Time to knuckle down and enjoy the match. Shall update more later (depending on the final scoreline). Enjoy the last day before the commencement of the school term (yet again).

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Dreamt of death (?) yet again.

Always seem to find myself thrust into one depressing scenario after another when I finally close my eyes and let t subconscious go crazily wild. Somehow I always survived, albeit surrounded by ruin and desolation.

Yesterday's Les Mis brought tears to my eyes. Although Eponine's time on the big screen was short (tragically so), I guess most of us could empathise with her: the raising and eventual dashing of hopes which never really belonged to you. The delusion that she embraced right to the end by virtue of her presence at the barricades, always looking out for the slightest signal or hint, even if unintended by him, that reinforced the illusion of intertwined fates.

And of course the songs were awesome.

Few words were exchanged, and fewer glances still, for behind that smile (?) lay much (perceived?) pain, anguish and sorrow. Bet we share much in common, if we ever get to sustaining a convo haha.

Who am I?

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Just a brief update.

I must firstly say that ReWind! was a great success! And a huge shoutout to all alumni saxas, lower ww and J13 (gasp!) seniors for making it such a wonderful concert experience. The pre and post-concert celebrations were really amazing. Guess it only takes an afternoon of pool/cuesports (btp) and late-night/early-morning games at the LAN shop (chamber) to create strong bonds amongst individuals who were effectively strangers before t whole adventure started in Dec.

Really missed maestro Leng and all his brilliant/witty jokes and mathematical/ scientific analogies during rehearsals. cos we are hwach kids, and they are supposed to know all these... your starting attack is like a normal distribution curve with a large sigma. I want it to become narrower, and eventually become a vertical line - towards the mean

We may not have played the best Titanic or Star Wars (it was much better during practice haha, and the audi's acoustics still sucks - as usual; couldn't hear anyone on our left or right) Still t passion and intensity at those emo parts really shone through - and the intonation was awesome. Hope t alumni band had done enough to persuade the school to make it an annual tradition. I guess it will inspire ppl from bands in non-hwach schools to continue engaging w the band scene even after graduation. Sometime during rehearsals Leng mentioned that hwach ex-students form the largest proportion of members in almost every external band in Singapore.

;If we are going to take it at a slower tempo, then you cannot staccato your notes. You must tenuto-rise them.

;Your usual ritard-ness in making all of us slow down will be useful here.

Thank you Louis/JH and Quek/ah chua for coming down. Really appreciate your presence in the audience tonight. The college band played Les Mis and the combined band The Bells of Sagrada Familia and an Adele medley for encore.

Truth be told most of us alumni members have no idea what t rest of the highsch/college/combined bands were going to play. We went on stage w/out warming up and just delivered the goods (with the odd accidental here and there). Listening to the recordings is a must then for us.

***On a side I was quite flummoxed by the seeming low levels of publicity the concert received on the net. Bandfusion's on a hiatus (still) and the band blogs seemed to have died a natural death. Nothing on the net at all, save for a wee ulu event/mention on FB.

And I feel old seeing all those lower sec kids back in 2008/9 playing alongside us in the alumni band. Wonder how the J13s feel? Haha.

2 years in Hwach flew past just like that. Nostalgia. Hwach is different I guess; that's probably why so many of us get drawn back during the annual mid-autumn celebrations.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Hi there. Its 2013, and since I was technically dead from the blogosphere for the past six months I am probably talking typing to myself, for my own amusement, right now.

Admittedly, I'd wanted to revive this site and update it on a regular basis many times (see t many failed attempts to do so over the past year). However I always struggled with the dilemma of whether to maintain a carefree narrative style reminiscent of our teenage years (don't deny, we were all like this at some point) or to conform to what we will like our peers to view us as - adults who can write in proper english and dispense with the unnecessary riff-raff about our seeming mundane comings and goings.

Although it seems childish now, we really did put our rawest feelings and emotions into posting (ranting) back then; in essence, those can/should be considered the most authentic representations of who we really are.

Over the past year, I realised that I am still unable to control my actions/feelings/words effectively when some vestige/distant memory(?) of years gone by show up once again. It was my fault for opening the Pandora's box before I was ready to face it head on. Dreams Nightmares last night were telling; it was a compendium of everything which I hated about the past which left me shaken for the rest of the day.

Time heals all wounds they say. Rubbish. Its only through your own conscious choice to release those burdens which you'd heaped unto your back can your wounds truly be healed without leaving behind an ugly, distinctive scar.

And, it's tough/rare to find another truly ever-green person nowadays. At least that was a factor which kept constant throughout 2012 haha.

On a side note, holidays are ending soon. And that's the easy part. Good luck everyone, we'll need it.

I think I need a psychiatrist, else just someone to talk to (Haha) Or to get admonished by.

Sometimes you need to start from the beginning to truly know/appreciate someone's character, personality and views. Its analogous to you starting to watch a new variety show/drama from ep 99 onwards when in fact you should have started fr the beginning so as to understand the relationships that eventually formed between the members of the cast (and the subplots!). True story. I did that and couldn't find anything to laugh at initially. On to ep 1 and then, voila.

Wished I could ever do photography. Was never able to capture a nice angle/timing. Lomo and flim look nice. Sometimes I wished I was smarter, more talented in music, sport and all that. Guess that's something which we have to live with eh. Au revoir. 통신끝, goodbye~

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

How can I ever bring myself to look in the mirror again?

The dates 14-15 June 12 will forever be etched as deeply as 24 Aug 05, 31 Dec 06, 21 Jun 07, 6 Jan 11.

I'm just a recalcitrant egoistic bugger at the very core.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

Its a brand new day, and I feel thoroughly refreshed after last night.

"I saw all your emo tweets. You see it's different if you actually practiced and then got overshadowed. Its not fair to judge yourself like that! And that benchmark is created by you! Maybe if you hadn't allowed yourself to feel so pressured and had confidence in yourself, then you wouldn't be feeling this way."

It's hard to explain it - but yesterday was the first time in many years that I felt my confidence drain away when faced with a crowd. And it was a harrowing experience which I do not want an encore of, ever.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

A few years later, I hope to look back on today and think that even though I screwed up, at least it woke me up and gave me an added impetus to work even harder both at work and in school.

In a nutshell, I bombed a presentation. And that's a horrible feeling to have when you know you had underperformed in front of your peers (who are outwardly showing signs of sympathy and empathy but probably sneering within) and made a complete and utter fool of yourself.

It doesn't take a fool to work out how retarded your presentation was when the chairperson of the meeting did not bother to ask you any questions and proceeded to sum up everyone's presentations with a common thread or theme about blah blah blah. Oh wait, everyone except yours. That's right, he thought your presentation was so rubbish that he did not even include it in his summation notes.

Here are some things that you should not do in order to avoid a similar fate -

1. NEVER GO IN WITHOUT A SCRIPT

I was perhaps too confident in my abilities to improvise on the spot - but trust me, that's not a wise move when you're presenting on really serious stuff to someone who, well, knows his stuff and can detect bullshit and smoke from a mile away. Hence, you should always have a script. Even if you are reading off it (blatantly), at least it beats stammering at the wrong time and repeating 'actually' so many times that it (actually) makes your audience cringe.

2. ALWAYS KNOW THE PROPER SLIDE TEMPLATE

Perhaps it was the 2 years of army that somehow conveniently forgot to structure my slides according to the standard template. And by that I meant the agenda, learning points, processes, chains of thought etc etc - which leads to me having to spine on which to base my presentation on. What's the point of having so many content slides when your audience can't link them to any theme? And having graphics or shapes to aid your explanation of concepts help too (Arrows to represent processes, Venn diagrams to represent relationships and convergence, so on).

3. DO NOT BE OVERCONFIDENT AND SET YOUR STANDARDS OR EXPECTATIONS TOO HIGH

I should clarify - You can set your standards high, but make sure you put in the corresponding amount of effort needed to reach your goal as well! In the words of the chairperson, "Nervousness will always be there (when you present). You should be afraid of the day when you do not feel nervous before a presentation for that is when you are actually complacent."

Having pegged my expectations too high, and made many errors along the way, I was brought crashing back to earth at the end of the day. People who are close to me will know that I heaped tonnes of added expectations on myself for a very unique reason (for obvious reasons I will not disclose).

All I can say is that I had imagined myself to be on par with the very best prior to this, only for my folly and rustiness (I had not made a formal presentation in more than three years, and came in with a half-cooked script and minimal preparation - a result of possessing an unproductive mind) to prove my undoing.

I have gotten the perfect slide template for any presentation imho (thank you!), and this whole unfortunate experience will only serve to galvanise my wounded ego and self-esteem to come up with the appropriate (positive) backlash. I hope you will not pity me for being so pathetic and sputtering like a machine gun in a accent gone awry due to my nervousness, and indeed look beyond this episode in your impressions of me.

I pray. Fingers crossed.

I hope I will be able to read this post again in a few years, and smile. For I would then have conquered my fears, and know that I had done the best I could in the intervening years.

*Post typed in the company of Jim Bean* Cheers.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!

I've never felt so let down by a confidante before.

Whoever came up with the idiom "blood is thicker than water" deserves to be shot.

And so my paranoia casts aspersions on the truth I thought I once knew.

Comment! (0) | Recommend!