it's all beeyooteefool -

November 30, 2006

@11:36 PM

odd how although im rather commitment-free, when things DO pop up they all occur at the same time!

december:
20th to 22nd - band camp
20th - relatives from malaysia are coming to singapore! <3
21st to 23rd - gep chalet
21st - feesh's coming to singapore!
22nd - we fly to hk.

heh, random picture! felt like putting it up. teaching materials from vietnam! :)

one day, when you're free (nyahaha i've been uber free these holidays, homework & whatnots untouched, binomial theorem has gone to the dogs & report for vietnam is as existent as rainbow coloured clouds), go on a quest for beauty! doesn't need to be intentional, just go about the day doing the things you normally do (for me, this includes cca, eating, sitting on a bus, strolling about west mall on the way home, practicing piano, reading papers and periodicals).

youll find out that beauty can be found really easily, anywhere & everywhere. in music, even if you keep going out of time and your bass clarinet squeaks, or when your piano pedal is spoilt and your brahms sounds detached. in the scenery around you, like the christmas tree in west mall, or the random birds flying overhead even if you know they're relieving themselves all over your dad's car.

but the most beauty is found in people themselves. giggling girls at a mac's table in kap, or walking down a bus aisle to notice that people of all shape, size, age, gender, race are sitting side by side, the laughter of a child when his mum buys him a packet of cartwheel chips from the uncle tidbits stall in west mall, a group of friends squeezing in a tiny neoprint booth, a wife waiting for her husband to pick her up from the mrt station.

& then you'll realise that all the beauty of this world - all the people, all their laughter and tears and anger and disappointment, all their joy and despair and successes and failures, all their love and hope and faith - was not created by something scientists say is a Concentrated Mass of Energy That Chose To Explode Randomly. there is no possibility that chance caused all of this to happen.

no, God did. :)

-

& i embraced the world;

November 25, 2006

@11:48 PM

listening to pictures at an exhibition again, performed by wind ensemble. much love!

a few more vietnam photos ahoy.

-

meet FOODIE BABY! one of the babies in the nursery in vietnam that i became particularly fond of. about one year old, learning how to walk, teething and hardly cries. the only time i remember her crying was when she just got an injection & they get injections near their temples, ow. do not comment on how bimbo the angle of the shot is, NOREEN'S IDEA!

charissa and her makeshift drums! creatively created using biscuit tins, paper boxes, empty bottles and lovely vietnamese wooden chopsticks. koolioz man!

meet Diep, our INTEPRETER for two days! otherwise known as lifeline, lifesaver, etc etc.

view from the second floor toilet, one of our group's favourite haunts. don't ask.

GROUP 4D! the group with the best dinner table conversation topics, oh yes.

one day, on the topic of what goes well with bread

alena: i don't like the nuts in nutella
noreen: but peanut butter also has nuts. everything also got nuts.
yuqin: tuna doesn't have, that's why i eat tuna!
charissa: actually, still got eh. spell backwards.
linette: then should be a-nut, not nuts!

- entire group diaos from the punnyness -

cleaning the toilets:

linette: we found a pearl in the upstairs toilet.
noreen: you should plant the pearl and see if it grows into a pearl tree!

us trying to bargain!

charissa: remember to bring our own singapore plastic bags, because vietnam plastic bags are slim, sexy, and see-through.

us, painting the mural! note half the group wearing plastic bags on their heads. :)

in the sleeping quarters, yingming jumps over noreen, hitting her leg
yingming: im sorry, i didn't mean to kill you.
noreen: i'm sorry, i'm too dead to hear you.

noreen: charissa's wearing green, yuqin and yuyue red, you black me blue.
alena: red and green. christmas colours!
noreen: so we're the odd ones out, black and blue. so SAD.
alena: who said that blue and black can't be Christmas colours!
noreen: unless someone beats you up on Christmas day or something.
yuqin: boxing day!

charissa's KOOLIO socks!

group 4d: what does deng mean?
miss soh: it means stand.
group 4d: OH so we've been asking the children to sit and stand all the while?!

miss soh: sit is ngoi-swong.
group 4d: HUH?! then what's choh? we've been using that the past few enrichments.
miss soh: in your pronounciation it means dog.

-

VIETNAM <3.

& i embraced the world;

November 24, 2006

@9:47 PM

so listen to our hearts

-

jericho is nice nice nice! & the bass clarinet part isn't that hard to play either! except for e first two bars where there's only bass clarinet & baritone sax & i just have the feeling i'll start squeaking all over the place once i try to play louder. but yep it's really pretty, as in, you can really envision everything happening along with the music, the desolation of Joshua as he led the Israelites, the seven rounds of marching, the crumbling of the magnificent walls, & the glory of the sacred trumpets! love.

finally got my premium membership! nyahahahaha tis time to raid the esplanade library, oh yes. whee! something i simply must horde first include the orchestral score of pictures at an exhibition, intend to compare it with the original piano one & learn more about orchestration, which is seriously darn kool. everyone should try it sometime! as in, even a simple G chord takes a LOT of effort.

like how if you want it to be soft, the bassoon can't play low notes because apparently its loud, violins and cellos and doublebasses cant play the G below middle C because it's an open string and it can't be softened with vibrato, flutes oboes and clarinets can't play high notes because they're piercing, and apparently muted horns have a soft mystical quality to them.

then, the notes matter too. if too many instruments play G, it gets too heavy and doesnt feel like a nice rounded chord. if the Ds are too obvious, it wouldn't sound like a G chord anymore. and so on and so forth, then take the different instruments into consideration, the number of instruments, etc etc. and compare that to playing a simple G chord on the piano!

okay fine, all that was koped from a book on orchestration i was reading a while ago. but it's darn kool right! which is why i want to do first hand research :) & pictures at an exhibition has got to be the best orchestration ever done. cheers to ravel!

am not making much sense. shall hop off now & continue being hyper over my premium membership. am entirely too lazy to upload photos, but meet the rainbow!

Many seek at a distance the God who stands before them at the door of their heart. They are waiting for a ladder to be thrown down from Heaven, while all the time Christ has descended the ladder and is right there beside them. - Every Day With Jesus ( Thursday, 23 Nov )

& i embraced the world;

November 18, 2006

@12:53 PM

imagine what it's like to be 16 years old, having stayed in the centre all your life, and having all your days fixed to the same routine of eating & sleeping. you don't go to school because a limited number do, so you do odd jobs around the centre, laundry because you're a girl, dishwashing. all you know about the world beyond the centre and the route to the market is from pictures and books and visitors that come to the centre - and you only have a few of those a year.

but you're happy. you can still laugh, and smile. your most precious belonging is a book full of songs that you've written the lyrics to, and you sing it all day long. you know them by heart but you keep the book and teach the other girls in the centre how to sing as well. you can dance, only a few steps that you repeat over and over again, steps that you learnt from some visitors a while back. but you're glad. you have three sets of clothes that you wear, wash and rewear, and you're satisfied.

visitors come, giving you things that are in fact, worthless to them. stickers, stationery that hardly costs anything, stuffed toys bought in bulk. in return, you give them all that you have - all your possessions you hold dear, the very few things that you have stored inside a single shelf. they laugh and talk to you, their extent of vietnamese being "what's your name", "how old are you", and "what do you like". but you laugh and talk to them as well, jumping up and down when they come to visit your dining area, offering them food even when you don't have enough. you love company, and you love people on sight. it doesn't matter what they think, or if they reciprocate the love you give them, as long as there are people there for you to love and be affectionate towards.

and you're happy.

that's what vietnam taught me, and what vietnam rcip means to me.

being satisfied, being happy isn't a goal or aim. it's a choice. it's up to you to count your blessings one by one and realise that you'll never finish. it's up to you to decide if you want to spend your life laughing with people you love and not contemplating whether they love you back enough for you to love them. i dont think it's naivete nor innocence that the children and youths in hanoi sponsoring centre #4 have, no, it's a rare form of maturity and sense of gratitude they have towards life.

gah enough heavy stuff. just a couple of photos, too lazy to upload them all. :)

OH YES VEE ARE AT ZE TOP OF ZE WORLD.

learn your numbers with the traffic lights!

namely yingming, annie & charissa.

ONE!

TWO!

THREE!

FOUR!

FIVE!

SIX!

SEVEN!

EIGHT!

NINE!

TEN!

ZERO!

more vietnam pics another day :)

& i embraced the world;

November 15, 2006

@8:02 AM

back.

you never give more than you take.

& i embraced the world;

November 3, 2006

@1:24 AM

VIETNAM.

Regional CIP.

031106 - 141106.

hoho i'll pretty much be uncontactable so don't sms me unless you want me to read it on the 14th when i get back. am being guai & leaving valuables at home!

went to marina south for bbq steamboat today with family, love. ate enough to last me for a few days, & i think i'll get rather homesick. but hope to come back a better person, having made a difference! whee shall treat it as a retreat of sorts as well.

OFF AND AWAY;

& i embraced the world;