tratakkaaism

Unity.

Fulfilment.

Deserving.

Justified.

You are the moment when the last bell rings and school lets out for the day. You are resistant to schedules and obligations, so you love feeling like you’re in control of your life again. You are the very moment when the second hand hits the 12, and the halls fill with noise and motion. Even if your after-school time is packed with activities, lessons, or a job, somehow, you just feel freer in the late afternoon than you do earlier in the day. Maybe it’s all that blue sky and afternoon sunshine? Nah — even on rainy days, 3:15 is always a beautiful time.

-

WARNING: LONG POST!! Skip Sunday if you are disinterested.

Suddenly it seems like the past week has been pretty hectic. Just realized. Monday had Band prac cause Dr Lee’s going on trip again. Tuesday was quite a rush after school, going to HollandV for Subway lunch (and Frolick!!) with Rachel and Michelle, rushing back to meet the repairman, practicing/preparing for the performance and going to Esplanade for the performance itself. It was my first Concourse performance, pretty fun :D And I totally didn’t know that the Level 2 of the Backstage was not only linked to the Recital Studio but the Concourse as well.. Haha we used back the same room for JCBF Honour Band Girls, just that everyone was in that one room, so the guys shared toilets with us -_- Rather amusing/dangerous. I thought everyone played pretty well that night :) Soomin Gladys and I fell in love with the Debussy’s Petite Suite for 4 Hands, Movement III: Menuet played by Vanessa and Matthew! <3 Soomin actually got the scores :D

Wednesday was spent conducting interviews for the new J1 committee and exco. Econs tuition after that. Tiring day. Asian test, GP package test and Sectionals on Thursday. Friday was spent going to ACSI to get the bari sax, back to school for the music IT session (LAST ONE! YES!!!) and Math tuition at home. Saturday was THE BIG MOVE :D From the QM Room to the CPA Band Room! (Finally la, that stupid thing is gonna open this Friday when like, the thing was under construction since I was like what, Sec 3?!) We came in the morning to pack, moved during Grease and the general move after prac. Everything went pretty okay! :D I forgot to take a picture so yeah, next time! Yay to a huge underground room and 12 aircons! :D @rtikulation after that at Esplanade Recital Studio, thankfully we managed to rush there (and eat Subway tapaoed by Eugene and friends and enter the studio) on time. Debussy by Vanessa and Matthew again!! Gladys and I melted hahaha. I liked Aaron’s piece as well :) Well done to all Meppers who performed! Went to Marina KFC for supper after that then home.

Sunday was spent doing.. a lot of hectic things!! Omg. Damn tired. Firstly, woke up really early in the morning (like 9 plus, after sleeping at maybe 12?) to go to school and check the dept’s inventory to prepare for the shopping later (Luckily I had the CPA key.) as well as retrieve Edwin’s wallet and phone from the QM Room (LOL). Bused to IKEA after that to meet Sean Zhan Edwin for lunch + shopping. IKEA restaurant wasn’t open D: so we went to Anchorpoint Food court instead. Edwin left, then we went back to IKEA for shopping!! Bought 4 rugs (2 for drumset and 2 for piano), a container for stationary, a stepping stool :D:D:D (for reaching the top cupboards) and colourful cups (for brasses and LWW to collect their saliva/condensation in, since the new band room has parquet flooring which must not come into contact with water) YAY :D Then we decided to go back to school to dump our buys since they were kinda heavy and we had to make a trip down to Sweelee, so once again, luckily I had the CPA key. Bused to Bras Besah after that and on the way there I realised I lost my phone. (Insert shock) Then I realised it should be in the CPA cause I remembered I last left it on top of a tom-tom -_- So yea, sort of relieved. Met Puaybing there and spent a long long time at Sweelee just waiting cause Aryadni was busy, until I had to rush off for Clarinet lesson, and the guys were left to buy the accessories. Once I reached Laoshi’s house, he told me to go with him to Katong to have lesson and I’m like wth? I just reached his house (Kallang) and he wants to go somewhere else? Then I was wondering how I would get back to Puaybing and the guys if I got ferried somewhere else but oh well, no choice right? I suspected he would bring me to his music college place and Bingo, he drove us to the Singapore Raffles Music College. And I was SHOCKED. Okay stunned perhaps. What with all these months of him praising his students from the RMC when I actually discover its this run-down place that looks like a primary school with all their students originating from the Land of Communism? Oh My Goodness la, I couldn’t believe my eyes.. the stairs were like those cement steps from primary school days and like, he brought me into one of the ’studios’ to warm up and disappeared after that. Oh yes the ’studios’ were nothing like proper Yamaha studios, they had paper-thin walls which were absolutely not soundproof at all (I could hear clearly a vocal lesson in progress next door, and the teacher kept banging the piano and singing the poor girl’s part while scolding her, and actually the song was quite a nice song full of modulations except that the teacher kept interrupting her to demonstrate and bang the piano. And then when they finally ended their lesson the room on the other side started having some yangqin ensemble practice so I almost died trying to hear myself all the time), the door was made of hollowed out wood which slammed because of the too-heavy weight attached to it, and the piano was like some lousy never-heard-of brand, and the room was so long in depth that it was actually echo-y, and I had a plastic chair which resembles that of the chairs from funerals or open-air hawkers. That was a really long sentence but anyway, I was like OMG he teaches here?! Well okay PRC scholars are always hardworking competitive people so I guess they must be of some high standard.. But to be learning in this kind of.. College? I’m perfectly fine with the idea of, you know, a Music college, but erm, please check out the facilities? Not doing this on purpose but I seriously felt like it was some kind of Kampong, with galvanised iron roofs and atap houses kind of atmosphere. The place felt like it was situated in some Malaysian village, just that everyone was from China and I felt so out of place and foreign. Plus it was at Katong and I didn’t bloody know my way anywhere. I didn’t have money except for a few coins (Spent all on lunch and hotdogs+chocolate for the guys earlier in the day) Plus I didn’t have my phone!!! (Left it on the tom-tom remember?) I felt like I got transported into some strange world.. I think it was one of those rare times that I actually felt scared and lost, in Singapore. So anyway after 40 minutes of warming up (Er, quite used to his bad habit of disappearing until a long time later) I got bored and decided to explore. Since I saw this International Pay Phone on the second floor I decided to make a call and brought my four 20c and one $1 coins down to call the QMs to complain about my current location and about not having lesson YET. Then I called my mum to tell her I was lost and stranded without phone nor cash (how pathetic is that la) and she said ‘okay i’ll transfer 50 bucks into your nets, go and take cab okay’ and I’m like, where in the world am I going to find an ATM machine nearby?! And not every taxi accepts nets so there goes. Oh btw the stupid payphone does not refund my unused minutes so everytime I call ANYONE, my money gets eaten and I get 2 minutes for every 10c. So that’s like 4 minutes for every 20c and 20 minutes for $1. And I’ve already used two 20cs at this point of time. Laoshi appeared, had lesson which was terrible. I don’t know why for the past few lessons I just feel like giving up. I feel like giving up on myself, giving up on him, giving up on the music in front of me. It just feels pointless to go on cause every lesson I have he just keeps pointing out mistakes that I make, unrelated to what he told me to work on the last lesson. Like he told me to work on articulation the previous lesson and this lesson he came hard on me for playing without musicality. How am I supposed to play musically when I haven’t even gotten the techniques right? I guess only Ben knows what I’m talking about. We’ve been suffering for the past few lessons due to Laoshi’s bad moods. Ah well. Anyway, after lesson ended, I couldn’t wait to get back to civilisation and hurriedly went to make a call to the QMs to check where they were. Decided to meet them (I was told by Laoshi to take a bus down to PAYA LEBAR, omg how far is that) at Bugis where they were eating steamboat near Miss Clarity Cafe. Then I was curious and decided to call my own phone to double check if it was safe in the CPA and that no one answers it, so I called it. It rang thrice.. and went click. (And the phone ate my money.) OMG I SWEAR MY HEART SLIPPED OUT OF MY MOUTH JUST LIKE THAT. I nearly had a heart attack la. Like OMG someone has my phone! Oh noooooo and in a hurry I used my last coin (Which was $1!! That’s like 20 minutes of talktime?!) to call Puaybing and tell her that I’ll be going back to school to find my phone first, and that call lasted 20 seconds maybe?! RAH omg I’m just going to keep ranting about the stupid Kampong school if I don’t move on. So after that I had to look for the ATM machine to get money (remember what my mum said?) and after 5 minutes of walking I saw a 7eleven (which obviously has no ATM), a Carltex (which has no ATM) and an Esso (OMG! Cheers has ATM! …Right?) Being highly traumatized by my SRMC experience just minutes ago, I almost spoke to the Malay petrol uncle in Chinese, how bad is that? I was almost gonna say, qing wen you mei you ATM, until he said yes ma’am? And I was like er er erm.. *reality check* Do you know if there’s any ATM around here? Gosh. He said yes, TWO bus stops down the road I’ll see another Esso with an ATM. So yes I started walking down the road.. for another 10 minutes. Towards the end I started to briskwalk/run because the whole Katong place was creeping me out with all those weird foreign (eastern) people and the dark was not helping. I spotted a Bus 33 heading towards Kent Ridge and almost wanted to take the bus instead, but the urgency of going back to school made me continue walking on until the next Esso came into sight. After withdrawing money I quickly flagged a cab and was at the school back gate in a fast 15 minutes. The cabby was a nice man who asked what was going on at ACJC that I was going there on a Sunday night (I lost my phone), oh no, when did you lose it (5 hours ago), oh no, that’s really long ago (yeah), where did you leave it (in the band room), so you have the keys to the band room (yeah), so are you a student there (yeah), in first or second year (second), how are you going to get into the school (back gate I guess, the uncle won’t let me in at this hour), oh then is the back gate open (not sure, but I don’t think so), then how are you going to get in (climb in I guess), are you wearing pants (yeah), how old is your phone (one year old), how much is it (I think three hundred), I think the numbers are more important right (yeah), will there be anyone in school (doubt so), oh then better be careful (yeah okay), hope you find your phone (thanks uncle); ALL the questions being separated by 1 minute pauses of total silence. Can you imagine how odd is that? Like everytime I think the case has closed he asks another random question about it. Key word: Random. But yeah, he was a pretty nice guy. So anyway I climbed the back gate (YESS the girls’ gate is back WITHOUT barriers!) and crept into school. A cat crossed my path in the dark (is that ominous?) and I nearly freaked out when I saw a sillhouette on the marble floor, which turned out to be a slipper. I really felt like some robber when I tiptoed down the CPA steps and literally hid in the dark. Never really thought I would use the dark to my advantage.. It sounds very much like a robber’s trait eh? For the third time, luckily I had the key to the band room, and when unlocking the huge door I turned the key as softly as I could.. Agh really felt like some burglar. In the night the green EXIT signs were really bright, and the moment I was in the band room I switched on the lights and flew to the tom-toms, and YAY my phone was sitting obediently there! :D YAY :D:D:D And guess why I heard someone put down the phone? It was my network system thingy which was functioned like that, hanging up on people when I didn’t answer them. I totally forgot that my phone was screwy there and freaked myself out! Gosh. Quite funny la, but yeah I felt this wave of immense relief while I just sat there in the middle of the band room clutching my phone doing nothing. Then I called my mum and she told me to go get dinner myself, so I called Puaybing and the first thing she said (before she even put the phone to her ear) was like “HOW COME SHE CALL ME ONE” then “HELLO?! HOW COME YOU CALL ME?!” Hahaha I thought that was quite funny. Then we said to go Vivo to eat and when I told her I was alone in school she told me to “HURRY UP GET OUT LATER EDWARD CATCH YOU” and I felt this sudden pang of fear and urgency to escape from the CPA. (Er, for those who don’t know, Edward is the damn bitchy and anal security guard who doesn’t let me swim on Sundays. I’ve run out of lies to tell him already.) Got out, locked the door quietly and tiptoed my way to the back gate again. Climbed out and felt SO relieved/carefree/happy/thankful/accomplished! Like, that kind of OMG-What-a-day-it’s-been kind of feeling. Ahhhh. Yup then bused down to Vivo to meet the dept and had dinner at Hong Kong Kim Gary (our favourite place hahaha) while the rest had yinyang and (Sean’s HAHA) bittergourd juice LOL. Cabbed home after that and talked on the phone for 2 hours, complaining about the traumatizing Katong experience and talking about how I lost/found my phone. WHAT A LONG TIRING DAY. My goodness.

Slept in today and slacked the whole day away except for having Econs tuition. Omg, this is my third tutor already, I really think I have no fate with Econs teachers. (Pun?) The first tutor was weird, I stopped after one lesson, the second tutor was irresponsible and (according to my mum) scheming, I stopped after 3 lessons spanning over 6 weeks, and now it’s the third tutor. Apparently she’s supposed to be really good cause she’s the Econs teacher of my Math tutor from her JC days.. Cool right haha. She’s not bad lah. And yeah now I’ve got some work to do before I can go ZZ.

Michelle Tan and I are on a Clodhoppers’ Craze :D Lol fat fat fat but nevermind, we’ll swim/gym them away! :D Can’t wait to swim la, I missed swimming yesterday thanks to QM shopping and all. Nevermind, Friday! CPA is officially opening (Sean and I are going for the official opening ceremony hahaha) and after that the Band is going to have ‘practice’ as part of the CPA tour HAHA -_- Then QM department swim!! :D LOL and then we’re gonna have dinner at MIN JIANG!!! :D:D:D:D:D HOW COOL IS THAT. HAHA :D

This is a REALLY LONG post in REALLY LONG time man. Haha :)

ACJC Band Double CD Compilation
Listen to our performances over the past 3 years such as Carmina Burana, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Fantasy Variations, October, Turandot, Movement for Rosa, Symphonic Overture, Star Wars Trilogy, Highlights from Chess, Phantom of the Opera, Festive Overture, Overture 1812 for just $20, for 2 CDs! Grab ‘em now :D

-

Enough of Friday timetable taking over Tuesdays. 3 hours of Econs tutorial/3 hours of Lit tutorial/3 Math lectures/4 hours 40 minutes of Math tutorials per week is not fun at all. Very tiring. Yay to the end of all the weird changes in timetable.

So anyway I went for Sax in the City. Claude Delangle is WOW. The Combined Choir was pretty cool. Great job to SSO and the choirs involved, I know it’s REALLY not easy for band (or any other orchestra for that matter) to combined with choir, plus it’s such a complex work. (Haha, To the Stars.) Oh and I got Claude Delangle’s autograph! Hahaha I cheat one :D

And I went for Glissando with the 2AA4 Band ppl minus Gerd. Jialin rocks manzzz! Student conductor, Section Leader, so cool lah :D Well done Ah Maxszxszxsz! Your guitar ensem is coool.

Yay to Friday swim with MichTan <3 (I think we spent more time slacking than swimming haha) and Sunday swim with Puaybing <3 Laoda came over to my house for lunch after that.

You sound like a FAT duck!

It’s just that nice warm fuzzy feeling that you get when you hear one of your used-to-be favourite songs :)

Performing in 2 days and my reeds feel weird ahhhh. I’m tired, night everyone!

I ate an apple during Lit class today.

TERRIBLE SINUS ): Even worse when I’m suffering a peeling tan and my nose peels even more when I blow my nose. Grr.

Flimsy.. Finzi. Placcid.. Flaccid. What amusing puns haha. Mrs T says “A is placcid!! HAHAHA”

Oh yeah I finished my Napfa ytd! Yay all done! :D

Do you remember? So many things.
:) :D :O :P :S :( :| :/ :\ :X I don’t know how to feel about this.

Anyway, looking forward to swimming with Mich and Gerd on Friday after school, and with Puaybing again on Sunday :D