Phew. Today was the lesson with Gulia. The first comment she made to me (well at least after “Take your time, don’t worry” because I was late and had run to her class) was “You lost weight.” It seems that every time I see someone whom I’ve not seen for some time, they almost always comment, “Oh you’ve lost weight.” But since my weight is constantly hovering around a certain weight, it must obviously be the same weight that I’m losing over and over again. I’m reminded of a Garfield comic where Jon congratulates Garfield saying, “Garfield, you’ve lost a pound this week! I’m so proud of you!” and Garfield remarks, “It’s the same pound I lose every week.”
As for the lesson itself, it didn’t quite go as badly as I thought. I played the 1st movement of CPE, theme and 1st 2 variations of the Spohr and 1st 3 pages of La Source. After the lesson she told me that the next lesson she wants me to play another movement of CPE, and finish up the Spohr and La Source. I was just thinking… oh man. Luckily I haven’t any more activities for the rest of the holiday. At least I’m crossing my fingers. I really dislike travelling out so frequently.
After the lesson, I got to practice on the harps! When I left, it was actually a rather emotional goodbye… I really miss Lyon and Healy, the two harps in the harp studio. This holiday they wanted to do some renovation or something in the teacher’s studios, so they removed students’ card access to the studios. Though the practice rooms are still open, it doesn’t really mean anything to me because the harps are still shut up in the harp studio. I really missed practicing on them. It’s quite a travesty, but I actually got so used to Ellie’s (my harp) sound, that when I went to play Lyon it felt funny. Actually what Bryan (Malaysian harp student one year below me, brilliant player) says is true when he says that Lyon’s higher octaves don’t sound good, because honestly that range on Ellie sounds better than on Lyon. Either that, or that I forgot how to produce a good sound on the school harps already… :/
I really can’t wait to get back to school. Now that I’m not practicing in a bid to get to a certain school just for someone, I’m finally free (well in a sense) to do what I want. Aim for any school I want. My romantic life no longer restricts me to certain choices. Previously when I used to like this guy from the US, I was really unhappy that he wasn’t from Singapore. I mean, I don’t want to move away from here, not really! Plus, he was Caucasian, so I was just shouting to myself, “What are you doing Karen??!” Somewhere deep in me I’d always looked down on SPGs (not going to define it, go look up a Singlish dictionary if you don’t know what it means) or otherwise girls who like Caucasians just because they think they look good looking, something that seems really shallow to me (still trying to kick the bad habit of judging superficial things like that). For one, my tastes are really not for Caucasians (prefer the dark type, don’t ask me why), so the looks thing wasn’t a factor at all in my liking him, all the more so because I’m a person who cares about next to nil about looks in a potential life-partner. But I guess I was worried that others would think I liked him because of the looks thing. For these reasons, I felt great anguish at the time when I had to admit to myself that I liked him, especially because I really really didn’t want to move, but well, I thought, you know, if a person is your soulmate, you gotta follow him no matter what, so that’s the direction I followed for two years, to practice and be able to get into the San Francisco Conservatory. But now… no more. I want to be no longer live a life that is dictated by the whims of my heart, but to finally live for myself (highly unlikely, looking at my track record… my head really doesn’t trust my heart’s new resolution…)
It’s quite liberating, in that now I am truly and wholly playing just for the sake of the music, to be a better musician, but at the same time it’s quite frightening to feel directionless. Well, all my life I’ve let my direction in life be dictated by people whom I had feelings for. As in, I always knew what I wanted to be and my end goals never changed, but the way in which I achieved the dream kept changing. This was also why I ended up studying harp in Singapore (this one was because of my ex) instead of overseas, when everyone was telling me that I would learn more in the US, for example.
Well, it actually turned out to be the better choice to stay here instead, because Gulia is really such a great teacher who will probably end up teaching me more than I would have been taught if I had gone to most US conservatories. And… well! She definitely has the connections. When I asked her today about buying a harp, she told me that she knows the guy from Lyon and Healy and told me to mention her name when buying the harp so that “they don’t stiff you with a lousy harp”. I was quite amazed that Gulia even knew him in the first place. Well, Julliard is Julliard. Can’t beat that. It’s really amazing though… with money you can do everything it seems. YST (Yong Siew Toh Conservatory) has been getting the best teachers from the best schools… that means that students from your school are now connected to students from Julliard, with all their connections. It’s really… well, a great but not wholly intended side-effect.
Then again, we at YST are already SO lucky to be able to have the benefit of teachers from MPO (Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra) because the MPO pays their musicians a Huge deal (sponsored by Sepang, Malaysian national oil company mah), so they attract the best musicians there, which YST then asks to teach at the school. Cool huh? Jonathan Fox (Percussion) is this way. Even though my teacher is from SSO (Singapore Symphony Orchestra), I can still see the rest of my classmates benefiting from the tutelage of MPO musicians, like Julian under Brett Stemple (Tuba).
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Oh… maybe I’ll relate some funny events that happened in the YST orchestra…
A violist arrived 20 minutes late and the pissed conductor asked him why he was late. The violist looked at the clock on the wall of the rehearsal room… then replied, “Oh my clock was 20 minutes slow.” The conductor rolled his eyes and said, “I think YOU’re slow.”
Then, there was this thing about the violist (different one) who actually did a well, shit, on stage. No kidding. It was, most embarrassingly, at the Esplanade Concert Hall. Yeah, I know, facepalm for the reputation of YST. Apparently, the offending violist had greedily eaten 3 packets of food during dinner time, so really it was no surprise that he had… digestion issues later on. And that guy being a 1st year and all… he probably didn’t think that he would be allowed to get off the stage to do his thing, or maybe he thought he could hold it in or something… In any case, the deed was done by the end of Ein Heldenleben, and because that piece concluded the concert, the orchestra had to stand, sit and repeat so many times to acknowledge the applause… the wind section just behind the viola section had to bear the brunt of it… Ouch. Thankfully us harps were pretty far away so we didn’t get it. I myself didn’t smell anything and obviously Gulia didn’t either, because she was busy hugging us and congratulating us on a good performance (awww :) ), all of this happening while we were still on stage. Afterwards, when we went down to the changing rooms, we could really see blobs of… the brown stuff… … … The horrible part was that by the time the Esplanade crew managed to get to it, some of it had already seeped into the flooring itself, and worst of all, the SSO were having a rehearsal the very next morning, so all the Esplanade people could do was just to put on a sort of platform on that area and they just went ahead. Must have been a real stink. No wonder the story has spread well beyond YST. When I was rehearsing with OMM the musicians were talking about it (with completely inaccurate parts added in, you know, the broken telephone thing), and apparently it’s been talked about even in the MPO. Blah. Infamy for the rest of your YST life as the shitting violist.
My favorite teacher Tony had a real good laugh about it when he heard the story… he said that that shows that Strauss’ Ein Heldenleben is so difficult that it literally makes people shit in their pants! *facepalm*
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After I finished practicing, I intended to get to the Opus Dei centre for the class at 3, but I met Uncle Wah Peng on the way. I’ve always liked Uncle Wah Peng a lot because he always helps me to move the harps. Always on time and just, well… he likes to help me and I feel really bad about it, so I try to move the harps or something before he comes and it actually becomes almost like a kind of game sometimes :P Even though I know that it IS his job, I still feel bad about it because the harp is not light at all, and him having to move them around… it doesn’t feel right. So sometimes I help him as well to make myself feel better about it. Like the other time, I helped him to load the harps into the hard travelling cases when we were moving the harps to the Esplanade. Man those things were tough. I bought him chicken essence once because I felt so bad for him having to lift those 40 kg harps all the time but he said, “Next time cannot already ok!!” because he felt that I was still studying and I shouldn’t be doing such stuff. I told him that I was playing gigs outside, so I was earning some money (which was true, just that I’m not actually getting much) and he grudgingly accepted it, but since then he’s always remembered it, much to my embarrassment when he openly praises me about it… I mean well, if you’re reading this then you should already know that that’s what I do for everyone anyway, I just like people :)
Anyway, Uncle Wah Peng was talking to me about his daughter, which just got into Medicine in NUS. (before, he liked to talk to me about her because she comes from the same JC as me, AJC (Anderson Junior College)) Wow. Uncle really very li hai (formidable). I could tell that he was just so proud of his daughter and I just encouraged him to speak more and more about, especially because he was so happy and everything… I was really happy for him. He went on about him going with his daughter for the interview (with him waiting outside while his daughter was being interviewed, of course) and actually, us who can get interviews for admission into university courses or scholarships are already very lucky… there are so many who will never get a chance like that in their entire lives. Uncle said that he wanted to go and see what the interview was like because he had never had a chance to experience something of that scale of importance before. It’s quite amazing, the lives that other people lead… Anyway I never realised how long we had chatted, until I got to the bus stop and I realised that it was already 3.08. Obviously I was really late for the lesson.
Afterwards, I went to someone's 'summer' house, as he calls it. The 'he' in question is Diego, a YST student from Mexico. I was a little confused as to why he had invited me there in the first place, because I don’t really know him well. The only time when we spoke seriously was in the library, when I was going to practice in the harp studio (then I found out I couldn't get into the studio). I saw him watching an opera which piqued my interest. I was really free at the time so I just chatted to him, and we ended up chatting for I think 2 hours? About 2 weeks after that he invited me to see his summer lodgings and it was a bit weird, especially since if I went it would be only the 2 of us. I only said okay when I heard that there were other people going as well. I figured that since he was living alone, quite a distance away from YST, it's difficult to socialise and he probably just wanted to talk to someone, anyone. In any case, I did know him from school, so I was never really worried, unlike the time when I wandered into a guy's level in PGP late at night.
Anyway, for the vacation, he was living in a house where, well... even if you have money, it's difficult get a house that is as beautiful. When I saw it I was just stunned. I’ve seen plenty of huge houses, but none of them are quite as beautiful as that one. It was just so well-designed… the layout was just instinctive and natural. It put me at ease the moment I stepped in. I mean well, even if you have money, it’s hard to get a design that good. I’ve seen the houses of people who are probably 10 times richer… and the whole package can't match up at all. Seriously, it takes not just a rich person, but a rich person with taste. And luck I guess. Just, wow.
When I got there, I was the only person at the time, so as you can guess it was a little awkward. Diego showed me the pool and jacuzzi and the conversation topic got to talking about how, in Mexico, it’s quite liberal and people like to suntan and swim in a way that avoids tan lines... ... and he said, "You know, life is short. Just enjoy life! Why do you have to restrain yourself?" I was a little jolted myself but before you start thinking that he's a creep, well just think that it's his culture. He had such confidence that his culture's way of doing things is better, and I guess that a lot of people who meet such confidence start to think that yes, their way of doing things is indeed better. I think, though, it’s important to know that their way of doing things is not necessarily better, just different. Trying to do things their way in our culture is really not going to work.
In a way it's kind of like free speech… someone told me about one of the subordinates to Chee Soon Juan (Secretary-general of opposition Singapore Democratic Party), that this subordinate was talking to a table of people about how we all need free speech and our rights and how America does everything better… One of the people at the table got so fed up that he said, ‘Alright, we all have rights right? Well, it’s my right not to sit here and listen to this nonsense.” and then he walked off. Man, I really salute that guy. Believe me I've talked to my fair share of Americans and it can really get on my nerves when they keep parading their right to free speech. If you ever show your frustration, they think you're just jealous of them when really you just want to tell them that unbridled free speech is not always the answer. Just look at America's cults and all that... In fact I'm secretly glad that we have some restrictions on free speech. Sure, some areas it could be loosened up, but in most others... well let's just say that free speech is not a license to stupidity.
The poolside chairs were all facing up to the sky, and I forgot to ask Diego if he could see any stars at night. I think it could be really beautiful if there wasn't much light pollution from other buildings so you can actually see the various constellations. If Wynne and Kung Ming want to go again, I'll be sure to bring my star chart. I might actually get to identify more constellations, I've never been able to find the Big Dipper, so I'm pretty excited to try see it. :D Though I still think that the best place to see stars should be in Malaysia. My uncle (mom's younger sister's husband) once promised, after a night of stargazing on their balcony, to bring me and my cousins to Malaysia to look at the stars. They had never used that telescope of theirs, until that night when I discovered that they actually Had A Telescope! Unbelievable! If I had something like that I would be out there every night, for sure, until I identify all the constellations in the Northern Hemisphere. Now that would be really fun! :D
Anyway back to Diego's summer place... after a while Wynne finally arrived and rescued me. Phew. Then we taught Diego how to play chinese chess. If you've never played chinese chess before and don't know how to read chinese at all... well. I'm actually quite impressed that he learnt so fast. Of course he made a few mistakes on how certain pieces move, but I think by the next game he could actually beat me. I'm intrigued by the depth of his intellect.
Hmm. Well we stayed out too late and parents were a little upset. Umm.. well they usually are when I come back around 11, and mom said she was going to throw my computer out of the window, a threat that she has been using for... well, since I got to use a laptop in J2 (junior college, year 2). I can't exactly say that I got my own laptop because even to this day I don't actually 'own' a laptop... This one I'm using is sort of on a permanent loan from my older bro.
I'm actually pretty tired of travelling out all the time and am looking forward to a good rest tomorrow. I Am going to travel out to get my contacts though, sometime this week. They’ve finally arrived and I wonder what it’ll be like wearing them…
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