Bass Addiction: Day 1: Trip to UK

1.50am GMT+8, 17 September 2011

A flight to Dolha takes about 7 hours , even though the departure time and arrival time is 9.20pm and 12.20pm respectively. How strange it is to be somehow travelling 4 hours back in time in an airplane. Thinking about it, if there was such thing as time traveling, this could possibly be it, only that you don’t end up in the same place of same part of the world, and that you probably can undo what you have regretted doing.

But of course, 7 hours of flight is still no joke, especially when you have another 7-hour flight after this one. One may probably get sick of the plane. But nevertheless this 7 hours proves to be one of the best time to really think and reflect and think about the things I have done, the decisions I made, some of which were thought through, others just out of emotions.

One of which was the very reason I chose to go for this trip.

One particular reason for this trip was the exemption of General Elective Module (GEM) next semester – another compulsory module that is not in anyway related to my course. In exchange for this exemption, I will have to do a documentation of this entire trip, what we have done, what we have experienced, and what we have learned from each moment of improvisation. With this exemption, I can then have more time to concentrate on other important things, such as family time, ministry work, and of course year3 work. Though it may not seem to make much of a difference - since it’s like one lesson of 3 hours in a week - but considering the fact that I don’t have to spend time revising and doing GEM tutorial, I think it worth the challenge and the trip, after all, it’s during the holidays – the period of time that I am likely to spend time on all the wrong things.

I pretty much did not know what to expect, only waiting to be surprised when I get to Keele. As far I know, we are conducting a workshop in collaboration with Keele University on Improvisation for the Year1s who has just joined the university. There will also be a couple of performances that we’ll have to do there as well as another performance after this trip on the 20^th October.

Most of our instruments are not the conventional instruments that you will see in the rock band, and even if there were, they were not played in the same style as they would have been. Many of them will be found objects of the streets, little ‘pick-me-ups’ along the way in the time of our stay in Keele, things like PVC pipes, combs, frying pans, wooden planks, are what we have to look out for. Essentially, it is mainly about turning things that are not musical by convention into something musical, like stomp only that we are not rhythm centric.

As far as lodging is concern, we will be staying in the staff hostel of Keele University, where there should be a clothes cleaning services/equipments as well as rooms for two. So being first-time in UK, it will be a very unpredictable trip for me as well as my fellow companions in Sonic Escapade (our group name btw).

So for every trip, there must be an objective right? (Now got to think of some…)

1) Learning and Practicing improvisation skills

2) Getting to know and make friends with my seniors

3) Getting to know future opportunities that Keele has to offer for musicians like myself.

4) And lastly, to enjoy being in UK.

So yea…will continue to update you guys one what’s happening here in UK with the sonic escapade team whenever possible (because our schedule is really tight).

In the meantime, some pictures...