It's 2.50am and im awake infront of my monitor. Blame it on jet lag, blame it my wandering mind...decided to update my blog before i forget everything that happened to me in the past 2 weeks or so.
Choir Olympics Bremen 2004. There is so much to say about this trip that i have no clue where to start. My mind is still shrouded by the cold air of Germany, laughters of idiots and the lovely voice. Not to mention the stench of turkish food...yes. boring saltish turkish food.
I barely recall the first day we touched down at hamburg. The hotel was superb. Great breakfast and even better rooms. Had a lousy tour though, managing only a glimsp of PSA and spending 4 euros on 2 bottles of "newwater". Visited some church the next day and had pork knuckle for dinner. English was obviously a peculiar language to the locals. Had trouble getting the idea of PORK and PIG across, however the universal snorting sound got us what we wanted. The conversation went something like
"Give us 3 pork knucles"
"Pork?"
"yah, pork as in pig pork?"
"Pig Pork????!!"
"koorrt koooort *snort snort*...pig?"
"ohOHHHH!! Swine flesh...kkorrrrnt kooorrnt *slap tigh*? "
"uh huh...thats the one!"
"sorry we only have one kooorrrt korrrt *slap tigh* today. How about some....moooooooo mooooooo flesh? *points to steaks on the menu*"
That was pretty much how we communicate in the end. The entire meal came up to a wopping 50 euros. ie, 100 Sin for 5 people who ordered ONLY 3 set meals to be shared among the rest. Expensive tasty food.
The rest of the trip was spent in Bremen, a small town known for 4 old animals stacked on top of each other - the Town Musicians. You can do a simple google search for the famour yet stupid story. Apparently mamayog told me the wrong story. He mentioned that the town was attacked...and these four animals made hell lot of noise in the barn to scare the attackers away. Well, what i read was that these four animals were old and on the verge of being killed by their owners. Thinking that they know some music, they set on a journey to Bremen to make some music. Midway, they stumbled across a house of robbers who were pleasing their stomach with plenty of wine and food, something the animals have been deprived of for many days. The four animals stacked themselves up and made ghostly sounds to scare the robbers away. Took over the house and lived happily ever after. Little brief...go read the story yourself.
Anyway, Bremen was a nice place. The days spent circled around breakfast, sectionals, warm ups, practice, competition, quailfying, shopping, finals, and of course, fantastic results. I thought a few of the chorale members shamed the group by acting irresponsibly in the hotel lobby but i shall give that a miss since im not in a mood to complain. Young people....*sigh*.
This competition meant alot to me, far more than SYF with VS and VJC. I would like to consider myself as a young singer for i have been through only that few competitions. However, i thought i grew alot in this competition. Not once but twice did i recover on stage, both in the finals. Qualifying was smooth sailing for both the choir and myself. The finals though was a different story altogether. Let me start off with mixed youth. The first song was salve regina and i thought we didnt started as well as we should have. The blend wasnt quite there and i remembered hearing a few notes going off. Generally, the volume was really low, like the choir didnt have the confidence to sing out. I concluded that it was due to my position at the side. Brushing that aside, i continued to sing...under sing slightly i must admit. The second song was Shu Wa. This time round i was confident that the starting went totally awful. THings were so messy that i didnt have time to recollect myself until towards the end of the song. By which i felt was alittle late... determined not to let the choir down, i took heavy breaths and capitalised on the fact that the altos were starting on the third song. dalapicolla. I calmed myself down and sang with the roles instated to us by Nelson over the days. Gossiping with intensity yet sounding deep at certain parts of the song. I thought we managed a comeback which boasted our confidence in our final Ace card. The Jap song was executed with enough emotions to melt the Great wall of CHina. Enuff said.
The same thing happened to me in folklore. The whole final was a touch faster. Maybe we were excited, but it threw me off alittle. Not so much for cui dong cui, more so for song da ge. I remembered cracking when i went high on " lin he li tou, you dui er e" My goodness, i was shivering with fear of the judges hearing it. All i could do was to calm myself down and continued singing immediately, delivering what nelson requires of us. The emotion and saddness of seeing someone off. Too bad i cant sing that now, i bet tonnes more emotion will flow. Anyway i was proud that i got back on my feet and sang with confidence for mamayog and janger. Got off stage feeling superb about myself. in the past, if something went wrong on the stage, my fellow singers would simply give up. I've seen that in chorale, especially so in Siglap on the night before we flew. However, i believe all of us saw the change. The chorale on stage didnt give up. We kept on fighting with faith and confidence of a winning choir. How we have matured! Im so glad to be apart of this gold medal choir....choRale is Ze Best!!!
My friends are in paris now. It should be night time by now, wondering how they are dealing with the expensive food and attractions. Certainly hope they enjoy themselves to the max. Dear Lord, pls keep a watchful eye over them and bring them all safely back to me. Miss them terribly but doubt they are the cause of my blues now. Something else is casuing it... i can FEEL it. Have the intuition...sixth sense!
My classes resumed on tuesday, attended the second macro class today. I mean yesterday. So boring, have to attend class so soon... how i wish the holidays were much longer. Something struck me while i was showering just now. If i am not wrong, i believe God was trying to communicate with me except that he didnt realise that a simple human like me will take slightly longer to react to his coded msg. How i wish he could have used a more earthly method like cellphone to pass me the msg. save me all the trouble/time wasted trying to decipher what he actually meant. I mean, what if i interpret things wrongly! anyway, with all due respect, im not complaining lah. Just thinking of the weird alternatives. Then again, who would believe a phone call that goes
"Hello My Son, Come to Church More Regularly. I Bless You."
Get the idea? maybe that's why coded msgs are still the best form of getting the info across. Alright, the message was coded in the following manner. I went to ah tong's church last week for this preaching session on why one should believe that the bible is indeed the word of god. It was more like a history lesson more than anything. All these said despite the strange conclusion the pastor gave. Wasnt appropriate and found no place in the title it sought to conclude. Anyway, some guy asked me questions regarding my visits. Obviously they were trying to prompt me to go there regularly. My reply was that i was only visiting the place and attended the talk/session purely out of interest and not because i was converting. I don't know what prompted me to mention my little sacrifice of cancelling tuition for the session. I think i was trying to tell them why i couldnt make it for church services. Because i had tuition on sunday mornings and each lesson will earn me $70. Cancelling the lesson that day already cost me that amount. Then a guy said something like God will repay me. Double somemore. Well, i thought it was the appropriate thing to say, like sny christians would so i brushed it aside.
The shoch came today because i saw the realisation of what the guy said. While i was reading and waiting for my class to start, my chem student told me she aced her lastest common test. Better still, a friend of hers want my tutoring services! I promptly arranged for us to meet on the weekend when another student called! also referred by my exisiting student! I almost fainted. two new students in a day!! And i took hours before it struck me when i was showering that God's msg was clear. The new students were the "double" repayment! The message was sent loud and clear. "COME TO CHURCH!!!"...but i...err...haiz. Dilemma!
Shall leave today's happenings to blog on another day.
Germany is such a stupid place. So so so stupid i got influenced...
Choir Olympics Bremen 2004. There is so much to say about this trip that i have no clue where to start. My mind is still shrouded by the cold air of Germany, laughters of idiots and the lovely voice. Not to mention the stench of turkish food...yes. boring saltish turkish food.
I barely recall the first day we touched down at hamburg. The hotel was superb. Great breakfast and even better rooms. Had a lousy tour though, managing only a glimsp of PSA and spending 4 euros on 2 bottles of "newwater". Visited some church the next day and had pork knuckle for dinner. English was obviously a peculiar language to the locals. Had trouble getting the idea of PORK and PIG across, however the universal snorting sound got us what we wanted. The conversation went something like
"Give us 3 pork knucles"
"Pork?"
"yah, pork as in pig pork?"
"Pig Pork????!!"
"koorrt koooort *snort snort*...pig?"
"ohOHHHH!! Swine flesh...kkorrrrnt kooorrnt *slap tigh*? "
"uh huh...thats the one!"
"sorry we only have one kooorrrt korrrt *slap tigh* today. How about some....moooooooo mooooooo flesh? *points to steaks on the menu*"
That was pretty much how we communicate in the end. The entire meal came up to a wopping 50 euros. ie, 100 Sin for 5 people who ordered ONLY 3 set meals to be shared among the rest. Expensive tasty food.
The rest of the trip was spent in Bremen, a small town known for 4 old animals stacked on top of each other - the Town Musicians. You can do a simple google search for the famour yet stupid story. Apparently mamayog told me the wrong story. He mentioned that the town was attacked...and these four animals made hell lot of noise in the barn to scare the attackers away. Well, what i read was that these four animals were old and on the verge of being killed by their owners. Thinking that they know some music, they set on a journey to Bremen to make some music. Midway, they stumbled across a house of robbers who were pleasing their stomach with plenty of wine and food, something the animals have been deprived of for many days. The four animals stacked themselves up and made ghostly sounds to scare the robbers away. Took over the house and lived happily ever after. Little brief...go read the story yourself.
Anyway, Bremen was a nice place. The days spent circled around breakfast, sectionals, warm ups, practice, competition, quailfying, shopping, finals, and of course, fantastic results. I thought a few of the chorale members shamed the group by acting irresponsibly in the hotel lobby but i shall give that a miss since im not in a mood to complain. Young people....*sigh*.
This competition meant alot to me, far more than SYF with VS and VJC. I would like to consider myself as a young singer for i have been through only that few competitions. However, i thought i grew alot in this competition. Not once but twice did i recover on stage, both in the finals. Qualifying was smooth sailing for both the choir and myself. The finals though was a different story altogether. Let me start off with mixed youth. The first song was salve regina and i thought we didnt started as well as we should have. The blend wasnt quite there and i remembered hearing a few notes going off. Generally, the volume was really low, like the choir didnt have the confidence to sing out. I concluded that it was due to my position at the side. Brushing that aside, i continued to sing...under sing slightly i must admit. The second song was Shu Wa. This time round i was confident that the starting went totally awful. THings were so messy that i didnt have time to recollect myself until towards the end of the song. By which i felt was alittle late... determined not to let the choir down, i took heavy breaths and capitalised on the fact that the altos were starting on the third song. dalapicolla. I calmed myself down and sang with the roles instated to us by Nelson over the days. Gossiping with intensity yet sounding deep at certain parts of the song. I thought we managed a comeback which boasted our confidence in our final Ace card. The Jap song was executed with enough emotions to melt the Great wall of CHina. Enuff said.
The same thing happened to me in folklore. The whole final was a touch faster. Maybe we were excited, but it threw me off alittle. Not so much for cui dong cui, more so for song da ge. I remembered cracking when i went high on " lin he li tou, you dui er e" My goodness, i was shivering with fear of the judges hearing it. All i could do was to calm myself down and continued singing immediately, delivering what nelson requires of us. The emotion and saddness of seeing someone off. Too bad i cant sing that now, i bet tonnes more emotion will flow. Anyway i was proud that i got back on my feet and sang with confidence for mamayog and janger. Got off stage feeling superb about myself. in the past, if something went wrong on the stage, my fellow singers would simply give up. I've seen that in chorale, especially so in Siglap on the night before we flew. However, i believe all of us saw the change. The chorale on stage didnt give up. We kept on fighting with faith and confidence of a winning choir. How we have matured! Im so glad to be apart of this gold medal choir....choRale is Ze Best!!!
My friends are in paris now. It should be night time by now, wondering how they are dealing with the expensive food and attractions. Certainly hope they enjoy themselves to the max. Dear Lord, pls keep a watchful eye over them and bring them all safely back to me. Miss them terribly but doubt they are the cause of my blues now. Something else is casuing it... i can FEEL it. Have the intuition...sixth sense!
My classes resumed on tuesday, attended the second macro class today. I mean yesterday. So boring, have to attend class so soon... how i wish the holidays were much longer. Something struck me while i was showering just now. If i am not wrong, i believe God was trying to communicate with me except that he didnt realise that a simple human like me will take slightly longer to react to his coded msg. How i wish he could have used a more earthly method like cellphone to pass me the msg. save me all the trouble/time wasted trying to decipher what he actually meant. I mean, what if i interpret things wrongly! anyway, with all due respect, im not complaining lah. Just thinking of the weird alternatives. Then again, who would believe a phone call that goes
"Hello My Son, Come to Church More Regularly. I Bless You."
Get the idea? maybe that's why coded msgs are still the best form of getting the info across. Alright, the message was coded in the following manner. I went to ah tong's church last week for this preaching session on why one should believe that the bible is indeed the word of god. It was more like a history lesson more than anything. All these said despite the strange conclusion the pastor gave. Wasnt appropriate and found no place in the title it sought to conclude. Anyway, some guy asked me questions regarding my visits. Obviously they were trying to prompt me to go there regularly. My reply was that i was only visiting the place and attended the talk/session purely out of interest and not because i was converting. I don't know what prompted me to mention my little sacrifice of cancelling tuition for the session. I think i was trying to tell them why i couldnt make it for church services. Because i had tuition on sunday mornings and each lesson will earn me $70. Cancelling the lesson that day already cost me that amount. Then a guy said something like God will repay me. Double somemore. Well, i thought it was the appropriate thing to say, like sny christians would so i brushed it aside.
The shoch came today because i saw the realisation of what the guy said. While i was reading and waiting for my class to start, my chem student told me she aced her lastest common test. Better still, a friend of hers want my tutoring services! I promptly arranged for us to meet on the weekend when another student called! also referred by my exisiting student! I almost fainted. two new students in a day!! And i took hours before it struck me when i was showering that God's msg was clear. The new students were the "double" repayment! The message was sent loud and clear. "COME TO CHURCH!!!"...but i...err...haiz. Dilemma!
Shall leave today's happenings to blog on another day.
Germany is such a stupid place. So so so stupid i got influenced...
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