Saturday, October 08, 2011

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?

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