Disclaimer: if this post seems really disjointed, it's because it is... I wrote it at different parts of the day.
We are from Cedar, we shall not be moved
We are from Cedar, we shall not be moved
Like the trees that are planted by the waterside
We shall not be moved
I hated cheering when I was in sec sch even though they all made us do it while jogging. While the rest of the class would happily cheer and jog, the only time when I joined in was when we were going to reach the teachers who actually give us a mark on our cheering during jogging! (so as to give the best class the 'jogging award' based on punctuality in reporting, jogging organisation, and cheers) When we passed the teachers I would join in just to give the class a boost on behalf of those in the class who really wanted the award.
Anyway that's not the point. The point is that I felt this applied to me this morning because if someone needs help, I will give it, and I shall not be moved, just like the trees that are planted by the waterside. Actually I'm even glad that it's me and not someone else. Because with my music and my friends and my generally optimistic nature I do take it better than someone else does, and of course, nobody else will be hurt.
"If it's really in your nature to hurt others, if seeing the pain of another makes you feel better, then go ahead. But if it's not your nature to hurt others, is it really worthwhile to hurt yourself and those who care for you?" - an sms that I wanted to send to C but decided it was not the right time yet.
Lol... why am I so accommodating to everyone to this extent? I practically run around trying to please people. Probably I'd make a wonderful sidekick, not to mention that I can execute a pretty good side kick though my specialty was always the backthrust, hah. (sorry, prior taekwondo training)
Brilliant. Nambi sent me a link that at first I thought meant 'a fine' because i saw 'fa kuan' in the link and I thought of 罚款, ((a) fine) but soon realised that it was an exceedingly interesting chinese poem/tongue-twister. Here's the link and you can go read it for yourself: http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML we had a good laugh over it :p it also has a recording of someone reading it, on the right of a pair of recordings. I wonder how my grandmother would pronounce it in Teochew. I can't pronounce all of it unfortunately... while I can speak and use the dialect functionally, if you ask me to read out a Chinese newspaper article in Teochew I'd get stuck within a few characters. Yeah, it's quite pathetic but at the same time I'm aware that my ability to speak dialect is already on the upper tier in comparison to others of my generation. I don't know which is more pathetic, honestly, my own lack of ability at my dialect or the general lack of ability. Dialects are dying out in China as well because people would rather teach their children 'Putonghua', in other words Mandarin. Now that my grandmother is senile I can no longer ask her to teach me Teochew. I can't help but feel as if I have let her down.
Hmm... I seem to carry so much guilt inside me, to different people, at different times, for different situations... I guess I should have a significant ability to be able to block certain bad memories of guilt or else I would be depressed all the time. Maybe some people are more susceptible to becoming depressed because they are less able to block out the bad memories?
I was just washing up my hands when I saw the dish for the bar soap that I use. I see it every day, but today I was reminded of the soap dish that I made when i was in Sec 1, for D&T. That was the first item that we made, I think. The second was a wooden sign to hang on a door that I painted with watercolours that got onto my pencil box (bright green paint on a grubby, old, torn pencil box that I started using in Sec 1 and still use now) and Stayed there until I finally washed it um... years later? Gosh, I was really a slob, haha. (still am in a lot of ways actually)
Anyway, back to the soap dish... we were making it and I had finished everything except for the supports to hold the dish up. We were supposed to bend the side flaps on the sheet of metal to form the supports. Because it was our first project, the teacher Mrs Lee helped us bend the flaps around a wooden pole of sorts and everyone ended up with a circular support, which really didn't fit into my idea of aesthetics. I took a look at theirs and decided that I wanted an S-shaped support instead of a circular support, so when it was my turn to have my support 'made' I asked if I could have an S-shaped one. She took one look at me and then said, "You can't do that, it's too difficult." I thought, "Alright fine, since you won't help me, I'll do it myself." And that's exactly what I did. I bent it first on one side around the pole, then on the other side (if you look at the S it is circular first one side then the other), then I handed it in. She gave me a very high mark.
I still remember Mrs Lee, who later liked to say to my best friend Joyce, "Joyce, are you alright? Do you need counselling?" because Mrs Lee was a teacher counsellor (in other words the school trained her to be able to counsel students. You have no idea how scary that is). And still later I once saw her in church, which might or might not have been her. Other than Mrs Lee though, I did meet Mrs Doris Foong in St Francis Xavier church though, which was a real... hide-face moment :p It wasn't really that she was my antithesis in sec sch or something, just that it's really weird to meet a teacher from so long ago that you're not close to, and then you have a conversation and you're scrambling through your mind wondering what you could possibly say.
Speaking of D&T, when I was young the only hammer we had at home was a hammer made by my uncle when he was in school. Because I had never seen another hammer, I thought that it was normal and even store-bought, because the handle looked perfect (probably ready made and just affixed onto the metal part). So, I always thought that that was the proper kind of hammer and wondered why pictures of hammers always showed a different style of hammer :p. It's almost like research with colours. If you grew up learning that red colour was really green colour, in a world where the colours were inverted, how would you know that red isn't really green? It's a really fascinating idea and made me lie awake sometimes wondering what aspect of my own perception was 'abnormal' but I thought was perfectly normal. It boils down to 'how do you know that what you know is the truth?' which of course starts to go into the region of philosophy that I'll spare you from (and myself, from typing) but even then, it's pretty fascinating.
Oh... not much about my day again... Today I basically charged my way through 5 hymns, arrangements and all. I don't even know how I did it. I wanted to give up so many times, especially when I couldn't find my manuscript book to write down my arrangements. So what I did I will have to practically get from off the top of my head the next time I practise. I was seriously frustrated but each time I got up one part of me (Self 1, Self 2) pleaded with the other part, 'just one more?' and somehow or other, I did it. I pushed my fingers too hard today though... 6 hours of practise is just too much for anyone. I even fitted in half an hour of Spohr Variations at the end because my lesson is next week and argh! How in the world am I supposed to do all of this in two weeks?? My forearm hurts. Privately I'm always paranoid that I might get an injury. I already suspect that I have a bit of carpel tunnel especially in my left index finger because I always tend to push my left hand, especially so this year after I finally learned that my technique that I had been using for years was all wrong. Pray that this doesn't all result in a career-ending injury. There, paranoid, but with good cause. I don't know anyone else in music faculty who gets aches like I do, even before I start practising. But can't possibly get to the doc's right now, with so many performances coming up...bummer.
Over-ambitious me has such a crazy programme for next year I don't even know how I'm supposed to manage them all. And I'm supposed to be able to retire two of the 7 pieces I'm going to play in Year 3, by december (end of Year 3 sem 1). Madness! Just what have you done, Karen? All of this just to be able to do post-graduate studies in a good school. Honestly though, I've never been so academically oriented, as in, I have never wanted to get into a good school so badly. Mostly I just floated into whatever was available. Jasmine says I've changed. Indeed. I've changed so much. Perhaps it's because previously when I was in sec sch and jc, I was never able to be fully free to pursue my passion. And now that I tasted freedom, I just want to fly higher, and higher, and higher.
Sometimes my tenacity and level of motivation (or maybe just stubbornness to keep pushing on) frightens me. Gulia (my harp teacher) tells me that I am a lot more ambitious than Huang Yin, my classmate. Perhaps so. But also perhaps not. A lot of the time I'm not even sure what exactly my goal is, where I want to stop, just that I want to keep getting better.
My mind is reeling. Too many thoughts are jostling for space. It's again time to tell my brain 'shut up and get to bed', though sleep tonight will probably be occupied by thoughts. Anyway, goodnight!
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