right. owing to the fact that i'm being compelled by, in all senses of the phrase, a chorus of people to update, write something more substantial and what-not, here comes something that will hopefully bear some semblance to a post. at any rate, i do think it beats my ranting about the immensely irritating flu bug and how i have a nagging suspicion that it's just doing a horrendously late celebration of the 'live earth' principles by turning my innards green; even if i were to post some form of a personal exposition - which i would never do - i guess i could do ten hundred thousand times better than that.

(oh but yes, a blogpost is somewhat like a personal exposition, i concede. which is precisely why i'm using politically incorrect exaggerations like 'ten hundred thousand times better'. you know that's impossible, of course, given my standards.)

long-winded, irrelevant, rambling and random preamble (somehow this makes me think of the word 'perambulator' - i daresay it is too much of neil gaiman) aside, i think what i really ought to do is to express, reminisce about and - if i do have the ability - immortalize the whole RGSChoir and esplanade and 'music extravaganza!' experience in words, which i haven't actually done just yet. so here goes. (:

simply put, i think that this entire journey has been an amazing one.

i guess we've already achieved quite a couple of milestones in the past two years, first in prague last year, syf and the accompanying choral presentation this year. but quoting (our most beloved conductress!) msloo, this esplanade concert was truly another step up for all of us, where we brought our performance standards up another notch and showed the audience what we, as RGSChoir, are truly capable of.

honestly, it's quite incredible how we managed to pull off our repertoire this time round. for one, i certainly don't remember us having as many practices as we did pre-prague, and perhaps even lesser than what we had for concert last year. (then again, we had the musical thingy.) but i've truly learnt a lot this time round, and with every stage experience it's like finding yourself, reinventing yourself once again, because you discover so many more different facets of life with each subsequent time. and of course you grow closer to the people around you, batchmates, seniors, juniors and all. at the end of the day, the music sort of becomes your soul; it just resonates with you, and you live the music together with people who are equally passionate about it - you share the joy of making music. seriously, the experiences are, irreplaceable.

perhaps there may have been times when this entire esplanade concert seemed like it was just going to disintegrate into millions of little pieces, when we couldn't nail down some things, when we couldn't open up and dare to emote and express, but at the end of the day, we did it, and i'm proud. :D definitely, singing at the esplanade was a tremendous honour, and i'm awfully glad we were given this opportunity. perhaps it ain't as cosy as vch, but the reverberation of the voices, the fullness of every chord and the lingering beauty of each and every note as it melted into the frigid air - that's what defines the place. obviously the steinway deserves special mention as well (read: this is one person highly obsessed with pianos.) i love the sweet lyrical quality of the sound and the warmth of the tone. (: basically, if all pianos were exactly like the esplanade steinway, i would so totally take up the career path of a pianist, haha! oh, and the backstage dressing rooms. we got the special room, thanks to chaoying, complete with a piano, sofa and all. i still like the vch backstage more though; the esplanade one is too much of a labyrinth for me to feel comfortable in. nevertheless, one key highlight of trooping around the esplanade backstage is that we got a (rather unauthorized) sneak peek at the 'king and i' wardrobes. now, you can't beat that!

concert itself. the atmosphere was electrifying, and as much as the emcee sort of mangled the chinese and french titles, she very much set the stage for us, and i'm quite thankful for that. towards the end when she gave the descriptions of itsuki and mbiri, there was this tingly feeling in me, some sort of a hybrid between nervousness, excitement and sheer joy. but anyway, i thought salmo 150 was really cool, the 'alleluia' bit was so impactful and phwoar! when you listen to it. jazz mass wasn't too bad, considering the rather pathetic yours truly was seated in front of the ivories. whatever it was, my face decidedly went O.O when the emcee script invovled something along the lines of 'characteristic piano accompaniment'. any attention drawn to the piano accompaniment seriously ought to be diverted somewhere more worthwhile! basically i still didn't exactly get my rhythms for the middle section right and plonked a wrong chord for the ending, which is extremely inexcusable, but on the whole i hope i did an okay job. haha, my very first introduction to jazz. (: see, i told you i could master the fine art of being lazy, nyak! xD cataract of mount lu, naturally, turned heads (okay, that phrase has decidedly, many layers of meaning), what with all the cricket chirping, the whispering and the mildly eerie singing, especially when it comes from the opposite end of the aisle. mingling amidst the audience was msloo's stroke of genius; it certainly created a more atmospheric setting - you could very literally, call it surround sound. :D oh i know adding this here will make this incoherent, but i am incoherent, so anyway mid-winter sounded like a nice blend, even though the recordings have very much chewed and swallowed up our consonants whole. i do wish we had been able to recreate the effect of msloo's lovely, emotion-ridden solo though. itsuki and mbiri: well, what more can i say? okay we definitely fared better than at choral presentation. (: there was that sense of poignancy, of helplessness and surpressed anguish that finally came through, and it felt as real as when we sang it at syf. (this is precisely why i jabbed my dad real hard when he alleged that itsuki wasn't 'particularly sad'.) mbiri, with all the frenetic stamping and drumming and msloo's 'last song! last song!' signs, certainly made for a good closing piece. it sounds tribal in the recording, whee. (:

i do not exactly think that the encore song calls for much mention though, as much as it is a really good feeling to get calls for an encore. not knowing my lyrics didn't help matters a single bit. but it's a nice song nevertheless, pity we didn't exactly get to enjoy it more. (though of course, we did hear many loud recitatives of 'this light of mine, i'm gonna let it shine!' in the dressing rooms during post-concert clean-up, hahaha.)

of course, all this couldn't have been possible without fantabulous msloo. :D i don't know how many times i've said this, and i don't exactly care if i've already reiterated this a million times, but msloo is just a brilliant conductor, and a brilliant person. her passion for music is certainly very infectious (ohno, speech day! but this is beside the point), and under her guidance we've not only acquired a greater appreciation of our repertoire, but also a heightened awareness of what it is to be a breathing, living, thinking, feeling human, and this common experience that we share with people from all over the world. and i'm really thankful for all the patience and understanding that she has shown, especially with a hopeless-at-rhythm person like me having to contend with the rhythmic complexities of the jazz mass accompaniment. in short, she really deserves a standing ovation, and i'm mightily pleased that the audience acknowledged all her efforts. wonderful, wonderful msloo. (:

apart from all the music, it was also the people who made this entire experience engaging, and memorable. so well, thank you RGSChoir for all the music! :D stacey and shiaoyen for their marvellous conducting; lisa and vivien for being wonderful sectional leaders and sharing with us this immensely satisfying journey thus far (lisa the prague roommate!); fiona for being such a scary-but-nice-and-huggable senior who has most decidedly helped bring my level of pitch awareness from -100 to a borderline 10; batchmates (chloe! qiqi! jovina! shzehui! jingyi! sheena! janelle! varsha! xiaoting! sirui! elizabeth! priscilla! kaixin! <- O.O imagine shouting all that in the style of jaakobin, hahaha!) for being such encouraing and supportive friends and for being there to talk to all this while; and of course, our most irritating adorable little secones, who have made me laugh so much with their most ridiculous antics. (granted, being in the same section as a certain stefanie and ariel makes things slightly peculiar. still, this senior loves you all very much. :D) oh, and well done for word game choreo. (: i must say i'm really proud!

having written so much, it nevertheless still feels that i haven't done enough justice to this concert as a whole, and i guess to a certain extent, i probably will never be able to. it's just the kind of thing that you need to be part of, to feel for yourself before you can ever understand what it's like, and well, basically one nice statement to you: nyak if you missed it, hahaha! xD

RGSChoir; thank you for the music. <3

**

yeah fine on to some random meme. so that this post won't be that saturated with choir! choir! RGSChoir! and more choir! (not that i'm saying that's a bad thing), though i hardly think anyone will ever read till here. if you have, well done. (:

[look, i'm deluding myself. truth is, hardly anybody comes around. other than choir people hahaha! and uh, i resent being called xiaojie, thanks. it brings back bad memories of my piano teachers. O.O]

okay anyway.

"Each player starts off by naming ten weird habits or facts about one’s self. At the end, tag six friends and they’ll have to do the same too. No tagging back. Here we go then. (:"

1. that chunk of text in quotation marks wasn't written by me, which is technically quite obvious, since i never do actually capitalize words in my posts.
2. however, i do abuse smiley faces, and i most discreetly slipped one in. yes, most discreetly indeed.
3. i erase pencil marks, dissect things and put on makeup with my left hand. a semi-southpaw, and i'm proud of it. (:
4. i took 14 years to realize the stuff in point 3. which isn't too bad because it does take 14 years to even get to dissecting things and (most unwillingly) putting on makeup. the bit about erasing stuff doesn't count.
5. i have way too much pink stuff. don't ask why. (and no i am not the greatest fan of pink, thank you very, very much.)
6. oh, i collect chocolate wrappers!
7. msleow probably hates my english now because i use the abbreviated form of because ever so often. and i insist on typing it as 'cos because plain cos reminds me of trigonometric ratios. not exactly the best thing, i say.
8. i am using way too many personal pronouns here.
9. do you know what i'm doing? gee, i don't know. (read: mildly schizophrenic. must be the influence of gothic literature.)
10. i need to go and sleep. go figure what's 'weird' about that. (truth is: nothing. grawr, i'm not going to strictly follow the stuff in the instructions anymore.)
11. wait, did someone say ten?!

oh yes, six friends. uh, i don't know. do as you see fit hahaha (:

byebye, adieu, sayonara, au revoir. okay enough is enough. ciao!

[edit] plainly i need to learn how to finish off a post in one sitting. this was finished on the 19th of august, 2007, a saturday and at the extremely early hour of 12:29am. yeah this makes more sense. right, good night, or should i say, good morning. [/edit]

or zongmin, in english, chinese or - okay, not really otherwise.

rafflesian
111 (06) | 213 (07) | 414 (09)
tripscience/lit♥ + mep, crab! (:
RGSChoir♥: sop2/alto1 + appassionata!
RGSPB-fior, batch of 'o9! (:
waddlian :D
CAPper'o7!
OBS}hillary!♥
team rgs/nsc08! (:
RGS-ICYL08: FIXcomm!♥
wycf08, satb choir! :D
ISYF@SG09!♥

lives, writes, sings, plays the piano, and attempts to sound intellectual at times (conclusion: fails rather miserably).

loves music (almost strictly classical, hurhur & inclusive of faziolis!), literature (& also the sciences - no they are not in conflict), making hopelessly lame puns, laughter, white/milk chocolate, cheesecake, the world & the people in it. list not exhaustive, by the way.

wants the world to be filled with peace, joy and love, and also wants (perhaps a little more selfishly) to be happy, plus lead a life of purpose. that would be more than enough. (:

oh, and she likes embarking on her own 'free hugs!' campaigns after exams and the like; not really sure why. D: (at any rate, you can tell that she's random enough.)

amanda g.
amanda y.
baozhing
brenda l.
brenda s.
chanel
charmaine
chloe
darrell
deborah l.
deborah z.
elizabeth
fangying
fiona
frances
giovanni
grace k.
grace z.
iris
jacqueline
jane
jiaxuan
jingjie
jovina
kezia
leevoon
lisa
lynette
madeline
may
mengshi
michelle
natalie
nikhita
peiying
priscilla
samantha
sarah
seetteng
shanjee
shiaoyen
shermaine
shze hui
siyi
sophia
stacey
stefanie
suetping
tienli
vanessa
wanhui
wanjiun
weite
xinyuan
yeephon
yinleng
yujia
zeslene

111'06
213'07
rgs choir
thefugacious@wordpress!

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very plain, she knows; but this is probably herself in its entirety - nothing more than a compilation of perhaps-boring-to-you little things (and the occasional Important Event), but also nothing less than all the brilliant memories which constitutes her life, and perhaps yours.

also interpreted as an inability to express with other things but words (nothing more, nothing less!), although even words sometimes won't do enough. but she does like orange.

v2.0 (230208): maybe solid grey isn't that fantastic after all. but wordy is good, all the same. she's weird, she knows.

ver. i-pretend-that-it-is-3.0-when-i-know-it-is-not (070608): i am boring, take that. (:

v4.0 (200908): got bored, so cut down on the quasi-fanciful stuff even more. perfectly plain now, though somehow the background still doesn't work on safari / google chrome. ):