Sitting here in lab on a Friday evening working late, so I thought I'd update this forsaken blog. Lotsa new developments in the past few months anyway, time to share my thoughts with my anonymous readers..
In the last entry I actually missed out on the huge potluck that I hosted for the NTU Choir alumni. After the concert, a bunch of us stayed out till 4am skulking aimlessly at the esplanade to sit and talk about what to do with the alumni. We decided to host a post-concert celebration thingie so that at the same time we could get everyone in to talk about the future of the group. anyway, more importantly (heh) we were gonna have a mega food fest. Since it's been at least 3 months since it happened, i can barely remember any details now but I do remember us lots of really good food, and a huge surplus at the end of it. In fact, Davin's donuts and Cheryl's pork knuckles and ribs weren't even touched! We had samosir from some famous indian place, lots of charsiew, roast chicken, duck, sushi, curry, potato salad, tiger prawns (my contribution hehe) and I can't remember what else. For once there was hardly any greens and staple. It was a really impressive potluck. haha.. attendance was good too, about 20.
Some photos from the night... of all things to forget, nobody remembered to photograph the food! haha.. see, the food was THAT good..
Gig schedule suddenly exploded in May after a dry spell for the previous 2 months. 2 wedding gigs, 1 Singtel gala dinner and an Esplanade recital studio gig meant lots and lots of hours rehearsing. Well, not so much for the wedding gigs. Those are never rehearsed. We had 1 rehearsal for the Singtel gala dinner, got to play with Bobby Singh for the first time and I enjoyed myself during that gig. Oh that event was so horribly planned. Worst event planners ever. Cue masters did not know when to stop each set of music, and if not for Mathilda we would have played our entire repertoire in one very long set. And then no one saids anything much about fanfare except for '15 second fanfare'. Turned out it was a continuous prize-giving ceremony where ppl came up in groups of 10-20 to receive prizes. So we played our 16 bars over and over until the entire group received all their prizes and the event planners were wondering why the music was on loop. Stupid do-dos! Oh, well, we played weird stuff for the cocktail! all kinds of R&B and rock and pop hits. haha.. from Beatles to Randy Crawford to Outkast. Stark contrast to the dinner repertoire of straight up jazz standards. Anyway, the Singtel event ended really late cos of hte stupid event planners who couldn't how many sets we had to play, and when we had to play them. We were contracted for 2 20-min sets but ended up playing 3 sets. gah... AND! nobody thought to make sure we received any dinner. ugh.. though I wouldn't put the blame on the event planners.
So happened that night, I'd planned to go back to the lab to finish up some experiments. I thought the gig would be a 2-hour affair, and i"d be back in NTU by 10pm. I reached only at 1230am, and started work only at 1 and finished up at 4. It as a mad, mad weekend.. not to mention, the weekend just before our huge recital studio gig...
.. which was a feature show for Mathilda, on a theme of Shirley Bassey and Gladys Knight. The band consisted entirely of friends, which made it really fun. In the backing vocal section were Jon Khoo, Kalli and Chekley. I think I had the most fun reherasing with the vocal section, mainly because it was the most challenging thing to do. We'd written some difficult parts for the singers and it was unfortunate that the gig had to be at ungodly hours of the morning when voices are not sufficiently warmed up to sing. Of course, there's no excuse for being unprofessional about that.. but, oh well, at least we got through it in one piece. A few muck-ups here and there and generally it could have looked more presentable and professional, from the POV of perfectionist me. Probably partly due to the fact that we're all friends and too comfortable with each other, stage discipline and communication could have been better. Preparations could have been better too; things that could have been achieved in one rehearsal had to be done in two because of inadequate preparation, or sheer laziness, or sheer complacency, or for taking things for granted, or a combination of all these reasons (most likely). Oh well, we'll see what happens next.
Took a few days off from work for the gig, and managed to get some rest before resuming my routine in the lab, trying to achieve some gold-coating on a silver nanoprisms. Finally got the desired results after about 2 weeks of work, and well within the deadline. In the end, the methodology was exactly as stipulated in the journal paper. So much for 2 months' worth of experimentation, we eventually came full circle and decided on the original methodology. This is all the Iranian student's fault. His incompetence and poor lab techniques are the cause of all this time-wasting. Basically, all the work that I was assigned to was to pick up from his failures for each of the 3 methods we were experimenting. And in each one, he started with the original method, then slowly adulterated it into his own by changing many parameters, only to leave me to pick it up from there, and slowly alter it back towards the original method to achieve the desired results. Good job, pro-terrorist nation, bane of the earth, not to mention their President sucks too. Anyway, in the few days that I was on leave after the esplanade gig, he LIED TO ME about certain work he'd done. I caught him red-handed and confronted him but he avoided my questions. asshole. Anyway he gets to write a paper after all this work is done, and I'm going to make sure that my name is on it. Better start to clear out all the results and graphs from the lab PC. I know the fucker doesn't keep all these results I send him on a daily basis so when he needs them, he's going to have to come to me and this is going to be my insurance and leverage.
The latest and most exciting development, is that I'm leading the youth and young adults' choir in my church. yeah, although I decided that I've outlived my effectiveness as a musician in a religious organisation, I've discovered something new that I can apply myself to. Just a litlte more on that - it's too tiring to work with relatively lackadaisical musicians who only have the heart to serve in ministry but not the attitude to work hard and improve. The group of musicians whom I started out with - at a time when I was probably regarded as the weakest link in the band - I have left them far behind now. Over time it became a chore to wake up on Sunday mornings and drag myself to church to play piano at 830am. Basically, I ceased to enjoy serving. After some thinking, I felt that a leading role would be more appropriate for me, instead of being on the ground as an active musician. I've been looking out for budding musicians to nurture - make that musiciannnnnn because it's so hard to find even one person with the right attitude and willingness to work. anyway, i'm leaving that to divine intervention if anything's to come of it, because everywhere I go, ppl are intimidated by me so I shouldn't try too hard lest I inadvertently reduce my chances of success.
anyway, back to choir.. the church is having a cop-out feel-good worship evening extravanganza - whatever - and each cell group, or age group, is to contribute music items to the big show. I was approached to set up and lead a youth choir for the event. Initially I was skeptical - and of course unwilling - given how young people these days are averse to hard work and commitment. However, those were the very qualities I was seeking. So I set a criteria of at least 20 members, and was pretty confident that it wouldn't come to fruition. But it did, somehow, and so I was left with no choice but to honour my word. The roster of sign-ups didn't look promising at first - only 2 or 3 with choral experience, and a number of timid, soft-voiced singers. Fortunately I also had my well-abled friends like Candice and Shushu who aren't really singers but have sufficient musicality to help pull the group together. So I wrote two SATB arrangements of two songs chosen from Katherine Jenkins' Sacred Arias album, haha. I wrote the first one just before the first rehearsal, and I must say it turned out very positive and exceeded my expectations. It was a combination of many flukes - a hall with good acoustics, an almost 100% attendance rate, an easy song, and most importantly receptive minds. The first session went very well, and consequently I felt we could up the ante and perform more difficult arrangements. So the second piece was written in a more contemporary style, with lots of extended harmonies and clashing chords. We've had four rehearsals to date and I must say the increase in difficulty has taken its toll but I'm confident we'll pull through well enough for the actual performance on the 28th.
Ok, my lab experiment is almost over, time to pack up for now and finish this later.
Wow i missed the last 2 installments. yeah i always thought i'd do it "when i get home from work tonight" but something else always caught my attention before i could get down to this.
life has been rather quiet and unhectic for the past couple months. work got really light as the NParks project drew to a close, albeit about 6 months behind schedule. So for some time there wasn't much to do in the office except to turn up, and perform a few laboratory tests and other small tasks which i managed to screw up..
since then i've been transferred to a new project in a totally different field. A more scientific project than the NParks one (which is a more engineering type). I have a new, much younger supervisor and a young Iranian PhD student who's 3 years younger than me for a co-worker. Since this is his project and i'm merely a project officer, he's doing the co-ordinating and my work gets meted out on a weekly basis. It's great because I have an immediate goal in sight, and someone to turn to if i run into problems, unlike working in my previous environment where both my supervisors were much higher up the ladder and often didn't have time to look more closely at my work. My hours are a lot longer now, since one experiment takes a few hours at a time, so no more idling at the computer checking I Can Has Cheezburger and updating myself on the latest soccer news.
let's see.. got myself some new gear (yet again!!!!!!!!!!) haha but i got it on the cheap. like real dirt cheap. It's an old CME UF5 49-key midi controller, called Omnipotent. yeah, that's what CME calls this model, seriously.
Sometime last year I bought the firewire expansion soundcard for this model. I'd intended to buy someone's UF7 actually, but just as he was to deliver it to me, he managed to blow up the circuit board cos he plugged in the wrong AC adaptor to test the unit. So the firewire board was sitting in the room for a year and I was gonna sell it back to Arnold until this UF5 wound up on SOFT at a ridiculous asking price of $60. yeah man, no joke. I was real lucky to land this baby. It was another ordinary night at PBE and my last student hadn't turned up, so I was lazing around surfing on my phone on the SOFT website when I saw the ad for the UF5. seller's reason for selling was that he was moving out or moving home. but whatever, I called immediately at 8.50pm. time stamp on the advertisement was 8.30pm. From experience, such ludicrous deals are usually closed within minutes but I decided to try my luck anyway. To my surprise, I was the first caller! So i got him to reserve the set for me, and Chekley and I went down to his hostel room in NUS to get it. It was working beautifully, although the keys had gone noisy from some use but that's to be expected, and for $60 i'm not complaining. So now I have my 4th controller for $160 ($100 for the firewire expansion), which retailed at $900++ altogether when new.
Oh, this year we missed Mosaic totally. I laid off music completely for a while and dabbled in Linux in the mean time. No thanks to the frustration from last minute preparations for the Valentine's gig with Motherfunkys, and the lack of follow up after that too. When the momentum disappeared, it was just downhill for me. I guess I need more experience. After all, it was only last year that I started gigging actively. I had a fully active year last year, starting with New Year's show, some fringe festivals at esplanade and a contract at eM Bar. Then it was all weddings and events till the end of the year. Anyway, so we missed Brian McKnight. bah... ugh.. makes me sick now when i think of it. Okay la, that chekley also disappeared to Aussie so it was kinda sian to go without my squealy kaki. haha ok im just making excuses. but yeah, it all feels so weird now.. not a single Mosaic show, not even the free programmes. What I did a lot of, in this time, was to download music. HAHA. a shit load, yes. I've discovered my love for Bobby McFerrin, Hall and Oates, and Michael McDonald. yeah, a different brand of soul and R&B. not the usual black kind. I also discovered Khalil Fong, from not-so-far-away Hong Kong. I just need to get my fingers warm again and I'll be able to get some new ideas from all this new material.
Okay talking about the Valentine's Day gig with Motherfunkys. We tried out Kalai on drums and I was right in the end to be skeptical of his suitability. Our styles were simply too different and we had to switch out 2 weeks from the gig date because it was simply not working out and it was taking a toll on the band dynamics. Nobody was really happy, and nobody liked the new dynamic that evolved from all the micro-managing and spoonfeeding we had to do with a technically proficient but otherwise unintuitive and clueless drummer. Thank goodness our original drummer Saravanan returned from his pilgrimage (that's another story) in time to learn 2 sets of new material in 3 rehearsals. We barely scrapped through the show. It was presentable, but certainly far from our best. Or at least in my point of view. I can think of people who'd beg to differ and write me off as cynical. Not my fault that I only know how to be realistic.
Another show came up and I jumped at the opportunity to work with some good backing vocals. This time it was for the Catholic church. Mathilda, Alvin and I joined with singers from Holy Cross. Preparations weren't as good as I hoped but at least the final product was presentable. I'm amazed by at how some people don't seem to spend as much time on music as I do but manage to keep their level up to par. yeah I'm talking about Alvin (also my mysterious Netherlands reader). I think we're still in tune with each other musically, as we'd been ever since we were rookies in the church worship team, and it was a great feeling to be able to just play together again after a 7 year absence (ok, we played just 6 months ago for Feast Day at Holy Cross too but before that it was about 6-7 years). Got some videos of the gig!
I'll just embed this one and if u're interested u'll find about 6 other recordings from this gig, just poke around my other uploads. you know, I think this will be one of my more unforgettable shows ever, despite some negativty that followed. mainly because through working with a certain person on this project i've learnt some lessons and grown as a result. musically, it's a rare privilege to play music that I really want to play and to have a supportive team and friends at that. maybe one day i'll be able to bring my ideas on a public stage, hopefully with the same people.
So that's the bulk of happenings in the past few months. Some new stuff has come up. I have picked up modelling, as in scale model kits. My dear girlfriend is into it too. We're hoping to build a 1/400 Titanic or Queen Mary 2 some day, and I want to build a really nice Millenium Falcon kit. Also, the next 8 weeks will see me busy with 6 gigs and amount as many different repertoires. This is not including the 28 June Family Day praise and worship festival in church for which I'm supposed to form a group and present 2 songs. It's been a long time since I've done any music in church actually, so hopefully this time (which might be my last, too) will be good and something to remember too.
I'll end off this post with my latest inspiration and obsession. heheh.. she is so hot. that, and i love celtic-sounding music.
So that's the way it's turned out, more or less.. haha.. monthly. well at least it hasn't fizzled out..
An awfully busy period is over, playing gigs almost every week since 3rd week November. But that's not really tiring, it's the fact that each gig was a different repertoire - and mostly new material to me, at that. I reckon the FP4 has paid itself off from all the gigs i've brought it to in the last 2 mths. it was good purchase.. no regrets. Next up - a real Hammond organ.. hahaha.. never ending process of buying new gadgets. The VB3 still serves me well, since I'm not really gigging with the organ yet. Major drawback just discovered last week when my new Wharfedale amp *yes yes roll-eyes haha* arrived - the merged mono signal sounds like CRAP! The slight doppler effect of the leslie simulation is totally gone and instead it sounds more like a fast tremolo with pitch bend. yucks yucks ugh!! I tried plugging only one side of the output and the leslie simulation sounds much better but I lose a lot of bass because of the stereo processing. Been trying to find a solution that compresses the bass into mono while keeping the mids and highs separated. That would give me a strong bass while maintaining a good rotary speaker effect. OR, i'll have to buy another of the same amp and run them stereo.. but that would defeat the purpose of buying a small portable amp in the first place.
Christmas was a nondescript affair.. New year's was interesting, never been swarmed by so many banglas in my life. And then we had a stayover at the Leks' where we ended up watching soccer until Laura woke up for work, then hopped into bed and slept till 1pm.
I'd been dealing with the problem of my car overheating for some time until it got to a point where I couldn't drive with the air-con on, and the car wouldn't travel more than an hour without overheating. Fortunately I never let the temperature run into the red part or I would have done much worse damage. I sent the car in initially to get my tyres balanced and the engine oil changed, the radiator flushed, and no more. The car returned with NEW tyres, new engine oil, a dirty radiator, and poor cranking. Changed car battery that night, and blew something. Couldn't start the car the next day, had it towed to the workshop where I got a new power distributor. When it came back, air-con was really warm and soon the car started overheating quickly, and I was losing half a litre of water in the radiator with each trip. Took it to the shop on a Saturday morning, only to get it back the next Saturday with a new engine cylinder head, new tming belts, new radiator coolant, and NO MORE PROBLEMS! air-con runs freezing now, acceleration is smooth and powerful and no more pinging sounds from the engine. Andhika said it was the sound of gear slipping - nay, it was the sound of petrol detonating prematurely because the engine was running too hot.
Spent $1200 in all on car repairs.. boohoo.. that's the price of ignorance I guess. But it beats paying tens of thousands more for a 'new car with no problems', in the words of many a singaporean. I think i'd rather have these problems now so that I'll know how to take good care of my future cars, and continue to drive old cars and save thousands of dollars which would otherwise be lining the pockets of some undeserving chap in the upper echelons. Next month I'll be spending another 1.5k on renewing road tax and car insurance.. bleah.. sucks. and then income tax follows shortly.. ugh. Hope I get a regular gig somewhere for the next half year to pay these bills.
CNY was quiet and I didn't get to spend much time with relatives this year cos mum thought we should 'not bother big aunt who's just had an operation'. Turns out she's fine and spritely and was disappointed that we didn't turn up early as we always have since I was a kid. oh well.. the things parents do and the things they think.
The streets and roads have been empty and it feels really good. I can only wish that the mysterious disappearance of what seems to be half the country's population remains permanent. are we really so reliant on foreign talent, or have we merely become lazy? why are cabbies queueing all the way on to the PIE at night and waiting hours to make an extra $6 in airport surcharge, yet one can never seem to get a taxi home from work at night.
I know next week, all the shit will be back in full force. enjoy while it lasts, I guess.
I'm finally back from work. actually i got back earlier to wait for this stupid guy to turn up to buy my keyboard amplifier (yes selling it away already) but he turned up HALF AN HOUR LATE. he sms-ed earlier to say that he'd be here by 10.45pm but when I called him at 10.55pm he was still in Changi village, probably picking up the two dubious girls (or trannys) sitting in the back of his car. he came, brought out his shit gear,and laid his shit on the floor while stinking up my porch with his (and his friend's) body odour. after proving that everything works, they wanted to crank up the volume to test if it would go loud enough for them.
WHAT KIND OF FUCK WIT! brainless brownies. anyway i pulled my long face and chased them out of my house not before the cheapskate tried to ask me to sell it to him at a giveaway price because he couldn't get to test it fully. well he can suck on my salty balls, try to reek less of coconut and I still wouldn't sell it to him. What really made me upset was that Jordan and Chekley were waiting for us at the tao huey place in Balestier but they ended up leaving before I could even leave the house because I was being delayed too long. ugh!! deprived of money, food, and friends!!! I am never dealing with their kind again (the social out-castes *sic*, i mean).
Anyway.. back to my update. sheesh.. Saturday was a long day which ended with 2 Motherfunkys sets at the Esplanade. The new stage is huge, and they've managed to totally isolate the stage mix from the FOH mix. so now the musicians on stage are totally at the mercy of the sound engineers *shudder*. Previously you could still tell if you weren't coming over the house, or if you were too loud. Some of my students came to watch, which was nice, as well as some members of the NTU Jazz and Blues club. Shout-outs also to the regular Lek clan, Jordan, and my long suffering girlfriend. I'm glad our Yiddish Polka arrangement of Let It Snow was a hit with the crowd. Apparently people were laughing throughout. I'll post a video soon as I get it.
Monday was my day, albeit with a less than ideal start. The plan was for the girlfriend to surprise me at home so that I could wake up to her face and breakfast in bed, but was rudely awakened by my father who felt that I had to move my car cos it was getting in the construction workers' way. I was suspicious, because their work was already well underway and the excavator was neatly parked behind my car and the driver had gone off for snooze or something. So I got up anyway to move my car somewhere else. Poor excavator driver had to scamper back to move thing out of the way for me so that I could reverse out of my lot. great, my socially inept father at it again. things would have been perfectly fine if left alone. I wonder why my parents have this uncanny ability to complicate matters whenever they're "only trying to help". and it doesn't apply only to me, they do it to almost everyone.
anyway i crashed back into bed, but never really got back into deep slumber. and then my mum spoils the surprise by announcing the girlfriend's arrival, loudly enough to wake me. Fuck! seriously. ugh. We spent the morning tidying my room, but it isn't much better yet. she also cleaned my laptops with alcohol swiped from the lab.. heheh.. and then we hit the music stores and sim lim square to pick up a Y-cable for my expression pedal, a Korg nano Kontrol and a new small laptop-style keyboard for my PC. Bought my Y-cable for $4!!! Deal of the century!!! James paid $13 for his. Also saw a cool Korg keyboard gig bag with backpack style shoulder straps, and the Wharfedale Titan active loudspeakers which sounded really good. they were selling for only $455!!!! 300W of titanic power in a smaller package than my bulky 65W Laney amp. too good to resist, hence the sale.
anyway, i've been going to work early this week. 8.30am two days in a row! OMG.. but I found it's really so much more productive. I can get so much work done by mid-day and I can have an easy lunch and take the whole afternoon to do whatever I want. Tomorrow I'll have to go in early again but I think maybe I won't... still got to make one more epoxy sheet. then hopefully on Friday i'll be able to machine all the tensile specimens and then on Monday they should be sufficiently rested so that I can apply the tensile tests.
Ok I"ve had enough for the day. Hope this Christmas goes well. I'm looking forward to more gigs while they last.
Basically things didn't go down well in the office cos I'd been sitting on a project for too long, and my future prospects(i.e. PhD program) is in jeopardy because i haven't performed up to par. Been slogging away at it, and finally got things well underway only within the last two weeks. Too many new things to learn about the research way of life, and thinking like a scientist/engineer. Engineering alone is fine, but it's when you have to be somewhat scientific at the same time that makes things very anal.
A quiet month by way of gigs, got a few shows cancelled due to the sudden onset of recession. Was introduced to A Little Dream, a wedding band management company, and joined their roster of musicians. Have played 3 gigs with them so far, with a fourth coming up just after Christmas. How come everyone likes to get married at the year's end? I don't get it. Anyhoo, this December has been an extraordinarily busy gig season and I've had to turn down several opportunities to keep myself from burning out.
Last thursday the 18th was my birthday. I spent it working long hours in the lab only to fail for the second time at an attempt to cast a sheet of epoxy. Went down to PBE after that where the guys cut me a cake and sang me a song, that was nice. Went out for dinner at Coffee Nations with my dearie and the Leks, which was one of the better dinners I've had. The whole day had been dreadful and I was grumpy but the Littlest Lek's chirpyness was too infectious and chased my blues away. Was supposed to take leave on the 19th to spend a whole day with my dearie but re-routed it to Monday instead so that I could try to finish up my epoxy sheet by the end of the week, only to barely manage one sheet of epoxy by the end of that day (which ended early woohoo).
Ok i'm going to finish this later after I come back from PBE.
