Friday, March 28, 2008.

yesterday was a BLAST. as in like a rocket blast.

3rdlang was as usual, except at around 3.30 the door closed on its own accord.The rain was seriously so heavy we could see it being blown into our class :O

After that was the mentally unsound bus ride to singaporeflyer from RI. That was when gohyuchen and chesterchen were playing charades. Yu Chen gave me a word ("requirement") - how does anyone do charades on that?

The flyer was STUNNING. As in, we were lucky that 1. the rain stopped. 2. it was at 6+, which meant that the sun would be beautiful and the surroundings not too bright. So we (aka quite a big group, including: Jeremy Sia, Yu Hsuen, Barry, me, Aaron, Fong, Yong Sheng, Daniel Tan, Daniel Lim, Ren Yan, Shing Bo, Wen Jie - all the RA freaks) had quite a bit of fun camwhoring like nobody's business (you pay $25 to camwhore mar.).

The pictures we got ranged from the obscene to the obscenely beautiful. Will show when I finish uploading.

Then Jeremy and I rushed to Marina Square (where I wolfed down a Carl's Jr. burger set (in full) while walking from Marina Square to VCH), and managed to get our seat just in time for the concert (YO concert if you didn't realise).

The first note was 1 tone sharp. (an A C# F# chord and an A C# E chord are like miles different), but Shostakovich's Festive Overture was nice (although the truth is that somewhere in the last desks of the 1st violin section someone was faking the runs). I thought that was the best opening I heard for quite some time.

Haydn was quite stale. It honestly bored me to death, even with the soloist being on form. Haydn is like that - either it rocks a lot or it sucks to the core.

Tchaikovsky's Symphony 5 in E Minor, Op. 64. Personally the 2nd mvt was a little too fast (If it's too fast it kind of loses the Andante part in it) and the horn solo, while quite accurate intonation-wise, was quite the wrong tone for such a solo. I felt the tone was a little sharp and glaring, which didn't suit my taste very well.

Faking as usual.

Last movement was good. I loved the extreme dynamics and some solos (bassoon solo's high A a little sharp), and the faking was done convincing enough.

Encore surprised me. It would have been better if they started from the beginning though. Still, the best piece of the day ending off the concert was a good choice.

I guess I am still in a daze. Love the Festive Overture theme a lot.

Labels: Life

{ 9:20 PM }

Tuesday, March 18, 2008.

I apologise if my previous posts sound super emo. Well, schoolwork easily makes one stressed and emo.

I don't look forward to tmr's english + math tests. Apparently someone next door got 2/20 and math ta was horridly bad, it was a joke.

Qn2, worth 6 marks, was not solved by anyone at all. WOW.

And it''s upon 15.

Sec 4 is where the cruelest teachers lie. They set sadistic tests to slaughter you and beat the living daylights out of you. Did I mention assignments?

Anyone can guess how I spent my March holidays.

Labels: school

{ 10:06 PM }

Sunday, March 9, 2008.

Strangely enough, 2 posts within less than 1/2 an hour. And of considerably different mood.

From Jerald's blog:
compare and contrast. hasn't the education system taught all of us to fall in love with this tool?

great! now let's exercise some of it.

Here's a short excerpt of what Mr. E Wigeysingha wrote about the Rafflesian Spirit in "The Eagle Breeds A Gryphon":

"The Rafflesian feels for the school because his destiny lies with that of the school.It is that strange feeling that surfaces when watching a softballer make a home run, the hockey player sounding the boards with a well-timed shot or a drum major catching his falling mace, that reaches its height especially when the school team is down and struggling to come back from behind."

Now here's what's in the handbook:
"The Rafflesian feels for the school because his destiny lies with that of the school. It is a powerful emotion that surfaces when watching the softball player make a home run, the hockey player sound the boards with a well-timed shot or the rugby player successfully race across the field to score a try. The feeling reaches its height especially when the school team is down and struggling to make a comeback."

well there's been enough talk going around, i guess. We fight for what we love even though we have been removed from the picture time and time again. Since recognition is something we hardly get, we'll just do without it and get used to it. We recognise ourselves, as all five of us are made of nothing less than passion and power.

The spirit fading? no, it's just divided into a whole lot of smaller parts and locked up.
Instead of asking ourselves what the school can do for us, why not ask what we CAN do for the school.

We need change (coughOBAMAcough). The spirit of sporting glory is entrenched within the Rafflesian Spirit. But how about the spirit of musical pursuit? How about the spirit of the Uniformed Groups' discipline?

We need more support. We need to convince the populace that RI is not a sports school. We need to take drastic action to remind the people up and down there that RI has other CCAs too.

We start, by making sure that we actually respond to the commands by the parade commander properly.

We start, by making it compulsory to go for concerts, just like it is compulsory to go down for match support.

We start, making sure the left-out CCAs do not become forgotten.

It is time we did something.

Labels: CCA

{ 11:08 PM }

I feel crushed.

Perhaps it's due to the immense pressure on me the past few weeks, exams, projects, homework, cca etc.

I don't think so.

By most accounts, I am quite durable. I don't buckle under homework stress, I don't die under tests, I don't collapse under scoldings (not that I do get a lot of them).

But this is different.

It's an ideological attack. Something new, something in unchartered territory.

And I seriously don't know how to deal with it.

It was a bolt out of the blue. I never knew.

Now I'm depressed.

Labels: Life