Could I die now...?
Or could SOMEBODY just KILL me now?

Couldn't get down to posting... (this is practically a food BINGE-blog)

I'm officially a shop-on-line geek!!! argh... I need to stop staring at my favourite shopping pg so often!

The previous Sat, the WW gang met up to go to the Science Centre for the Pix@r exhibition and to post celeb Jeff's b'day. The 2 saving grace of the Sakura buffet - the baked oyster+cheese+rice thingy and the salmon sashimi. The Konnyaku was good too... What really spoilt it all was the chicken satay that was 'grilled-to-order'... It was not good, it was spoilt... very spoilt... (for one to actually smell the stench from the chicken satay above the char from the grilling and the satay sauce...!!!! It was BAD...) I'm NOT going back there again. At least the XO Fishhead dinner and ice cream waffle with Ting and E the day after was GOOD... hee hee. I met them after my church choir prac and after their WW prac.

Finally met up with the 2FSG guys last Tues - for lunch at Hanabi - remind me again why i don't like going for buffet...??? - The standard at Katong mall was better (but no more already) This one at Odeon Tower was just lacking. Only the Teppanyakis were good. So, yes - Finally passed R the stuff tht i brought back from HK.... 2 months already!!! '-_-''''''' Other midwk binges - included Korean (i still like Kimchi) with Jiejie and dinner with J at Hacienda on Wed... It was a week of going to town and Clementi... Specs had problem (again!!!) so finally just put on my contacts and sent it in to get the frame changed.

As some lessons were cancelled, moved, blah... Met up with my cuz for Cedele lunch and TWG tea on Sat. Lunch at Cedele was pleasant. Had i known there was complimentary bread tht came with the soup, i wouldn't have gone for a sandwich for my main. It was good though. I'm a fan of tender red meat. Thanks to my cuzzin's F & B industry 'status' we had 3 complimentary macarons. Only the Earl grey was good. Didn't really like the raspberry or the caramel ones. All that was before going for St. Martin's, directed by Joshua Bell last Sat. It was good, to say the least. More details in the 'academic' blog. One downside - smethin tht Jer agreed with - was tht Beethoven 7th was a bit lacking... Not cuz they ain't good. They were excellent actually - clean lines, effective phrasing and dynamics, Mr Bell's interesting and refreshing interpretation of the pieces) but we both thought if the ensemble were a bit bigger, the sound would have been richer, thus sounding 'more' Beethoven... (there again who are we to comment... maybe orchestra music of those times are not meant to be so thick and heavy as we understand it to be?) I'm going to start doing a bit of searching about this... 1 fine day... haha. And cuz, Jer and I bumped into some... 'pple', had to change supper plans from MSXW to MM... ya, supper at aRistorante bologna... we mde their 'last order' and their last customer for the day.

The Sunday that just passed, i met up with the 2 NIE xiao didi for dinner... ES and Law seem to be doing reasonably well... It has been ages since we last met... and it was a fun time reminiscing the past and catching up... (We're mtg again soon for some "TDS" - haha, no, it's not the name of a drug... ) It's the acronym of the place i SHOULD really stop intro-ing pple to... unless i've got shares in it...!!! haha. Hope it doesn't get too commercialized... cuz together with tht, quality drops... no no no... i want it to remain like this, always...!

Gone to HK and back...

My intention was indeed to go there and get away from stuff... yes! - much to the 'amusement' and 'shock' to those who already knew it before i went over. So the intention wasn't to - eat, shop, or 'elope'- as what 1 of my ex-colleague thought or whatever else - though i did come back with almost SGD200 worth of scores... haha.

Just a brief of what i did and where i went -
Day 1 - dim sum lunch at this place in Tung Chung. So nice...! Then it was shopping at the outlets. Bought a bit of things. Ben bought some stuff too... Then we took a bus back to his place in sheung shui. Headed to Mongkok where we had a quick dinner and then he had to go for band prac. So i continued walking around Mongkok... Managed to find my way back to his place fine... He bought supper back this evening porridge, wanton noodles, walnut and sesame paste. All good! Never seen such HUGE wantons... haha but the noodles had too strong noodle taste. So kinda not used to it.
Day 2 - Had a dimsum breakfast opposite his place. Then we headed to Shenzhen... Had i known it was a buffet thing we were heading for, i won't have requested breakfast! Eat like siao tht day... Then we went to shaonian gong where there was a huge bookstore kinda thing there... Haha... scores galore... not as great as the Yamaha in Ginza, but wow, definitely a good place to get stuff cheap! Friend had to go to another band prac so i just bummed around in his place. Nice long sleep that night. I guess I was actually very tired...!
Day 3 - lazy day in... had lunch before i went to the sheung shui shopping centre and the one at Kowloon Tong. Managed to get more stuff at Parsons. There was an agnes b. there - tried to make up my mind which bag to buy for quite awhile but ended up walking out of there empty handed... haha. Then proceeded to Yuen Long for Itacho dinner! it was good...! And according to Ben, it was rather cheap, compared to the general food prices in HK! - no wonder there was also such a huge crowsd there as well...
Day 4 - Since Ben bought some scores, we decided to try our luck booking the music room and try out a couple of the duet scores he bought. It was quite fun. But i didn't really like the piano... sounded weird and the room was a little too small for such a twangy piano and trumpet some more... We then had a quick lunch at old village and then proceeded out to catch a ferry to chang zhou. The name of the place says it all... It was a really really LONG and THIN island... haha. Nice cool weather so we attempted to walk a round, round the island - but unfortunately, there was no more proper foot path up to a certain point - so we made a u-turn back. Dinner was on the island. It took us almost 2 hrs to get back to his place... as there was, unfortunately, no direct bus back.
Day 5 - Last day to bum. So i bummed out on the Sofa until i thought maybe i should go take a walk outside. So i went and walked round the area. It was getting a bit hot. Walked into TomLee for a bit of air-con and a look look around - an bought more stuff again! Scores lah, what else? Then headed back to wait for Ben to come back from school to go to the airport with me. Final dinner at some chan ting before i had to board the plane.

All in all, a very pleasant trip for me. A good get away too, i should say. And of course, definitely the free lodging at my dear friend's place and his company made things all the better. Really appreciate all the time and effort he put in to entertain me... ;p Thanks so much my dear!!!!!!

Knowing too much isn't exactly a good thing...
Why, u ask? Because... I know situation A and I know situation B. I've heard the views of pple involved in both and somehow, i can't seem to come to a conclusion about what to do about it! I could inform pple in situation A what pple in situation B are thinking and try to sort things out. That's the problem with me... I always feel that i'm 'responsible' for making things right cuz i happen to know the situation on both ends. There again, sometimes i wonder if I should even bother to think so hard. To try so hard to put things right?

It's like i just settled my internal battle about the V and J issue. Now... got this one... which is like sigh... whatever lah. If the party is willing to talk, I'll try to put things right. If not, then I'll just take it that i'm no longer needed around.

Now that I've gotten hold of the Concert Video...

I really don't feel like sitting down and editing it! I'm soooo not looking forward to sieving through it and trying to work the technical details of it all... sigh... how how how? Surely, we didn't mt for bfast, walk around Chinatown, sit in Olio for an hour and i miss Good Friday Service... all so I can sit on this video some more right???

To make things worse, got news of something i have no idea to believe or not... except to ask the other horse... tht is a risky decision to make - in my view. So, to ask or not to ask? - that is the question.

Easter Vigil was a tiring project... how come the rest of the altos so soft? and how come I kept forgetting to relax, relax, relax? My teacher keeps telling me that every week i go for lessons, but somehow, i keep forgetting - or maybe i haven't learnt to... :(

One down...

Finished one concert last week. It was OK i suppose, although some parts of one of the songs were a bit messy. Things are still not quite back to normal yet. In fact, cuz i bought a plane ticket to HK, i'm just cramming stuff into the other days again! Oh well... and cuz greedy me wanted badly to make bfast, by hook or by crook, it was to be on Good Friday - causing me to perhaps even miss Fri mass... (oops, ok i don't believe i actually put this here)

Alright more updates soon... For now, prob really live each day to the fullest.

A Great Concert...

Went for Kam Ning's concert at YST Conservatoire on Fri, 19 Mar. It was a concert of 20th Century Music... Music written in the past 25 years, to be precise...

In short, the performance, to say the least - was electrifying! I remembered her from the time she played Tchai's vln Concerto with the SSO and again from a Concert special on TV tht featured her playing one of Mozart's violin concerto in the Queen Elisabeth Competition - observing her play the 2nd movement was just so emotional! - She was playing it with such conviction tht perspiration was just all over her forehead... Enough abt tht. She was no different this time. Her personality just shone through and it was such an honour to have been able to attend her performance again. So glad for that oppotunity - special thanks to jie for bringing up the YST concert series to me!

On other news... I finally 'talked' my t-i-c out of playing for fiesta. And i managed to get Derek, twin bro of David - my NIE snr to play the accompaniment for this event. Glad it's him... (definitely more prepared than her!) and seems like he's quite intuitive with accompaniment... so it was good to be working with him. 2 rehearsals so far were reasonable. The girls are the problem... not him. Met up with him for a little chat and bizness talk last Thurs @ yishun... it was good to mt up with another free-lancer who was willing to open up and share! After tht, as I had a while more before going to school, I went to the library to check things out. To my surprise, i found 3 music related books on the '780' shelves. Haven't read most of them yet... But they've got great titles...! More about the 3 books soon... (most prob in the educational blog)

It's been a month since...

i last blogged here. So much has happened... Meloidikos II went rather well... sensei said programming was good... tht pieces were nice, a good mix and tht most of the kids showed good technique and flair. Unfortunately for many of them, being nervous got the better of them for a good part of the beginning of their pieces. Managed to pull a couple of personal friends to help... Min to pg-turn and Jer to borrow the video cam and video the thing... thanks pple! and for Jer's dinner and dessert company after tht too...

Managed to mt up with so many pple the past few weeks. Met up with Liz, Jereon and Daryl for Sushi and ice cream 2 weeks ago, and cuz jereon was due to head back to holland within a week, we met up again for teochew porridge dinner and dessert another evening tht week. Cindy came for the piano performance so together with min and i, we went for a VERY good and fat dinner at Paradiz after the perf. Caught up with Philip just a couple of nights ago... and just got back from Godson's place earlier today.

Attended WW concert - quite a bit of nice sounds coming through - i wasn't the only one who thought tht! Didn't make it to IT Show, but got a EHD, a free mouse and a free laptop stand thing... (obviously the EHD wasn't free....! the rest of the goodies didn't come with my EHD either... d'uh!) As usual, Itacho never ceases to fail... settled my sushi craving tht evening... and thx to Jer, both R and I didn't get wet in the rain when Camp ended cuz he came and drove us... :)

My girls are still rather terribly out of tune... is there anything else i can do to resolve this?