Burnout

yo guys sorry i haven't been posting.

Anyway God's been good to me, life has been easy on me. I hope this goes on forever. Haha yup that's me. Easily contented and stagnated. Haha

Btw caleb intro-ed me this band Norwegian Recycling.. Basically, they(or he) do(or does) mashups. Gotta give it up to him. Very smooth transitions and all.. I wonder how he took out everything except the vocals.. anyway here are 2 nice songs by him/them. Some people will look upon it as how boring and duplicated music has become, but I see it as how 4 simple chords, 1 5 6 4, or even the way overplayed 4 5 3 6 turnaround find in half of the gospel songs written since the 80s, and more than half the pop songs we hear today, can be injected with every individual's own flavours and genius lyrics.

The 2 songs sound especially nice towards the end when everything's so heavily layered, but ever so poppishly that it's not tiresome for the ears.

anyway here it is:
8 become 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeYSkxQxcRM
how 6 songs collide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JKKl95Ttrc


p/s: i finally found a picture of myself!

Letter to Mr Arsene Wenger

Dear Mr Wenger,
WHY THE *!&@ ARE YOU LETTING ADEBAYOR PLAY SO LONG?
Has he not done too many unnecessary one-touches, and let loose too many potential goals nicely set up? (Not mentioning the passes he's been making to the phantom Henry)
I'm sure you'll let somebody else take his place (I think bendtner's a good idea).

Arsenal Forever,
David

C: pop

Yo guys. This is one of the nights which I will regret tomorrow.. It's been like that for the past 4 nights, and tomorrow will be my 5th day in a row dozing off in anything I do.

My cell group and I went to K-box yesterday (a first time for me) to....... I suddenly can't remember what for. But anyway it's got something to do with Theresa before she gets married but it's nothing near a sabotage. Anyway, it turned out to be Wen Ai's birthday so we passed around to card to sign in front of her (I wonder if she saw) and dedicated a Happy Birthday song to her. This song. I still remember it. When I was secondary 1, I went to karaoke with my godfather. It was a birthday celebration for one of his friends, and of course, they sang the happy birthday song. AND IT'S THE SAME CHEESY MTV WE SAW YESTERDAY. It was this teenage blonde girl's birthday and they had a cake in the living room of their white-ish bungalow, and guests started streaming in with gifts and all.. I'm sure some of you have seen this evergreen video before.

It was fun seeing everyone sing. And it's the love that kept them in the room when I was singing. Wen Ai's obsession with S.H.E., Shuwen's preference for oldies (Everly Brothers man.. even the MV was in greyscale! haha), Reuben's ability to sing any song, Sinlong's photography expertise, it was fun man. I'll see if i can get some pictures from Sinlong.

To my surprise, K-Box was a lot more fun than I had thought it to be. We sang lots of C-pop songs by jay chow, david tao, stef sun (all of which are artistes I used to like a long time ago, but also which I have forgotten to listen to amidst all the new(and old) music). Reuben and I attempted a H-pop(hokkien pop) song which proved to be as disastrous as it can ever get. haha.

Anyway all these C-pop artistes have very nice songs with very meaningful lyrics and very interesting arrangements. I should go get my hands on some of their cds this weekend. Jay chow, in my opinion, is the chinese "jay"son mraz.

He has a song called '(secret) signal' and it's interesting how he parallels a couple so in love and later on slowly losing steam to a handphone that's slowly losing the ability to receive signals sent to it. It starts with him talking about this couple not letting people know that they're together at first, how they're "walking in the tunnel", and then the girl eventually wants to "get out and feel the breeze", to let the world know that they're together. But the boy prefers not to let people know so that their opinions and gossipping won't crowd out or interfere with the signal they have between them. Anyway, then through a sudden twist of fate, the girl loses the ability to receive signals, and the boy is searching and searching but still he finds nothing.

Anyway since a video speaks a thousand words, here's the jay chow secret signal MV

F.I.R.'s Fly Away and Our Love, Stefanie Sun's Wo Yao De Xin Fu, and many other songs keep ringing in my head. I guess it's the Singaporean (or maybe just the Chinese) frequency that's resonating in my heartstring.

Anybody wanna go K-Box don't forget to jio me!!


Support local, make it global

the grass is always green where you're not

Dang.. The accents for the previous post didn't come out right..

Anyway I've come to the conclusion that it's pretty pointless in thinking that after doing this, or once i buy that, or once i get to this point i want to get to, I will finally be satisfied. There is no such thing as a better girlfriend, a smoother drumset(of course if you wanna mail me a dw set pls don't stop now), a nicer workplace, all because "better" is not a constant. It's just a mad and endless chase from one point to another. It's just an occupational hazard that most of us cannot shake off, and that is to keep ourselves busy. When life is more on the repetitive side we look for adventure, and when we get too tired of the insecurity that adventures bring we long for a quiet life by the countryside. In the most uncliche-ish cliches, the grass is always greener on the other side.

Sure we should look for betterment and embrace change. But sometimes we just gotta look out for delusions which brings us longing for our old little grass patch, or for some, a field of Venus flytraps in the Addams Family backyard.

Not many people make drastic decisions with drastic implications every other week or month. Some wait their whole life pining for the one day to take that taxi to the great unknown, and that's when they find that the grass may not be greener, or even as green, but one day it will be as glorious as when God walked in the garden of eden.

That's just a theory. I'm still at the stage of recognizing that i should stop field-hopping. I look forward to the day when God tells me to move (or stay) because I know that's the best(maybe worst it will seem?) place to be.




Why do people train to play fast? The top drummers in the world don't play even half of their grooves and fills at their top speed. It's because when they can play fast, they can play slow easy and effortlessly.
-a certain pro drummer

if i were milla jovovich..

I wouldn't be blogging now. I watched Resident Evil 3 yesterday, the part that made me really jump was when kok siong let out a yelp and twitched violently in his seat. Anyway I'm so glad that the real world is not plagued by the T-virus (yet) and not hanging on a strand of her DNA (yet) and not subject to the fancies and theories of some Umbrella Corp. (yet)

Seeing how the zombies and the zombie-birds come like a steam roller on these humans just makes me really thankful for the fact that in life there's always a way out. At least it is still so in my simple life. I really don't think that there's anybody in this world who'd rather be a zombie-fighter in Resident Evil. Maybe except for the 'Save' function, and cursed be the day when the undead close in upon you with the computer out of reach.

Anyway the new worship ministry schedule is out. I was just gonna tell Mervin and Jocelyn that I don't mind playing the bass guitar more in church, but I just don't want to play less drums. And so wonderfully, the roster came out just as I had wished, saving me a lot of grumbling and jocelyn and mervin a lot of pain in the butt from my grumbling (which shouldn't be the case in the first place, but in this case, thankfully it didn't have a chance to be the case)

I'd better go get some sleep. Else go work tmr like the zombie I was today.



> >> > > > > >
||:RLLR RLLR RLLR RLLR :||
> > > > > >> >
||:LRRL LRRL LRRL LRRL :||
-rick latham, Contemporary Drumset Techniques

woodshed

Hi dear readers..

Once again, the week flew very quickly. I hope ORD comes soon, but not too soon at the same time because I don't think I don't think I'm gonna do music like I do now and get paid (a measley sum) for doing that.

I've been thinking about it lately, and I think that how you perform, and your general behaviour and thinking habits are very much determined by the culture you are in. Why do I say this? I started wondering about why there are so many pro drummers from Victoria School. First there's Ramu, then there's michael liang hong christopher and of course jonathan. Could it be that Ramu started a culture of asking yourself for more, and not being content with yourself? Back in Maris Stella, we rarely cared about learning new rudiments and cool chops, and we were very easily contented/impressed with ourselves. I wish I could go back to Sec 1 and start woodshedding from then, and also be a better section leader to the percussionists.

Anyway, maybe that's why everybody says the music scene is dead in Singapore. I hope I can take the 'S' train on time and lest I be left behind with all the critics and naysayers.. Already I feel the train has reached the next station. hahah..

I failed my motorbike prac 5 just yesterday. So demoralizing man. I thought everything was going fine, until I came to the plank where I fell to the deep hollow in my wallet. Good thing i accumulated 22 points. If I had met the < 18 points requirement, and got an immediate failure for the plank I'd be hopping mad. Can't wait to pass sooner so I don't have to waste any more money and I can finally not be dripping wet when falling in for first muster.

gtg now.. have a great weekend guys and girls

black wednesday

I knew I shouldn't have taken that afternoon nap. All my life when I take afternoon naps, I wake up feeling wasted, like i'm waking up to a world without friends, purpose and hope.

I left my wallet in bunk today. Either the 169 bus driver give chance, or he didn't notice that I didn't scan. Whichever was the case, I'm thankful for it. I was hoping to meet somebody I know when I get off, actually I was hoping to meet sgt. Leon cause I thought he gets off at the same place as me, but that didn't happen. I couldn't find any familiar faces to borrow $1 from, so i took a taxi, and it cost me $7.50 =( I'm not even pennywise, and I hope I don't be too pound-foolish, too often.

Often people say life is more than living for yourself, and I've friends who commit themselves to helping and caring for people. I have benefitted from selfless people like this myself, and I feel the obligation to pay it forward. But I can't seem to see myself doing that. All I wanna do, is just to get my girlfriend back, play drums, make music. Of course it doesn't mean I don't care about the people around me. One's life is a like tree that receives and gives, going in a full circle. I consider myself no longer a sapling, thought I still have much room to grow and many things to learn, and I have a feeling (maybe due to peer pressure) that it's time I gave of myself to helping other people. But then again, some people have been the victims of my theory testing, and I'm very afraid to assume that I'm right in many things. For now I think I'll just stay 'selfish' and make sure I don't ruin more lives than my own. The best I can do now is probably just to make my workplace a better place.

Now, back to how today can be marked as a relatively grey day. I was watching the chinese evening news, and a report said that some joker from the labs in taiwan said that sleeptalking, sleepwalking, or generally just the lack of sleep, can have many harmful effects on people. For growing people, I'm guessing children, that can stunt their mental growth. For adults it leads to a higher level of physical stress (I don't recall if they mention mental stress), and higher blood pressure at the later parts of their lives. And there's a part which is horrifying enough for me not to tell you about. I worry that it might pertain to me, but I also don't want to retrofit into some mis-prophecy. For all we know it may be rushed out to meet some quota just like how we jc kids fake some numbers and statistics to pass PW.

I hope tomorrow does get better. What does my hope weigh, nothing more than a fool's hope, but nonetheless it's still the same hope that keeps us living from day to day.


P/S:thanks jeff for subscribing to my blog! =)