A Lesson From a Walk with My Rifle

The rifle is often termed as your “wife” in the SAF, probably because receiving a SAR-21 for the first time during the arms parade could be paralleled to how a husband feels whilst receiving his wife from her father, with much thrill and a passionate promise to take care of the rifle, or “wife”, “WITH MY LIFE!” Well, I doubt my ability to uphold that promise much longer, now that begin to see why my sergeants calls them a burden.

Having to walk 3km with your rifle on a road march is not exactly a totally pleasant experience, given that I was already worn out from the few weeks worth of physical training. [Yes, I’m in Physical Training Phase (PTP)] Apart from the sweltering sun, discomfort of being drenched in your sweat and a helmet that gives you headaches, you have to deal with the shoulder ache from the “irritating” weight of this rifle - 3.4kg I reckoned - slung on your right shoulder for the entire hour along with a vest with about 3 liters of water in the water bag and water bottle each, and that’s just the start of many other road marches.

Despite the aches and the exhaustive walk to maintain within the file, I’m quite thankful for road marches likes these because they remind me of what it means love other people. Quite random but here’s how I see it.

Drawing a parallel with my rifle/”wife”, we often see of how couples (in the media especially) are so passionate on their marriage day - promising to love and care for one another till death us part – and soon after files for a divorce when difficulties arises. Much like how I now dislike and don’t wish to have my rifle just a few weeks after I got it, except that I cannot divorce this “wife” just yet.

We sometimes define love as a feeling or emotion, it comes and it goes. When it’s gone, it’s gone, reminds me of David Foster’s song”: “After the Love is Gone”. The problem with this definition is not just an increase in break-up cases or divorce rates, but more so, in the broader context, an extremely picky choice of who or maybe what we want to love, when we want to love, and even how we want to love. In other words, we love someone (not excluding friends and family members) when we feel like it, or at our own convenience/ enjoyment/ pleasure.

I used to indirectly affirm that, but recently while having a discussion in my bible study/cell group, I found out that the bible had never define or describe love as a mere feeling, but more interestingly, phrase them as commands, and also suggest that actions must be taken too. Have a look at some of these verses:

Deuteronomy 6:5:

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Leviticus 19:34:

You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

Deuteronomy 11:1:

You shall therefore love the LORD your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always.

Matthew 5:43-44:

You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

Mark 12:30-31:

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.

Luke 6:35:

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Romans 12:10:

Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.

Ephesians 5:2:

And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

I John 4:11:

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

(There are more, but I’ll leave it to you guys to read them in context.)

The question I was puzzled with was: if love was just a feeling, how can we be commanded to feel something do not feel like feeling? Brain cramped right? As I read these verses again, it seems evident that love requires a certain action to be taken notwithstanding our feelings, and emotions and I suppose moods as well.

While love may involve intense emotions and feelings, love should never be equated to these things that are temporary and prone to discrepancies. Because love is founded by God - whose love endures forever – and also made for His glory as the loving Heavenly Father, and thus as his creation, we are therefore made to reflect and display that too.

Now as I redefine love for my own life, I am slowly learning and understand how then it is possible for one to love even those who persecute you. It is because love was never a feeling or emotion to begin in the first place, neither is it dependent on these. I have been freed and commanded to love; I do not base my love on how I feel or even what immediate benefits I get in return.

So whether or not my bible study contacts are interested in listening to God’s word through me, whether or not my family chooses to show concern for me or not, whether my sergeants demands certain high standards of me or whether or not my friends like or dislike me or some times insensitively make fun of me, I’ll learn to love them just the same because God first loved me, redeemed me with a new life to now display that same love to others.

I like how Alan Catchpoole succinctly and practically defined Love (for people):

“Love is an intelligent willingness to do what is best for the other person.”

Most of us would agree that it is important to do what’s best for others, but the important thing here is that we must also be intelligent to know what then is best for those we love, it may something that they do not necessary like but have to do. Moreover, we don’t do it grudgingly just simply because we are commanded to, but because we want to do so, because we were also loved the same way by our God.

This then defines why I did some of the things I tried do (but often didn’t do too well):

Cleaning my bunk and the toilets that others may have a cleaner and healthier place to stay in and rest. Apart from avoiding more trouble and frustration of everyone by being punished by my sergeants, which is a secondary reason in attempt to maintain the unity of everyone.

Helping the family with the housework, and handling my own laundry, that they may have more time to rest from their busy work and recuperate and work hard for the rest of the week.

Preparing for bible study not just with the people I’m teaching, but also for my teachers not just based on respect for them, but also that I may of encouragement to everyone in the group as the others encourage me.

Sms-ing or whatsapp some friends to hear them out and ask for prayer request, and if within my ability and if needed, give advice to certain issues I resolved in my own life.

P.S. To my non-Christian friend out there, this is also why we Christians may tend to be aggressive towards you with our faith, because we know and tasted the best gift of God’s love for us when he chose to save and forgive despite our rebellion against him. Thus knowing of the best gift, we therefore eagerly want to do what we know is best for you by sharing with you this gift of love from God.

These are but some simple things I resolve to do in the midst of my army days. They are not exhaustive for there are indeed many more ways that we can show love to people, some of them involving things which are of great inconvenience for most of us. especially when it comes to loving the same people for a life-time.

I suppose I'm not the only one here struggling and working out resolutions here, so for the readers who are also struggling to resolve this issue like myself, I would like to pray alongside with you that we may continue to remember this resolution of love we have learned, from God’s Word, that we may consistently put to practice our love for God - which is to delight in Him - and for people as well, as we live our lives as Christians in various places, to serve, to rely and to trust in God, so that He may be seen more clearly in and through our lives, especially through this love we first received from Him.

Scales: MILLPAD Method

Recently a classmate of mine taught me a interesting way to play scales of 2 octaves, probably because I kept questioning myself if there was a more effective way to play scales. Well, for me this new method made it easier for me the play scales on the bass, so I thought I would just share with you. I call this method: MILLPAD. Basically, it's formula of finger patterns that help you play your scales in different mode, using these 3 finger pattern in a certain sequence.

Why MILLPAD? What does it stand for?

• Mixolydian (V)
• Ionian (I)
• Lydian (IV)
• Locrian (VII)
• Phrygian (III)
• Aeolian (VI)
• Dorian (II)

Basically if you guys are wondering what these foreign language is, it's Musical Mode. In order to fully appreciate this, it is important to understand what musical modes are. But basically modes are scales in a particular. Each of these technical names just tells us which note this scale starts with. Modes will take the key signature of that particular key.

Like for example, Ionian mode on C Major means that the scale is made up of starting from C, D, E...A , B, C

And if I say, Dorian on C Major, it's a scale starting from D, E, F...B, C, D. Notice that there is no F# or C# or Bb in the scale starting with D, simply because this scale takes on the key signature of the key the Mode is on.

And so on...

so before we get confused about Modes, let's reveal the formula...

(Sorry I'm meant Pattern 1, 2 & 3)

Basically, this diagram shows the different fingering pattern for each mode you are suppose to play. Like if the sequence is a Dorian ---> Mixolydian, you play pattern 3 followed by pattern 1 again.

(I'm naming the different fingering as 1, 2, 3 to help the explanation below.)

All scales/modes follows this sequence of fingering patterns,

Mixolydian (V), Ionian (I), Lydian (IV), Locrian (VII), Phrygian (III), Aeolian (VI), Dorian (II) and back to Mixolydian again.

Depending on what scale you play, you start off with different modes and follow the sequence when playing an ascending scale. If you are playing a descending scale, just follow the sequence backwards.

Let's look at the first example in the C Major Scale (Ascending, 2 Octaves).

• First we must agree that, Major scale = Ionian Mode:

So we start off with Ionian, and follow the MILLPAD sequence. In this case will be:

• Ionian ---> Lydian ---> Locrian ---> Phrygian ---> Aeolian
• Pattern 1 ---> Pattern 1 ---> Pattern 2 ---> Pattern 2---> Pattern 3:

Notice that each pattern is made up of only 3 notes? So basically, once we have completed one pattern, we move on to play the next string with next coming pattern, only at the G string do we have to slide 1-2 frets and play the next pattern (this is an exception for 6 string bassist)

So if we were to play C Major scale, descending the sequence would be,

• Aeolian ---> Phrygian ---> Locrian ---> Lydian ---> Ionian
• Pattern 3 ---> Pattern 2 ---> Pattern 2 ---> Pattern 1 ---> Pattern 1

Just basically a reverse of the ascending scale.

Let's look at another example to get it right.

Here we are going to play a C Natural Minor Scale (2 Octaves, Ascending)

Agree that Aeolian Mode = Natural Minor Scale

Now let's figure out the MILLPAD sequence for the Natural Minor Scale. It should be,

• Aeolian ---> Dorian ---> Mixolydian ---> Ionian ---> Lydian
• Pattern 3 ---> Pattern 3 ---> Pattern 1 ---> Pattern 1 ---> Pattern 1:

So once again you notice this same pattern again, after 3 notes you either change strings of change position on your fretboard. And descending scale would just basically be the reverse MILLPAD sequence. For me, I find this a very good tool to use as it helps me play bass in different modes quickly, Thus, I won't find it hard to play any scale starting from any note in the scale because of this formula. Apparently my friend who introduced me to this said this came from Victor Wooten. Still, I'm very grateful to her for imparting her secret to me. I hope this will help you guys to play scales on the bass guitar more efficiently. Once again, don't believe everything I say, try it for yourselves!

Feel Free to post any questions in the comments.

Practice Diary for Bass Guitar

Hi people, for now, this blog with be used as my practice diary. Basically I will be posting up the different things I am doing to improve myself on my selected instrument - the bass guitar.

Well, I started off with bass a during Secondary 4, and I have never played it consistently, it 's the curse of a multi-instrumentalist. It's only once in a while when there's a need for a bassist, do I get a chance to properly sit down and practice the bass.

Over the years I found some weaknesses I have with playing the bass (as with a lot of other instruments I play).

• Little control over the instrument, which leads to inconsistent volume, rhythm.
• Little knowledge on scales, and different melodic fills on the bass
• Little Stamina in playing a full song, especially fast punk rock song which require continuous fast fingering.

So in this performance, I aim to:

• Be able to play the bass tight in a band, and have good control over it by playing bass more in every opportunity possible.
• Be able to keep time well, by practicing with my 'best friend', click
• Train up stamina, by playing more songs and practicing finger exercises and scales
• Learn how to play gospel style bass - from fills to its grooves, by imitation and application.

Hope to hear from you guys how else I can improve my skills on the bass. Some of these goals may not be accomplished during the course of study, but I'm sure it will be accomplished sooner or later...

The Last Day in Keele

Saturday 8 October 2011 11:51pm GMT+1

Sigh, tonight is the last night we’ll be staying here, feeling a little torn right now as one part of me wants to continue living here, while the other longs to go home. Yet, I know I will leave this place to go back to where I belong, because it is necessary.

I guess today’s supposed trip to Liverpool turns out to be a trip down to New-Castle Under Lyme for us to get the last of souvenirs we needed to get. Well, for me, it sure is wasn’t a wasted trip because I got to properly explore the town area of New-Castle Under Lyme unlike our first visit in the first week shopping for found objects.

I’m not going to tell you what I got today, you’ll find out when I get back to Singapore.

Well, anyway apart from spending 3 hours in New-Castle Under Lyme , I spent an hour packing my bag. Surprisingly, I was still able to fit everything into my luggage and hand-carriers without the need for space extension. So that’s pretty much an achievement for me, being able to properly bag a luggage full of dirty clothes neatly by myself, guess the luggage is gonna smell real bad after 24 hours.

Btw, a note to all - We will be arriving in Singapore at about 3.05pm on Monday not 9pm, apologies for the miscommunication. It will be flight QR 638, so yea it’s for those who wants to see me..

So after packing 90% of the stuff into the luggage, we went over to James’s and Melissa’s accommodation, Horwood Hall. It’s a nice area of cottages side by side each other.

Quite interestingly, their place was very warm, even without a heater It’s really strange. Over here in the Hawthorns apartments it can feel as if an air-conditioner set to 5 degree Celsius even with the heater on, while over there, you would rather be outside in the cold than in the room. Maybe is because they had a kitchen with stoves and ovens that’s why.

And speaking of their kitchen, today we had a special dinner prepared for us specially our own Sonic Escapade Chef, Chris! Haha….it was awesome. Special thanks to Melissa for her hospitality to allow us to have a gathering in the kitchen, thanks to James for loaning us his cooking equipments and to all of them for buying and preparing dinner for us.

And we had to thank Melissa’s hostel mates for being so accommodating to us (they ended up having cup noodles for dinner because of us), even though we were pretty noisy too with all the sharing about Scottish and Welsh people and other random stuff…

Well, this time round I didn’t take pictures of the food, but did take some of the processes we took in helping prepare dinner, before Master Chef Chris stopped me. Well, nevertheless it was a good dinner and desert spending our last night in Keele with out fellow alumni in DMAT.

Well, after that we went to Sney Arms to say farewell to the people there, they have served us with lots of hospitality throughout this 3 weeks, and provided us a place for us to have good dinner and desert and other activities as well. We are sure going to miss them, but thankfully we have their Facebook! Haha..the power of social utilities.

Well, I guess I should be sleeping soon, we will be leaving here at 9.30am tmr for the airport, so I will have to sleep early, or least try to sleep, I starting to regret having my last cup of tea in Keele just before bedtime. It’s a bad move..well, let’s hope exhaustion will win caffeine this time…

Thursday: Michael's Session, Farewell Dinner

Well, another morning kind of wasted because I woke up late again! I ought to get rid of that as one of the condition of my climatization. Apparently the more used to the environment I am, the more I tend to sleep.

Well, anyway the day mainly started at about 2pm where we had to get down the Lindsay 1 to attend a talk Michael Spicer was speaking on. It was just basically a sharing session on the approaches he uses in his compositions, what approach he used to come up with piece so quickly in demanding conditions. Well, he actually taught us already in class, but I guess we needed to hear it again because we have not really understood it to be able to apply it in our composition. It basically a metacognitive model of how we think - Generating Possiblilties àAnalysingà Comparing and contrast à Evaluation.

I won’t bother explaining it as I would simply confuse everyone, I found myself to be very bad at explaining things, especially sound things which I totally understand and practice it but not be able to put it down in simple understandable vocabulary for one to comprehend.

Well, after the talk we were pretty much dead and tired, because it was simply mind-boggling, must be the chips that I ate for lunch too. But in addition to the explanation on the metacognitive thinking, we had another multimedia performance like the one on Tuesday only that it had a different repertoire. Well, this one was harder to appreciate, partially because we were already half-dead from the lecture. All the pieces played were great and nice, but I found myself too tired to even enjoy listening to them.

Well, it got better in the second half the show after the intermission, because now your body knows it’s pointless getting tired because I’m not going to be sleeping anytime soon, probably also because the mint sweet I bought helped to keep up the sugar level up.

So after the performance/showcase, we had a 40min break at our accommodation before we met to go to ‘Hand and Trumpet’ restaurant for a farewell dinner. Well, because this was going to be part of the University’s budget, our meals were subsidized, so I had a £13 meal for £7. And of course a chocolate ice-cream for dessert. YAY!

Well, yes so our main conversation there were about our alumni, because 2 our alummi – James and Melissa – joined us for dinner. They are now current students in Keele University. Well, what else would you expect in a conversation of them with Michael Spicer, of course it had to be about our seniors.

Interesting to see how we had really skilful musicians in the past, they were like our imbar batch of musicians, especially the second batch of DMAT. It’s really interesting yet sad at the same time to see where they ended up to and even for some who dropped out of the course – their rationale behind them.

Some of the graduates and are studying in Berklee, some like Melissa and James went to Keele, some went to local universities like MUS, SIM and NTU to do other things slightly non-related to DMAT, like Finance and Banking, some went on the NIE to do teaching. Some went on working in Soundfarm, our local production house of which some of my current seniors interned in.

Those who dropped out, pretty much left because they wanted to do what they really want, like playing in Gigs and sessions in Pubs, being a DJ turning turn-tables, they didn’t do too well in the course simply because they were too busy on external stuff that they couldn’t concentrate on their studies. I guess the total opposite of me, being busy in school during schooling periods and busy too in the holidays.

Well, some made silly decisions, some made radical ones, but ultimately whether they were really good decision was a real question for me. It seems like the older you get the bigger the price you have to pay for every bad decision you made.

If you chose not to do your homework when you were young, at most you will face a punishment of writing lines, which may last at most 2 days.

If you chose the wrong combination in JC, you suffer for 2 years.

If you chose the wrong course in Polytechnic/University, you would probably suffer for 3-4 years and then be free of your consequence.

If you chose the wrong scholarship for a wrong bond, you would probably suffer 6 years or so working in a company you don’t wish to work.

If you chose a wrong job, the consequence could be 10 – 60 years.

If you chose the wrong wife, consequence could be a lifetime, otherwise a divorce, which is also a lifetime consequence.

And lastly, if you ultimately chose the wrong way to live your life that would be an eternal consequence you have to face.

I guess the important thing is to make every effort to make good decision, and learn from the bad ones you make. Ultimately I guess, everything’s pretty much clear to me, I know which route I should take, and the price I have to pay for each route, the question is, am I willing to make that decision?

Wednesday: Free and Easy, First Tin Whistle Session with Michael

Wednesday was another free and easy day, so most of the time was spent on uploading the videos for the rehearsals on Monday and trying to upload the performance on Tuesday though I know it would be pretty much impossible to do in a day. Now that youtube has this function that enables you to pause and resume uploading when you leave and return to a wifi area. That means that if you have like a maximum of 20GB of videos, you can upload half of that in one day, turn off your computer and resume uploading the rest of it as one entire video, pretty cool.

Well, yes so most of the days was mainly spent on that and mixing and eating, not forgetting I had wasted one entire morning still snoozing comfortably in bed. Seriously, nothing beats the warmth that the heated room brings after a long hard day in the cold.

And yes it is drastically colder now that the weather’s back to 13 degree celcius, I guess the Singapore weather came and now wants to bring us back to Singapore.

Well, that evening we spent quite some time over dinner hearing about Michael’s life story, about how he first started to learn about synthesizer programming at the age of 17 where he heard a distinct timbre which he liked and found out that it was the mini moog.

Then how he went to university after that to get a degree in composition and as playing as a session musician in a pub and later in his first original band called FX and then later as a third-class rock-star in Redgum as a keyboardist and flautist at the age of 23. Well, I forgot how long h toured with them but what I do know is that he was partially the cause of Redgum’s hiatus till now. Apparently the band was going to reform after 1-2 years, after his visit to Singapore. But that ‘1-2 years’ turned out to be like I think 8 years till now, and it has still not reformed. That’s bad news for Redgum fans..

Well, but it was thanks to his Redgum days that he was well-aquainted to Irish tunes. That pretty much led to a session of Tin whistle tunes in Valarie’s room, where we basically followed the John Walsh Session Tunes score and played all the Irish folk tunes together. Well, being a poor sight reader and a amateur tin whistle player, I was of course not able to catch up with them, so basically, I had to listen and learn by ear and practice it on my own before playing with them again. It was a fun time learning to play the whistle, I can tell that Valarie probably practiced the whistle harder than me cus she on the way of becoming an Irish musician.

Well, at least I got to know one more Irish folk song on the tin whistle, but I will definitely need more practice on the whistle before I can play a piece fluently on it. Apparently you are not allowed to use tonguing in Irish folk music on tin whistles, you might get executed for that.. You were suppose to play every phrase within on breath smoothly and add ornamentation to two of the same notes played to distinguish the notes, now that’s tough.

But who knows maybe the tin whistle can be incorporated in our church worship band, I have one in Bb key now, maybe with a D major one, it will be much easier to play.

Monday And Tuesday

Well, Monday was basically another free and easy off for us, except for those who have lessons. Lessons as in lectures in Keele, because this is also an immersion program, we too had the opportunity to get to attend the lessons in Keele university and see what their teaching style is like, what their module content and assignment workload is like.

Mine’s on Tuesday and on Thursday so basically I had a free day off on Monday till our Rehearsal at 5pm and following that a multimedia concert featuring acousticmatic pieces from a few of the Keele lecturers and alumni, and of course Michael Spicer himself playing the crystal garden.

Yea..so the rest of the days were spent on uploading more videos and mixing some stuff I found on recording-microphones.co.uk. Just to get back into the practice of mixing and stuff, and of course to analyze some of these arrangements these songs have.

In a sound engineer’s point of view, a good musical arrangement is one that balances out by itself without having to even lay a finger on it. Meaning to say that a good arrangement – a good choice of instruments, where and how they are played in a song – would almost mix itself nicely, so the mix engineer just have to mixed in accordance to his interpretation of the piece.

Michale Spicer has a pretty strong opinion about this – that you will first have to be a musician before you become a sound engineer. Technically I would say sound engineers who deals with songs and stuff are pretty much musicians I guess, playing their instrument called the mixer. We had a pretty long conversation about this over dinner and I guess I will skip that discussion for now.

Anyway, the supposedly ‘full dress’ rehearsal was yet another time of making new combination of instrumental group again. In fact even for the actual performance, almost all our groups were randomly put together, will upload the video once I have the time to, maybe in Singapore.

And you can find some of our rehearsal videos on my Facebook videos as well, which I may put them here should my lecturer request me to do so.

Well, we had our first multimedia screening that evening after practice, and it was certainly a rather interesting experience hearing music that it is hardly music. In fact, some might not even call Sonic Arts music as it Is another form of art though it makes use of musical elements. Most of acousticmatic pieces in general make use of sounds rather than actual notes, scales and rhythms. Yes, they contain pitch, time and texture base organization like music does, only more disorganized. As some would define it, music is organized sound. Then again, how do we define music?

Well, Tuesday was my first and last lecture in Keele, apparently I had to skip class on Thursday to attend a presentation given my Michael Spicer. Well, the amusing thing was whatever that was covered in that lesson was already done so in REMT1 in our first year. So, it was simply like revision for us, in fact I would love to stay in year1 in that module because the whole assignment for the year was it is simply what I just did – a individual production, 31^st July. I have couple more songs up my sleeve to attempt to reproduce.

Well, the actual performance on Tuesday was pretty much very informal and slightly disorganize, mainly because everything was just improvised on the spot, well, that’s apart from some of the band grouping we originally had. But we also had some of our audience come up and improvise with us as well, Well, will get the video here once I have uploaded it on youtube. As you would have already know a 13GB video takes 2 days to upload.

I guess this experience has really changed my perspective about music really, The way we do in Singapore is always the safe way, copying whatever the big 4s have to offer rather than coming out with our unique style of music. We always copied arrangement styles, mixing styles, performance styles in hope that we can make money producing what’s already in the market and not meeting unmet needs, competing with the rest of the more experience musicians in that genre, maybe that’s why the music industry in Singapore never bloomed much, simply because we didn’t have any unique points in our products. Simply because we are afraid to step out of our comfort zone to explore other ways to make music which may be far better than that of what we hear today. Perhaps, pragmatism has killed the artistic industries of Singapore

Catching Up on what I have missed...

Thursday Oct 6 6:12pm

Hey guys, have not been writing much this few days haven’t I? haha…yea..I guess I forgot to update this blog regularly, been trying to post the rehearsal videos up on facebook as archives so that I can clear them from my computer.

As of now, I’m left with 14GB of free space left out of the 180GB Hard-disk, couple of times I had no enough space to import my videos from the camcorder since most of the 4min videos in MOV SD format are like 2GB, so if that was so, I would only have enough space to store 7 more videos, and that excludes the pictures and the audio for our first performance..

Well, anyway now that I will be relatively free from now onwards, since all the major programs are pretty much over, I can start journaling again. Well, because I missed out so much (like 4 days of experience), I’ll just explain what happened during the time of my ‘absence’

Last weekend was basically another free and easy weekend again, this time I’m not travelling anymore as I would be broke by the end of this trip if I had gone to Edinburg with Irfan and the rest…so pretty I thought it would be good to spend some time to update the family about what’s happening here face to face rather than in words.

Since a picture paints a thousand words, a video would portray more words right? Hence the rationale for Skype! Well, actually it was an initiation that I made while chatting with my brother on facebook while uploading our rehearsal videos…well, since I had just re-installed Skype on my computer and we both have web cameras, what better way to use them than Skype-ing one another?

Well, our first Skype session on Saturday 4pm (GMT+8, 11pm) was actually meant to be a test to see if Skype works, but it turned out to be an hour session conversation with the family, well a fruitful one for mom I guess since her birthday was the very next day, I hope that my Skype call would suffice as my punctual birthday present for her.

Speaking of her birthday, she was given an iPhone 4 on Sunday, her birthday. 3 Days before the iPhone 4S was released, oh well I guess people were selling them cheap than as they anticipate the next iPhone to arrive, which actually didn’t have much difference to the previous version. Just maybe a 8 megapixels camera, and some other network thing that we can live without.

Well, our conversations mainly revolved around the basic stuff like am I getting enough food there, do I have enough clothes to wear (which at that week it was particularly warm), whether I have enough money to live as so on. Apart from that, there were conversations about my results and my future plans for studying in Keele. As of now, I don’t mind living in Keele, from what I have experience it’s quite safe over here in Keele village with warnings of drunken people.

But I guess I’m still pretty undecided whether I want to go on to university or simply start work after poly, the course I would take here would probably be Music Technology, which seems to revolve largely around Sonic Arts and less commercialized music, more of Acousticmatic piece rather than pop music.

As a musician I would love to combine the two worlds together, using acousticmatic music ideas in pop songs or the other way around. But ultimately if they can both used to share the gospel to other people, I would really want to learn to do so.

It will certainly cost me my fame and my pride to be a prestigious musician to be a God-follower, because when Christ calls a man, he bids him comes and die – die to all these worldly passions, and for myself, the desire to leave a legacy behind as someone great and famous.

It still a bittersweet thing, to really give up something you love to have yet knowing in time to come that you’ll have something even greater than what currently have or wish to have. Nevertheless, I will continue to be diligent as a Christian, a son, a brother, a student, a Bible Study leader, and a musician/sound engineer.