Bass Addiction

Scales: MILLPAD Method

2011-11-14T00:02:00.004+08:00

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

2011-11-01T20:37:00.007+08:00

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

2011-10-09T16:56:00.001+08:00

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

2011-10-08T17:46:00.000+08:00

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

2011-10-08T17:10:00.000+08:00

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

2011-10-08T17:09:00.000+08:00

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...

2011-10-08T17:08:00.001+08:00

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.

Trip to Wales

2011-10-01T20:12:00.011+08:00

Saturday 1^st October 2011, 2.00pm

I guess climatization for me waking up later, can’t believe I woke up at 10.45am today..must be the hiking trip yesterday to Snowdonia in Wales that exhausted all of my energy, I returned with a aching lead and a broken shoe. But trust me, it was worth it, the fun of hiking difficult terrains as well as the wonderful scenery of the lake was enough to offset the setbacks.

Well, yesterday we went to Wales, probably a 2 hour drive down from Keele. One thing good about Keele is that it is at the central part of UK, so it’s really easy to travel around UK from here, if I had not woke up so late, I would have joined my friends in Edinburg today, now, I missing out on all the fun. Sigh…

The trip I guess was organized to fulfill Valarie’s wish of seeing a Castle and Michael Spicer’s request for his favourite hobby – hiking (Oh no…). If you ever go the Wales, you might want to learn Welch, then you can prably read the signs there without looking at the translations below. So the 2 places we visit were the Beeston Castle and Woodland Park as well as Llwbr Pyg Track.

Beeston Castle

If you love ruined castles, and very windy places, this is the place to go. Well, I probably tell the experience using pictures, because a picture speaks a thousand words.

This is the structure of the castle itself, made out a the castle itself, and it's outer walls and the gateway as well. There were two enclosures, the Inner and Outer Bailey, each having a massive gatehouses with a strong defense plus a high curtain wall with D-shaped towers which allowed effective crossfire along the exterior wall. The Inner Bailey had the extra defense of wall cut ditch running around the curtain wall.

Well, this is what remains of the curtain wall, the D-shaped towers which is half demolished, leaving behind ruins of this mighty curtain wall.

One thing's for sure, getting to a castle is rather difficult since it's located on a hill. The curtain wall is already located high up the hill already, and getting there is already quite tough.

I believe this is the ditch which they build to shooting arrows from. It's a very effective design. You can cover a large area just shooting through this small hole without getting shot, because you are only expose to arrows through a small slit. Amazing design indeed!

Walking up to the castle is another uphill road. I actually tried running towards the castle but I found myself really, really slow...it's kind of demoralizing as well, having used so much energy to run but moving so slowly. I guess this road was deigned to demoralize enemy troops attempting to charge towards the castle, imagine having to travel this route with arrows flying all around you, in the state where any moment you may get shot dead.

So this is what remains of the castle, wait till you see the back part of it...I think one of the vulnerable areas of the castle was at it's back, because it hardly had any defensive walls, people coud catapult rocks from the land below and destroy it's structure easily...

Caution: Sheer Drop. This is what is left of the Moat, imagine water with crocodiles swimming in them, I actually wonder what they feed the crocodiles with...

This is what remains at the back of the castle..pretty much ruins and totally expose to the land behind. you can easily see the farmlands across the horizon. Shows that the enemy who devastated this structure had really good strategy.

Irfan asked: "Where did they store water?" I guess this is the answer. Using Valarie as a reference, you can tell that this is a huge well, and yes it's deep as well. How deep? 3 seconds reverb when you clap, and if you were to drop a stone, it would take I think 12 seconds till it reaches the bottom. I believe it would be deeper than that since many have probably thrown stones down this well. It would probably be full of rocks the next time we return...

And well, interestingly we found a great vocal booth for us to record vocals in here. surprisingly, even though this was made up of stones (of which I would expect slap backs), it is actually quite tight. I wonder if they used to record vocals here...

Llwbr Pyg Track

Well, if you love hiking treacherous roads and love sceneries and stuff, this is the place to go. The Llwbr Pyg Track is said to be the most challenging route among the six hiking roads in Snowdonia. I guess for Michael Spicer it was simply 'no kicks'. One thing about this place is that you have to carry your litter around the park, they have no dust bins one the way because they fear that litter may destroy the environment.

The roads here is pretty steep, almost all the routes we walked in our direction was uphill. So many of uswho weren't used to hiking had to stop for a rest. It's really tiring when you first start but once you gain momentum, it gets easier.

It is best you get proper hiking shoes for this expedition. The route here is not like the normal walk in the park with furnished stones pieces or pavements but it's more like pieces of rock, of which some of them are insecure and can break off easily due to erosion and weathering. It can get slippery at times - I slipped a couple of times in this route because I wasn't wearing proper shoes.

It is good you carry as little thing as possible on this route, and empty your pockets, you will need to stretch your legs out quite a distance to reach out for the other rocks. The steps here are pretty steep at times. I certainly had to empty mine because it proved difficult to climb up rocks such as this.

Although the walk was pretty much a very painful massage, it was still very rewarding because the scenery was just majestic, plus the weather was cool and windy, perfect for someone sweating from the hike.

Walking from the big view of valleys...

To the smaller streams...

Seeing sheeps along the way...

We reached our main destination - The Lake

A beautiful sight indeed! Well, we actually planned to continue to walk the route down to the stream as some of us actually wanted to swim in it...but because it was another long walk, and majority of us were already exhausted. We decided to turn back and walk back..

Walking back felt much faster when we first came as usual, because you are used to the distance you traveled and it's also down hill. Though it was less strenuous, it was actually more tricky because you had to choose the right rock or otherwise you might end up sliding and rolling down. Well, that was also where my sole broke off and caused me to slip. So the moral of the lesson was to get a better shoe next time.

Well, after the hike we had a strange craving for chips, so we went down hill to search for a place to eat..as soon as we smelled chips (because we opened our windows), we pulled over at the nearest carpark. Mike and Cass then went to search and trace where the chips smell came from, while we waited around the carpark area.

So while walking along the grass area, we saw a dandelion, and since valarie has always wanted to blow a full dandelion, she picked it up and tried to blow it...but things didn't turn out the way we expected...the video will explain why..

Well, I guess that's all for now, going back to my room to sleep first...I think fatigue from the hike is taking over me..sigh, hopefully a nap would do the job.

Day 11& 12: Workshops, Stargazing

2011-09-30T05:53:00.004+08:00

Thursday 29 September 2011, 8.30pm

It has been said that the UK has great weather, 3 days in a year, I certainly glad to have been privileged to experience one of those days today. The weather today is so warm that it almost feels like Singapore’s weather, only that there is more wind. I was and still am comfortably dressed in my Singaporean attire for the whole day, one polo shirt and one jeans was already making me sweat.

I really starting to like this place…only issue I have here is the cost of living, it seems like I may face some financial issues on the last week, so I have been spending less, but I trust that the Lord with provide, so I’m not worried..

Well, these past two days were mainly focused on our workshops for the Keele students – The Music and Performance students (on Wednesday) and the Music Technology student (on Thursday, today).

I guess part of the reason why we’re sweating is because we have to setup our equipments for our workshops and tear them down totally after that and the next day setup and tear down again, this was because the Lindsay Studio was being used by an Orchestra for their rehearsal, they’re gonna need all the space they can get in the hall..

One thing that sure distinguished the two groups of students from the two courses were their choice of instruments. You’ll see that Music students would rush to Irfan’s station to get their hands on the dulcimer and Doltali or otherwise ‘scramble’ to play the sound sculpture while the Music Technology students would head to Valarie’s station for the airFX, or Chris station with the EMS synthesizer and the Guitar synthesizer. Well, thankfully there was no ‘fighting’ involved since the number of students who attended our workshops were few, numbering to about 5/6 Keele students.

So the video will show you a tour around our instruments, basically a showcase of our instruments we did today…

Basically what our main goal for this workshop is to teach improvising skills by forming a group of performers with the Keele students for our upcoming performance next Tuesday evening…so basically, students would first go around a tour of the instruments to find out which instrument they wish to play, then once they have selected, they will be randomly assigned a group- made up of one student from Keele and then the rest of us depending on group size..

As of now, we have 6 groups I reckon, some of us will have to play for one or two groups from the Music and Music Tech, others- like myself – don’t have to play. Well actually I do need to play with the mixer, so that makes me part of every group! HAHAHAHA..no wait, that means more work..sigh.. :P

Thursday 29 September 2011, 9.50pm

Just went for my first stargazing with Michael Spicer, along with Gabriel Clara and Valarie. It’s really an magnificent sight to see yourself being surrounded by a dome of stars. I never felt so small in my entire life. It’s like you - a small microscopic dot - looking up to the wonders of the universe, this huge place out there with so many other galaxies apart from us in the milky wave.

Well, apart from planes and a bunch of weird goose flying in a v-shape formation at night, we saw Pleiades, Ursa Major (Big dipper) and Ursa Minor (Little Dipper), and the North Star, Cepheus and Hercules and probably Saturn or Jupiter in the horizon.

There was were many more out there which we couldn’t see if our eyes because of the street lights and other distractions such as planes and clouds, the mist was also just about to set in so that didn’t make things any better.

Michael was sharing with us about how he used to go Stargazing back when he was in Australia, it was very easy there simply because you had clear skies at night. Because it is a desert you hardly get any clouds due to low humidity, so you could really see the stars even at the horizons. Oh well, I should be content, you don’t get to see much stars in Singapore to begin with… so this is yet another incentive to live in the UK.

If you think about it, star gazing is looking back in time, because you see these stars the way they were a from a thousand to a million years ago, even when we see the sun, we are actually seeing how it looks like 8 minutes ago, so in a way, you are looking back time…

Indeed as Incubus describes it: “The sky resembles a back lit canopy With holes punched in it”. And these ‘holes’ are really punched in a such a wonderful arrangement just for us to marvel at, and get our necks pain at the same time…seriously there bound to be someone behind all this that we see, whether it’s the stars, or on this earth, even ourselves are too marvelous, even if there were evolution, surely there must have been a starting point to all this, even if it was a big-bang, there must be cause for that to happen.

Surely this wonderful things we see now cannot be just a mere matter of chance, can it?

Day 10: Our First Performance...

2011-09-29T02:00:00.009+08:00

Tuesday September 27, 2011, 7:03pm GMT +1

Sure am glad to have a half-day off to catch up on what’s been happening, although it’s one hour, it felt as if a lot of things has been done.

Today was the performance day, after all the rehearsals, today is our first and informal performance to the public of Keele. Well, for those who listen to popular music, it’s something that would be new to the ears, and in fact it will always be new every time we perform it to other crowd, because it’s improvisation…

Well, here’s the bunch of instruments involved in this mini-informal setup..

Irfan's station (From left to right):

1) "Doltali" (२ स्त्रिङ्ग्स) - meaning two strings though there's 9 strings in total; one melody, one drone and 7 seven sympathetic strings, played plucked, or bowed. This instrument was at first a guzheng prototype, before Irfan's modification.

2) "The thing with the string that goes tinkling" - it has a string but doesn't go tinkling, more of boing, basically played by plucking and pulling the screwdriver attached to var the tension of the string

3) The tin whistle - also called the penny whistle,English Flageolet, Scottish penny whistle, Tin Flageolet, Irish whistle and Clarke London Flageolet^.

4) PVC Flute, played like the chinese xiao, only without holes, made by him as well.

Yin liang's instrument, a Novation X-25 midi controller with a digital synthesizer called omni-sphere. Gives you cool sounds. He also plays the classical english flute once in a while...

Chris's Station: 1) EMS Synthesiser - The analog synthesizer I was talking about in my previous post 2) Home-Grown Electronics Synthesizer - Basically a light dependent resistor controlling the frequency of the oscillator on a circuit board. He uses the iPhone LED flash along with this with a app which allows you to strobe the LED flash.

3) Guitar Synthesizer, we call it the guitar that produces the rodes sound, because of an occasion where Chris played the Guitar Synth with a rodes tone.

4) Feedback Delay system - similar concept to my instrument except that the feedback is created with the delay pedal (many people keep mixing the sound of the instrument with Chris's). You can also create a fake snare using the dome mash (forgot the name) and the distortion pedal and the delay I think...

My station (or rather it has become Michael's). The feedback synthesizer, modified by Michael Spicer to his preference.

Zheng Jie's station (Gabriel's playing it in this picture): Basically a midi controller controlling one of the drum synthesizers in Logic Express 9.0. Similar in concept to Yin Liang's system only that the keys are replaced with pads...

Valarie's Station: A Popular station for electro-musicians, from left to right:

1) Alesis airFX, basically a digital wavetable synthesizer/controller that has sensors that detects hand movement and playback sound, in accordance to what we play. You can play this without even getting into contact with it....

2) MIDI Wand, two dimensional spacial controller build by a client- Jimmy Sorson. It's basically a X and Y controller using 2 ultrasonic speakers and one ultrasonic microphone, and later map it to different control information. In this case, we used to control a digital synthesizer - ChucK.

3) The iPad - which is actually the Crystal Garden interactive music performance software, which michael programmed - was played by Sandy, she shares the same station as Valarie.

4) A Melodica aka. Melodion (Suzuki), Melodika (Apollo), Melodia (Diana),Pianica (Yamaha), Melodihorn (Samick) and Clavietta.

Johanne's Station: The bass guitar into an bass amp, how much more simple can this get..

Anna's station: The Rhodes MK1, probably the oldest instrument here, a lost art that was popular in the 1970s. Now we bring it back along with chorus, delay, wah wah, and distortion. This setup is capable of replicating a electric guitar, that's why it's also known as the piano that sounds like a guitar.

Sandy and many others' station: The sound sculpture, now modified with other chimes and ornaments to give more timbre possibilities..

Other instrument are:

1) Simon's plank, basically a piece of wood with a contact mic, you can make wind sounds by rubbing it with your hands and playing around a wah pedal.

2) Trumpets - played by Gabriel and Clara.

3) Classica Flute, Saxophone, and Piccolo - played by Michael Spicer

4) chinese mini drum played by Simon, a small toy drum that you can get from a pasa malam every chinese new year.

and lastly but definitely not least,

The mixer (submix in this case), managed by valarie. This basically works as a router to group our instruments according to who's playing them on my mixer board, making it easier to pan them left, right, front and back on my end.

You may not know this, but the mixer is considered an musical instrument, because it manages the music that comes through it. Playing this would mean being like the main performer of this entire performance.. cus you can mute a performer if you dislike him and that totally changes the piece...

Today’s performance wasn’t too bad for a start, one thing for sure, there was no feedback throughout the show (yea..of course excluding the synthesizers). It’s funny being praised for doing things that you do not know what you are doing; everything I did on the mixer board – panning left to right, front to back, fading, and adding reverberation - today was totally on the spot. I was too busy to figure out why I did this or that; everything was just in real-time.

I think I might have had too much movement though in terms of panning, but "if it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing" -Michael Spicer :P.

I guess the days PArts as a live soundman really help me to do everything fast on the spot, but I have lots more to learn…

Well, will be uploading the video of the show if possible, it would be hard to cramp one hour of show into a single video, but I will see what other alternative I can do, either to show segments of the performance or to split the video into smaller segments so that so guys can see the part of the performance while waiting for the rest to upload.

Day 9: The Quad Setup

2011-09-27T07:17:00.004+08:00

Monday 26 September 2011, 10:00pm

Having a break right now in an extremely stuffy place with a terrible headache due to the severe lack of oxygen. Everything is back to practices and rehearsals back at the Lindsay hall, after all, there is going to be a performance tomorrow that we do not know what we will be playing, now that’s improvisation!

Today, it’s back to rehearsal again, after 2 free-and-easy days of resting and fun, it’s time to get back to work. Well, the routine of breakfast → rehearsal →lunch→rehearsal returns.

The major thing that happened today was setting up the quad setup for our performance tomorrow. What is a quad setup? Essentially it is just four speakers setup up at the 4 corners of a rectangular room facing one another.

To better explain this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadraphonic_sound

It’s actually really fun mixing live sound with this method. Setting this up takes quite a while though for these guys in Keele it was almost instant a sthey normally have a 8 speakers setup, so four speakers to them was a piece of cake.

It’s really fun have four speakers to play around with, you have two more areas on sonic estate to play around with since you have an additional 2 speakers behind, the fun part is, you can move the sound around the room just by playing with the pan knob and grouping switch. It’s sure going to be a fun time doing sound and performing on the mixer tmr… okay, will need to rest now, will keep you guys updated of more from sonic escapade.

Pictures:

View from Front left speaker...

View from Front right speaker...

View from rear left speaker...

View from rear right speaker...

Now, that's four speakers indeed!

Day 8: Trip To London

2011-09-25T16:25:00.006+08:00

Friday 23^rd September 2011, 8:44pm GMT +1

The London experience sure is a strange one today, I see almost every single nationally and races in this place except English men. You see, Germans, Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, Indian, Russian, Americans, maybe Japanese here, but hardly any of the locals here. Maybe it’s just because we were in the town area of London.

London as compared to Keele is a rather densely populated area I would say, London is like comparing Orchard Road in its peak period while Keele is that of Ulu Pandan Road.

The weather here is actually warmer than that of Keele, all you need to comfortably walk round London is probably a long sleeve shirt and a pair of long pants of jeans, no jacket, gloves, no scarf required. At least for me that what I ended up wearing in London.

Today was mainly touring London to look for an area with lots of music shop, this particular street in London has like the most number of Music instrument and Sheet Music shops, it’s like musicians’ paradise. I was basically too busy buying things I forgot to take pictures…oops, oh wellz.

Well, we were mainly traveling on foot, it’s a long walk but great exercise, we started of at Earl’s Court Road Station where most of us were in need of a toilet. Well, but to our surprise, and for some horror. The toilets here weren’t the same kind of toilets you will expect in our MRT stations. The video will explain why…

To excess the train, you’ll need tickets, otherwise an Oyster card if you are a resident in London. They also have like zones for the different areas where the stations are located. This implies that if you get a full-day Zone 1 and 2 train ticket (for £6.50), you will be permitted to travel on board the train to any stations located in Zone 1 and 2, which was what we did as we were going to Westminster to see the Clock Tower.

One thing about the train transport system here (which I am amazed), is actually the number train lines and train station there are here. You can walk from one station to another on your own, if you like because the train stations are everywhere, every turn of a street you see one (that is if you are observant), blending in with the shops till I couldn’t recognize it myself until Irfan pointed it out to me.

Train lines here are way more complicated than that of Singapore’s, until, I still don’t quite understand the map. It’s interesting to know though, that in an interchange, unlike Singapore where trains on a different line comes in a different platform, here trains of a different line shares the same platform, so occasionally, you might find the train coming to a halt in the middle of the tunnel, not because the tracks are faulty, but mainly because they have to queue up for the same platform.

The design of the train is also different I would say. One being that there is no air-conditioning in the car, of course you won’t need that, you have air conditioning on the outside! And secondly, unlike Singapore MRT, you cannot travel from car to car directly, the cars on the train here are separated, wonder why though. Another thing I realized, the platform where the train stops is not always straight like the ones in Singapore, they can be curved, giving rise to the uneven length of gap in between the train and the platform.

They are allowed to eat in public transport, on the way back to white city station I saw a guy eating peanuts, in Singapore we get fined for doing that. They might allowed to smoke in train stations as well I think but not in train cabins, in Singapore we also get fined…haha…really different, though in some ways similar.

After we got out of the Westminster Station, we were approached, rather stopped by a bunch of ladies, asking for donations and selling little pocket flowers. They approached me a gave me a flower asked for donation for homeless children (though according to my friends they were asking for donations for a hospital), I thought oh I could be nice and donate a few pence.

I took out my wallet to search for some coins only to find that I had spent it all on the train tickets, leaving only 5pence, so I apologized to them and offered five pence. Well, in Singapore, ignorance or decline would suffice in such cases, in fact one will be contented if someone gave 10cents but in my case they insisted that I donated more, 5pence was simply not enough, they wanted me to give notes (I guessed they saw some notes in my wallet), they would give change for it if it’s too much.

Then I got really suspicious and decline, passing them the flower they gave me, I declined to donate. But they continue to insist that I donate, they cornered me and shaft the flower in between my collar, persuading me to donate because all my other friends were donating. Well, angry that they took things too far, I stood firm and decline them while trying to keep my cool, I was on the verge of declaring them daylight robbers. So it was the battle of insistence, until I said the magic phrase, “No, please.” that they let me go, without a thank you or anything.

I thought about it after that while walking to Buckingham Palace whether I did the right thing by opting not to donate. I was not angry that they did not thank me or bid me goodbye, I wasn’t angry that they just stopped us while we were following Michael Spicer, I was angry that they did not have the attitude of contentment. Well, 5pence is not much, but a 100 of 5pence would give you 5 pounds. If they were truly desperate to help needy homeless children, I believe they would have rather 100 people donate 5 pence, than to insist and blackmail someone to give notes. Clearly they wanted money real fast, but I suspected it was not for the love of homeless children but for selfish gains.

I may have been a little stingy on my part, I was not willing to give my 50 pounds to them since I needed them for lunch, for some musical instruments as well, as the rest of the week. I know on my part I acted selfishly as a way to defend myself from being cheated. I was just too intimidated by the method of approach these ladies used, but that doesn’t justify my self-centeredness. It was just a prompt to me that I should be avoiding these people.

Well, so my friends and I were discussing about that and I was kind of convinced that it was just a cheat after all, apparently, the lady gave another rationale behind the donation, which was for a hospital instead of homeless children. So we really got very suspicious that they were cheat.

Well, whether or not it was a cheat or not, I don’t have a say in it. But if it really a cheat, then I pray they will repent of their ways and follow Eph 4:28, not longer stealing and doing honest work. And if they are doing honest work for these children in hospital, I would affirm them and perhaps get them to consider Phil 4:11, and their method of approach people, especially Singaporeans.

Anyway, so continue on our journey to the Buckingham Palace, but we didn’t get the see the queen there…because “I(We) forgot to inform her that we’ll be coming” - Michael Spicer. LOL! But nevertheless I got some pictures. And again without me, cus I want this documentation to be mainly in my point of view.

So after that, we made our way to St. James’s Park because some of us have been holding our bladder since the time we got off the a££ord van after a 3 hours drive south. And then we proceeded on in the direction of Chinatown point and the district of music shops we were planning to go to.

One thing about the birds here in London, and probably the whole UK, they are huge! Pigeons here are way fat and densely populated here, Crows are like 1.5 times bigger than Singapore’s to the point they start looking like Ravens. Ducks here can be as tall as the height of my waist from the ground.

We had our lunch at 3.05pm, at a place called Nicholson’s. Pretty awesome food there, you should try their Fried Brie with Jam. Cheese lovers will melt at the taste of this. This is also where I had my first cappuccino, never drank it till today. Truth be told, even though I hate coffee, cappuccino is really nice!

The catch about this place is the waiting time for your food, if it’s the peak period, your food can take close to an hour to come, in fact Anna (whose food came last) was still eating her meal at 4:05pm, we spent like an hour here sitting and eating.

After lunch, we headed for the music district, of which I forgot to take photos, I’m sorry. So describe it, think of the music shops in Peninsula Shopping Complex, plus Excelsior plus Parklane Mall and Brash Basah, and an additional store selling saxophone.

Well, most of the shops here are guitar shops, like multiple Swee Lee, Davis Guitar, Guitar77th, SV Guitars around here. The equipments are generally more expensive as compared to Singapore, but you get to see the good stuff you don’t see in Singapore.

So I bought some souvenirs as well as 3 other instruments - Jaw Harp, Ocarina, and a tin whistle. Instruments you hardly find in Singapore.

There are of course other things you can buy from here, including J.S. Bach score sheets and Rachmaninov piano scores and dream theater albums. Guide books that teach you how to play an instrument from scratch, from saxophones, to guitars (including bass), to tin whistles I think.

Lots more stuff I could have bought if we spend more time there. But I guess 2 hours was enough for us. So we opted to walk around the town area to see other things as well, from Chancery station, to Oxford Circus station, right down to Marble Arch station where our feet were wobbling, where we took a train back to White Estate to meet Mike.

But because the jam didn’t allow him to enter the town area, we went somewhere else, where Michael Spicer used to reside for 4 months in London. And so, right now, he’s fetching us back to another place outside London for dinner. So yea..I guess it gonna be a long ride back to thishostel after this..will continue to update you guys on what's going on here...

Day 6 & 7

2011-09-24T17:31:00.006+08:00

Friday 23rd September, 9.39am GMT +1

On the a££ord van, going to London now, it will be 3 hours drive there so that means more time to write down what has happened during the 2 I didn’t write about because the schedules were getting tighter.

In case some of you were wondering why I’m starting to blog again, it is because I have to document the whole trip down, it’s part of my job, apart from being the cinematographer, engineer, and a performer here. I may or may not be using this blog as an official documentation depending on how personal these post are but oh well, hopefully this will help in allowing me to write-up a proper straight document on the trip.

Another reason for this is so to keep you guys updated on what we are going through here. I guess also a way to keep my family and friends informed the events here so they won’t worry too much.

Well, the last 2 days were rather straightforward, it has more or less conformed into a routine similar to that Day 6, only that this time round we have found a new place to eat. A little restaurant at the Chancellor’s Building called Comus - The chips there are not too bad, prices there is slightly cheaper (£4.95 instead of £7.75) but yes it is still expensive – and Le Café, a Café where you can try out their thin-tasting hot chocolate.

Well, in terms of rehearsals it is more or less about the same structurally, trying out stuff with Crystal Garden and the other synthesizers and see which instrumentation works best for them.

New addition to our instrumentation is the MIDI Wand and the EMS Synthia.

The MIDI Wand is made up of an antenna and a receiver that is used as a MIDI controller. A MIDI Controller is a device that controls certain parts of the synthesizer, like it’s volume, pitch, modulation and more. In our case, we used it to control pitch, basically the further away the antenna goes from the receiver the higher the pitch goes. But the processes behind it are far more complicated than that, so I won’t try to explain.

And the EMS SynthiA, your traditional analog synthesizer, just yesterday I was trying it out. It’s a pretty awesome piece of instrument, with everything wired using a circuit board and pins. It’s like adding inserts on a channel except you don’t do it with a mouse click but with pins and a substantial understanding of how the electrical signal travels in the circuitry.

It was considered one of most portable analog synthesizer of it’s time, we will know why one we see the real analog synthesizers (which can probably occupy the space of my study table in my room). These days you don’t see analog synthesizers much, since everything is digitalized, in fact you can have a equivalent of more than 20 of these synthesizers on a Macbook (they won’t sound the same as analog synthesizers though). Nevertheless doing things the old skool way can be fun if you are patient enough to explore possibilities of different sounds.

Apart of that, a few modifications to our sound sculpture to make it easier for us to play.

We also had a session (in fact just yesterday) where we had Diego sharing with us what the Music Technology course in Keele University does. It is a possible course for me since they do sound recordings as well, though not so much on performance based but more on Sonic Arts. The video will explain…

So yes, that’s mainly what has happened over the last 2 days. Well, yes I forgot buy a gift for Yin Liang because it was his birthday yesterday, so yea..Happy Birthday Yin Liang.

I certainly hope today would be more exciting even as we go to London to check out some instrument shop and to see Ravens at the Tower of London. Will be posting up some footage of London so stay tune…

Day 5: Meeting The Keele Guys

2011-09-23T03:49:00.010+08:00

Well, things are starting to conform to a routine, starting the day with breakfast at 8.30am at the Hawthorns restaurant, then heading to the studio to practice. Then lunch, sometimes in town, otherwise improvised (just like today where we had chips and coke for lunch..lol!) and then dinner either at The Sneyd Arms or in the hostel eating cup noodles.

How did we get chips for lunch? Well, our practice was 'interrupted' today because we had to meet some of the Keele guys for a meeting to discuss the upcoming plans for the Keele tour, well, the following video will explain everything...

So yea..these are the guys whom we are working with, basically if there's one thing to describe what we do, it would be Sonic Arts. (Amos Chua would be excited about this :P). Well, although plans have more or less been made, I believe thing will change, because we always end up improvising most of the time. I think this entire trip will end up teaching us how to improvise our way around UK should we return back to this place.

so yes, apart from receiving chips and stuff, we have of course new stuff to our sound sculpture and our instrumentation...a big thank you for Mr. Diego for letting us use his collection of 'noise making objects'

And apart from this, a new software on iPad (programmed by Michael Spicer) - Crystal Garden. Perhaps one of the hardest thing to play along with. Most of the sound it produces is mainly either random, or in a pattern of which on the programmer himself understands. Oh well, so much for generating possibilities.

Well, perhaps you might be wondering what I am playing in this group, well, apart from the mixer (of which Valarie is slowly taking over my job), I am playing an instrument I call the Feedback Synthesizer - A synthesizer you use when you do not have one.

How does it work? Well, basically in my case, this Feedback Synthesizer is made up of guitar pedals, connected in a loop, such that the signal travels from one point to another and is routed back to the beginning point, as you see in the picture. Guitarist will ask this - how then do you get sound if there no input of sound, what then will make it have sound, the answer - noise.

Basically in any circuitory, in any cable or any pedals in this case, there bound to be electrical resistance/impedance(Ω), and this causes noise, but because we use good stuff, this noise are more or less not perceivable. So we use either a overdrive or distortion pedal to boost this noise so that we get the feedback we want.

How feedback works:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_feedback

So let's see the parts that makes up my version of the feedback synthesiser..

Transparent Overdrive - One of the pedals that can help boost noise to create feedback, this one gives me a warmer tone as compared to the fuzz or distortion pedal.

Distortion Pedal - either the overdrive or distortion would suffice, but because I wanted to explore more possible timbres, so I added it in, I end up having 2 of the drive pedals most of the time.

Wah Wah pedal - This is actually a mini wah, but any wah pedal will do. basically it makes it easier to change the pitch of the feedback, use this at your own risk, this one can get very nasty..

Chorus pedal - Any modulation like Phaser, Flanger, and Tremolo is possible as well. this is actually optional, I end up using this like a Vibrato pedal so that I can add colour to the tone of the synthesizer to sound almost just like tone-wheel organ with tremolo.

Delay - This one's outside the circuitry of the feedback synthesizer, as a external effect to reduce the harshness of the feedback tone, as well as to add some eerie effects to the synthesizer when you slide between pitches, also has a modulation to create siren effects, very interesting tone you can get from this.

Truth be told, I have yet to be able to tame this animal, the feedback synthesizer I would say is the hardest instrument to play because it is hard to gain control of feedback. Moreover, playing this too much may run into a risk of offending people too. (Especially Sean Chan :P)

Well, looks like I'll need more practice with this instrument, hopefully we can stil use this instrument to play on the actual performances, there's beauty in this instrument if it's tamed properly, hope to be able to use this in my next song production. :D

Day 4: Bus trip to town

2011-09-20T17:36:00.001+08:00

20 September 20, 2011 10:32am GMT +1 DST

Waiting for a video to upload, on iMovie to Youtube 3hours remaining, to Facebook 4 hours 57 minutes..haha, so much for uploading a HD video (I didn’t even record them in HD :P) Watching the rain fall outside my window, looks depressing to some, but really go guys should try walking in the rain, it’s really cool. The rain drops here aren’t as painful as the ones in Singapore, plus like every other cold countries, it is warmer when it rains since the storms clouds traps the heat inside.

The trip seems to be getting busier and busier by the days, with more plans more or less settled and implemented. Somehow Michael and Mike seems to be make their plans for the day on the day itself, purely improvisational indeed. But somehow it works out.

Just yesterday we had our second rehearsal this time round with our electronic instruments (Pedalboards, Laptops, Keyboards, Synthesizers), and the following is some of the little toys we have setup.

Will upload some of our rehearsals videos as soon as possible…

So after we went back to Yates’ (again) to have lunch. Only this time round we took a bus down to town! YAY!

It’s cost £3.50 to buy a return ticket to town, now I really appreciate the transportation fees here in Singapore, which at most would go only up to $ 2.20 at most, I think. Bus number 25 was the loop service bus we took from Keele to the bus interchange in town.

I guess we pretty much traveled the full journey of the bus, the bus-stop near our hostel was the last bus-stop before the bus loops at the roundabout back to the interchange in town. So, it getting to town was pretty straightforward.

So after we had lunch at Yates, we went to look for items to build our sound sculptures – basically an instrument made up of recycled materials such as CD racks, washers, wooden boards and other things you find in your junkyard or garage, mainly played by wither hitting or scraping. The idea is to repurposing an item in a musical context.

I have actually videoed the shopping experienced down, so enjoy.

Well, right now, we are waiting for either the rain to stop (which is highly unlikely) or for a car to come, so that we can proceed on to our practices in the venue. Watching pretty interesting show, Jeremy Kyle show (by iTV show) is the name I think, basically like a show for couples to confess their secrets to one another or something, from having affairs 5 people to sleeping with 10, or being honest and not done anything of that sort. You’ll have to watch it to understand.

It quite tragic though to see so many couple face off with this issue, watching the show, some questions that kept popping in my mind, how did they chose their boyfriend/girlfriend and why? It’s strange that couples are hiding so many things form another. Shouldn’t BGR be a time a where a couple explores the possibility of spending a life-time with one another faithfully? Wouldn’t that make honesty and trust the core a relationship? What ever happened to faithfulness?

Sigh, the impact of sin…left so many people blind to these truths, I only wished I could have told them these things that we have learn.

Oh, time for me to leave this place, will continue to update you guys and upload video. Stay tuned.

Day 3: Exploring Keele

2011-09-19T17:13:00.006+08:00

Monday 19 September 2011 GMT (+1) Day Light Saving , 7:44am

First time, being able to sleep at 9.30pm and wake-up at 5am woots! Haha…somehow UK seems to allow me to have better sleep discipline than in Singapore. Maybe’s just the weather..

Probably also because of the walk in the woods yesterday that tired me out quite a bit. Yes, there are a hiking routes in Keele University, like the one in Macritchie reservoir, only cooler and damp. That’s what you get for being in the largest campus in UK.

And yes, because of the hike, I have just been given the role of being cinematographer of this trip (with a SONY camcorder…). So yes, I might upload some of videos of us pretty soon once I’m able to get it into a format where I can edit it.

Anyone knows how to convert MTS files to MOV?

We had our first rehearsal yesterday as well, haha..it was really tough to have only acoustic instruments to play around with. For those who brought their own trumpets and flutes, things were easier for them, for us who had electronic instruments (bass guit, elect guit, pedal boards etc.), we had to figure out something else.

I starting to appreciate the campus size of Singapore Poly..haha. Getting from the hostel to the student union (the nearest provision store), is probably twice the distance of T4A (Main Library) to T20 (Business Block). But it’s great exercise that makes you sweat, literally, in cold whether.

Yes, I was sweating in UK while walking in the temperature of like 10 degrees Celsius. A weird feeling to have sweat on your back and having your hands almost numb from the cold at the same time. It’s really weird, but yes that was how it was.

Well, yesterday was pretty much exploring the campus of Keele university, going around to different places where we were to conduct our workshops and conferences. Truth be told, I wasn’t able to navigate my way round the campus, there were way too many turns and too many buildings and studios to go to. I’m not even sure which building I should be at today..haha. Oh well, going to follow the crowd then.

Today, should be the first day of orientation, so we’ll be expecting more people in the campus today. Finally, no more L4D campus!

Photos:

The transition of Summer To Autumn

Bees - What sprained Ying Liang's back

Brotherhood

Sisterhood

Videos:

Settling In Keele

2011-09-19T01:37:00.004+08:00

5pm GMT 0 – 17 September 2011

Feels as if 2 days has come and gone, although it was merely a day. The 16 hour flight is finally over. This is the very first time I did not enjoy sitting down, especially if you have to do so for 17 hours in total. I didn’t really get much sleep in the first flight as it was just hard trying to adapt, eventually I gave up trying to sleep but instead tire myself out so that I may rest on the second flight and not suffer from jetlag.

Because of our late arrival to Doha airport, our second flight was also delayed, not just by 20min, but I believe by an hour. During that time I kept having the feeling that we were about to fly, hence I couldn’t sleep because I wanted to consciously see the plane take off. So at every interval of ten minutes, I end up waking up and sleeping, waking up and sleeping. Thus, when the plane finally took off, I had trouble trying to sleep for the next four hours.

So in total, I had 2 hours of sleep from the first flight, another 2 hours from the second, 3 breakfast meals, 2 visits to the toilet. And when we finally arrived at Manchester Airport, we were so exhausted that we were strolling to the arrival hall, the consequence of that - a very long queue. Plus an uncooperative nose was not helping the situation (even now I’m still sneezing and sniffing), due to the lack of proper rest. But nevertheless, I am waiting for the sun to set first before going to bed, to ensure that I totally tired to be able to have a good sleep on a proper bed this time round.

Today, after we finally cleared the checkpoint, a friend of Michael Spicer, Mike as well as his wife greeted us. They will be our tour guide as well as our scheduler for this tour to Keele University.

The temperature in Keele here is awesomely cool and chilly; it’s slightly colder than Melbourne though not as cold as Tasmania or China (though I believe it will get much colder as night falls). As of now in Keele, I already seeing smoke coming out of my mouth as I talk, but strangely, I’m able to cope with the whether even with just a polo shirt and jeans (only if it doesn’t rain).

Over here, a standard license should be able to allow you to rent a 16-seat van and drive it. This was how we were driven out of the airport today before it had to be returned. It was a pretty powerful van, only that it’s speed was limited to 600mph(close to 100km/h), but nevertheless, it got us safely to our hostel in an hour or so.

After we unloaded our stuff into a random conference room (since the hostels weren’t ready for check in). We had quite a fun time looking for a place to eat lunch today, the originally plan was to eat around Keele Village which was where our hostels were. The food outlets there were only a 20min walk away from our hostels. However, and unusually as well, the eating-place we wanted to go to was closed (and from what I overheard, will no longer we open on the weekends like it used to do). So we went to the other side of New Castle under Lyme to find another eating-place, only to realize it was not open as well!

So, as improvisers, Mike and his wife changed their plans and drove us down to New Castle On Lyme, where we found malls and many restaurants open. So, there were many options to what we can eat, from Chinese food, to fast food, to some Thai dish, of which we chose western food since it was hat we also came here to try.

So, we had our very first lunch in UK at a small bar restaurant named Yates’ (apparently they cater to children as well!). So yes, at first sight, the restaurant was quite a culture shock to me, seeing shelves and shelves of beer bottles and wine and even Carlsberg Beer dispenser. But thankfully they don’t just serve beer, they serve plain water too, for free and of course they have good food as well.

Should you ever visit this place, you should try their BBQ Chicken Melt. Though their quantity may be a bit small, but for the quality is really worth it. The unusual thing about this restaurant is the Two Meals offer (should you want to order a meal from this place, you should order two if it instead of just one). Take for example, a set of BBQ Chicken Melt cost 5.75 pounds but buying 2 sets cost 5.95 pounds with this offer! I wonder if the whole point of it was to encourage you to eat 2 sets all buy yourself. Given my capacity to eat and the severity of my hunger, I believe I was capable of finishing that.

And we sat there for 1-2 hours (I think), waiting for Mike to return to pick us up (because he had to return the van), and also waiting out the rain (which was intermittent). During that time I was pretty much tasting the difference between the HP Sauce and the tomato sauce, as well as taking pictures of the place and stoning on my seat (After-lunch effect).

It was not long before Mike arrived in the restaurant and he came to fetch us with a camper’s van - an awesome van that has it’s own kitchen build in it (Basically like a caravan only that the driver’s seat and the bed is all in one vehicle)! The catch was, it could only sit 6 people in total, and we had 12. Hence we had to split up into 2 groups where one group will leave first while the other waits for the second trip. I opted not to go off first because I saw that there were other people in need of rest than I was, and by that time, the rooms were I guess more or less ready to be checked in.

So seven squeezed into the van and left, while 5 waited. So while waiting, the five of us – Clara, Gabriel, Michael, Valarie and myself talked about our rough travel plans this week and had insights to Michael’s traveling experience in his younger days of how he had to be in different countries and even continents almost everyday, touring about with Redgum and his keyboard playing days and how he had been in most of the UK states except the central parts like Italy and Austria.

And so, the van came back for us to bring us back to the hostel. But our journey to the hostel was not a direct one. We had a couple of sidetracks and ‘distractions’ that made this journey back home more interesting than usual. Near the Student’s union, we met a group of Chinese students form China who were struggling their way uphill with two huge luggage. Having an urge to help, Mike stopped the van and offered to help them. So we loaded their luggage up the van and drove them to their destination at the Arts Center.

The next diversion was an interesting one, we happened to be passing by a building called the Darwin Mansion, and I don’t know if Michael request Mike for a tour of this place, but Mike stopped and let us take a few photos of this Mansion/Castle. Apparently, Keele University was build upon this Darwin’s Mansion and expanded to what it is today. Looking at this Mansion and the space around it seriously made me wonder how rich the Englishmen were, being blessed with financial wealth to build and live in one of these.

So after taking pictures of the building and it’s garden, we got back to our hostels to check in and to remove our bags from the conference room. We were told before this trip that we were going to share bedrooms with another partner, which meant 2 in a room. Surprisingly, that was not the case (I guessed they had enough rooms to house the 13 of us). We each had our own private rooms! What pleasant surprise that was.

I seriously thank God for his provision of a wonderful room here, you have no idea how much I love this place, The Mews. Firstly, because it is at the ground floor, so I won’t have to carry the luggage up the stairs (there was no lift).

Secondly, the room had sufficient provisions, a comfy and tempting bed (with two pillows (Y), one to sleep on, one as a bolster), soup and shower foams, towels, a water boiler, a cup and a tea spoon, a heater which actually works, a water heater of course, and a cupboard wit racks and hangers to store my clothes neatly. Other luxuries that came with it was a bath-tub (though I didn’t have a need for it), a tissue paper (that came in handy for my running nose), tea bags of different flavors, coffee powder, white and brown sugar, and an awesome chocolate abbys drink hopefully can bring back to show you).

Thirdly, I was close to everyone; hence visiting one another was just a simple walk next door or next floor. So I’ll be getting some cup noodles soon for our cup-noodle gathering, hopefully tonight or tomorrow night.

Fourthly, right next to our place was a wonderful lounge, where there is Wi-Fi for me to post these blog post, as well as chairs and tables to sit down and talk, and of course really hospital reception that would cater to your request where possible and show you around the Keele Management Centre. Hence, if anyone is worried if I coping well here, rest assured I am not just well provided, but maybe overly provided. (So much for packing so many things in the luggage, I end up only using my toothbrush and toothpaste.)

After a short break of 2 hours or so, I also joined Johannes and the rest – Sandy, Anna and Zheng Jie, to the gym. Well, yes there is a gym but it is in the campus, so it’s about a 30min- 35min walk down the street to the main entrance of the campus and into the sports hall. I didn’t join them to work out so I left early along with Sandy back to the hostel (you need to sign some safety forms to use them, if you are a student, you will need to book a time slot, but since we are visitors of a conference…haha, you know.)

Well, walking back and forth the place is worth it nevertheless, not just a good exercise, but at least now I know how to get to the campus from the hostel.

So yes, it is more or less time to go for dinner, so we’ll be gathering at the restaurant next door form here. Hopefully, the food will be just as great as the one at Yates’. :)

Stay tuned for more updates…

Day 1: Trip to UK

2011-09-18T01:18:00.003+08:00

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...

Valerie's Platypus Soft Toy, I'm missing Big Whale, Henry and Dorphy now (my soft toys)..

Writing journal in 2 languages! Skill sia...

Making use of every opportunity to charge our laptop, this was taken at a phone booth.

Our way of entertainment, while waiting for our gate to open.

Doha Airport, ver similar to Changi Airport right?

Waiting at Changi Airport Departure Gate...

No Love, No Gain

2011-03-03T23:07:00.000+08:00

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing - (1 Corinthians 13:3)

This verse made me pondered for a while, it made me think if I had been spending time serving in vain – not that the work of the gospel is vanity (I Corinthians 15:58: ), but rather have I used to work so hard that I end up not loving others?

It struck me hard when I see my total negligence toward the family. There were times I could have helped to release my mother’s burden cleaning the floor, washing dishes, and drying clothes. Simple things even included informing her of my departure and arrival back home, telling them my plans for the week so that they have to worry less.

If I had gave my all for the ministry, worked late at night to do sound for a event so that the gospel would be shared, but have not bothered to meet the needs of people (especially my closest ones), I would have gained nothing.

“I don’t feel like you are a part of us anymore,” my mom sighed.

If my whole life is meant to be a ministry, if I have been freed to love others (Galatians 5:13-15), why then is my love for the family neglected? How can I say I love people when clearly this is not shown in my family life?

Recently my mother, brother and I had been debating over me going to project serve instead of finding a job or taking music theory exam. They talked about how getting a job would equip me to face the world, “would allow you to experience the social experience besides getting yourself some pocket money.”

I know where they are coming from, they wanted me to be realistic, if I can’t support myself, how am I to support others? But what if there was something else that could allow me to earn pocket money, and learn to do ministry, how is that not equipping??!! I couldn’t square it off, so I insisted on.

Then she talked about me serving in PArts, spending too much time and doing things you are good at (technically I’m not good to begin with). And she observe I work late every night till 2am, and so being an concerned parent, with worries of me entering the hospital again, she insisted that I not serve.

Yes I agree I love doing sound and love music as well (these are skills I’m somewhat equipped with), but doing these things for the sake of the gospel is hardly comfortable. It is easy to do these things for my own recognition and my own enjoyment, after all that’s what a chao lang is good at, but keeping your conscious clear, doing it constantly with servant-hood is impossible for me if not for His Grace. If I as a volunteer have already been taken out of my comfort zone by just being involved for a few days, I dare say project serve would bring me exponentially further form my comfort zone everyday.

So I asked how is Project Serve different from working overtime and sometimes even to the weekends in the normal environment. And once again she would say a Christian environment is a protected environment and I won’t get to experience the “full intensity of sin”.

Then I again, I stood back and think, would not sin be present even among Christian as well? Is there even suppose to be a level or intensity against sin? Sin is sin, there is no bad sin or worst sin, they just manifest in different forms (Gal 5:19-21). In the working place, it can be outwardly harming others for one’s benefit. In church, it’s even subtler. We often see good deeds done, but we never see the motives behind it. I would say it is hard to deal with sin in both environments, one in an environment where you are tempted to sin, another environment where there are chances of false assurance. Either way, we’ll just have a fair share of exposure to sin, either way we have to guard our hearts.

She later links it to say that these skills that you learn will then enable you to be an efficient ministry worker. But as I pondered further about what she said, I begin to question, if we say that the gospel is sufficient, would wanting to get a job or taking other qualifications for this reason prove otherwise?

And so I asked, and she said, “the gospel is sufficient for your living, but in order to reach out to the people in the world, you will have to further equip yourself.”

I couldn’t totally agree all the statement she said. I find that you do not necessarily need work experiences or certain qualifications to share the gospel. Yes, these are helpful (and yes I should be reading the papers more often) to create a heart bridge, but these are not everything. If I have all these and no knowledge to share the gospel, I would have worked and studied in vain. Moreover, I don’t see why I should forgo work to study the gospel; it is after all a never-ending breath that gives lives to us. Plus if finance were an issue, how would project serve not qualify as a solution?

The debate could go on and on, and it did. But the main issue was not these. It was how I could have spent my time loving my family instead of doing something else. I am busy, yes as always, but never for the right things. And it was for fear that I neglected the family that lead to this objection to Project Serve in the first place.

It took me 3 weeks to realize that the root issue behind this argument was not about opportunity cost, it was poor prioritizing and management of time. All things lead back to one verse: Matthew 6:21. I know not very clearly what I have been treasuring, for it seems to keep changing. But I know for sure that my life certainly did not reflect Christ as my treasure.

So with this problem, all that was left to do is to deal with it, since I know that this is an issue to resolve, I cannot deny the responsibility yet be accountable to God with justifiable reason. I hereby repent and pray for God to aid me in this issue, to enable me to willingly make a change, to soften my hardened heart and open my eyes from blindness of my own sin. But I have a hope, a strong hope that the Lord will continue sanctify me and challenge me to continue to think, not for myself, but for others and I am confident that he will do the same to those who believe and are struggling with sin.

Even though I prove myself to be pretty much a failure as a Christian, I certainly glad I am one, for it is no longer my own efforts to change me, but God’s. I will gladly boast in this sin, not because I proud of it (in fact I am ashamed), but because it will show clearly what the Lord has done (1 Cor 12:9) that all men might praise God for His enduring Love and never ending mercy upon a crook like myself.

Freed to Love

2011-03-02T23:29:00.000+08:00

Freed to Love

Thanksgiving After CCIS

2011-01-04T21:51:00.002+08:00

Dear God,

Words can’t describe the gratitude and the joy I have for allowing me to have a chance to serve in short serve. Indeed, it has been an assuring yet humbling experience for me each time I serve You. Assuring because I know I am serving not for my own glory but for Yours alone (that is right in your eyes), humbling because I see how much more a better servant I could have been and how much more I could have done to live out the gospel.

I am always constantly renewed with the passion to live for Christ whenever I surround myself with people burning with passion for the gospel, somehow it is the only way I am spurred/compelled to think harder about the Christian life and about scriptures, for my passive nature forever wants to find an easier way out and ask how much is too much (when it’s never too much but always too little).

The sinful nature constantly tempts me to return to the wasted life I once lived, the life before I knew the gospel with much clarity, the life when I was still fighting for my own glory, in pride and self-centeredness, for that seems far easier, and more ‘natural’. Sometimes I wished I never knew SYFC, never knew knowing Sebastian and Alwin, never served Mimby, REW and SWAT, even wished never knowing You, because it is because of your revelation of Your Word to me that started this struggle in the first place, to keep me wanting to stop living in sin and yet prone to sinning, because I know I have to account to you for every deed under the sun. But on second thought, it is pointless whether I had these opportunities to know you or not:

Romans 1:19-20: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

Therefore, even if someone was born without any Christian background, they have no reason to justify their ignorance to You, what more me, a person whose mother and brother are Christians, who have learned your Word enough to know the gospel, and served alongside with many role-model servants who died to self daily? After all that has been said and done, how can I continue living a sinful life and justify myself before you? How can I still enjoy sinning when it is clearly wrong and an abomination to You? How can I choose not to struggle to live out the gospel?

“The corruption of sin is far-spreading, evident in all parts of life. But the redeeming work of Christ on the cross is so complete, that the Christian can be freed from the bondage of sin, to live and to die for the sake of the call.” – Seb Kwan

Will I still be able to have any reason for indulging in sin, after what you have done on the cross to save us from domain of darkness into the kingdom of light.?How can I take for granted the very fact that my life was bought at a price? It’s a costly price, not just a life, but Your life! To save us from living in sin, you humbled your status as God and made yourself NOTHING.

II Corinthians 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.

After all that you have done to undeserving people like me, to say that I want to live a sinful life would make me deserving of eternal punishment and suffering in hell. The thought that I had actually did that in the past, makes me want to put myself in a punishment far more worse than crucifixion and eternal separation from God. Because that is utter foolishness, to been saved from the fire and yet want to go back in to get burned.

Indeed Lord, I foresee that the days to come will be one that is so difficult to keep my focus on you, will be days that will be stormy and dark, days that will be sometimes lonely and sometimes hard to live. Lord I’m still very hesitant to go back to school, to go back to face the world of sin, to be distracted by the things my sinful nature desires that never fails to correspond with what the world has to offer, for it is sin that causes me to stumble and fall.

But yet it is sin that Grace is then so precious and so wonderful, for your grace never fails to pick me up when I fall to sin, grace that not restrain me from sin, but also allow me to draw closer to you

The days would be tiring as I continue to struggle with myself to try to serve one master which is you and not my passions. Nevertheless, I know Lord that this struggle is worth it. For You are far greater than what my sinful has to offer, far greater than recognition and fame, far greater than wealth and riches, and far more satisfying than making a name for my own glory. Lord, I want to continue to struggle to live for You, so that I can appreciate the rest and peace you give even more in my weariness and heavy burdens, so that I may naturally give you the praise you deserve when I can truly experience enjoyment in you. For You are most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in You.

By Your Grace,

Leon

The Mountain

2010-10-23T23:45:00.002+08:00

I want to build a house up on this mountain
Way up high where the peaceful waters flow
To quench my thirsty soul
Up on the mountain

I can see for miles from this mountain
My troubles seem so small they almost disappear
And Lord, I love it here,
Up on the mountain.

My faith is strengthened by all that I see
You make it easy for me to
believe up on the mountain
Oh, up on the mountain

I would love to live up on this mountain
And keep the pain of living life so far away
But I know I can't stay
Up on the mountain

I said I'd go, Lord, wherever You lead
For where You are is where I most want to be
And I can tell we're headed for the valley
My faith is strengthened by all that I've seen
So Lord help me remember what you've shown me
Up on the mountain

You bring me up here on this mountain
For me to rest and learn and grow
I see the truth up on the
mountain And I carry it to the
world far below
So as I go down to the valley
Knowing that You will go with me
This is my prayer, Lord
Help me to remember what you've shown me
Up on the mountain
Up on the mountain

I cherish these times up on the mountain
But I can leave this place because I know
Someday you'll take me home to live forever
Up on the mountain

JUST A CLOSER WALK WITH THEE

2010-10-12T09:50:00.008+08:00

Refrain:
Just a closer walk with Thee,
Grant it, Jesus, is my plea,
Daily walking close to Thee, 
Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.  

Verse1:
I am weak, but Thou art strong;
  Jesus, keep me from all wrong; 
I’ll be satisfied as long 
As I walk, let me walk close to Thee.
  

Verse2:
Through this world of toil and snares,
  If I falter, Lord, who cares? 
Who with me my burden shares?
None but Thee, dear Lord, none but Thee.
  

Verse3:
When my feeble life is o’er,
  Time for me will be no more; 
Guide me gently, safely o’er 
To Thy kingdom shore, to Thy shore.

Find more artists like Randy Travis at MySpace Music

Izit Cannot, Dunno How or Just Unwilling?

2010-10-05T21:54:00.005+08:00

After talking and discussing with my mother about various issues, I have come to realized I have hardly took the first step of a redeemed Chao Lang.

Jialat

They were many things that had to be address, but they all fall under 3 categories:

Self - Discipline
Self - Control
Time Management

simple as they may sound, these are the 3 issues that makes me a chao lang, someone who disregard people, someone who spends time on unnecessary things, someone who likes to stay in his comfort zone. My blog profile still has the best description even after 5 years.

They were many things we talked about, one was project serve VS working, another was Diploma-Plus program (a program that offers you to take 2-3 diplomas in your course of studies).

In the area of Self-Discipline, it was in the area of constantly loving people. To have the discipline to do what is good for the family. Simple housework like refilling the water boiler when its empty, like washing clothes and hanging them to dry, or even simpler things like tidying up my room was more a chore than a joy to do. Which lead me to think why I did not even think about these simple ways to love my mother and brother, why I did not think of die to self just to help to lighten the burden from them? Worse still, it was my holidays, 80% of my time are spent at home, why then did I not do it?

In the area of self-control, it would be computer gaming. From secondary 4, I 'devoted' never to touch computer games ever again, remembering my weakness to computer games. Never had I expect myself to be so complacent, to get L4D installed on my macbook (given that installation process of a piece of cake), and run the big risk of getting addicted again, which unfortunately I did. I won't blame that friend who gave me L4D, it's not his fault, it was my lack of self-control that put me in this situation. And simply because of this addiction, I found myself neglecting God, neglecting other people. The time I had to spend time with God, meet up with people were all spent on this unnecessary thing called computer game. How foolish can I get seriously!! It was not a matter of no time, but rather the wrong allocation of time.

Which goes to the next problem of poor time-management. I have to fully agree that in my case, it is not a matter of no time, it's just poor time management, whether it is caused by too much computer gaming, or too much time wasted on unnecessary rest/sloth. Which was the reason why I appeared to be so busy, staying up late at night and waking up at 9-10am in the morning. I really appreciate Randy's questions on:

"What are your free time for?"

Are they for playing computer games? For oversleeping and slacking? For going out on meaningless bus rides? Or for staying at home and surfing useless sites?

Woe to me, for wasting my life. Woe to me for neglecting the love for God and Men. Woe to me to desire to go back to be slave to sin and be the Self-centered man I was.

Project Serve VS Working

I'm glad to have this one more opportunity to talk to my mother, to clarify our misunderstandings and to challenge each other. Well, the reason for the objection was basically the 3 major problems mentioned. Worried that I might become more busy and more negligent for my health and the family, objections aroused for me to join. I have to admit, this was the problem that gave rise to fear and objections to join project serve.

Still one think I could not fully understand was the point of working. My mom presented her opinion by saying that it is good to work to gain experience from the REAL world (the world that looks at results and capabilities), to get me to struggle in it and therefore learn to be more self-discipline, practice more self-control and learn prioritizing and Time-Management. That through working, I will be able to appreciate how difficult it is to work and earn your own pocket money and do housework and therefore better empathize with her.

But would not working made me equally or more busy, equally or more negligent of the family? Will I not struggle, and be burdened with these 3 issues even in project serve? Will I not be able to experience working life with countless deadlines to meet and certain expectations to meet? Would not life be as hard/ even harder to depend merely on the funds you raise from Project Serve?

Then she would say, "You are still protected in the Christian environment, but the real world are non-Christians too."

Apparently she thought that I was project serving...which goes to show how 'much' I bothered to spend time with the family or even care for them. So, I had to explain that I was a volunteer, not a Project Servant and that is why I looked 'protected'.

So the conversation ended with this, "Now is not the right time. But you can still serve in future."

It felt dissatisfying a conclusion to get, not that I insist of joining Project Serve only, but rather I disliked this answer, there are just some things that just can't wait. I fear that I will get the same answer for the request to join full-time in future, be it SYFC, be it in Campus Crusade or in Church, or even when planning to get married to a godly wife.

"Now is not the right time. But you can still go full-time in future."
"Now is not the right time. But you can still find and marry someone else in future."

I will continue to pray and ask for joining project serve (Mom wouldn't like this). And as I do so, I will deal with the 3 issue that badly affects the way I live my life as a Christian.

So how now?

Some things I could start with was to be observant and take initiative to serve. Be less passive and more pro-active to do what is glorifying to God, and loving to people. One of which could start simply with the way I treat the family, to be specific, housework. The way I honor and care for my family by maintaining the house could be a loving act to ensure that the family and sometimes friends can come into a neat home, rather than a pig sty, a place for fellowship and rest, not a place with dirt and germs. To ensure that the family has cleaned, crisped clothes to wear everyday, and to lower the difficulty level of finding items.

Basically to keep myself occupied in doing things that glorify God and love people so much so that I become too 'busy' for computer games.

In terms of Time-management, it would be under the category of living out the life of a godly student. To be responsible in studies, working hard and troubleshooting and set good examples as students. To be humble and loving to one another, looking out for needs of my classmates (could be in terms of studies), to be thanking God with both good and bad results, and be blameless before the lectures and classmates.

Time management is essential here, by prioritizing what needs to be done first, and making good use for time, I can then have a more time to do ministry, as I hope to. To learn to die to self in the area of doing what needs to be done, not what I like to do and also knowing the difference between them (like finishing homework, before playing soccer).

I guess the ultimate motivation for doing all these things is Christ. Because we are now redeemed by the blood of Christ, now new creations that belong to God. We live a life that love God and love people, a live with a all-embracing, soul-satisfying passion for Christ even in the simple things we to do. I'm glad the Lord showed me ways to take the first step of a redeemed Chao Lang, now it is whether I willing/brave enough to take it or not, be willing to die everyday for the sake of Christ.

So Izit Cannot, Dunno How or Just Unwilling?

Laments of a Band Leader

2010-09-18T00:29:00.002+08:00

I thank God for my ability to play every single instrument in the band, not just play them, but more or less grasps an understanding of how they work together when playing a song.

I thank God for giving me a decent understanding of music, and having many great friends to help me to arrange a song that would bring out meaning out of every worship song.

I thank God for putting me in this position as a band leader and making me make countless mistakes, for in my weakness in leading a band, I will no longer boast in my own abilities, acknowledging that it is God who is at work.

I thank God for such forgiving band members each time I failed. It pains me to short-change them of their service to God in music. And it worries me if I am really pointing the band back to God, or to music instead.

I am a failure at explaining music to other people. Especially to bigger groups of people, it is so hard to explain musically. It’s so hard to tell people when to play this and when not to, so hard to explain why it must be played this way and not the other way. So hard to coordinate everything together, guess I’m not good at multi-tasking.

Maybe it’s just me having a high expectation as a musician, not thinking of me being called first as a Christian. Somehow, music always seems to overtake my main calling as band leader, not just to make sure that everyone is down for practice, but more importantly using music to minister to fellow Christian, teaching them the ‘ways of serving’ in Christ.

It is so hard to strike a balance between musical standards and servant hood. On one hand you hope that the focus of worship and worship practice is God, on the other hand you hope that the band can play decently well enough so that the congregation may not be distracted by their mistakes, as representative of a All-powerful God. On one hand, you hope to bring out certain feel to put the congregation into the ‘mood’ of worship; on the other hand, you have to keep it simple so that the members can play them.

There were many times, I wished I could work with a smaller group of people, maybe just one, just a piano and a guitar (myself), or maybe the bass too. It’s just so hard to coordinate so many people to play 8 songs in 2 hours. Time was just so against me.

There were times I wished I could work one on one with my band mates, to allow them to understand the musically behind every song, where to build up, where to break down, what to play for verse and chorus, and how to bring out the lyrics in a song, and why all these?

There were times I wished I could allow them to understand the meaning behind each lyric, and teach them biblical lessons through every song. Where they will not only grow in musicality, but more importantly, in their faith in God, that their joy in God can be completed even through the use of music.

There were times I wished I had someone to train my properly to lead a band, so that my band members won’t have to suffer with me in my failure to do so. I pray that this band may continue to hold strong with the ultimate purpose of glorifying God with music.

There were times; I wished I had been more responsible as a bandleader, to make more preparations before practice. Less we waste time dealing with confusion of chords and flow of music.

There were times I wished I could practice with each one of them individually, interact and get to know each one of them better, not just in terms of musical skills and preference, but in terms of their life, struggles to be a Christian, and if possible, encourage them.

Once again, I have to remind myself that this is God’s work, not mine. Therefore, God ultimately determines every result; we have no control over what will happen during practice or worship itself, just today the Kurzweil Stage Piano blacked out half-way through the practice, and we spend 30 minutes trying to get the power back. Apparently the power cable was loose and had to be twisted and bend at a certain precise angle in order to work. In the end, thanks be to God, we had an upright piano in our practice venue, so the pianist was still able to practice with us.

This incident I guess, it is pretty much a clear example of God being the one who determines the result. None of us expected the Kurzweil to black-out. Nevertheless, God was ultimately still in control of that situation, and was merciful to provided us with the upright piano to resume our practice with the pianist (though it meant the pianist getting off her chair frequently when we made changes). Even though I know not of what would happen to the Kurzweil this Sunday, I pray the Lord’s will be done, knowing and trusting that everything is still in control.

I guess this implies also that my wishes may or not may not come true. Maybe after posting this ‘complain’, I might be removed from the ministry as a band leader, or even as a guitarist, I don’t know. But I will continue to pray that the Lord may be glorified in my weaknesses, not really musically, but more so in leadership, discipline and ministering to other people, or simply just relating to people, that I may never boast in anything else but in Christ alone.

So do pray for the band:

That they will continue to work hard, perservere to play good music to glorify God.
That they will have a clear focus of magnifying God, pointing every song back to God.
That they will grow in their understanding of M-U-S-I-C
That God will work in each one of them to be greater servants in Christ

The Run of Lessons

2010-08-20T13:59:00.003+08:00

It has really been a long time (maybe 6 months) since I last ran like this. Otherwise, this might not have happened to me. Nevertheless, I thank God for this moment for there were many lessons I learned.

It all started with a run, a run from Ang Mo Kio station to Serangoon Community Center and if stamina would suffice, run back. At that time, I had no idea that the distance between these 2 landmarks was 3km apart! Alwin and I agreed to run together in the morning at 7am as a simple morning exercise. I suppose it is good start to keep fit since it’s the holidays, and since I have a bit more time at hand.

I started off the day with 2 thoughts in my head:

1) How do we to glorify God even in a morning run?

2) What have I not been accountable for in my life?

These 2 questions were some of the factors made me understand the reason behind these events that happened today.

Everything started fine, I did my warm-ups, I drank water, I ate a packet of biscuits to temporary relieve my morning hunger since it is not good to run with a heavy stomach. The first mistake though was not bringing my wallet. I thought that it was just going to be a simple 45min run since Alwin had to prepare for Project Serve at 9am. I never expected anything serious, it was at most just slight giddiness like those in 2.4km run.

We didn’t exactly start off from Ang Mo Kio Station, we started off 2 bus stops after the station towards Serangoon Community Center, near Alwin’s place. So we ran as the traffic light turned green, Alwin lead the way and paced me at a comfortable speed.

During the run, I randomly imagined myself in the last days, running to Jesus, where there will be no turning back, no turning back. It also got me to think about this passion we have in Christ, and how can we pursue this ONE passion of glorifying God, just as we were running to reach ONE destination, Serangoon CC. It kind of reminded me of what Paul wrote in Acts 20:24:

“But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”

So this run pretty much felt the course that Paul had finished. Trying, tiring, yet with a great goal to achieve. (Though reaching SRCC is not as great a goal as bringing God glory.)

Half-way through the run, I started getting stomach aches. It was not stitch, not the same time of pain in the appendix; it was more of a need to visit the toilet. The pain was intermittent, so it was more of an annoying stomach. It was later during the run that the pain – now accompanied with stitch- became permanent. So we all agreed to stop at the community center for a toilet break before resuming our run back home. It was better to play safe than to be sorry, I thought.

After about 12 minutes of continuous running, we ‘finished the course’, we made it to the community center (it’s an assurance for me given that I manage to run about 3km within the 2.4km passing standard). By then, I had cramps, stomachache, stitches, and headache and oxygen deficiency all at the same time. I was advised to breathe in and out fully, raising and lowering my hands for my lungs to expand and contract accordingly. Well, it was still bearable for that moment. Alwin jokingly mentioned about how Nicholas (another friend who ran with him recently), had similar feelings and ended up swatting on the floor. I guess if I had done that, it might have been better.

We crossed the street, with me sharing about how we should try other forms of exercise (like swimming) next time and other random stuff like how Yio Chu Kang Chapel was so nice. At that time, I was in urgent need of a toilet and dizzy to the verge of vomiting.

“Not now, God. Not now.” I whispered.

Apparently, 7.30am was too early for a open community center, let alone its toilets. We reached serangoon CC only to find all the toilet doors LOCKED! Even the handicapped toilet was not spared. (I could have tried the female toilet but I’m not planning to make this my 5^th visit to a female toilet). So groaning silently in pain and dizziness, we went to the nearby coffee shop (of which it looked like a hawker center to me in my state of vertigo). Again the doors were locked, not because it was not in operation, but because it’s occupied. At that time, I was already about to vomit and faint.

“Not now, God. Not now.” I pleaded once again. And thank God, He allowed me endure till I got to do my business.

Well, the first attempt was not successful, partially because I was constipated, partially because I lacked oxygen. A searing pain emerged from the rear-left side of my head causing my entire head to feel compressed, as if my brain expanded but was under pressure under my skull. Sitting down felt better, at least I managed to clear some undigested waste, and got my breathing rate back to normal.

I decided not to keep Alwin waiting since he had to leave by 8am. So I decided it was time to go back. We planned to walk back to our homes since I was kind of dying already. (sorry Alwin, I know I’m weak :P) I thought that the trauma would be over, but I guess God has something more in stall for me.

The moment I got up from the toilet seat, another wave of dizzy spells came to me, I thought it would go away after a while since it probably just the sudden change in posture as always, so I washed my face and walked out.

However, headache became more severe as I walked, everything around me looked pixilated. I was pretty much disoriented; I didn’t know where the CC was. I told Alwin, ”Wa..I see stars liao.” hoping it would get better.

It didn’t. The pain struck me so hard that, walking seemed an impossible thing to do. Slowly my sight depleted, the world around me turned dimmer as the color red took over my vision. We found an empty bench and quickly sat on it before I lost conscious. In no time, I totally lost sight.

I could tell that Alwin was pretty much helpless, desperately asking if I was okay and what I would do in situations like this. I was equally blur as this was my first time encountering a black-out, and I felt bad to put him in a spot like this.

Thankfully, a passer-by, at another coffee shop next to the bench (I just realized how God provides us with another toilet when I needed it the most), heard our cry and quickly called the ambulance, she offered and fed me Milo while I was still blind. I wished I could thank her for her kindness to help me in this time of darkness, but the state I was in did not allow me to speak properly or to even recognize her by sight. Another strange phenomenal was the feeling of clogged ears, as if you were on a plane taking off. Accompanying all this was a growing stomachache.

I thank God I can more or less empathize with the visually impaired people through this experience of being blind. It was felt like your eyes were closed even though you have opened them. It must have been a great shocked to these people to learn that they were blind, though ironically for me, it was cool! (I guess on the basis of knowing that I would regain sight.)

I guess this was what it meant when we were all blind to the gospel when we were sinners, blind to the obvious (I guess deaf to it as well)! It’s like how the sun, people and building around you were obviously there, yet you don’t see anything. Well, there are times of course people choose not to see them. But we should still share the gospel for there are people out there who need God to open their eyes to see the obvious, to see there God is there.

And by the grace of God, their eyes would open to see God through the obvious, his creation! Just as how I regained sight after a few minutes, to see the sun again. Hmm…maybe not the sun but my shoe and some puke in between them.

As darkness continues overwhelmed my world, Alwin asked if he could pray for me. We turned to God and prayed to him. In times of desperation like these, we (or at least I) would often overlook prayer to God. In times when we need something to depend on, we depend on other things that are not unreliable in comparison to God. I’m glad that Alwin did not. He recognizes that things were beyond our control, but he remembered that God is in control of everything (even the situation then), therefore there was no one else better than God to seek help in times like these. Though I could not really make out what he said in my semi-conscious state, I was nevertheless, encouraged to see Alwin dependence on God in action.

I guess that kind of answered the first question I had in mind before I left home. Indeed God was glorified when I received later received sight again. He demonstrated he’s ‘healing power’ on me and showed mercy by bringing an end to my blindness. At that time, I knew that I could no longer hold my puke (my stomach probably rejected the Milo I drank). So I vomited, only hearing only the sound of liquid splashing on the ground. Slowly, I began to see figures and shapes of my leg, then colors, and sharper details and then my vision was back to normal. Amazing how God actually healed me without me realizing it then.

Now that my sight was regained, it was time to deal with the stomachache. So, I got up and limped my way towards the toilet. This time round it was much better, I managed to clear a lot of waste and I felt much better after that even though the pain in the head was still prominent.

It wasn’t long before the ambulance came. At first, I thought Alwin was joking when he said that the ambulance was here. Firstly, I never expected the passer-by to call the ambulance, as I thought my condition was not fatal. Secondly, the ambulance came even before I finished by business. Looks like SCDF kept to their quota of 7 minutes waiting time.

12% of cases that the SCDF encounters were false alarm. I felt bad to be part of that 12%. For the SCDF personnel to drive an ambulance all the way here meant that there might have been one less patient they could attend to. Nevertheless, they still brought me back to the ambulance for a blood pressure test and a sugar level test (that means I can’t play guitar for the time being, my finger hurts)and asked about some background to my condition, what I have ate, how I felt before I ran, what happened next. That was where I learned that Serangoon CC was about 3-4km away from Ang Mo Kio station, I guess they were quite startled to see this ambitious guy wanting to run 3km after not running for more than 6 months. They advised me to go for a check-up either at the hospital (A&E) or the nearby private clinic (GP) to play safe. As I was in a dilemma, I inform my brother of my condition and asked for his advice(since he was redirected to A&E after visiting the clinic). We decided to have our check-up at the hospital since there was an ambulance, and there might be a possibility that the clinic might redirect me back to the hospital anyway. So they took down my name, IC number, handphone number, Home Address, and my date of birth (which ended up making me 10 days younger than I actually was).

So yup, that as how I ended up in Tan Tock Seng hospital under observation. Frankly, though, I quite enjoyed the free ride on the ambulance, the Mercedes Van sure has great horse power for this purpose, but it was the conversation between us and the SCDF personnel that made it enjoyable. We learned quite a lot on my condition, which was pretty much a over exertion and later a vertigo and how to deal with them- to lay a person sideways. It was pretty much an eye-opener, I guess that was what made Alwin more determined to learn first-aid. We also talked about their experiences in SCDF, learning they were also serving their National Service, was encouraged and assured that it was going to be an enjoyable one (at least in SCDF).

So upon reaching the hospital, they placed me on a wheelchair since it better for me not to walk with a searing pain still on my head. Sitting on the wheelchair reminded me of my younger days of how I used to be pushed around on a wheelchair while I was having my leg operation. From that experience, I have always wanted to learn how to maneuver on a wheelchair on my own. I thank God for this experience I learn how to do so. To move straight, push both wheel forward, to reverse, push them backwards, to move/rotate left, push the right wheel forward and the left wheel backwards and vice versa. It was fun pretending to be handicapped for the time being, since it was something I don’t do as a person with two legs and hands.

Well, so I was lead to the observation counter, while Alwin did the registration for me. (And I have yet to thank him for sending me to the hospital). The room was pretty much cold since I was sweaty in my attire, and was frail and expectant of some more pain to come.

“Mr Teo Yu Yong Leon,” the nurse called, and upon seeing me in perspiration and on a wheelchair she asked, “Are you in cold-sweat?”

So I explained to her about the run, how I had blacked out after running and had diarrhea. After listening to my testimony, she did another sugar level test on me (NOT AGAIN!!!) and had me place in an isolated room with a upright bed. She then took out some stickers and placed them on specific parts of my chest, my two arms and leg. Then she pulled out a bunch of wires with crocodile clips attached to them.

“Don’t worry. It is not going to be painful. Just scary because there are lots of wires involved.” She said, probably because she saw me shivering.

Well, I was not shivering because I was scared, more because I was freezing cold. I guessed she got the hint and offered me a pair of hospital pajamas to change out. That felt much better since I was not in sweaty clothing. I happened to glance back at the bed I was lying on to see the layer of paper on it wet. I guessed that’s how she got the hint.

So as instructed, Alwin took me to a place called Room 8, a place where there were many doctors. While waiting for a doctor we started talking about personal stuff like family and younger days until a call from my brother interrupted the conversation. Apparently my brother had arrived at Tan Tock Seng, so Alwin took his leave to direct my brother into Room 8.

“Teo, Yu Yong, Leon,” the doctor called. As I wheeled myself forward, he asked “Hey why is that person asking you about your family and stuff?”

“Oh, he’s a close friend of mine.” I replied as my brother joined in the conversation.

“Your brother?” the doctor asked.

“Yes, and I think we’ve met before.” My brother replied. Apparently, it was the same doctor who my brother saw when he was under observation here in Tan Tock Seng. Although the doctor did not recognized him at first, medical records later verified that my brother was a patient under him.

So the doctor had me to look at his pen as it moved in circles, do a blood test lying down, and standing up, had me to walk like I was walking on a tight rope. And had me to do a blood test twice! Well, because no blood came out when he injected the needle into my right hand, so he had to do it in my left arm (where he left a weird blue tube later in be used for the glucose drip. So I was pretty much unable to bend both arms for the time being since the pain didn’t allow me to.

And so I was kept under observation for 2 hours, in a room called Room 28. I guess it was with this 2 hours of free time I started thinking of the things I have not yet done. One of it was writing the teacher’s day wishes (sorry Sara I forgot!!!). So I kind of sms her what I had wanted to write and apologized to her, and somehow, I added that I was under observation. Soon the news spread like wildfire. Next came Valarie, then Dawn, then Gabriel, then Alicia, then Robin, then an unknown number (sorry I really lost most of my contacts). But to all of you thank you for taking some time off to sms and express your concern for me, really appreciated it. :)

My mom came down from work too to bring me an extra set of clothing and my pair of sandals. And of course, nagged at me for staying up so late all the time and having little rest.

“This is a sign from the Lord to tell you to take care of your body, the temple of God!” she warned.

I guess this was another lesson I learned, one aspect of taking care of your bodies since it is not yours to begin with but was given to us, just as it is written in 1 Cor 6:19-20:

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”

So therefore, we are accountable to God with the way we take care of our bodies too.

Randy, and Alwin whom seemed desperate to know my condition (dun worry I’m fine), also sms me even in the midst of their busyness in Project Serve. Amos did too, but with a somewhat random sms that there will be practice this Monday and a reminder to pray for my friends(I guess he didn’t know of my condition yet). But nevertheless, “praying for my friends” was something that I could use this 2 hours to do, apart from eating breakfast and staring at gloomy faces of other patients.

And so I prayed to, and I have listed them in no specific order down NOT to show off how much I can pray in 2 hours, but in hope that it might encourage you that you are kept in prayer.

1. To Seb: To continue to manage his time well, and continue living right before God. To make wise choices which are pleasing only to Him.

2. To Alwin: That he might recover from his shock this morning, that he might be strengthen to do God’s work in Project Serve.

3. To Nicholas Ho: To have the courage to teach the word of God. And continue to be our “Holy Spirit”, to fellowship and continue grow with us even in busy JC schedules.

4. To Moses: Thank God for giving us a wise and selfless BS leader who has been willing to teach us despite us being difficult disciples to teach and minister to. Pray that he may continue to minister and grow more people, not only those under his care, but even those whom are not from our church.

5. To Randy: To find rest even in the midst of faithfully ministering to Christian and Non-Chirstians in Parts. Also, that he may continue to set a good example to other Christians who looks up to him.

6. To Amos: That he might be encouraged each day to continue living for Christ, that he may find someone who is willing to do so alongside with him.

7. To Florence and Ariela(somehow they come as a pair in my prayers): To manage their time well, and have good people to seek help from. And that they might both be strengthened each day to live godly lives.

8. To Mom: That even through this time of handling difficult people in the office, that she may continue to trust in the Lord to bring her through the days ahead. Also, praying for the Lord to sustain her with good health. And that she may be able to retire soon and choose to live an unwasted life.

9. To Bro: Thank God for sustaining you through NS and examinations. Pray that the Lord will continue to strengthen you as you return to work in church and resume studies.

10. To Calwin and Louis (whom I have invited for August event): That they might open and receptive to the gospel through this time of sharing from YMCA. That they will truly consider Christ and by the Lord’s Will, be saved. Praying also that the Lord may continue to be at work in their lives no matter the outcome.

11. To my DMAT classmates: Thank God for giving me such caring and forgiving classmates who still bother to care and even pray for me despite many remarks from me that have hurt them. Praying for the Christians there to be challenged to do work of God, and for the Non-Christians to come to know Christ one day.

12. To myself: To learn to be accountable to God in everything I do, in the midst of my struggle not to waste my life.

I know there were many people I missed out in my prayers, there were so many others I could have prayed for whom I didn’t, so much for having a finite brain with finite memory space.

As I was starting to doze off at the last hour under observation, I heard the mourning of a neighboring patient’s relative. It seemed like the patient had contracted some deadly disease, or it could have been cancer. Though I was not sure of the situation there, somehow the setting of the hospital, the mourning and the comforting of the nurse lead me to one word: Death.

Death can be seen as a separation, whether a separation from your loved ones through physical death, or eternal separation of God through spiritual death. Most of us ‘fear’ physical death for the separation from our love ones or simply the world; some ‘fear’ death because they don’t know what happens next, some are afraid to be judged by God (I admit used one of them).

Yet there are others who don’t fear physical death. One reason for that is our constant desire to seek for happiness. Yes, we were created to seek happiness. That is why there are people who were daring enough to commit suicide, for they find more joy/happiness in dying than living.

Blaise Pascal wrote in Pensées – “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire both, attended with different view. This is the motive if every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”

Of course, none all of us can find happiness in committing suicide, that’s a fact! But for the other group of people who say “to live is Christ and to die is gain”, for Paul who wrote this in Philippians 1: 20-21, what does it mean? I just didn’t know how to explain it. The question that pondered me was how dying could be a gain when we are separated from our loves ones, or the possession we have on Earth? Is not that a loss?

Most of us see death as a separation, but death “brings us into more intimacy with Christ”. We are separated from the world yet, brought back to be with Christ. So which is better, your possessions or Christ, or to plainly put it, temporal things or eternal things to come? Or rather the better question to ask is: Where is your treasure?

Luke 12:34: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

If your treasure is here on Earth, naturally we would be unwilling to depart from your treasure here on Earth right? And aren’t these treasure here on Earth the ‘temporal things’ that don’t last. I can give you an example of such item: our mobile phone, it would eventually spoil even if we are determined not to change to a new phone right?

For if your treasure is in heaven, in a place where moth and rust won’t destroy and thief don’t break in to steal. Christ would be more valuable than these possessions you have now, your family, your work, your studies, your grades, certificates, scholarships, goals and achievements. For Christ is that treasure in heaven! So naturally, you would say to die is gain, for Christ is the ‘better option’ that you are working for.

This doesn’t mean that you should kill yourself right now. We are not our own, but God’s, it’s not up for us to decide if we should die now. There is still a another part to this which is the purpose the Lord have for us to be still living, what “to Live is Christ meant”, which my finite mind made it impossible to think and write of it now, otherwise I will be sent back to the hospital for treatment again.

Nevertheless, I thank God for using this event to get me to think of such issues as these. For teaching me to know my limits and not be so ambitious, and learn to take care of myself and make use of resting time properly. For using this time to answer the questions I had in my mind that morning.

I pray that the Lord may continue to teach us various lesson in different events in our lives and that I may mature and improve in my writing that I may be able to express these lessons I learned clearer to my readers.

Reflection of Project Echolocation via Post-Community Service Worksheet

2010-07-01T14:14:00.003+08:00

1. Rate the success of your service / project on the scale below:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

(very unsuccessful) (very successful)

1. Why did you give it this rating?

The event was generally a successful one not just for me, but also for HCJC. Overall, the event had indeed fulfilled its purpose of raising funds through tickets sales. My personal goal of working together with the class was also fulfilled. In fact, it was through this time of project work, that I get to understand my classmates better than before, be it in terms of musically or personality.

One of the things I enjoy doing would be house visitation. I would love going to a friend’s place to see more from their family background and the circumstances they live in. I was privileged to be able to visit my co-video producer’s place to give some perspective to the video, as well as taking last minute shots of video that were cheesy and amusing. It was through this visitation that I found out that my co-video producer had two siblings, a brother and a sister. Otherwise, this ‘truth’ would have always been hidden from me.

Indeed, though it was only about 5 hours in his home, we managed come up with the raft framework of the video and get every resource we needed – the photos and videos taken from the jamming studio, and the videos recorded in his house – to complete our first draft of the video. With many sleepless nights of video editing and synchronising for my co-worker, the video was successfully completed and ready to be shown.

The event was itself was generally smooth and enjoyable. Although there were occasional glitches, the smooth running of the programme was not affected too badly. It was really encouraging to see many local bands and artiste performing that night for charity. Many or in fact all of them were unknown to me (since I had inferior knowledge towards local bands and artiste). I was glad to be able witness local artiste and bands with great potential to perform and expand the music industry of Singapore with their music.

On the whole, our project was considered successful considering that it is our first time we worked together as a class and I hope to have more opportunities working with the class again.

2. How did you / you and your group members feel about rendering the service / working on this project? Why?

I felt honoured to be able to serve in the area of photo taking, video recording during our preparation and sound recording during the performance. It was good to know that my niche area is being used to provide a service to raise fund for the Visually Handicapped.

When we were asked what our most important value was, one answered, “Love your neighbour as yourself”. I feel this is one example of being loving to other people the act of using what we have, what we have been given to benefit others who may not possess what we have, may not have opportunities like we do. Though loving other people does not merely apply to us loving the poor or disabled people, this is also one of the areas we can practice this value in our lives.

3. If you could go through your experience, what would you do differently or what do you think could have been done better?

Projection Echolocation though was rather successful, was also partly a result of poor planning, perhaps in terms of prioritising the different aspects of the event. I do not expect JC students to be perfect in this area of concert planning, given that it could their first time doing this. In fact, if it were the students’ first attempt, I would have quite impressed. Through this event, I believe there were many things we can learn about event planning through these glitches.

One result of poor planning could be seen in the attendance of the event. The turn out then was a disappointment for me, given that less than half of the seats in the auditorium were filled. One possible reason could be poor publicity or rather persuasion for the event. Another was the period where the performance was held.

I asked some of my HCJC friends about their knowledge of Project Echolocation, Many barely remembered it’s existence others were ignorant of it. Those who knew the event said that they would not be able to turn up for the event as they were going overseas.

The idea of having the event on Friday was good, as it is nearing the weekends and many are willing to stay up late, but perhaps the second week of June holidays, the holiday week for most of us, is not ideal for a performance with good turn up. This is one area we could learn about event planning, not just the importance of publicity, but the importance of considering general people’s schedule when planning a concert. Perhaps, having the event on a period where people are free and not likely travel would be ideal for our next gig.

4. What difficulties did you encounter and how were these resolved?

One difficulty I remembered was doing the mixing during the band’s rehearsal. The difficulty of balancing sound of our band because our guitars were constantly too loud no matter how much I brought them down from the mixer. There were complains of the vocals being too soft and the band not being able to hear themselves from the monitor speakers. We tried all means to bring the vocals up, but to no avail.

So, we took this step by step. First, we had the musicians to move towards the front of the stage, closer to the monitor. We figured that it was the guitar amplifiers that were too loud (to the extend they could be heard deafeningly in the auditorium). We had all our musicians lower their amplifiers and the drummer play softer. Next we did modifications to the signal such that we could balance the vocals and instruments separately from the mixer above and not together. All turned out well for our rehearsal, the sound was balanced to such that the trumpets, which were not mic up, can still be heard clearly when the full band played.

Sadly, the settings were messed up when the other bands came up to practice. Because of a very violent drummer, the amplifiers were blasted again and it was back to square one. I was very disappointed and frustrated for the change in setting after the hours spent to mix something perfectly. On my part, it was my mistake that I did not tell the musicians to remember the settings used and memorising it.

5. How do you feel about the feedback that you have received from others about your service / project?

It was a delight to hear compliments for our performance, even though I not directly involved in the performance. We were considered the best band of the night.

Michael Tan, our lecturer expresses his satisfaction in the way the performance was arranged and how the band coordinated well together. Personally, I feel very proud for the band. Despite only working with each other for less than 2 months, they have managed to gel with each other to the extend that the band can easily pick up when a member made a mistake during the performance.

I believe after Project Echolocation, we will have greater opportunities for future gigs and more opportunities for the class to work together again, both as Musicians or Technicians.

6. Describe some of the most important lessons that you / you and your group received from this experience.

Personally, I felt that this was one the most difficult times given to me to train my control of temperament and patience. At times, I wanted to criticise the audio technician for being over-protective over their audio-equipments and the sound crew for their ineffective sound setup. But thinking over it, I believe there were constrains that prevented the ideal setup. Moreover, scolding people who were of more experience than me only creates more trouble. I’m thankful for this time of testing to learn how to respect other people and their decisions, and to adopt a submissive attitude towards them.

Another lesson was the lesson on humility, and the lesson to be sensitive to other people. I remembered how I used to keep telling people how they should play for certain song, and what they should not. I admit that I was very harsh in my judgement, even though my intention was that of a suggestion. That apparently inflicted a heavy damage.

Once, I got off my seat to show the drummer how he could play the bridge for one of the songs. Apparently my action crossed the line. Halfway through the practice, he dropped his sticks, got off the chair and walked out of the room suddenly. We were all shocked and looked at each other with blank faces. A few of us formed a search party and found him in the hang out area. The drummer expressed to our bandleader that he felt he was inferior and not good enough to play drums for him.

Later, I approached him to apologise and return the watch he left in the jamming room, but was given the cold shoulder. From that day on, I learn to reserve comments to myself.

7. Which of your skills do you think you have developed while carrying out your service / project?

I certainly had great experience developing and apply my knowledge on sound. Indeed all that mixing was tiring, but it was through this time of mixing that I found many solutions to the many problems I encountered when mixing for live smaller live performance previously.

Another skill I acquired may sound simple, but it is the importance of communication skills between a sound technician and a musician. As a musician and a sound technician later in life, I found it a important skill to have in order for a good performance. I am glad to have this experience to work with experience performers like my bandleader who is patient to bear with my instructions, which tends to be unclear. Nevertheless, I develop my communication skills in every event I do sound for and I’m glad this is also one of them.

One thing I felt was enriching was talking with one of Luther Music’s sound crew as we watched the rehearsal ad sound check. I was given some tips on operating audio equipment like the mixer and also an insight to the economy of the audio industry and the tough life of being a stage crew and a sound technician.

It was also my first attempt to do live recording through a new part of the mixer called the Auxiliary Outputs, which is basically how people can transmit sound into a recording devices to record sound. Throughout the performance, I spent 50% of my time enjoying music and 50% troubleshooting on the mixer. It was my first time using my macbook to record a live performance, something which I always wanted to do, but not given the opportunity or equipment to.

8. What kind of training do you think you would need in order to do a better job?

Sound-mixing training would be very helpful in improving my skill set. One of the challenges was mixing the band during the rehearsal. It was challenging because I could not hear what the performers were hearing and thus had to depend on a headphone to mix. But through my trips on and off stage, I could not rectify the problem of unbalanced mix not matter how I rectify it.

After listening to the recording of the performance, I also realised how bad my mixing skills (balancing the volume of sounds) was. Of course, there were certain things beyond my control, because of the way the sound system was setup, but I failed to mix a good mix even at a basic level of vocals and music. Therefore, I hope to be able to develop my sound mixing skills to a higher level to do a proper mix for all to enjoy.

Life in Poly

2010-04-28T08:57:00.002+08:00

It is a challenge to describe the first week in polytechnic.

It is fun because it is not only doing what you like to do, but also more so because you are doing it with many other great friends with similar interest. DMAT is a place where you can randomly sing out s song without anyone thinking you are mad. Since everyone is just as crazy about music as I am.

It is exciting because we will be working with people, some of which are outstanding in their own carriers, in DMAT’s case as Audio Engineers and musicians. Even some of my classmates has skills set comparable to that of industrial standard even before they came into DMAT. Working with these people will not only be easier or more efficient but exciting because we learn new things to what we have already know, sometimes learning how to apply some of our skills in our daily carrier lives.

But life is poly, is sometimes tiring, I can’t put the blame on boring lecturers or long hours of classes. For me, lessons starts at 8am every weekdays. It’s tiring, because I have to get used to waking up at 5.30am in the morning - which for most of the JC students, it’s a piece of cake – and getting ready to leave home by 7am LATEST

You might wonder why 5.30am.

Because, I don’t always wake up on time
Because I normally take a shower before I leave home so that I may not bring discomfort to my classmates with my stench
Because I hope to have a heavier breakfast so that I may survive lecture till 10am without being hungry – also given that I don’t eat breakfast as quickly as I do for lunch or dinner.
Because I hope to leave the house by 6.30am

MRT – though the traveling time- 50 minutes - does not vary as much as buses do, but waiting time may become a factor of my delay in travelling time.

Bus – though the traveling time can be shorter than that of MRT- 45minutes - the jam in the morning may increase traveling time by 30 minutes especially when there is an accident in the jam

Taxi – though traveling time is the shortest – 30minutes – it is always my least preferred mode of transportation. Traveling from home to SP would cost me $12, meaning that I have to skip 4 meals in order to have enough allowance for the rest of the week!

So after all that has been said about tiredness, I guess it’s a matter of getting used to the shorter hours of sleep, and the long traveling time to school everyday in the morning.

But life in poly can be quite worrying at times, especially when you are told of all the assignments and project that is to come. I often wonder if I could manage my time in order to finish my work, despite having so many other assignments from different modules.

The scariest part about poly is when you start thinking that you are very free when you are suppose to be busy, one example would be when there are assignments to be complete but you are not aware if it. Most of the time, the ‘revelation’ comes when the deadline approaches or worst, reaches!

But there are times where there are really no homework at all, because poly is mainly about self-directed learning. Meaning that I should not expect a lot of homework from each module as most of my learning comes from my own research. Yes, it is true that SP tutors would give a lot of guidance to its students, but on our part, we have to be pro-active to sometimes go ahead of our lecturers and further explore certain areas of study. It looks like I have to self-teach myself certain things about Music technology like how I did for playing guitars and drums.

To make an attempt to describe poly life in one word, it would be ‘Independence’. Yes, we may have freedom to do what we like to do without anyone stopping us in poly, but more importantly we need to be ACCOUNTABLE – not just responsible- for our own lives in poly. But independence not in the way that I solo everything myself, but rather independence is managing my own things in poly well, so that I may also help others in these areas.

It’s not very easy to be accountable; in fact it is difficult, especially for someone like me, who is very passive – depending on someone or something to push me to do something. But I guess, in order that I may ’remain’ in the society of today, I will have to learn to be more pro-active, especially in doing the right things.

Just as it is challenging for JC students to live out a Christ-centered life, it is immensely difficult for me to live out one in poly. Poly may not be as hectic as JC with piles of tutorials and projects to finish – the challenge for me in poly is not with homework yet. Often of times, I find myself forgetting who I am as a child of God, as a member of God’s people.

I find difficulty in living out a Christ-centered life even when there are no assignments due. Many times during the week I find being very arrogant, boasting about what ‘numerous’ instruments I can play – taking all glory to myself. How dare I - knowing that this talent is not mine, but is God’s whom He gave to me and place me in this course that I may develop it and multiply it and use it for His own Glory, just like what the two servants with 5 and 2 talents did in Mathew 25:17-22 – boast freely about MY own talents when it is not even mine?! How dare I look down on other people, when I am not better or even worse off than these other people; to see a speck that is in other people’s eye and yet oblivious to the log in my own eye as in Luke 6:41.

There are many times I felt that I could have responded to these situations better. I was given so many chances by God to do the right thing, yet I chose not to. If there was a chance for me to apologize to those I have hurt, I pray that I might seize every these opportunities bravely to not only apologize but to be humble and seek help, if they can help. But importantly, I pray that God will forgive me in every failure to use so many opportunities so many times, to end up hurting even His People in my class.

I guess saying to live courageously and consistently for Christ, would be something too broad for me. Perhaps as I continue to be in poly, arrogance could be one of the areas I could work on. Perhaps, pro-activeness could be another. So to all readers out there, welcome to the start of my poly life.

Holidays---> Poly

2010-04-10T20:41:00.007+08:00

To write about my feelings now? That would be the hardest thing to do now. Maybe excited that Poly Life is going to start this coming Monday? Maybe sad that my holidays are going to end? Maybe anxious as I am going have lots to do with SYFC PArts and Poly Life?

It's hard to say how I feel now, given that I tend to only focus on one thing instead of many things at the same time. Perhaps, it is a good thing as it shows that my ability to focus is good :P. But bad, because I neglect everything else when I focus on one thing too much. Perhaps this goes to show I not good at multi-tasking.

A JC friend of mine asked, "so how are ur holidays,"

I replied, "hahas...a great time of resting"

Well, I not laughing at him because he in JC with assignments pilling up while I'm at home slacking(not really slacking, but doing work at own pace). Just that I was grateful for his concern for me. Honestly speaking, I thank God for the 4 months of absence from school, I would really consider this time of holiday a time of resting despite having to be busy with MIMBY and REW, after all I am doing things that I love doing (Music and Sound) and getting learning experience from all this event, another thing I can thank God for!

I must say this 4 month of holiday really showed me how much God has blessed me. From a decent roof over my head to sufficient supply of food and finances, from family so loving to friends so trustworthy, these things I take for granted. The next step is then to consider how these things can aid my relationship with God, an later other people's.

Maybe God is revealing all this blessings to me for a purpose.

Maybe God wants me to see how He would continue to bless me even if the days in poly isn't easy. Maybe He is trying to show that I have everything needed for me to Live for him, and to die to self.

Maybe he wants me to use this blessing to benefit others who lacks these things.

Maybe he's showing me how I need to Trust And Obey him, to depend on him fully to live a God-pleasing life with whatever He has give me, knowing I depraved and nothing without Him.

How I wish I could appreciate the fact that this life I live in temporal, that there is a better live after this world, and therefore seek and reach out for it. How wish I can appreciate what God has done when he paid his life as a ransom to set us free. How I wish I could see the value of this relationship with God that reconciled when we are called Children Of God.

Living to please not myself but God isn't going to be easy, serving in SYFC has made my mother worried if I was going to survive in poly, given that I seem to always be so busy in my involvement(to her). I understand her worries, she is still not sure if I'm doing these things with peace in my heart, with a clear sense of direction. I wish I could show her that SYFC was where I made my first attempt to live life as true christian.

I think I probably have not lived out the christian live in my family, not showing any change to my life in comparison to how I have been living previously as a blind 'christian'. Well, in that case, it's time to Change! Easier said than done.

Living to please God and not yourself is easier said than done. there is lots to change in my life, just hard to decide which aspect to change.

Perhaps the aspect to do everything diligently for the Lord whether it pleases myself or not. One area could be learning the piano? :P Having learnt the piano for 6 years, there are numerous times I got really sick of the piano, to the extend that playing it makes me fall asleep. Well, piano isn't really the main problem itself i suppose, because this is not the case when playing pop songs or riffs on the piano, or even composing songs. Perhaps it is my hatred towards classical music? So once again to continue with classical music not and try to appease my frustration with something else, but to learn it faithfully, and diligently for the Lord, to show God's glory(hopefully through learning/doing something to the best of my ability even though I dislike it).

Well, this is only one out of so many other aspects to change, temper management, unity not individualism and integrity not deception. Of which I won't write it out now.

Sigh...as poly starts, I hope that even if life may often tempt me to do the things I like, I will do what pleases the Lord first. For what pleases the Lord, will somehow please me I suppose, doing things the way he had intended us to do, for when he created us, he saw that it was very good!

So yeah...if you can, do pray that:

I might live not to please myself, but to please God
Continue to love others especially my family members
Continue to live a christian life consistently and courageously

We can't do things right on our own, that's why we depend on God to do the right things :)

Enrolment? SP?

2010-02-27T11:18:00.005+08:00

Alright! Finally, my enrolment letter has come! This means I have got things to do:

Photo Form
Tuition Grant
Online Pre-Enrolment
Submission Of Financial Forms
Medical Checkup

I got a feeling I got myself into big trouble this time. Because I was suppose to submit my tuition grant form together with the photo form but apparently I submitted only the photo form without putting in the tuition grant application form, so it is either I find a way to get a white envelop and mail it to SP(thru SP or otherwise) or else I’m going to have to pay $8k+ for my course fees without tuition grant. Which means I will be bankrupt even before I can pay my fees, given my bank account balance can’t pay the fees with tuition grant. Hopefully, I can rush down to SP on Monday to get an envelope quickly, hopefully I can return back in time by 2pm for my piano lesson on Monday since submission date is on Tuesday 2 March, otherwise it would be after my piano lessons, and hopefully they do not close too early.

Enrolment done! It’s ideal to have enrolment done online, so convenient and easy to do enrolment online since I need not travel all the way to Dover and waste $2.60 and 2hrs of traveling money and time where it can be done at home within 45 minutes on your own. Enrolment also allow us the create SP email account, as if I am working in an organization. It’s really exciting yet a little weird, probably because I’m not used to having a working email and thus treated like an adult to know everything, indeed the next phase of live isn’t going to be any easier. In the Pre-enrolment, I was to fill up all particulars like citizenship, NRIC, Religion, Marital status, Occupation (if given a choice I will put servant of God :P), Number of siblings, housing type (tempted to put Zinc roof house), Gross Monthly income (of which I thought (<$300 was more appropriate), Contact information (which is a problem since I do not have a home phone and what was placed by default is my old hand phone number), and Medical/Physical conditions (which I wanted to include asthma though I recovered from it 12 yrs ago)

I will also be receiving my SP student Card, once again a feel of how it is like to work in an organization, to work as an adult, stress sia… so for those going SP to collect the student card it is 31 March 2010, 8:45am at the enrolment center. That means I will have to wake up at 6am in order to be in time!! For now, I will be waiting for my matriculation status which will probably be announced nearer to the enrolment date and get my tentative appointment for my collection of the student card…

Also, I think I may have my own SP email which should be leonteoyuyong93.10@ichat.sp.edu.sg.

What else? Oh yes, financial letters! Okay, this means I have to pay for my course fees L. It ain’t that bad with tuition grant but without tuition grant, it’s GG for my family’s finance. I wish Ang Mo Kio had a Standard Chartered Bank Branch then I dun have to travel to Thomson or Peace Center to go pay for my school fees, yup I have to pay my SP fees via standard chartered bank since I am not using my Edusave(which has a balance of 10% of my course fees…lol) or using a loan from banks(knowing that I might incur interest debts :P). I guess I will go down to the Peace Center Branch today to pay my fees before having my reunion dinner at Bugis and find a mailbox to mail my financial forms.

Ah lastly, the medical check-up, done it today at Thye Hua Kwan- Ang Mo Kio Hospital this morning, it’s been a long time since I last had X-ray, I used to have phobia of X-rays and always refused to go for an X-ray (at that time I did not even know X-rays could kill cells), which surprisingly not present today, thank God! Still, the aftereffects of X-rays are still present, will slight chest pain and discomfort which should be gone within a few day. I may even be radiating X-rays! :P Well, after paying $25 for an X-ray. I also had a medical checkup, where as usual they did an eye test and colour deficiency test, measured blood pressure, pulse and heartbeat rate. But I realized there was one common question which the staffs and doctors asked: “which course are you studying?” the strange part is, they the way they phrase their question were the same. I wondered if it was just by coincidence that they asked the same questions or there was a template to follow for them when speaking in Poly students during the checkups. But I suppose that doesn’t matter since I have done my medical check-up. I just have to wait for them to mail in my medical report form to SP then.

I seriously can’t wait to begin poly life, new challenges to face, new people to meet, and new opportunities to serve God too! Though there may be bad influences, discrimination, persecution, hatred, jealously in poly life. I pray that I may continue to stand firm in living out my Christian life for Christ, dying to self every day. It may be the toughest thing to do in poly given that the culture there. Then again it shouldn’t be surprising to experience this, after all “There’s no one righteous; not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away.”

Poly life won’t be of a life of slacking, it appears to be quite slack as we have holidays on the period where JC students are having examinations and also because we spend more time doing hands-on things rather than sitting down to mug, appearing to do things which seems less mentally challenging when it’s both physically and mentally demanding, You may think, Music and Audio Tech students would either be their studio playing their instruments or playing with sliders on the mixer. No, there’s more to that meets the eye. I recently received an email from my bro’s friend studying the same course regarding a essay question. He was assigned an essay question which needed him to visit a concert, take down all equipment used (from Speakers and Mixers down to Microphones, types of cables and DI-units) and account for their usage purpose. He had to talk to the sound technicians and asked them questions about audio tech (hopefully make contact with them). This is only a small piece of theory work that’s done for the Audio Tech aspect of the course for first year students. I seriously dunno how hard the music aspect of this course would be as they are also introducing new subjects like Business of Music and Critical Reasoning skills. So who says poly life is slacking, said JC people are just busy with more paper work and a little practical work, while poly is busy with more practical work and less theory work. So JC and Poly Students both equally busy, just with different things.

I will also be joining the poly band in SYFC, which I may even get to apply what I learn in Poly into doing Tech work and music arrangements, cool! Though it’s only a once a week commitment, this commitment may also increase as mission trips and events draws closer. But I suppose that isn’t the problem with good time management. The only concern is my purpose of serving in poly band. Is it because I like music? Is it because I like doing Tech work? Is it because all my friends are there? Or is it because I hope to use my skills in Music and Audio Tech to serve God and aid in doing His work in the body of Christ? I pray that I may continue to be clear of my decision, not just in poly band, but in every decision in life that I will make in future.

So for my brothers reading this, can you:

Pray that I will live out the gospel consistently and courageously, with strength that only He provides. Living for Christ, dying to self.
Pray for good time management as I juggle time between poly work and poly band.

Pray that I may find great Christian companions in poly to consistently encourage one another through trying periods of poly life
Pray that I may be able to use my skills wisely for the Lord’s Glory.
Pray that my hunger to know God personally will never fade because of my poly life.
Pray that in all circumstances I may Always Remember, Never Forget God

So, before I end my post, those people to pang sek and never come for MIMBY, here's one part of the MIMBY show for you:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/video/video.php?v=326373265285

Enjoy!

JAE Posting Finally Over!!

2010-01-30T20:18:00.008+08:00

Oh yea!!! Posting results are out. I’m glad the wait is finally over. So for those who are curious of where I’m going, it will be to Singapore Polytechnic to get a diploma in Music and Audio Technology (I prefer to call it Music Technology). Of course, that course is not just about doing stuff like mixing sound and recording, but it also allows us to compose music and produce them on our own. Now that’s cool (at least to me). After all, I have wanted to do such stuff since I had both background in music and sound so I suppose this course is really like made for ppl like me, who loves to do sound and music at the same time.

Problem is…further study. Lol…so far only three overseas universities offers a degree program in Music Technology: University of Queensland (AUS), Keele University and Lancaster University (UK). So if I want to/have to further study on this course, traveling overseas might be the only option unless Singapore opens its newer universities with this course (hopefully, that’ll be the case). Nowadays, it very hard for degree holder to get a job, to a diploma holder it’s harder. Perhaps even if I can get a job with my diploma, it will most likely be of a lower status. It doesn’t really matter whether I end up the CEO of Creative Sound works or a mere sound technician in a church, so long as these skills are used for the glory of God and not mine, and that my family’s necessities are met (which I believe it will be). Well, just have to prayerful about it and trust in the Lord that he will guide me with His Holy Spirit to do his work and fulfill his will.

I sometimes wonder if I was testing God to see what he will do to save me now that I’m in a course that appears to have no bright future for me. Since it is difficult to further study this course, it would just mean I would have gotten myself into trouble now that finding a job becomes harder (nearly impossible) and then crying out to God, expecting him to save me. It’s like jumping off from the top floor of Swiss Hotel and expecting God to send his angels to rescue me. Of course, if send help to me would glorify God in some way (I dunno how), he might do it. I joined this course, not just for interest sake, but in hope that I may use my passion and aspirations to serve God with my interest in Music and Audio Technology. But I know that won’t be enough. First of all, I have yet to give up my aspirations and passion all to God and seek Him and His Kingdom, to simply put it, to pick up my cross and die to self daily. It is difficult to sometimes give up some things that you worked so hard for in hope that you will attain success in these things you place your hope on. Would I be able to give up being a Musician and a Sound Technician to seek God? To consider these things as rubbish as compared to knowing God? If there’s no sitting on fences, my answer is simply a no. Yes, it’s a NO, even though I as a Christian must give up everything I am for the Lord. I am still struggling to do just that. It just simply to give up my life to Christ, and yet I can’t do that simple bit…it is TRAGIC!!!

But in all of these, I do pray for God to change me slowly, to one day be able offer up myself as a living sacrifice to Him with little or no hesitation. That day will come when Jesus returns. :)

Well, it is exactly 3 more weeks before Music In My BackYard!!!! Aka MIMBY!!!! Anyone interested to come along? We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day with a few songs from Backstreet Boys, Colbie Calliat, Taylor Swift and Kris Allen, also songs from Chinese artiste such as Tanya Chua and Stefanie Sun. We guarantee a night full of fun and laughter and a little gospel sharing, where friends come together to chill out and catch up over scrumptious food and be entertained by the live band, in a warm and cosy atmosphere. Just like the name suggests, MIMBY is held in the backyard, under the stars!

So do come and enjoy celebrating Valentine lie you never did before!! Well, at least for my sake, because I will be performing on the Acoustic guitar, and will feel lonely without any familiar audience to play to. :P

So the Details:

What?

MIMBY: Shape of My Heart

When?

Saturday, 20 February 2010 6:00pm – 10:00pm

Where?

Bedok Lutheran Church, BackYard 485 Bedok South Ave 2

So those interested to come to have fun with us, do contact me via sms or email

If you have Facebook, do also make your RSVP at:

http://www.facebook.com/events.php?ref=sb#/event.php?eid=267359663010&index=1

For more information/enquiries, visit:

www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=175619682057

or email MIMBY at:

musicinmybackyard@gmail.com

See You There!

2010: A night before the release of O'level Result

2010-01-11T01:31:00.003+08:00

O level results will be released tmr!!!

Lol...some say that it will be released at 9am, but my school is going to release these results at 2pm instead so it should keep everyone in longer suspense :P. But not for me, I wouldn’t mind if the results were released sooner or later, it’s strange that I dun seem to be worried about the results at all such that I find it hard to empathise with the rest of my friends anxiously waiting for the results, calling me and ask : “ So Leon, do you feel anxious that the results are going to be released?”

And my reply would be: “No, not really. I guess I have done my best for the O’s, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

Sometimes I wonder if what I said was true. Did I really do my best during the O’levels? Or am I saying that because there is no hope for the O’levels? It sometimes feels weird when you honestly ask yourself these questions. Well, it’s not that I don’t care about my results at all, I do, and in fact a lot, not only does it show me how I have fared for Secondary education but it also determine whether I get in to the courses I want in poly or alternatively the JCs I want (if I score 7 pts below) through the Joint Admission Exercise (JAE). Therefore, it is important that I get my results back.

I suppose the reason why I am not anxious fearful of my result is probably because there’s nothing really I can do much about my O’level results. I mean there is no way I can bribe the Cambridge markers to give me an A1 grade for all subject (even if there is I won’t -integrity). So with that, I shall just entrust my results to the Lord and know that he is always in full control every situation no matter how bad it is.

This past few months have been a very impactful period for most of us I suppose, for most of my friends, they have really changed in maturity since the last time I met them. Perhaps it due to their job experience that they turn from slackers to diligent workers. For others, it’s from muggers to couch potatoes worrying for their O’s – well at least they finally learned how to relax :P .

Well, for me, I have not been blogging for a extremely long time, not because I was trying to earn pocket-money, but rather I was ‘serving’ in the SYFC’s Performing Arts (PArts) ministry’s Short Serve in organising a mini-BBQ and a mini performance and ski put up by us for our friends, the event was called See A Clearer Christmas. In this, we hope to not only share the Christmas story aka Message aka Gospel to them but also to grow spiritually among ourselves as we work as bros and sis in Christ to do the work of God. For non-Christians need the gospel to be save while Christians need the gospel to grow. :)

Well, for the sharing part, it was a little disappointing because I did not exactly have a very good response there. Nevertheless, I know that it is not by our abilities that “convert” people into Christians but the Work of God in their lives. Intellectual wisdom does not produce faith but the Spirit is capable of changing hearts. The gospel has power and the gospel is power, we are just messengers who share the message just as it is and let the gospel do its work of transformation. So I pray for my friends that God will one day soften their hearts and open their minds to receive the gospel and be changed by it. :)

But I guess more importantly for myself, I have finally realised how I had been rejecting God this past few years of being a Christian, living my life without a true hope, blinded and fearful. That was when Randy (my boss) pulled me out after the event told me about my problem.

This is what I can roughly recall. He said, “I may not have known you as well as I know Seb and Alwin(my band mates), but from the time before short serve until now (end of short serve), I have seen them grow as Christians but I don’t see any of that in you...to put it explicitly, you love music, you love yourself more than you love God and Men. There had been many opportunities given to Love your fellow Christian (through talking with them I think during break time) but yet you chose do otherwise (to play the guitar during break time)...Leon, what’s stopping you from doing the right thing which God wants you to do.”

It can be seen as scolding but in a loving way – perhaps challenging me to think. I really thank God Randy did that or I would have been living my life and serving in church (as an audio technician) without a direction and purpose. This had always been the problem I had seen young, the fear of over commitments, fear of failures and mistakes and the need to be assured of my own confidence (meaning that I need ppl to tell me I’m good before I believe that I’m good). There also seem to be a barrier between my brothers and I as I tend to put on a ‘desired’ front to impress my bros to show my passion for Christ when I may not be. I have build this barrier in me, a barrier to hide my true self, a barrier to hide my weaknesses and appear to be superior to others, a barrier build by my own pride. This was why I was unwilling to share during devotions and sharing of fear that I might look bad in front of others. I had always wanted others to see me as a worthy person where in fact we are all of the same worth as God’s creation and people. Indeed, as I continue reflect on what I have been doing during this short serve, I realised that my focus was not on God. My focus was on playing music! All along I had used my service to God as a means to play music rather than using music as a means to serve God. Indeed, I loved music, I loved myself more than I loved God and loved my brothers and sisters and Christ.

I believe there were also other problems that I still have in me, of which some I may not know or may have forgotten, perhaps similar problems just shown in different context. To these problems there must be a solution right? So thus my New Year resolutions are:

1. Being honest with God, being honest with men

2. Putting my faith in God, rather than your own self confidence

Okay, basically being honest with God means to hide nothing from him, simply put it. Often of times, I would always hint to God that I wanted my own personal space to deal with my own personal problems by myself, often rejecting the help he offers me because I did not want to depend on God’s help (perhaps thinking that I have not played my part in my own problems when God comes to help). I always wanted to do things on my own before seeking for help if things go beyond my control---which often leads to failures. Because of this I was afraid of failing, afraid that I would lose face and lose my worth as Leon. Thus, I sometimes put up a strong front in front of others to cover up for my weaknesses, thus also being dishonest with men. To do so, I must first acknowledge that I need help and SEEK help from God, in prayer and petition, being willing to humble myself in front of God to know I cannot make it without God. From there, I will then be more willing to seek help from older bros in Christ to help me with my problems, as mentioned above. Another perspective I look at this would be also sharing these problems to peers with the same interest, to allow them to learn from my mistakes, my sins and thus also encourage one another to continually grow in Christ.

Putting my confidence on God is something I learned during a lunch meeting with Moses (my Bible Study leader). I shared to him about how I was worried that I was not ready to receive a Bible Study (BS) contact, basically not ready to be a BS leader because of the problems I have, as mentioned previously, about how I was unable to do God’s work naturally.

That was when he asked me, “How long does it take for one to learn how to be a true Christian?”

“A lifetime,” I replied

And indeed, it is true. As the Chinese saying goes “活到老，学到老” (live till you’re old, learn till you’re old). Indeed we grow as a Christian so long as we continue to live as one. That’s why we always need the Gospel, to grow. I realised that I usually dared not try new things, like leading in a BS group or sharing the gospel because I did not have the confidence to, in contrast to music where all my confidence seems to be found. Thus, in things we are called to do that we feel that we aren’t good at, we should learn to trust in the Lord that he will continue to guide us slowly and transform us to be more Christ-like in accordance to His plan for us, thus relying on Him and His word to change us daily and not on our own strength, for we ourselves can never reach God’s standard with our own abilities.

So for the year 2010, whether I will end up in Music and Audio Tech or Audio-Visual Tech or even JC. I will to continue to trust in the Lord that he will not just ‘groom’ me into a better Christian, but to slowly reveal himself to me through His word, that I will be honest with Him and His People, Rely on His Power to do His work and to live a life of a Redeemed Chao Lang*!

*Chao Lang(smelly man)- a person who cares for himself only

After the O'levels?

2009-11-17T00:52:00.009+08:00

YAY!!!!!

O'levels are over!!!!

but it's funny how come I still a little exam stress...lol. maybe I'm juz not used to the holidays yet...or else just worried about my results already... still, I'm really looking forward to my birthday on the 20th Nov, indeed I have just received my early birthday present this year from God : A Sennheiser Infra-red Headphones IS380 !!!
Now that's cool. Since no wires are involved in the process, I won't have to worry about messy wires lying around the house, all I have to do is charge a VA151 accupack and it is ready to be used!
well, how I got it, well I just went to our school's Graduation Night and won it in a lucky draw! nice, it is like the first time I won a lucky draw so I'm like exhilarated, but I suppose God wanted to give me my 16th birthday present that I won the 20th prize and no because I got lucky today, after all, I was never in a lucky draw...

of course today was one of the most sentimental days as it will be the last time we get to see each other this year, at least for me as I will most probably not meet up with them during the release of the O'level result, where there will be more of tears of joy and sorrow rather than tears of getting to meet up with each other again.

well, my holiday is going to be a very busy one, it won't be long b4 I will be moving into a new house soon, and get my VERY OWN BEDROOM and MY VERY OWN privacy, as all teenagers desires although of course my family members are welcomed into my room so long as they can bear with the colour orange...:P why orange? cuz it's my favourite colour(it makes my room so bright that visitors would probably go blind and never dare to step foot into my room unless of course they don't mind the colour...). so for those who wants to check out my new house or my new room pls come to me personally. (unsafe to type address here)

well, packing and moving things to the new house does not make my holiday a busy one. after all, I have already finished packing my stuff yesterday. It's me participating in short serve in Singapore Youth For Christ(SYFC) that makes it busier. indeed, I would really hope to gain more knowledge and more experience in the area of evangelism and also partially on other areas like fellowship, prayer and worship...I think, cuz I believe there is more to that than meets the eye. yup, this period in short serve will be 'full of surprises' as seb told me and I seriously don't know what to expect in SYFC, particularly in the section of the performing arts, so I will be meeting a SYFC member, Randy, in hope to gain enlightment when he shares his expriences and work out a schedule that will hopefully fit my timings during the holidays...well, just to let you know, I am actually interested to join the performing arts group in SYFC and thus I am having lunch with randy to work out my rehearsal schedules. hope things would go well for the both of us.
other than that, I am also in the logistic team for our Student Fellowship(SF) year-end retreat, which reminds me that I have to contact Genevieve to find out how's progress so far for the logistics team, it's only a few more weeks b4 the retreat itself, so I getting ready to go shopping for props and items...and probably go on a market research for the best food prices(although food prices are still high). Nevertheless, preperations for the SF retreat must be made in order for our retreat to be held smoothly (can't image us going without food during the retreat).

Another upcoming thing would be the christmas event comiong up on the 23 of Dec, so far I have approach a few friends who either gave me a cold shoulder or juz said that they MIGHT be coming, so I hope to get in touch with them to confirm their attendance and hopfully take this chance to share the gospel with them since it is after the O'levels and also after short serve. By then I should be fully-equipped with the knowledge and skills in order to evangelise effectively, unless I don't patyattention to the talks and sermons(which I hope that's not the case).

so pray that:

for God's guidance and wisdom to allow me to manage my holiday time well
That I may be able to brace myself for any challenges that I face during the short serve
Chirstmas event to be meaningful to these friends and pray that God will soften their hearts for them to hear God's word
I will still praise God regardless of the O'level result I receive next year
God will grant me the strength and wisdom to decide on which academic route to take (JC or poly) and allow me to adapt to that environment

oh and b4 I forget, the answer to the last Song Rec Test:

and your next challenge..lol:

song rec13.mp3 -

Chinese Is Over, O'levels Aren't

2009-07-23T18:08:00.009+08:00

YAY!!! Chinese O's are finally over!! At least I think so...I'm still wondering if we were going to have Chinese in prelim 3. Some say its pointless since the Chinese o'levels are over..but otherssay that there's still prelim 3 for chinese so that chinese can be used to appeal to your JC thorugh your prelims...so yea...please comment if there should be Chinese exam even if the chinese o'levels are offically over(except maybe for those who intends to retake).

okay...b4 that ANSWER to previous challenge:

some drama there...lol. Wasn't that hard right? try this one:

Song Rec 12.mp3 -

Not simple right? but for synth rock lovers, this song is probably very familiar, once again the instructions:

Listen
Guess the Song name and Artist
Find out the answer on my next Posts
Enjoy!

lol...now that SYF is over, Chinese O'levels are over, what's left..the rest of the subjects in English..sigh things have not been too good these few days. have been bombarded with Maths and humanities homework, plus some english and physics homework to add up to that pile of papers, so far, i dun rmb doing any of my tuition hw yet...lol...becuz I probably dun have the time to..

But life in school is not that stressful after all. there still some sense of humour in the air like how we usually argue with the teacher to compromise hw deadlines.

The following piece of artwork is also a another example why life in school isn't that bad:

“You told us to put our chairs on the table,

but you didn't specify how you wanted it to be placed.”

- An artwork by Luke Nicholas Lim Wei Ren

okay, here's some background information in case some of you don't get the joke. well, like every routine in the classroom duty roster, we had to sweep the floor, clear our the bin, clean the board and arrange the tables and chair neatly. However, the slight difference is that we were also assigned to put the chairs on the table as part of the arrangement of tables and chairs so that it would be easier for people on duty to sweep the floor since the chairs does not get into the way unlike pushing them between the legs of the table.

Well, since we were pretty much bored of putting it upright and straight on the table, why not change the old routine a little? So, Luke and a few of his friends came up with this idea of placing the chair in such a manner as shown above by sloting its legs into the compartment underneath the tabletop. After all, it does not really get in the way of sweeping the floor, and even if it does, nobody would bother to sweep the floor anyway.

Well, so far we did not fail the classroom cleaniless check this week, nor were we punished because of this. It's probably because the teachers could appreciate our form of art in school just by using simply a chair and a table in a classroom setting. So during this period, let us all learn the proper way the distress perhaps through doing some artwork like Luke, or even crack some jokes to liven the spirit in school. Sometimes even arguments with the teacher, brings some ways of humour in our daily lives in school too.

So, in the meantime, do enjoy the artwork.

O'level Chinese Papers And Oral Over..Now to Listen in Chinese...

2009-07-03T21:11:00.002+08:00

lol....i promised to blog again after the Chinese O's but I guess it is not over yet...today, i just took my Chinese oral today so I'm left with the Chinese Listening Comprehension which I'm certain that i will own it..unless I am absent of course...

anyway, back to the Song Rec Test, for those who are still cracking your head over the name of this song...let me enlighten you...

THE MAN WHO CAN'T BE MOVED by THE SCRIPT and so, here the next challenge:

Song Rec Test 11.mp3 -

well, this is too easy for rock listeners...but I understand that there are a few who sill didn't know this song...so please help them by answering this song rec test correctly..the song name and artists...so:

Listen
Guess the Song name and Artist
Find out the answer on my next Posts

okay, back to the chinese o'levels...according to my entry prove I only have:

Create your countdown widget and more at Blixy.com!

so it won't be long b4 i totally neglect chinese for the rest of the year as the remaining subjects I'm taking for O'levels are all in Englilsh...hopefully I won't neglect chinese for the rest of my life...

anyway, today's oral examination was a tense one...indeed very tense...we came in early at 12.30pm way before our oral starts at 2.15pm for a briefing of what to do and what not to do during the examinations...yawn..the same thing again and again...Greet, Smile, and Thank your examiners...maintain silence in the hall...and blahblah show your IC and entry prove what not....

so there I was sitting with my classmates and other schoolmates in the neighbouring class...our bags have been placed at the side of the hall and all I had was two oral revesion notes (which weren't exactly very helpful to me) and my IC and entry prove(though I later realised that an entryprove was not required)..

We have been told not to leave the hall b4 3pm to ensure none of us will blurt the topics covered in the oral conversation to latecomers...so candidates who arrive after 3 pm will not get to take the oral examinations...so, I'm not revealing what the topics are at least untill the Chinese Oral examinations end...

Anyway, this is a grave sin I guess that I did in this Oral examinations...i seriously pray hard no SEAB staffs are reading this...

Image this...I was in a quiet school hall..the slightly smaller than the size of size of three volleyball courts and I happen the be seating where the examiners are across the other end of the hall..and thorugh the slience, I overheard the coverstion question in short abrupt phrases....

Immediately I knew the subject for the conversation...so I kinda panicked since I was rather unfamiliar with this topic...so I actually had some last minuete preperations before the oral examinations :P. So i guess having a good ear sometimes do have their advantage..

So yah, to SEAB, I apologise for the little cheat code I used...but to others, if you can maintain slience in the hall and have good ears...you might be able to get clues from the oral examination...so let this be one of the good reasons why you should maintain slience in the examination hall... so that's all, take it or leave it is up to you guys then...

CHMA Band Auditions

2009-05-21T22:07:00.012+08:00

hi guys, again long time no post...firstly, just like to apologise to the I-Media members for my uncultured behaviour before the Catholic High Musical Awards (CHMA) Band Auditions, just wanted to let you guys know that condensers mikes are very sensitive and that the stage monitors were too loud. This caused feedbacks during the band's performance...

Anyway, why am I talking about PA..Ishould be releasing the answers to my previous challenge..which is Song Rec8:

And yes, your next challenge:

As usual:

Listen
Guess the Song name and Artist
Find out the answer on my next Posts

ok..for readers who does not know what CHMA is:

"CH Music Awards is an annual school talent search competition which presents the school's musical talents a platform to showcase their abilities. Organised by iMedia, it is one of the large-scale school concerts in Singapore."

Quoted from http://chmusicawards.blogspot.com/

yea..so last tuesday (19 May) was the CHMA band auditions. Well, I was there to support two bands because my classmates were performing too...lol. Basically, here's some of the songs performed my the various bands

A Tout Le Monde - Megadeth

well, this song was performed by Eugene Tan's band. And they made a very good attempt with this song. (btw, Eugene managed to clinch the Merit Award for Instrumental) Anyway that's not the point, I must say that Eugene really had a lot of difficuities singing this song, since the vocal range is very wide, and he had to sing in the "rock" style. So far this is the first time I heard him sing and I would say he really did their best....Good attempt. Other than that, I would say the musicians did a good job during their performance, could see a lot of effort placed into this performance. Sadly, their place in the finals were taken away from them.

To be with you - Mr.Big

Away from heavy music, we have Andrew Lai's band on stage. Ooo...now this song was popular in my bro's teens. Playing the classics tunes of the 1990s was a pretty good choice, specifically for Andrew Lai, who sang this song decently during his band's performance. I felt that it suited him well. And he was accompanied by the Bass guitarist Toon Yang in the chorus. Ian was also in this band as the rhythmic guitarist if I'm not mistaken. Well, if I'm not mistaken, Bryan Ng was the drummer keeping the beat and Kee Wen was the lead guitarist playing the solo tune on the Acoustic. Well, despite a few feedbacks and mistakes, they overcomed these setbacks and performed well getting themselves into the finals. Congratulations Andrew and Ian, also to Kee Wen, Toon Yang and Bryan Ng.

Kids - MGMT

Well, for Shaun Paul's Band, I was expecting to own the entire CHMA just like like the previous CHMA Awards last year. Well, true enough they really transformed the hall into a discotheque with this song. Michael, I must say has already thrashed me in music, not only is he able to play the guitar better than I do, now he even sings better than me..sobs....Oh, I just loved the way Brian Cheang played the drumset, especially during the solo when he hit the two different crashes, it was way cool. Well, he walked off the stage with the kick pedal off the kick drum, and a dented crash cymbal...he must have enjoyed that performance. Well, Bryan Goh coodinated very well with the drummer, and turned the timbre of the bass guitar into synthbass. Shaun Paul had his effects on the electric as he played the main rift, I found it weird at first but later understood why he had used this effect ofter I listened to the song. Well, not forgetting derek who showed the virtuosity of the keyboard during his solo. I must say, they were one of the better bands performed during the Audition. Well, they inevitability made to the finals...Congratulations guys.

So much for saying all these, I just realise I have only:

Create your countdown widget and more at Blixy.com!

I guess it time for me to mug now, will post again after the Chinese O'levels