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12 awesome days at Hong Kong (22 May – 2 June 2011)

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Let’s just say that cause and effect is the most interesting and amazing law that I have ever observed based on recent events.

It sounds quite cheesy, but if the major turning point didn’t happen, I probably wouldn’t have gone to Hong Kong with Audrey, Bi Neng and Tommy. I was rather upset then, and wanted to be alone myself somewhere and I thought HK would be a good escape for me to get my mind off things. Tricia suggested asking Audrey along, as it wouldn’t be safe for me wandering along the streets of HK alone. And I’m honestly glad I did! 🙂 Along the way with regards to the planning, Audrey’s bf Bi Neng joined us, and also her brother Tommy. To be perfectly honest, I had only met Bi Neng once before he agreed to join us in this trip, and I had never really talked to Tommy before. It was all exciting. 🙂 And if the turning point didn’t happen, I would have been the closed minded angry me, who because I was trapped in such unhappiness then, would be unable to open my life up to be happy to have more people around me.

I was pretty much in a direction of self-destruction before the turning point happened. Okay anyway, enough about it.

These 12 days I felt were the best 12 days I ever had in a really long time. It was only Audrey and I staying over at Tricia’s for the first 8 days (2 days in Macau too) and Tommy and Bi Neng joined us on the last 4 days of the trip.

I probably did a lot the most DMK for this trip (much more than the Chengdu trip) and even on the trip itself. Of course, having good company definitely helped and I really want to thank Audrey for accompanying me these 12 days, Tricia, for allowing us to stay at her place foc, Tommy for taking care of whatever that I didn’t notice and Bi Neng for joining us. 🙂

Even though we’ve been back for more than 1 month, I still can’t stop telling everyone how awesome this trip was and I am pretty glad that I am still really good friends with Audrey and Tommy!!

Going to put random pictures here and a few sentences here and there.

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Life, Soka

NUSSD Graduation.

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So I graduated from SD yesterday…

Wow, I remembered how 1 year ago after O&G 2010, I was walking around, feeling pretty upset and sore because my DSLR had dropped. And then Sharon and Derui came to me (at different times) and gave me 2 gifts. Sharon gave me a card that had Sensei’s guidance, and Derui, a notebook from SGI Japan. I will always treasure these gifts and will never forget the feeling when I received them.

I gave out my own postcards yesterday. Really glad that my friends love them! 😀 Based on their feedback that I got, it’s that the cards are pretty. I don’t think many of them know that the pictures were taken by me. haha. But anyways, yea.

Quite sad that a few of my friends weren’t able to attend the meeting. Would be great to have them there to share the joy and my testimonial.

I didn’t attend the day event this year, and even missed out on some stuff at the night event, but I had fun! Really loved how they involved us graduates this year, instead of us being participants only.

Anyway, I felt really honoured to be able to share my testimonial. First time!! I had always felt that my life was going well and that unless something really big happens, then I would be able to share. So now my chance came!

I thought back how 1 year ago I had only just became CIC (can you believe it?!) and now I’ve graduated! With so much more experience than I ever had in 3 years in poly. Haha. I suddenly thought of Sally’s perspective about my situation then and she explained that there was a possibility that because I had made a decision to be more active in Gakkai and also helped others more (something to that effect), I had changed my karma and polished my life. I really think so too now! 😀

I realised that life’s a series of parallel projects to be honest! So what’s next for me? I’m seriously thinking of joining Chingay next year. I had actually decided not to join this one when they announced it a few weeks ago, until they reminded us that next year is the year of the dragon!!! OMG!!! I performed at Chingay in the year 2000. Hahaha. So now it’s one cycle of the horoscope and I get the chance to join again!! Why shouldn’t I take it? haha. Trainings will start in October, so I have about a month to “relax” after the concert this week, before being busy again. I am going to make sure the month of September will allow me to settle down into learning the cello and some other long term plans that I have made for myself.

Cello… Finally I am learning it. I have been talking so many times about wanting to learn it but have been pushing it constantly away. My reasons? No money, no time. I realised that if I really want something to be a priority, I will have the money and time regardless. Even if it means my bank account being quite empty. And I was reading the book “Something Borrowed” in which the narrator was saying how she regretted having a prim and proper life up until then. Now that i have gotten school out of the way, I am going to live an exciting life! Sure I will keep a 9-5(6) job, I will still be strong in my faith, but it doesn’t mean I can’t do the many things that are out there for me. I want to learn cello, I want to be good at percussion, I want to travel, I want to have fun with my friends at Timbre, I can do that.

Nothing is impossible. 🙂

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Music, SNCO

“Marry You” Percussion Ensemble arrangement

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I wanted to write my thoughts with regards to an arrangement I did for “Marry You”, based on Glee’s version of it, originally by Bruno Mars.

I really wanted to arrange something for SNCO’s percussion to try out, more because most of the other percussion ensemble pieces are to be honest super boring or nothing most of us can relate to. I wanted to try something different, and also to try out arranging music. “Marry You” is actually the 2nd arrangement that I worked on (the first being “21 Guns” by Greenday but that is still WIP).

Anyway, I don’t intend to sell this, or gain any profits from it, so I do hope that I won’t incur any copyright issues. o.o

Okay. About my thoughts.

I chose to arrange this piece many many months back when I was feeling really happy while in a relationship, and then this Glee version came out. I checked out the Bruno Mars version but still prefer this version to be honest (because of the different voices etc). It took me about 1 month to complete this. The process wasn’t easy, as I am not good at harmonies despite a grade 5 in theory (theory and practical are always 2 different things). Plus I consider my primary instrument(s) to be the percussion and not the piano, or any other instruments. Basically, I am not a notes person. Perhaps this is why I want to learn the cello. 🙂

I wanted to dedicate this song to my then boyfriend. But I am not sure if this is appropriate now. So I shall just keep it for myself or my future husband.

All the mallet parts (other than the chimes) will get to play the main melody as well as the accompanying harmony. This is because I felt that sometimes some mallet instruments won’t get to shine or show in an ensemble. The Glee version kinda allows the different mallet instrument to sort of show through.

To be honest, I haven’t tried it out yet (or rather no one tried it out yet) so I am not sure how it sounds like. Hope it will be nice.

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Life

Enchanted.

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OMG I know how this feels.

Anyway, been having lunch/dinner with friends these 2 weeks. Don’t know what I was worried about seriously. I wasted my holidays worrying about something that I don’t have control in when I could have been having more fun meeting up with friends, having lunch/dinner.

I think I’ve changed. I used to be someone who didn’t like a lot of things. It made me angry, and upset, because I didn’t like these things and I didn’t want to do them. What resulted was someone who was scared and lonely, and boring.

Finally taking some action to fulfil something that I’ve been talking about since 16. 🙂

Need more daimoku. 🙂

Also, i didn’t realise how hard it is to write my own testimonial (for sharing in Gakkai). I’ve been procrastinating it a lot, because it is very painful to recollect these thoughts and put them down into words. It’s like cutting my heart open again. I am not kidding. I really think many people who have shared are really brave. I want to be like them.

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Life

Nothing is impossible.

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There is nothing that is impossible anymore.

And I really mean nothing.

My life has changed really dramatically in the past 3 months, and things that the closed minded me felt were impossible actually happened. 🙂 I used to think that I wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation with a few people, because we aren’t that similar, but that has changed. And I bet that the things that i now think are impossible, will be made possible one day! 😀

I wonder if anyone still reads this blog? Well, it doesn’t matter. To be honest, this blog will definitely be here for me to record my life and read it many years from now, things that I’d forgotten.

Things that I will be blogging about: Commencement, HK Trip (12 days one).

I would just like to say that I’m glad that I got to know Audrey, Tommy, Tricia, Crystal, Jie Shi, and many many others in Gakkai. Without them, I probably would have honestly just rather disappeared from this earth. Okay, maybe not as serious, but I would just wanted to disappear. It sounds cheesy, and probably a bit mushy, but I feel that such stuff should just be openly said, instead of being kept inside for one person, who may never even stay forever in your life.

Happiness should be shared with as many people as possible. Perhaps one day I may find that one special person, but in the meantime, I shall just be happy where ever I am, with friends who are happy being with me and do their best to help me however they can. 🙂

To be honest, I am really very glad that Audrey and Tommy stays quite near my place! I can actually just walk over to their house or meet them nearby for dinner. =x Quite paiseh to actually bug them for 2 consecutive days last week. Probably they would have dinner at home after their parents are back! But never mind, I hope that we can still meet up, etc. 🙂 They’re really really great people and friends and I honestly can’t thank them enough.

Maybe like what Kaiwei said, I probably haven’t met good enough guys yet, who would actually know how to take care of me. Maybe.

So far:

  • Graduate from NUS – DONE
  • Find a job – Almost done
  • Have at least 20k in my bank account
  • Visit Australia
  • Visit Hong Kong – DONE
  • Get Grade 8 in Music Theory (ABRSM)
  • Exercise more
  • Stay healthy
  • Share more about Buddhism
  • Compile a photobook for SNCO’s 10th anniversary
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Chinese New Year, Family

Day -1 of the new year of the Rabbit (CNY Eve)

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This year’s CNY eve we had a reunion lunch (with my immediate family) and a reunion dinner (at my Gu Ma’s house). I looked forward to it a lot because my cousin Mun Mun would be back having dinner with us! She hasn’t been back for CNY for 13 years (o.O) and instead of a phone call, it would be having an actual dinner with her! 😀

Reunion Lunch

Steamboat as usual

Reunion Dinner
Gu ma cooked all the food. Really good food for a first time (she said it was her first time cooking the dishes but we couldn’t really tell coz it was that good!).


The 盆菜 that almost didn’t arrive coz the delivery man was about 2 hours late!


Vegetables with abalone


Port’s wine.


haha


Group pic.

I was coughing during that period, and on the way home (cousin Jason drove us back) and I had a bad coughing fit. So embarrassing.

Anyway, I was really glad that I took the courage and effort to talk, even though it was only a bit, to my cousin Jason. I’m closer to his sisters, Mun Mun and Wendy, and for some reason I am closer to my female cousins than my male cousins even though I have more guy friends. 😀

It would be good if one day I can talk to all my cousins and relatives like they’re my friends. Coz I’m sure they’re awesome people. 🙂

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Haven’t blogged in a while.

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Haven’t blogged in a while.

This post was supposed to be a complaint, but I wrote in to the blogshop that I wanted to complain about and they replied me. But I realised that they don’t really know how to handle customer complaints.

So much has happened, and I guess I’ll slowly blog about the events then. 🙂

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Interesting

Beginning of the final semester.

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How time flies! It feels like yesterday when I first started school at NUS, and the upcoming semester’s the last semester!

And as of yesterday, I’m not a part-timer at EL anymore. In fact, it was the final day that I’m working there – as a student. Plans are in the making for me to have a full-time job after graduation, but it’s still not concrete yet, as I have things to find out before boss can let me know if I can go back.

I think many people have been discussing if I should go back, and I have been thinking about it too. My career counsellor was against me going back at first, until I told her about the positive work environment – where everyone’s friends with each other, we can joke around, boss having an open-door policy and everyone would help each other out when we can. In fact, I dare say that it’s like having a second home, and family. Everyone’s just like my siblings, we can talk without really getting offended (of course, with some exception issues, but that’s because of low EQ I guess?)

Boss is definitely expanding from what I observe (and with a discussion I once had with Kelvin after a not-so-informative-briefing at a potential client’s place) and he’d also hired 2 new colleagues. 2 new people with different personalities I would say. 🙂 I was given the honour to teach them the basics of what to note at EL, what to do, etc for the first week. Afterwards, it was up to them to survive and fly. 2 different characteristics, of course 2 different ways of helping them and them learning but of course, this wasn’t an easy job for me. I got told off by boss partly because of it, and not because I didn’t help, but yea. I won’t go into details because i don’t go by the stand of saying bad things here unless I’m really pissed. haha.

I was also pissed enough to rant about a client on twitter. I really hate it when a client doesn’t pay up and yet expects us to keep his website running. That’s still okay, until the client talks to you in a cold voice. I’m really going to boycott that catering service.

And in case you see that I have a new sibling on FB, worry not for it’s just a friend who added me as his sister. Amusing. Haha.

Anyway, my cousin Fong Ling had just given birth on 3/4 January 2011 🙂 Her child’s name is Daphne 🙂

And also finally added a new feature for my Facebook app.

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Life, New Year

Summary of 2010 and current plans for 2011.

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In 2010,

In 2011, I plan to…

  • Graduate from NUS
  • Find a job – Almost done
  • Have at least 20k in my bank account
  • Visit Australia
  • Visit Hong Kong
  • Get Grade 8 in Music Theory (ABRSM)
  • Exercise more
  • Stay healthy
  • Share more about Buddhism
  • Compile a photobook for SNCO’s 10th anniversary
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Life, YCF

SSA’s 2010 General Meeting cum SGI’s 80th Anniversary Celebrations

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So, I guess the YCF this year was replaced with a SYM as well as this: the 80th Anniversary Celebrations of SSA in Singapore Indoor Stadium (SIS). It was a SSA members-only event and you had to go for at least 2 discussion meetings in order to get the ticket for this event.

SD and FD members were also involved in this, for the youth dance, youth cheer as well as the RHQ cheers. I didn’t attend any of the trainings as I was to be involved in this celebrations with SNCO 🙂

It felt as though this was a YCF itself. And I really missed this whole “big family” feeling with the other SSA members.

We first had our major combined rehearsal on the 19th December at SSA HQ. And that was where I realised who will be performing with us.

That day was pretty fun actually. 🙂 I’d brought 90 to take pictures. Here are some of them. The rest are on my facebook:

*note: This is going to be a photographs intensive post


Singing is their passion.

And when we were on stage getting ready, I heard this drums sound coming from somewhere and I turned and saw…


UNCLE JACK!

I haven’t seen him in ages, and only heard from him a few months ago when I contacted him to catch up with him. He’s really funny, and I really miss those times in SWE when he was still a percussionist with us. He’s with the Red Band now. And I got to meet his student that day too. I didn’t know who he was but I thought he should be around my age from how he was dressed and he didn’t really smile. lol.


RCO Bassists.


Kenneth and Audrey.


Desmond


The rest of them


Kenneth, Audrey and Kat. I forgot what they were laughing about.

It happened to be Meow Ling’s birthday the next day (20th Dec) and so we had a small celebration for her.

24 Dec
We had a rehearsal on Christmas Eve. I went down there straight after work, and met up with Audrey to go there. Huzz was there and he walked me there to SIS and then went back. He’s just an awesome guy la. Even 5 minutes with me he also don’t mind. :))

So we went around playing with cameras mainly, and played twice only I believe.
I didn’t bring 90, so used my Nokia phone’s camera to take pictures.

Oh ya Jiu Jian, Jeff Wang, Zhu Yong Qin and Ye Li Mei were to be the celebrity hosts for the pre-show segment. Jeff Wang specially flew in for this event and the rehearsal! Wow!


And Jeff Wang looks really really good in person. Not kidding. I just cannot believe my luck to be able to see him! In fact, for some reason, I started behaving like a typical fan after seeing him lol.


Red band.

I don’t really remember a lot of things but just that at the finale, Audrey and I were almost the last 2 to go on the stage and we happened to stand in front of uncle Jack’s student. We turned to watch him play (we were at the back anyway, so no one could see us) coz as percussionists and as friends of Uncle Jack, I felt that the electronic drum pad thingy was quite interesting. And Uncle Jack’s student was quite good actually. He looked up and saw us watching him, and Audrey and I gave him a smile, and he smiled back (I’m telling this coz not because he smiled back or whatnot but because of what was going to happen next). He lost count of where he was playing at, and for like 2 seconds, stared at the drum pad and started laughing to himself. LOL! I thought that was pretty funny. lol!

I told Audrey, and we decided to disturb him the next day.

Some of them wanted to have supper at Kallang Leisure Park’s Mac around 10.30pm, but Audrey and I were like “But it’s so late!!!” As we are among the youngest in SNCO, many of them went, “Wah how old are you both? We don’t find it late but you both find it late?” haha. Well, we had to be there at Indoor Stadium at 8.30am! So we didn’t go.

25 Dec
Was to meet Audrey at 7.45am at Kovan MRT station but we were both late. We were to meet Kenneth at 7.50am at Serangoon MRT station but he ended up heading to Stadium first.

Met a few other SSA members on the train including Weilun and Siow Siong. 🙂

And it was soundcheck, and more waiting (and taking pictures time). The first show was to be at 2pm.
Some pictures are courtesy from Kenneth and his iPhone!


Me and Kenneth.

We had a mini gift exchange. haha. I got Kat’s gift (a cup), Kat got Audrey’s (a mini lava lamp), Audrey got Kenneth’s (thumbdrive) and Kenneth got mine (Monopoly Deal). We ended up playing Monopoly Deal while waiting for the finale. It was my first time playing it and I felt it was pretty interesting! Though kind of weird how suddenly someone will just win like that.

Then it was the finale again! And we took lots of pics backstage and kept singing “I Rise” (the theme song). Desmond even added beatboxing! lol. I haven’t laughed so much in a lot. And I was really high. Haha. You don’t get this sort of high easily.

So anyway, what happened at the end of the first show is that there were lots of performers who took pics with Jeff Wang. And I was among those who waited. However, was unable to do so as Jeff had to go backstage.
What happened after that was that my sis found out where Jeff Wang’s holding room was, and Audrey, Kenneth, my sis and I decided to go take a look and hopefully get a picture with him. It turns out that his holding room was the same as Pin Wen’s and Uncle Jack’s. And when we were at the door, Uncle Jack waved to call us into the room and we just rushed in. Lol. Talked to uncle Jack quite a bit, and then he asked us if we wanted to take pics? Hahaha. something like that, and we took pictures with the celebrities (sans Jiu Jian):


Pic of all of us former and current SNCO members! 🙂 Look who’s at the back. hahaha

More pics from waiting and the soundcheck before the second show:


The ever awesome YMD Brass Band. The choir also rocks. Their version of “I Rise” was totally epic and you can totally feel the whole song. Haha. But I wish the Brass Band people would smile more when we smile at them coz sometimes they don’t :((

So it was the 2nd performance after a lot of waiting, and Audrey and I went to touch up our makeup in between. We aren’t girls who usually wear makeups, but yea, just for the fun of it. lol
We also decided to take a pic with Uncle Jack’s student (we found out his name’s Jacob) after the finale.
After our performance with RCO, we sang lots of Gakkai songs with the RCO people. And then took a big group pic.

It was like a major party after that:


From Tricia’s phone.

And yes, we took a pic with Jacob. Audrey and I didn’t manage to guess his age right. haha when I found out his age, I was pretty stunned but yet sort of expected. Haha. He used this pic as his Facebook DP after I tagged him on it. 🙂 So sweet!

After that we had supper with Audrey’s family. Her dad gave us (percussion section) a treat at Subway and we talked to Martin after sooo many years 🙂

Everything’s just awesome. I decided to blog this now before I start losing the high (already losing quite a bit of it, and feeling quite sad about it. Nevertheless, it was an awesome and fun experience as always and as per each YCF. 🙂 Glad to know new people and see them in Gakkai! 🙂

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