Viva La Vida

Today was NUS Open House and Raffli sang Viva la Vida, and one other song that also sounded quite nice but I forgot the name. I loved the in-house performance in Raffles Hall, it was awesome! :) String instruments always sound extra nice in a band I think. There was Raffli on the drums (so cool, never seen him play drums; but he wasn't actually drumming, just keeping the beat and once in a while clanging a cymbal), Shawn on cello, Jing Horng on violin, and the very 'pro' Issac on acoustic guitar.

I was more impressed by this performance more than the actual one on Youtube by Coldplay, honestly speaking. Maybe it's just nice to hear things (especially strings) live. And with the alternate music arrangement - it sounded a bit different. Loved the drums effect. And this is without e-guitars for once haha. Maybe I have lower affinity towards e-guitars.

This is Tirza's favorite version on Youtube - Viva la Vida fused with Love story by Taylor Swift. Music only - this is an instrumental :)

Actual version by Coldplay, with singing:

I performed for Open House too, two in-house performances in Raffles Hall, and one of those performed in the Multi-Purpose Sports Hall.

For CME I fused Starry Starry Night, Wind Beneath My Wings, and You Raise Me Up; recycling Phoenix Fest's item.

1) Starry Starry Night - didn't exactly reproduce this, what we did was more 'sentimental' version of this. This is orginal singing is more detached, I feel. You should read the lyrics if you want. The message is a bit depressing - but they are all based on Vincent van Gogh's paintings.

2) Wind Beneath my Wings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrvodSr3JmA

Embedding disabled so here's the link. I can embed other versions, but this Celine Dion's is my favorite so far out of the limited number in Youtube. Song is nice -but not much of a peak - hence my idea of fusing it with You Raise Me Up (Starry Starry night suggested to be added by JH later on).

Most people don't know this song (surprisingly) so I added the Youtube link here. I like it's lyrics quite a lot :)

With He Li and Yifan's duet I did 一个像 夏天, 一个像秋天 by Fan WeiQi, and Zhao Wei's 好想好想 that Jon is currently still addicted with after listening to our practices.

一个像 夏天, 一个像秋天

Actually I'm not that much in love with this song, but the lyrics are pretty cute.

好想好想 (I put this here before, but anyway, just for a record).

Phoenix Fest 09/10

Maybe this is the last Phoenix Fest I'm going to perform in. Unless I perform as a final year, but one can't be too sure about that at this point of time.

Thanks Pin Yun, Farid, and Huimin who came to support. And thanks Kasun for sticking through the whole thing too haha. :) I don't know how I really did (three practices is a bit short for a big-scale performance like this, and I'm sure we should have done more). But my performance surpassed all those practices and I was able to put my heart into the music. I guess that's all that matters to me now.

All the other performances was spectacular. I remember when I was in Year 1 I enjoyed the performances so much that I wrote a sequential review of each in a blog entry. This year's one was generally much better than the previous years, in terms of atmosphere, residents who came to support and performance quality. But I'm lazy and I won't do the one-by-one review any more. Sigh. Enthusiasm dies when we go over. But stage fright doesn't. I've been performing for so many years running and I'm still getting butterflies in my stomach every time my turn approaches.

I'm always proud to be part of RH's cultural groups. Even though I don't think performing is the best way to express music. But I can't deny it is a good entertainment source, to share and showcase your talent. But when you're working with so many zai people, someone with slight inferiority complex like me still like to wait until the piano lounge (and preferably the surroundings) is completely empty before I sit down and play. Maybe this is selfish - but most of the time I keep my music to myself.

Anyway, Phoenix Fest has come and gone, and deadlines are approaching. As my final year in university edges closer, I just can't ignore the sad fact that I'm growing up, graduating and am going to face new challenges and shoulder new responsibilities soon. I need to be ready for that - and I need to start now.

人间四月天

Here's a song Dawn and I loved to follow during our late primary school/early secondary school days. RTM2 had a lot of sad dramas based on the Shanghai era at that time, and some of them though acted by not-so-popular movie stars were quite intriguing. 人间四月天 is about a famous poet 徐志摩 and his complicated relationship with his wives and two other girls. I don't like the fact that he is so unloyal towards his partners and that they are so dependent on him (except the second girl, acted by 周迅). He died in a plane explosion in the end. But the theme song was nice and Dawn and I used to have this pet list of theme songs where we would sing together. This is one of them.

If you can't relate to who 徐志摩 is, you might have heard of his famous lines:
悄悄的我走了，正如我悄悄的來；我揮一揮衣袖，不帶走一片雲彩。

Other dramas aired around that time (when we would usually eat our lunch), was like 星星,月亮,太阳; 像雾像雨又像风 (a very different 周迅 in here this time, song above), and other series written by Qiong Yao which could be way too cheesy making it a pain to watch sometimes. The first two I mentioned were set in the Shanghai era too. I like the costumes and the stories during that era more somehow. Can't remember too many titles, but once I come across the dramas I remember them.

Musings After Week 7

This semester has been a rather slack one. :) I like it! But I don't know how much difference it will make to my results.

I'm going out tomorrow to visit the Family Service Center that we could (hopefully) do community service at. It's tiring having to constantly change plans like this. But in the end I think we'll make it. :) My MNO team is a nice one to work with, at least so far.

I'm practicing for Phoenix Fest and NUS Open House for CME and the Rugged Hallways respectively. I don't know why but I don't really have much mood for music nowadays. I once said that my music reflects who I am at a point of time? That's really true. It sounds listless now, no energy, despite my constant trying and trying I can't put that little extra 'oomph' in that my songs badly need. The tactics and beats are there, but the emotions won't come.

I told JH (he's playing violin for me) today that our playing lacks something. He says, well, there's not much we can do. It's true also. CME used to be a big family team playing together, so much that even when practices are tough it's a joy to listen to and play with. Now there's just two of us. I always feel it's my fault not being able to carry on Farid's legacy. True enough, last year's CME did quite well in terms of performance quantity and quality. In fact I never realized we did that well until I started looking backwards. But one thing I never managed to instill into my members (that Farid did): CME is a family, and the fun thing about belonging is our being able to jam together. I lost that quality out. And now, it's almost gone forever, until some Chairperson in the next few generations revives it.

Hall points are out. My points are the lowest so far in the past 3 years. But I don't really mind - because the effort I put in is the least in the past 3 years too, and my points are enough for me to stay on in hall. I know there are people who are dissatisfied with their points too. So I should be quite thankful that mine quite aptly reflects my efforts for hall this year. So far dissatisfaction stems from two reasons: 1) Points don't match effort. 2) Points match effort, but alas, fall short when compared to other people.

Sometimes I think when we don't compare ourselves to others, we'd be so much happier, and satisfied. Easier said than done though. The world isn't fair. Sometimes you're unfairly better off than other people. Sometimes it's the other way round. You'd never really complain when it's the first case. In my case, I often have quite an effective way of solving the 'unfair' problem. Jesus paid for my sins and credited righteousness I don't deserve in my account. That's ultimate unfairness that tip scales to my side all the way. And because He loves me, nothing else will be unfair anymore. It will just be part of His big, big plan for my life. It's always wonderful to have this assurance.

One thing that made me quite happy this week was the new wall paper I found:

http://snooglezoo.com/wp-content/gallery/cute-wallpapers-1024x768/owl-family.gif

It's my new wallpaper now! I can't post it here because I somehow couldn't resize it or move it around. But it's super cute! And I love it. Makes me feel much better when I open my laptop to do my mundane FYP work of looking through 690 chemicals, checking their pka and recording their charges one by one. Thankfully Jon helped with some Excel codes, making the thing less tedious. However, it's still an awful chore, that I can hardly learn anything from. Hopefully this phase of the FYP will be over soon!