seniors were at a bench nearby, talking. When they saw me emerge, one of them quipped, "Cold, right?" "Too cold," I replied. Withstanding at least three hours in the control room, I helped Andre deal with the majority of his recordings. Rain offered to take over, seeing that I was in discomfort and that she said that her practical skills were bad and she needed to exercise them. I thought, for a moment, that Andre's work would be in jeopardy. But, then again, there were others around to watch her work so they should be able to help her. I agreed and packed up. Before I could step out of the room, Rain kicked the sound card offline. We hurried to save Andre's work and try to save the sound card. I'm glad to tell you that the expensive piece of equipment is still functioning, as Teck Hui assisted Andre in doing a final pass after my departure and there they called it a day. Electone exam's this month. 29th. I talked with my tutor today and she told me that I would have to drill. And drill. And drill. And drill. It will take stamina, and a lot of sugar and guts, to do just that. I will accomplish that. By hook or by crook. I'm helping my tutor, who's also a church friend, with a task. A volunteer trip is going to Chiang Mai, Thailand, this December to celebrate Christmas with some of the locals at a preaching point. Three songs are lined up and the only instruments they had was a keyboard and an acoustic guitar. Good news was, I have a software that can give them what they lacked : drums, bass, possibly another accompaniment instrument and spizzazz to their songs. So, I'm enlisting myself to give these people, more unfortunate than me, a chance to celebrate in song. I will help create accompaniment tracks for three songs and give them a CD to play along with. Not only am I helping others, I'm putting my lessons into practice and my skills to the test. That's it for now. I'm kinda tired now, though a little spurt of inspiration helped me to work on 'Autumn Leaves' a little more, and update my Transformers fanfiction. Good night.
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Think about this: What if you were told not to go to school? No lessons on campus, no practical, none whatsoever in school? Instead, you are given a whole chunk of assignments and told to do them online? How about doing that for a week? (And the week after that, back to school you go!) That’s what I rooted at home to do for this week. E-learning week is what this week has been termed as. It’s going to be so boring. The tasks and assignments given aren’t as much as the previous E-learning week, but they aren’t as easy. They’re tougher. Keep an eye on this spot, people, and see me do daily reports on the E-learning Special! (Nyeh. I’m not joking about the ‘boring’ bit. I intend not to suffer from a bout of boredom and mess around when I should be doing my work. Personal incentive, if you may.) So, let’s put up a count. Here’s the first report: T: +2, -7 Things: REMT (Recording, Editing and Mixing Techniques) = ¼ done MIDI (MIDI and Synthesis) = DONE EIC (Effective Interpersonal Communication) = about ⅓ done MUST (Music Theory) = ½ done ET (Ear Training) = DONE ACTS (Acoustical Science) = yet to start CRS (Critical Reasoning Skills) = ½ done SS3 Entry (You should know what this means!) = yet to start Electone Exams Practice = yet to start And onto the next leg! Here we go!
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I thought my mother would take a second go at mauling me for coming home late. I glanced at my watch and realised that it was fifteen minutes past five. The little meeting going on around me did not seem close to any conclusion. That meant that I'd reach home at around... seven, if the meeting would drag on. For the Writer's Club meeting today, held at thirty past three, there were only three people who attended it: Pradhu, the other writer with the same writing style as I, Ms Chng but we all call her Suan, ('suan' can mean 'sour' in Chinese, though) who's the lecturer-leader of this club and yours truly. I was happy that the meeting group was smaller, but the attendance was appalling none the less. We reviewed each of our own works, each that had been submitted at the last meeting. 'Autumn Leaves' went through the critique and now I'm working on it, on a new and improved version. I'm happy for that. I realised a new fact about stories through that meeting: More often than not, there would be an issue present in the story, one that has to do with society, characters (or people, as some characters can be alien), or things about life. 'Autumn Leaves', once edited, will carry such a message. I got to know Pradhu better. He was a Year Three Maritime student, the kind that won't sail and work in the office, and Year Three was the final year for most courses. It's kinda unfair that the good writers in our club, the ones whom I really like, are in Year Three and will be leaving after the term's done. That may make me 'the best' (but I don't want to brag) but I don't know what'll happen to the club once they leave. I'll be awfully lonely. Might as well make friends when I can, and I'm happy that I got a new friend today. En route to the MRT station, I ran into classmate Zoë. Pradhu was taking another train so we parted and I stuck with Zoë who was taking the same train as I. As we chatted, the topics ran along wild tangents, breaking off from subject to subject. We covered our interests and animal favourites, and I found grounds of similarity between her and me. My ride home was no longer so boring. I was happy. Once I got to my station, the afternoon thunderstorm had ceased and I was able to take out the chocolate bar I acquired from Suan because of my dutiful attendance. A sweet reward well-savoured. Coming out of the MRT, I realised that it was just fifteen past six. So I was getting home before the curfew! That made me really happy. The chocolate bar snapped but I caught the loose chunk before I lost it to the ground. I contented myself with that chunk, tucking the wrapped-up bar into my pocket for later. Nibble nibble nibble. As I walked on home, I left the main road to turn into the lane that leads to my little house at the bottom of the hill. I loved walking home and rarely take lifts from my friend (but I do when I end classes late), where the little lane was often empty of other human life, save the occasional dog-walker and dog, so I pretty much get to be Queen of the Road for a bit. Strolling down the lane, I was able to appreciate the beauty of silence, until I started singing to myself for the sake of it (and to practise my Ear Training. Yes, that’s what I do in school, every Monday.) And I was glad that I was missing out big time on possible public embarrassment. The chocolate chunk in my hand had started to melt, and when the last of the chocolate was downed my fingertips were slicked with a coat of sweet chocolate. I sucked them clean on the home stretch, and that kept me entertained till I reached home. Grandma may have a fit about having chocolate before dinner, but I really didn’t care. I was happy.
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I'm glad I didn't chicken out of the DJ Club. Today was its first workshop where we finally start learning what's in a mix and what's with the get-up of turntables and mixers. It was scheduled at 5:45pm, and the last school class ended early at 11am. Taking my liberties, I had lunch at the most popular food court the school had to offer. I missed the crowd and I'm glad I did. The place was packed, packed when I finished. Allowing my pal to leave first, I tried to do some homework but the table conjoined with mine had a group of boys who had friends tagging along for a seat. I was sitting at a six-pax table alone, so I packed and left. Not a single 'thank you', but at least they noticed that I was kind enough. Heard them chat about a girl giving up her place, territory, or something. I had an event to see to: my good friend's junior college open house. I wanted to give her the support she needed: she was one of a very small handful of girls who went from my secondary school to that particular education institute. She had few friends, so she was more or less a loner. She tried mixing in, but not to much avail. So, imagine her surprise when she saw me coming. Unannounced, uninvited, unexpected. She was beyond ecstacy. She squealed even louder when she noticed the shirt I was wearing: a printed black tee of a snarling and prowling tiger, orange in front and white at the back. She loves tigers. I love their attitude. Rawr! We chatted and she led me on a personal tour throughout the junior college. It's a big event. See, this is the day the school opens to the public, especially to future students. They go in and see all the exhibits, chat with the students, basically trying to figure out what the junior college (JC)'s lifestyle is like, if they're suited for the JC life and learning system and if they'd like to join. Part of the open house's program was a mass dance that the students learnt upon their orientation. It was a simple, yet hilarious and fun dance to Jennifer Lopez's 'Let's Get Loud!' and I watched my friend enjoy herself with a good friend she found. We sat and we chatted. There was not so much to chat about; I am regularly updated of her doings via MSN Messenger but the up-front meeting after a long while was great. We didn't talk much, but it was enough to know that each other was coping well whereever she was. I took a look at her artwork at the art exhibition, a study of the human eye and soul, before leaving. I made it back to the polytechnic in time, a little too early for the club meeting. I loitered and tried to browse the food court for a snack for I was ravenous. I couldn't get a snack at all, as a call came and I had to run off. The DJ club meeting was held in a new block in the polytechnic, built specially for the arts and media-related CCAs, I believe. We have it good. We have a top DJ in Singapore, a real nice guy by the moniker of DJ Rattle, hip hop dude and all. He was very open and friendly, but still commanded his respect. We gave it, and it's nice to know you have a new big buddy. The lesson was basic, but he expects us to do homework: Look up many DJs from around the globe and see what they do. I've a few names to check out, some I heard and some I haven't heard: Q-bert, Milk, Grand Master Flash, Cash Master, JazzyJeff among some. The rest I can't remember. When I checked my watch, I was startled. The entire meeting had stretched from an expected two hour see-and-do to a four-hour submerging session. I was tired and hungry but I didn't complain. But my parents did. Dad was upset, apparently, when I finally checked my handphone. There was a lovely accumulation of messages asking where I was. (For your information, I got a nice telling-off from Mother, nothing dramatic, just a few words and off. Yes, I learnt my lesson. Seven's the curfew, and after that is the notification alarm period.) I all but sprinted for the taxi stand. Mother's orders were to take a cab home. I was in no position to oppose that. The cab came quite quickly, and the driver asked me to direct him to my house. I agreed. It was no more than three minutes that the cabby popped the question, "How come school end so late?" It was 9:45pm when I caught the cab. "CCA," was all I could reply. It started off a nice conversation that diverted from topic to topic: he was an ex-student of the same polytechnic I took (and that was because it was the ONLY poly back then) and taxi-driving was a hobby and part time job for him, that became his job in the end. We talked about the courses we took. When he heard that I did a music course, he immediately told me of his daughter. Blind, but pitch perfect and doing her performance diploma and furthering her studies into the performance degree. It was heartwarming to hear that, just what I needed to get my mind off the dilemna I was in. And it turned out that the driver had a bit of music in him too, but he sacrificed his own course to support his daughter. What a lovely father. Then again, his musician father was a strict teacher and he feared music till he took up music classes elsewhere. Maybe he wanted a break from it to get a proper job, even if I'm not supposed to jeopardize my future by saying such nonsense. When we reached my home, it was 10pm, but the talk with the cab driver was enlightening, if it had not already made the day a little better. I did not mind the $8.60 fare at all either. Well, that's it for the day. Busy day. At least tomorrow's a public holiday so I can sleep in. Time check: 12 midnight.
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Most of the members here have an active role of some society made by the school, or at least supervised by the school or the community, which sounds interesting and fun. I don't mind the Scouts tales, and manga clubs, music clubs (oh, they're the most interesting). I would not be lying that I am turning a bit green. With envy, not sickness. I'm in a bit of a limbo right now, considering my co curricular activity to participate in during my time as a polytechnic student. I had, at first, shown great interest in a new kid on the CCA (Co Curricular Activity) block: The DJ Club. No, it's not radio DJing, but music DJing. Scratching vinyl hip-hop and beat-juggling and making the infamous playlists that grow as tall as you do, that sort of stuff. I'm wondering if I made a smart choice. The pending period for the people is still on. The top DJ (or, arguably the top DJ) of the country's the trainer, it's a new skill that many teenagers who are into hip-hop or dance music (like me) would covet for. I already made some friends. I'm wowed by the future teacher's skills. I can catch the rhythm and beat, can count my beats too, am not tone-deaf, and also pride myself with a good pair of hands. What's more, since the club is new, they're skill-searching for future committee members, and strangely enough I'm labelled as a favourite. I don't see why I can't join. The catch: I'm plunging head-first into a rough world, where the music can be harsh and blaring to my ears which I need for a future job as a recording producer, and the politics of DJ circles another good point I have to consider. I wonder if I'm plunging into this on a whim. If I turn around one day and say that DJing is not for me, I would have made a regrettable choice. So, if I don't join the DJs Club, where do I go? The Creative Writing Workshop which I lamented about has turned into a Creative Writing Club, a CCA. It's the perfect place to sharpen my brain and writing skills, not to mention that it'll give my fanfiction a well-needed boost. Interest-wise, I have a higher interest in writing than in DJing. It's a whole lot calmer and quieter too! I can live off dance music by composing my own, anyway. I've made some friends from the Creative Writing Workshop too. I'm establishing myself to be one of the more experienced writers there (THANK YOU BZP!) and I'm giving the lecturer-in-charge the run for her money by asking her for tips, tricks and the what-not in moulding and sculpting my writing style. I don't think I'll go to the ranks of Tolkien or ToM Dracone or Tuan Taureo, Jack London or Janus, Hahli Husky, Schizo Kaita, and other members of the Elite Writers' Club, (No, that club doesn't exist. The writers do. Oh yes they do.) but I'd like to be somewhere there. Also, the polytechnic has a certain 'extra-activity' which is to get student ambassadors for the school to 'advertise' their courses and facilities to future students. Etiquette, public speaking and capturing the youth's attention are a few of the skills to be learned from the experience, and it'll look good on my resumé! Well, maybe this post has finally sorted out my thoughts properly. Glad to have written it. Now all I gotta do is to find my lecturers and tell them my plans. I'm not going for the DJ Club anymore, but the Creative Writing Club and Student Ambassador are on my list. BUT, I'm still not sure... I'm still not sure... Now, to find a place where I can put up a podcast...
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The Giving The Yukta: a race discovered by the explorers of the Twenty-first century, yet its ancestry dating back to the Hundreds. Better known as the Race of Discoloured Eyes due to their diet of raw seal meat (but that is under speculation), they dwell within the Arctic Circle, the land of the Final Frontier where hardly anyone survived, and were believed to be part of the recognised Inuit’s gene pool. However, the tough race of ice people was slowly dying off, their numbers ebbing away due to chill-induced illnesses that preyed upon them mercilessly. They were the People of the Cold. They never discovered heat. That was to change today; I was sure, as I finally noted a gaping hole in the ground, and others like it littered sparsely around it: the homes of the Yukta. The endless plateau of glaring white, with the occasional glacier and ice peak, had been all that surrounded me like an unending sea of frost, doubled with the freezing chill that recalled the heat of the tropical island I left behind as sheer bliss. The sun hid behind the cloud cover, adding to the chill, but blessedly the arctic winds decided not to make their appearance today. Ending my hour’s trudge through the wastelands, I dropped the frost-bitten harness of my human sled, carrying my worldly goods. The sound of metal falling onto the hard-packed ice was palpable, a sonorous din that ripped the silence. Heads popped up through those holes. Human heads, covered with extremely thick fur coats of tundra animals that were coarsely sewn together. Patches of brown and white surrounded the plump cheeks, tanned brown skin and almond eyes of the people. The eyes were ogling me: the discoloured eyes that gave eerie leers. They had reason to stare: I was a foreigner, an outsider like the few others, others who had discovered their existence in the bleakness, and did not return for eons, leaving them to their fate. It was time to make my introduction of the life-saver to the Yukta. They have missed it for far too long. I grabbed the sled harness once more and lugged it closer to the dwellings’ entrances. The women started chattering – literally gnashing their jaws together and adding in clicks and simple vocal sounds into their vernacular, something that I still have not deciphered. Some of the men gave me a frown – what was that foreign woman doing? I dropped the harness once more and dug through the haversack bounded to the sled, chilled fumbling hands retrieving some seal blubber and dried skin from a scavenge and a broad flat slate I found midst the tundra vegetation at the scientist village I left this morning, along with two rough stones. All eyes were on me as I laid the slate on the floor, the seal blubber and dried skin on top like the icing on a cake, and kneeled myself to the side of it, allowing the heads to have a good view of the mini pyramid. More chattering rose, a hint of suspicion in them. Now for the magic trick. A stone in each gloved hand, I struck the two rocks together in a quick flick of the wrists, an inch from the seal matter. Sparks flew, and the silence from the Yukta that followed told me I had their interest. The skin started to smoke, and a red glow was present at the edge of the skin. Slowly, that red glow ate the ebony hide, until it touched the gel-like blubber below it. A flame sprouted, and it grew swiftly, from a fingertip’s width to the size of my enormous gloves. I hazarded a glance to the crowd by my sides. There was new chattering, but of surprise. What was that orange and red… thing that sprouted from the seal matter? Why was it growing? Is it real? What did she, that foreign woman with light brown skin and black hair do? Soon, a little bonfire was raging upon the seal fats, and I fed it with more natural fuel. The natives were staring, curious or apprehensive I could not tell. The warmth of the fire rose to my face, and I failed to hold back a smile on my guarded face. I was warned not to show much emotion, but the presence of heat was bliss. Slipping off my stained gloves, I allowed the flames to warm my hands directly. The Yukta continued staring, but they focused upon my hands now, palms outstretched towards the flames, the glow of vermillion upon the pale skin that was slowly turning rosy. In that squat before the flames, I paused. I was hoping upon this chance, the risk that curiosity overtook fear and suspicion, something that I greatly demanded from the Yukta. If they fall back into their holes, all would be lost: my efforts to come to this barren spot in the vast expanse of ice to teach and save a few, but precious few lives. “Kok!” The cry came from my left, and I swivelled upon my feet to see. There was a girl who had clambered out of her ice hole, much to a woman’s dismay, who reached out for her presumed daughter. She was a toddler, barely three I believed. Her large eyes, a hue of grey and black, true to her kinsmen, stared at the red flower. Limp ebon hair peeked from her hood, and her button nose, pout-like lips and her plump face had every inkling of an endearing little girl. The child was stumbling towards the flame, curiosity pouring from her features. Her hands were outstretched towards the bonfire, all caution thrown away. This child did not know that an open flame could burn, I was sure. Hurriedly, I reached for her outstretched hands before she got too close, and she gave a cry as my hands enveloped hers. But this cry was not of pain. The Yukta girl looked at me; her grey and black pupils at my hazel ones, and her face wreathed into a wide grin, and gave a heart-warming chuckle. She felt the warmth of fire, through me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is my second contest entry to the polytechnic's writing competition. I do hope I win. It's one of the rare times I'm taking my writing out of here and the fanfiction world to Reality. I wrote a first, and that I may publish one day. Do note, this was entirely fictuous. The theme of the competition was 'That's Hot', and was aimed at creativity, writing skill, and (for self value-addition) emotion. I can't stand stories that have no emotion. All stories have one, already, but... I'll shrug that off. Read, criticise, enjoy, spread peanut butter over it. I reviewed four long and large epics for the Epic Critics Club, getting rid of all the pending orders so now my critic-self can take a little hiatus. And maybe... just maybe... am I allowed to post a Transformers short story here, or at least a snippet of it? (Question directed at Blog Moderators, actually, but I think anyone can answer it.) To do, to do... I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves...
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“Oh, that one out of stock. Will come in only next week." It was not much to ask people to speak proper English. Ah well. This is, after all, the Little Red Dot. No where in its name did it say it was an English-speaking Red Dot. And the acoustical music textbook would have to wait. With a mumbled word of thanks, I left the store. That was a bummer. Today's classes were only from eight to ten in the morning, and now it was approaching eleven. I had not intended to make the trip but I did, and now I wanted to go home. I would have taken the MRT (Mass-Rapid-Transit. Think ‘subway’ that’s clean, air conditioned and goes aboveground and underground) back. I didn't. I was short on ezlink cash (that’s the form of transport payment), and hard money to top it up. That would mean the bus then. Thank goodness Clementi Bus Interchange had the service bus 166, which brought me right to the front of the little lane that led me home. And I realised that the directions on the BlackBoard on how to get to Clementi Bookstore was very vague. I walked around the HDB town, searching for an NTUC FairPrice supermarket and could not find one. When I found it, I wandered full circle around the building and trailed off to its right and I finally found the store. I was assured that I was going in the right direction when I spied senior Ian with (a girl) a plastic bag from the supermarket. Then I told myself he might be living nearby. The reputable senior made his way past me, chatting with the girl. I daren’t disturb him. Back to the story. Waiting at the station, I was the only one in queue and an old man later stood behind, while an elderly lady stood at the end of the metal railing. It was a long wait. Thirty minutes wait, I'd wager, before the bus came. I had half the mind to throw I was thinking to myself all that while if taking a bus home was a good idea. MRT was a lot faster, I think. Or it could be the same amount of time. And that was all the MRT side of the argument had to hold. The bus was cooler (MRT aircons don't work as well), more likely to find a seat and sit all the way home, and it's MUCH MUCH cheaper too. When the bus came, I did not regret. I found a seat with a large leg space and set my bag next to me on the two-seater chair. There was a fresh cool constant blast of air from above, and the mobile TV in front of me which was showing a sane lady with common sense and a ditzy badly-dressed girl who spoke with such an accent that I felt like taping her mouth shut with duck tape. Both were hosts for the art 'news' programme. Turning my eyes away from the TV screen, I looked outside. The window was large, about half my height, so it gave me a great view of everything that passed the left of the bus. The Red Dot was a green country, and whoever who said that wasn’t lying. Green grass blanketed the hills and undisturbed land where buildings did not stand. This was often along the sides of the roads and the sides of the highway. Many buildings too sported something of a garden and greenery. The bus went past Chinatown, which was prepped up for the mid-autumn festival. A myriad of coloured lanterns swung from the unlit lamp posts, and the moon-cake shops were a flurry of activity with the people buying the sweet delights by the box. I do like them, though I did not like some of the dry and flaky egg yolk fillings some of them had. The shop-houses passed me by, figments of the little heritage my country could hold onto in a time of change and progression. The old often had to go, though some get preserved as national monuments or heritage sites. The shop houses, however, may have a short life. The old buildings were sporting cracks along the sides, something the new paint jobs they had had failed to cover or heal. It also went past one of the universities the country had, and I loved the design and layout of the place. It was split into three buildings, each occupying a section of land and each had a ring of shrubbery that had chrysanthemums, heliconias and I think some purple-leafed sages. The canny thing about the university’s location was that it was on a piece of land that, long time ago, was just a patch of grass in the middle of the road, near the city central area. No one used that big triangle-shaped land. The government, however, decided to change that. They increased the land by a bit, chop it up into three, and placed the buildings there. Good for a country with a lack of land area. The bus passed by at least three malls along the way, with me making a mental note of which. Now I can tell my parents that I’m going to eat out after school and enjoy a movie instead of limiting myself to the mall near my home. And when I got off at my stop, I realised that a good amount of time I would have used to stare lazily at other people’s faces on the train was used to gaze at greenery and percolate. The fifty-minute ride home was worth it. At a cost of twenty-five cents to the gargantuan fine of a dollar fifty for the MRT ride, and I don't have to walk as much and I get a good view of the outside world. I think I'll take the bus home on early days, then.
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Location: School. School with my own laptop so I won't have to worry about teachers (lecturers, if you may) locking down and banning the site. I'm in a polytechnic. Gone past ten years of the Little Red Dot's education system, and oddly enough I've been termed as a 'college student'. Maybe the system here likens this kind of education institution I've been enrolled into similar to a college in the US, or the UK, or somewhere that's not here. I'm in Year 1, which should speak for itself. I'm a freshette (feminine term for freshman), though not really so. It's the second semester of the school year. Twelve weeks of raw tough learning. What course I'm in? Music and Audio Technology. If that phrase doesn't mean anything to you, maybe a description is in order. This module teaches me how the many music CDs are created, how we can hear people sing and talk on stage, how to create music using technology that we are equipped with and, the rudimentary one, music. This course is a real tough course to get into. Each year's cohort only has forty seats, and at least two hundred students apply for such a course after the big exams (the O Levels). I got me a nice score of twelve, where the requirement was thirteen. I was on the list of being chosen, and I got in. (The system here says the smaller the score you have, the better you are academically. Don't ask me why.) It's with pride that I say that I'm part of this course. Not only is this a fun and interesting course in an area that I greatly wish and desire to pursue, this was the course which had kick-started my madness in doing well. I was in Secondary Three, a most dejected and unmotivated girl, when the school's Career Talk revealed to me this course. I told myself that I wanted to go there. Badly. So I studied. And I'm here. A success story, no less, but it has yet to end. I want to do well here. I have grades to pursue, I can't let myself down. So into school I go, motivated and the lively and happy girl I should be. May goodwill and hard work follow me these twelve weeks. I won't put BZP aside. This is my relaxation grounds, and it's important to relax, study freak or not. See me around. Now, to return to that epic critic review. EDIT: Guess what? One of my lecturers found me, and told me that Ear Training, Keyboard Skills and Music Theory Classes are off for two weeks! (Those are just module names, so don't worry about them.) That means that I have no school today!! Off home I go!
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The snapping that was going on in my mouth was far from comforting. I didn't like it. But it had to be done. I was waiting for more than a year for this day to come. I'd never thought it'd be this tedious. The orthodontist patiently worked. Suddenly, there was a lack of tension in my mouth, tension that I had grown accustomed to for a year. And a rather putrid stench wafted. The orthodontist told me that I had to brush my teeth before she could continue. I closed my mouth promptly and sat up. On the quicksilver dental tray was my braces, now two wire lengths that had strange cubes attached to it, and the back brackets were small grotesque hoops attached to the wire. Good riddance, I thought. I did not like my four or five year long journey of dental burden, but the worst was over. If I handled the headgear and the braces, the retainer was a small matter. And I would have a proper, aligned set of teeth to last me through my life. Armed with my toothbrush and paste, I set to clean those filthy teeth that did not receive the good cleaning it needed. I brush well, both orthodontist and dentist agree, but still the plaque hid from the bristles. At least now they could get a good scrubbing, the metal no longer barricading the path of the toothbrush. I could not help but run my tongue over my teeth a few times during the brushing. It felt so... strange... to have your mouth feel so... roomy... and empty. But, as I rinsed my mouth and smiled at the mirror, a straight set of teeth was staring back at me. Many years' of discomfort and dental slavery paid off well, I could say. My tongue rolled over the straight teeth once more, before the orthodontist called me back to the dental chair. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ That's old news. I took out my braces on Thursday, and now am waiting for the retainers to come. Gawsh, I hope none of my teeth move! I know the description is bad. Heh. I watched a musical, a local production that was a big hit, called 'Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress'. I would have loved to tell you all about it, but a lot of it needed some comprehending from the audience of China's past under Empress Dowager Cixi's rule. But it's a touching story. Everyone in the modern world sees Cixi as a woman with an iron fist, downright cruel and cold. However, this play revolves on the account of an American painter who painted her portrait, and what a harsh life Cixi, then known as Concubine Yehenara, suffered to survive in the Forbidden City and revealed to the painter. If only everyone could remember that everyone around them is human, and you can never say that he or she has no feelings or emotions. The hardest of generals can let a little kindness dwell in him, same goes for the cursing medics and soldiers, and teachers. This is my last week of holidays before polytechnic starts. I had a glimpse at the new timetable, and I have the first lesson at ten in the morning. Good time to blog here about a school life that no one believes I have, since I have not splurged my school burdens and whinery (coined by my twin sister) here. Those hours to ten could be used well, I think. I had a good time this holiday. I was unemployed, but I helped my grandparents out. Sure, many people left the face of the Earth during the period (Steve Irwin, my grandaunt, Elizabeth Choy) and even it was bitter, it was something. I had a blast in Malaysia, I had more quality time with music on the laptop and BZPower than necessary and, most important of all, I feel that my time was not wasted. I was doing something that was personally productive. I was writing. I was reading. I tried to write a song to add to that emerency song-writing class list, but it did not come out. I practised for an upcoming music exam. Still have to practise, but the progress is visible. I'm going into Transformers fanfiction now. I'm working on Bionicle fanfiction, spitting out two short stories and, most recently, an epic chapter. I feel mighty pleased with myself. Mighty pleased.
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I was wrong: it actually was harmful. I felt like passing out after the 'harmless' creative writing workshop, session number two, was done and I reached home. This time, I was the first to arrive at the designated venue, which was confirmed last night. Assisting the lecturer-in-charge, Suan, to organise the place a bit, I mentioned to her that I had an idea of a short story and it was brooding in my head for a week, and I had planned to get it down today in the workshop. She stopped pushing the table that we were hauling into position, and told me to get working on it immediately! Being the good girl I was, I booted up the laptop and sat down to work. Bad idea. I immediately was on a head-first collision course of brain-bending, and brain-blending. When I had finished the first draft of the mentioned short story, which had perfectly 'smoothied' my brain, the rest of the workshop participants came, with some latecomers trailing in. Lina had arrived, and the talented Yi Xin, Peter (one of the boys in the group) and Pradhu, the one I mentioned who could write in a similar style to mine. Suan had to play the ice-breaker as a memory game. She just HAD to squish my poor cerebrum. It was a simple test of remembering the person's name, which was a moot point as everyone was wearing a name tag, and a fact about the person. When it came to my turn, I had to name everyone around the ring. My memory did not fail me, until the last person. I was stumped for a nanosecond, but someone whispered 'sports', and I took it. I was saved from humiliation. It continued on to an activity, to quote from Suan, 'to force you to write'. I know many people don't like to be 'forced' into writing. I was one of them. To make up for this, I often have this lapse in time when a topic is given to me. In that lapse of time, an idea would spring into my head. I really mean 'spring'. It just comes in: a total plot, an idea that's plausible and fitted with relevance. I would immediately start writing it down. That saved me today, I believe. The next task was to dissect a large piece of paper into three columns, and write a topic - any topic - into them. I complied. Games. Scenery. Anime. The challenge: a limited timespan will be given to each column. Upon the end of that timespan, the instructor will immediately force you to deviate from the current topic to another topic, and this was a repeated pattern that could force you to return to your old topic, or to hop to a new one. Everyone was confuddled, but I and my scrawling made the Anime column burst its boundaries and leak to the back of the crisp white paper. The Scenery column almost found itself in a similar position, but it was broken into two separate plots. Games, however, had the shortest amount of attention, and a worthy amount of words on it, reaching half the length of the paper. Majority of the rest had only a rather short snippet on their papers. The topic-switching didmuch hashfrazzle their powerbrain. (Save the MNOLG Treespeak!) After that, we plunged straight into a writing activity. Deriving from the Lists (the moniker I've given to the mess of words the first workshop participants made), we chose characters, settings and scenarios to put into a short story. I got a short story pretty quickly, and impressed Pradhu (who was seated to my right) with the amount of paper used to write that story - four letter-sized sides, two sheets of double-sided paper in other words. It did help that my scrawling was predominant, and I tried to write italics by hand. Never write italics by hand. Suan only had to take a glimpse at it, and admitted defeat to my handwriting. I'm submitting that piece of work through email now, the audacious scrawls far from her sight. If there was anything I gained from today's session, it was a brainache. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lina asked me for my Hotmail address, so we exchanged contacts today. (No, you guys aren't so privileged to know that. Sorry.) This evening, she came online, and there and then I told her of what I felt of her...how would I put this... precariously unstable situation. I would term her as the 'less matured and more simple-minded' of the lot, but I did not tell her this. So, I decided to do what a true friend would: offer her assistance. She was elated, I'm pretty sure, but all she replied was 'yes'. In fact, anything in a form of an agreement from her was a 'yes' and nothing else. Poor girl. I already knew what kind of image I presented myself as, and how I looked like in her eyes: a writing visionary and nothing less. She must have been daunted into use simple words to avoid humiliation. I started off by editing the errors that were already made in the MSN conversation so far. Her explanation for her late arrival at the workshop was a mess. No sentence structure; it was hardly a sentence to start with, and the punctuation and use of words were all in a bad state. I was glad I had done my epic critic quota today. I would have bitten some poor member's head off if I was doing his or her review while handling poor Lina. Simple English problems and errors vex me. Grammar does not fall into here, for I'm guilty of blindly committing grammatical errors. But to Lina, it was a big English woe, not a small problem. So, for Lina's good and my mental state of health, I bit grit and edited most of her words. Next, I asked her where exactly in the spectrum of English did she want me to assist her in. Simple enough: we were in a creative writing workshop, and it demanded short stories from us. She wanted help in compositions (otherwise known as essays.) Hard for me. She was, indirectly, asking me on how she could be me. (Or at least, if I'm reading things correctly.) I write essays as a visceral action and output from my brain. I did learn here and there, but if you told me to write, I would write. Putting the way I write into words and instructions was the equivalent of mental torture. Still, I bit grit, and nearly touched my festering ulcer while doing so. I looked at her errors and decided that Writing 101 would start with something rather simple: Sentences. I warned her that it was a rather large topic she was demanding of me, and I would start from the absolute basics. She laughed it off. "They (compositions) are made of sentences put together. Right?" She replied with, for the first time, another word than 'yes': 'right'. I jumped for joy. "Compositions use sentences to tell the story. What makes each writer different is by what sentences she uses to tell the story." That was the absolute truth of writing in words, I feel. Look at each epic and see that the way sentences are stringed and woven into a tale differ from each fanfiction author. It's also the secret that many authors don't know, and don't realise. I was prompted: "Tell me more." I was more than happy to. "You can use sentences to talk about people and things in the story. You can use sentences to talk about what the people are doing, or feeling, are seeing, et cetera." She must have been nodding her head, taking the information in, or reveling in some Chinese pop music. I didn't know, but I continued. "If you're really good, you can use sentences to tell what the people are doing AND what they are feeling." I bombarded her with the first example of many that were to come. Examples are the keys of teaching: to show mistakes, to show progress, and (to an extent) to keep the student engaged. I didn't know if the student in this scenario was paying attention. I was wracking my brains for her, and I mighty well hope that she's taking this in with some effort on her attention span, even if I'm tolerant. "The little girl hugged her elder sister. She cried into her skirt. She felt so scared." "The little girl hugged her elder sister,crying into her skirt, feeling very scared." "The little girl, trembling in spasms, wrapped herself around her elder sister's legs, crying into her sister's plaid skirt, too afraid to look at the monster before them." The last one was to cool off my overworked engine. Now, if the student was paying attention... "Can you see the difference?" "Yes" Yes, she was paying attention. No, she did not know that I was non-plussed about her constant use of 'yes' as a confirmation. "thanks ur my best teacher!" That was heartwarming. "Okay, now the best teacher becomes the scary teacher." Time to rattle her a bit, and kick her mind into gear. "Eh, can you tell me the difference between the examples? For example, how many sentences were used in each example?" Clearly, the answer was three, then one, then one. "3 examples" was the reply. She did not get me, did she? I repeated my question, and provided the example once more for easy reference. "one" If you thought I collapsed into hysteria, I did not. I asked her the question one more time, and this time, I added: (A sentence is like this.) "3" It was followed by cries of jubilation from yours truly. Finally, she was getting it! After her lifetime of an incomprehensible basis of written English, she now grasped an important part, one of the most important parts, of an English essay! What an achievement! I was about to pat her on the back when she thanked me for the lessons and called it a day. Never mind. It would wait till the next lesson.
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The main reason I signed up for the creative writing workshop, the real reason behind my daring of taking on a course alone (no friends, no family, nadda. Just my miserable self and butt) was that I was doing it on a whim. Face it, three consecutive weeks of boredom - 'stuck at home, on a laptop all day' kind of boredom - got to me good. So, when I saw the words 'Creative Writing Workshop' on the front page of my polytechnic student web's, I was immediately enticed by the bait, and I would not be exaggerating if I said that I was hooked at sight. It was scheduled on a Tuesday, and happened to be the immediate day that occurs after the day I arrive home from Malaysia. I had a doubt that I would not make it. But I did. Walking in a completely foreign part of the polytechnic's gargantuan campus, I was solely dependent on the route I had memorised and backed-up with sightings of the directional signs overhead. I was curious about everything: what was this course going to be like? A lecture-like one, a discussive one, or one that was totally hands-on? The information page had little information about the enrichment course (oh the irony), just where to meet and when. Also, was it a big gathering of aspiring writers or a small gathering of intellects? Will the people there be nice, sarcastic, sadistic, or weird and wonderful like me? I saw a boy clad in orange and grey standing by a door. He was the only soul I saw that seemed to be waiting - and I was rather early- so I believed I found the place. I was right, upon confirmation that I found unit T643. When the time came to go in, I moved into the classroom - and got a nice little shock. 'Nice', as in that it was not a bad shock. I was happy about that shock. It was a small class! Good grief, I was worried it would be a mass gathering of people talking about writers that don't exist in my mental catalogue of writers. It is pathetically small. I saw a mass of tables stacked into each other into a beehive like formation in the far left of the room, yet giving ample room between the tables and the wall. There were some people there already. There was one girl there busy munching on something, and another bloke on the chair, working on a laptop. (I should've brought mine.) The orange and grey boy stood around, and so did I for a bit. But there were chairs placed around the perimeter of the table formation. I had been standing for quite some time now. So I sat myself at a corner seat. The rest followed suit and sat down. Typical lemming behaviour, but I shan't comment. I didn't want to be seen as a clam - all clammed up from the world. It was a past error, a haunting shadow of my shy and timid past, that I made in situations like this. I was going to be my confident self - at least, confident and not overwhelming or boisterous - as far as I can carry myself. And, for my first friend, I decided upon the other person in the room who was of my gender. She must have had the same thoughts too, as she sat right next to me. She saw me watching her gorge down her biscuits, so she told me why she was eating so voraciously - in Mandarin. Uh oh. The chubby accomplice now revealed a little more of herself, a little more than what I would've thought was comfortable for a first-time meeting. She was worried about being late and she came from Yishun, and was a part time student. Her Mandarin was rolling off her tongue (the irony that Chinese is a Mother Tongue subject) and I was taking it in. I cannot write it well, or speak it so fluently, but I could pull off some listening. Further introduction revealed that she was Lina, someone who was a talker and not such a writer, and was one of four girls who signed up - a girl called Yi Xin, a Priscilla, Lina and myself - out of a group of twelve, give or take one. So much for the stereotypical 'women are the writers' thought. But I could see something clearly: if Lina was so fluent in her Chinese, it was nearly hundred-percent possible that her English was of down-the-drain standards. I would have to help her as much as I can, given that everyone else in here would have a better hold and grasp of English than she. It would not do good for her confidence, and if there was any hope for her English to excel, that confidence must not be deflated. That, I will help ensure, though my bombastic words may terrorize her. Our lecture-in-charge was a Suan Tze, some lecturer in the Language and Communications Department, and her oral English was poor (a lot of unnecessary '-s' found their way into her speech), her written English is not such a hoot and she could not read my hand-writing. (Now that last point was fine by me.) What was the first agenda of the day? Physical stretching. What a bummer. I complied, and we all attempted to stretch in a ring formation. Hip gyration was avoided as well as I could, but the rest were all right, though everyone looked like eyesores. Writers did not need an image of themselves - they need their words to do the imaging. Then it came to the ice-breaker. Everything was predictable. A ball was made in haste - a ball of scrunched-up scrap paper - and tossed around the ring from an individual to another. We were to say our names as we threw the ball. The lecturer decided to bend things a little. We were to add an adjective to our name. Oh dear. It became clear that no one was rather eager to do that. Neither was I. Everyone's mind went blank there, but I was not going to make myself look like a wooden block. I thought of a good one for myself. Since the lecturer had used an adjective that shared the same first letter as her name, it was best if I followed suit. Mmm... 'M'... something with the letter 'M' and would not blow my image and make me look proud and pompous, nor make me look too simplistic. 'Maverick' would do fine. It's not such a big word, and it meant that I was a greenhorn. The adjective was used, and I passed the ball to another person. More or less everyone had thought of a word to go with their name, but there were those who just could not think of one, so I thought of some for them, and they took it. So one had a 'spunky', another with a 'lively' (that was for Lina), and the rest I forgot. Finally, after a quick recap of our names, we sat back down at the table and we finally got to writing. Our task was to cough out at least two or three pieces of work. That was fine. For starters we had to mention five memories (any memory, I remembered the lecturer saying) and pick one of them, the most lively and energetic of the lot, and write a short story of it within a time span of fifteen minutes. I immediately chose the Ipoh Hor Fun experience, and had my short story down within ten minutes. I turned to Lina to check her progress. My fears were confirmed. She was lacking in the written-English department by more than a stretch. Instead of five activities, there were five sentences of 'I like to...', in a basic elementary style. Her short story were just a bunch of sentences which were, unfortunately, non sequiturs. I glanced at another person's progress, the one to my right. He was faring better off. Oh dear. I could not help Lina to 'improve' her work, as the only solution there and then was to take her paper, axe off everything, and get her to dictate to me of what she liked about shopping. It would be a total annihilation to honesty and learning. She knew, from a glance of my work to hers, that her work was far from the expected standard and she started to whine about it. No, she did not sound whiny, but it was in a sulking manner. She complained about her poor English standard, in her flow of Mandarin. I listened, as that was all I could do. It was too much for me to fix, and already eyes were looking at us, pointed glares if you may. I told Lina, after she was done, that she should cool down and focus on dealing with the next topic, never mind if her English is bad. Getting that all out in Mandarin was not easy. The teacher wanted us to convert our story into a poem. Problem was, I was horrible at poems. I hardly do poems, in fact I don't think I do them at all. But I did mine anyway. Lina had a hard time with hers, but it looked a little more acceptable now. Next challenge: Spice up the poem to make it 'hot'. Oh, I got it! The polytechnic was running a creative writing competition, one that was entitled 'That's Hot'. So we had to heat things up in our poems, eh? Not a problem. I added in chilli and pepper into the poem. Go me, I was all for the obvious and unimaginative. A break was called for, where I treated myself to a grass jelly drink and a samosa. Lina helped to pass around the paper plates loaded with nachos. As I walked around, I pointed out the possible people in the group I had to watch. There were this bunch of boys from the same course, who were absorbed into each other only and not to anyone else. Bad team material, but maybe this will bring good plot about, if they discuss things out well between themselves. There was an artist-girl who decided to write, there were two Malay boys who looked fine on their own. There were at least two serious writers in there, excluding me, that I presumed. The next writing exercise was too obvious. We all took pieces of paper and passed them around, where we were supposed to write a word for each letter or scenario placed before us. Lina thought of the absolute simple words, while I added in flamboyant ones, partly because I wanted to challenge myself to remember those bombastic words, partly because others were putting up flowery words too, and partly because I needed to cover Lina up. The painful truth was that, I discovered to my hidden horror, that this was not what I thought it was. This creative writing workshop was no more than an English lesson gone simple. There was no active discussion of our works, no talk of improving or such a vein, nothing I had hoped for. But I bit grit and went for it. I cannot complain. If I did, pandemonium would break loose, or others would think that I was just too snobbish and immediately turn their cold shoulders my way. Besides, it deserves a chance. I give chances where I can and where I see fit. I see some people there had talent; Yi Xin had written a poem of claws and white horses to portray her encounter with tooth extraction. Another guy, I forgot his name, could write a short story in the same style I do. I wrote a story, and I had to read it out myself since she could not read my handwriting. She did laugh when I prompted her with corrections twice and decided to read it out aloud instead to save her the trouble. And when that was over, the creative writing workshop had come to a close. I was slightly disappointed. I was not writing at my peak. I could not churn out a proper tale, a story of standards that I could hit, but did not. Lina was discouraged, but I was her listening ear. She was outgoing, I could tell, and could rattle anyone's ear off. At least it did not turn ugly. Suan Tze ended the event with a note: she hoped to create a Creative Writing Club out of the lot, and was hoping that we would stay and continue. I gave it a thought, and determined it: I was jumping onto this bandwagon. And if Lina wanted to come aboard, a friend would be waiting to give her the moral support and the coaching if she wants it. And right now, I'm thinking of a plot for the next meeting. A 'hot' story, a story of warmth, a story of discovery (no, I did that one already)... I ought to put up one of my stories here sometime. Meanwhile, interest yourself with the results that I received from a type quiz. It labels you as a type of person, or character, whichever way you see it: INFJ And, on a lighter note, Happy Birthday my good friend and fellow writer Hahli Husky! Whap me, girl! Whap me!
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Time check: 5:07pm Listening to: On My Way Home –Enya Last day of the trip, and I’m feeling a little more than sore that it’s almost over. All the planned activities have been done. We’ve eaten, drunk, ran and slept our way through the trip, where we all had a good time. I’m sure many share my feelings with the contentment of the trip’s goal being met: We ate a worthy amount, and the others say that it was worth the money. This morning, the lethargy of my room mate infected me for a bit, deeming that it was a rule that I lazed around a little more. Slowly, I rose and started packing up. Two bulky plastic bags had become part of my luggage that already consisted of my bag and shoe-bag. I’m no heavyweight, and I don’t think I can sling around two plastic bags with me too. One contained all the laundry and the other were the goods I purchased for home. The size of each bag, you ask? As large as my bag. The coach people boarded and hence I resumed my role as the bus nanny. The first stop we made first was to Ipoh, another state in Malaysia. Due to the late hour I hit the sack, I napped on the coach. When I awoke, I realised that the coach was lumbering about, two cars of the convoy that had split from the group were trailing after us, and the bus guide brought a fact that had me worried. Immediately the phone was used to call the higher heads of authority. We received contact numbers of the stall we were to visit, and a number of problems came upon us. 1) The stall had a different name by each higher head of authority. One said it was Oon Kee, the other said it was Wong Kee. Close together, but not so. 2) We had no idea where in Ipoh we were. That worried me. That meant that any form of directions can still lead us astray, and the fact that I am weak when it came to direction-following or direction-giving made me feel more uneasy. 3) The people around me were distressed too. I kept my face a stern one, but something of a smile was there. I was told to try to keep them relaxed and happy, but I cannot lie to them that we were lost. A student placed as leader and guardian of the coach, of at least fifteen adults and two children, and they depended on me to solve this little problem we were stuck with. In the end, I finally made contact with the stall and my Chinese was seriously limited, so the phone was passed to the bus guide who, with his fluent flow of Mandarin, found a solution: a guide would find our coach and show us the way. Clear cut, no nonsense answer, I liked it. I informed the drivers behind us by walkie-talkie, and a five-minute wait found a man on a motorcycle (one of the more popular forms of travel in M’sia) as our guide. Our mini convoy trailed most obediently behind him, and in no time we found ourselves at the restaurant. The Ipoh hor fun was fantastic! This dish of silky smooth kway teow (or better termed in here as hor fun) ran down my throat, and it was most delectable to slurp down the long rice noodles. Complimented with the peppery and stock-based soup that the kway teow was served in and taugei (bean sprouts, the little white crunchy shoots) stir-fried in some soya-sauce, and steamed chicken which boasted tender and soft meat. There was a tau huay (Soya bean curd) stall not too far from the stall, and there I visited after trying a bowl of the aforementioned dish. The bean curd was silky smooth with ginger-based black sugar water, which flavoured the bland white slivers of curd. It was most heavenly sweet and warm, and it felt good to eat too. I wanted to buy the related food item that came with it, tau huay chwee (soya bean milk), and went to buy it. I ordered to the lady, “tau huay chwee, tau pau.” (Soya bean milk, take away.) I received three packets of tau huay instead. I halted the lady as she packed up the last packet and clarified my order. She determined that she had given me what I had wanted. I told here again, tapping a container filled with the drink I had wanted, that I wanted something else. She got to filling up two drinking plastic bags of the liquid delight. I only wanted one. I just ordered one from the start, and she’s giving me double and even triple of what I wanted. I halted her at the third plastic bag, and told her I would take the entire lot. I cannot blame her for her error. It must have been a loss of translation somewhere along the line between me and her. And most obviously, she mistook what I had said for something else. When I related the event to the coach riders, they all guffawed and pulled my leg incessantly. They all deciphered the joke real quickly. “tau huay three.” I was pretty sure that I had not said that. Three was three. Chwee was chwee. And, due to the poor standard of oral English there, tree was tree. Apparently, she thought that “three” was “tree”, and “chwee” was “tree”. Therefore, the tourist wanted three packets of soya bean curd. Someone should do something about this “chwee-tree-three” business. One bag of the drink was given to co-worker Kelvin, and a packet of bean curd to the bus guide. I finished the other bag of drink. Next pit stop: the Sungai Hot Springs Park, which would be the first hot springs park I have visited. People had the option to soak their entire selves or dip their feet in. The actual spring water temperature was ninety to a hundred degrees, though the thermometer read a hundred and fifty Fahrenheit. I opted to soak myself in there. The two boys Jordan and Nicholas did the same. Well, we three waded around, and I was comfortable with the water temperature at the first soak while the two cousins had a little difficulty adapting to the temperature. A waterfall feature there provided us with the opportunity for water to run down our backs, and the old gentleman and a father tried that out. They made space for me, and I did not hesitate to join in. We must have looked like three birds huddled in a bird fountain, just soaking wet and clearly enjoying it. The two men were clearly the daredevils, going quite far in their search of the perfect hot spot. They found it, and the old man, apparently the bravest of us three, tried it first. He leapt clear of the fountain. We three waded and crouched around the radius of where the water was tolerable, and slowly inched our way into the realm of the scalding water, but not going close, or very close for the men’s part, to the waterfall. Some of the coach people wanted to try to put their feet into that path of water before it fell on us. I immediately cried that they should desist (part of the reason why I ‘cried’ was that I had stepped too close to the hot water for my like) and one of them tapped the water with his foot. He was convinced, so were the rest, and they searched for another stream. After a thirty-minute soak, we had our fair share of the water, and the boys and I ploughed and powered our way through the water for the showers. And that was quite some time ago. The only events that should occur after this is a stop-over for dinner at a rest stop, and on straight home for Singapore. The ETA is around eleven, or midnight at Newton Circus. I don’t think I can type or think so clearly at that point in time. So here I wrap up my trip. I’ve had my good time, and I still have activities planned for the next few weeks till the holidays are over. I think I gained weight, if that’s something, and my face had some sun-burn and now my cheekbones are a tint of pink. Well, the next time a trip like this coops up and I find myself in a situation of boredom; I’m definitely hopping onto the coach again and joining the convoy. Now, what to do with that last bowl of tau huay?
