Orange invasion!

Friday, December 30, 2005

I swear, that from today onwards I will take everyone who says my pai zi is not correct very very seriously.

*feels terribly guilty for screwing up bits of chun which would have otherwise sounded perfect without my lousy pai zi problems.*

I remember how I got pissed with my seniors when they told me I was too slow/fast. I remember how I had insisted that I was right. I remember how I truely felt I was right, because being one's always blind (or deaf in this case) to her own mistakes. People in CO next year, if I lose hold of my pai zi and refuse to admit it please do not hesitate to slap me hard. Alternatively, play recording of ny arts fest CHUN in my ears over and over again to remind me of my grave mistakes. Having listened to it twice in a row, my humbleness for NYCO left me completely and I can proudly claim that NYCO sounded professional. However, I cringed at each and every of my glaringly apparent mistakes. Before listening to the recording I thought it was the intonation that's probably going to ruin the song. To my relief, intonation was good. VERY GOOD. I didn't expect it to be so good at all. To my horrors, my pai zi was to blame for marring the piece.

I deserve some scoldings...

I am hardly making any progress with xun huan huan qi, there's still quite a significant gap between one breathe and the next. The fact that I had not been practising for a week due to my travelling around reduced my other skills to pulp too. So much for practising "bounciness" of fingers during the holidays. 7 days of negligence and it's down the drain.

The 7 days of hiatus, however, made me realise that hey, without practising dizi, surprise surprise, I didn't die! Ever since I started playing dizi in CO practising dizi has become an integral part of my life, something as essential to my well being as meals and rest, something staple in my routine. During that 7 days, I didn't miss dizi a single bit. Instead, I felt so much lighter without having to calculate how much time I can afford to spend outdoors or with family so as to not affect my practices. While that may sound heartless, it's exactly how I felt. I was glad I gave myself a break, finally.

Not that dizi had been a burden all along. In fact, far from it. I enjoyed practising... it's the restrictions it created for me that made me weary of it. Practising every day means coming back early every night from wherever I was having my activities to meet my dizi. Practising every day means missing precious family time after dinner and being alone with chang yins and lian xi qus, occassionally hearing family members calling for me to join them. Practising every day during holidays, especially, means rushing home from my grandmother's house and spending less time with her. It also means complains from my parents and neighbours, who would politely knock on my door and try to hide their annoyance while they say "what beautiful music! but we need to rest already."

Oh yes. Practising every day means being called a "lianing freak".

Play for enjoyment, play for pleasure...

Yes I know all of that. How's that going to happen without accquiring a certain level of skills? How's accquiring skills possible without practising? How's practising going to be effective without doing it every day?

...

I've had my break. Now it's time to work (and play) again.

And here the story ends.
3:08 PM

Thursday, December 29, 2005

my lj: http://www.livejournal.com/users/cn_89/

And here the story ends.
11:16 PM

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

It's raining again, and I'm at home alone. Such circumstances makes it ideal for missing people.

Anyway I tidied my room yesterday! It's quite a feat if you've seen the state my room was in before I did anything to it. My revision stuff for end-of-year exams were stacked on my bed because the shelf's too occupied with my lower sec and primary school (!!!) stuff, things that were useless since quite long ago but stayed on the shelf because I was reluctant to move them elsewhere. So yesterday when I was just as stuck at home as I am today and found no better ways to while my time away, I decided to do something about it.

Anyone who had tried tidying up a very messy room must have felt the same way. Once I've decided to devote the whole afternoon to clearing the rubbish in my room to make place for more useful stuff, I looked around and I was caught in the dilemma of where to start. The tabletop piled with books and papers and scores and other random things like my tuner? My bed which has one of its sides covered by sec4 revision notes and TYSes? The rundown shelf (no longer intact! I need a new one.) that bears the weight of my primary school assessment books? (Ok it's starting to sound ridiculous) I wished I could turn my room upside down and shake it so that the rubbish, even the ones hidden in obscure corners that I've forgotten about, would fall out by themselves thanks to gravity. No such convenience.

It took sheer determination and courage to START the whole process of recovering no longer useful PSLE revision papers from the shelves and putting them in what ended up as a magnificent pile of future rough paper. Then it's a struggle between emotion and reason - whether to throw away the banner my P6 class made together during sports meet 5 years ago. That is followed by miserable sights of stacks of lower sec papers that looked too bulky to go anywhere. The final blow to my initial enthusiasm in turning my room into one as orderly as a standard hotel room, or at least, an inhabitable place, was the fact that even with the rubbish finally in their respective trash bags waiting to be thrown away no longer occupying the shelves, my sec4 revision stuff still couldn't fit into it. My english file, the fattest of all, is still lying homeless on the table in the study. Issues of TIME and National geographic formed what looked like a refugee camp of old magazines, waiting anxiously to be settled but neglected by the authority (the authority has done its best).

So now my rooms looks neater. Phew.

Well, before my JC books and notes crash in, that is.

And here the story ends.
3:59 PM

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Saw Ger's entry on her first prac in HCCO. I guess why hers sounds more fun than what I've just experienced is because apparently when she just got there her seniors weren't in work experience programme but beside her in CO. We, on the other hand, are left stranded in HCCO feeling extra all the time. Jh and I spent the first half of today's prac debating whether to head home, because we were the only two dizis there.

Oh, also, when Ger went for HCCO she was accompanied by many fellow NYCO people. Before going to HCCO, Jh and I dropped by NYCO and watched their dazu. Sitting behind the row of dizi juniors, I reminisced about the times I had sitting in the same row blowing dizi with my batch of NYCO people, watching shawn jumping around her tim and listening to lin lao shi tell us stories about the songs we were playing, or even, receiving that glare from ms chek when my yinzhun goes way off.

Seeing this horde of HCICO (high school I mean) erhu guys clustering around enjoying each other's presence at HCCO reminded me of the times I had in NYCO, where all my relations are.

Anyway prac today was quite ok, except those stupid blunders that probably cost the reputation of NYCO guanyue. And I was frustrated at my xin di yin se and yin liang. Although I know that with the scotch tape over my dimo I was just supposed to keep rather quiet and be part of the background support, I was so distressed by the fact that I could hardly hear myself that I was so ready to tear that stupid tape off and start blowing qu di. Oh well, at least I didn't have to worry about uneven/wet dimo.

And here the story ends.
10:03 PM

Monday, November 21, 2005

My first unofficial day in HCCO:

1. Meeting people with different backgrounds and ways of practising is truly beneficial. After trying some zls style lian xi qus, I am more clear of what my teacher's system trains better as well as what it lacks. Qu3 Chang2 Bu3 Duan3. Oh yes, it's motivational too.

2. It's the orchestra prac with the least number of people I've ever gone to. Never in NYCO there's only so few people attending orchestra practice. BUT YET things still sound ok. It's HCCO afterall.

3. I need to train sight reading.

4. Wei lao shi is er... =D.

5. The person (whoever he is) who hollered about locking the door reminded me fondly of Uncle Jack. Uncle Jack, in his loyal singlet, had used the same gruffy tone on us to make sure we don't dwell in M401 after every practise without fail. I should pay a visit to him at where he hermits when not chasing off girls after their CCAs or mending rundown Sheng cases using his abundant collection of screws and screwdrivers.

And here the story ends.
10:10 PM

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Physco is still giving me the creeps. Now I kind of know why Zeng didn't show us the whole movie during our sabbaticals, the movie's highly disturbing. Tony Perkins made Norman Bates come alive - trapped, vulnerable looking, and obviously mentally disoriented. Matricide, dual personality, series of murders due to a serious physcological disorder... too much to take for a lovely afternoon? Luckily Ratta was there to distract me from the tension. Thanks Mengy for the movie!

And here the story ends.
11:03 PM

Monday, November 14, 2005

When I was down at Jurong East library today afternoon I saw my primary school classmates mixing with my secondary school schoolmates studying math for o levels together. Jac was the bridge that connects all, and I have to admit that she's the right material for a bridge - long enough, wiry enough. (Sorry Jac it's a compliment. =P)

Meeting them brightened my day and brought me to smile. =D It's great to see them and talk to them again, and when Jac, Thomas, Weiquan and I did the "6A rocks" thing in front of my sec school schoolmates I felt something tugging my heart. =D

Yet something in the night made me depressed, all of a sudden. It takes so little for me to be happy, it takes so little to chase the happiness away from me. CALL ME FICKLE.

And here the story ends.
11:37 PM

I was just listening to NYCO concert 2004 recordings. I miss those times! Those times that seniors were still with us, Zhixuan's still getting pinched by me at the elbows, Xiwen's still telling me where I blew wrongly, Sab's still standing in front of the CO making announcements and YingYing's still chasing me for CO fund. Those times that if I didn't prac properly someone would go after me with a gu3 chui2...

After a slack year with no one point anything at my neck threatening me to "practise or else", I've been lax on myself. Now I wonder if I'm able to blow the solo in the front of Hong Mei as well as I did last year.

And here the story ends.
11:59 AM