MEEEEEEME.

I guess this is revenge for the 'hanxin smashes head, then smashes Ryan' comment.


Once tagged by this entry, the assignment is to write a blog entry of some kind with six random facts about yourself. Then, pick six of your friends and tag them; no tag backs. This explanation should be included.

1. First thing that came to mind - i love it when it rains. Especially when it rains outside and i'm indoors... somehow i find that very comforting. Must be linked to some childhood thing i can't remember. I have a big transparent door that leads from my room to outside so i can see the rain and the plants and the garden slowly flooding up. I find it fascinating. Although, now there are plants and the garden doesn't really flood up anymore. It's still good.

2. I have incontrollable bouts of nervousness before public performances. Despite all my experience with that sort of thing it never goes away.

Notably, the worst was before my first debate in the Julia Gabriels national debating competition. I remember sitting in the canteen outside the debate room and being paralysed. As in, I actually felt breathing difficulties and dizziness. I went on to win best speaker, but that was the last and only time and eventually my team dropped out at the quarter finals.

The other time was before band concert this year in which hyqel and I were guest performing. We were both novice jazz guitarists at the time, barely able to decipher a 'D7+5' chord (doesn't that make it a D12?), let alone navigate the intricacies of fingerboard harmony. Worse still, we were accompaniment. Hyqel told me he got it too. Strangely that somewhat alleviated my panic... and I realised that the best antidote to nervousness is empathy. And winning.

3. Perhaps my favourite musician of all time is the electric bassist Jaco Pastorius, even though I don't really play bass much. I wouldn't say that his music is terribly profound compared to the likes of john coltrane, but it just radiates an energy that is incomparable. I don't think I will wax lyrical about his music right now. Rather I think i'll note that up to the 70s and 80s electric bassists were progressing hugely by co-opting electric guitar technique. So much so that I think (at least as far as jazz is concerned) they overtook us. Now I think it really is time for guitarists to start learning back from the bassists.

4. I used to be a swimmer. As in, I used to swim competitively. This is in spite of the fact that i'm horribly unfit and I have never taken my gold survival certificate. It also was around 8 years ago, so whatever swimmer is left in me has probably drowned. I still regularly owned my non-swimmer classmates in secondary school though.

5. I always use (almost) full english when I SMS or email or use msn. I don't shorten things which don't need to be shortened like 'You' or 'like'. I can understand using shorthand for long words or phrases like brb for be right back, but I can't stand people hu tok lyk dis. Seriously. You've saved, like 4 letters at the expense of looking completely retarded.
I also don't use a qwerty keyboard. I've switched to Dvorak which is faster and easier on the hands.

6. I really only speak one language : english. My chinese is good enough to express myself in a very limited fashion. I usually just resort to english and gestures. I also know a little French, but not enough to speak fluently. I can understand rudiments of Bahasa Indonesia, but not enough to speak as well.

I am tagging RYAN, ABBY, ELI, NATALIE, GERARD and SHARON.

Sorry Ryan, if this takes too much time away from nanowrimo then please tell me.

adam

EDIT: sorry, had to post this. This is brilliant.
I think it's important that churches are up to this right now. I think it's a step in the right direction.

Have been feeling very insecure lately, about everything. I put it down to hormones, but that doesn't make it any less shitty.

In fact, I've been pretty emo this whole year. Whoever it was on that documentary about teenagers got it right. It's a terrible time and a wonderful time.

Mr. Pastorius

I saw Jaco Pastorius and his band play 'Liberty City' on Youtube.

It is heartbreaking to see a man so happy.
Toots Thielemans, the harmonica player, came over to him during a rest and said something I couldn't hear and he laughed. He threw his head back and laughed like a little kid.
It is heartbreaking because in that instant I knew my life's goal is to be that happy some day, in the same inimitable, exuberant way.

Hey, I don't even know the man. I don't claim to. Never before have I seen a person, let alone a grown man, so joyous.

So I'm sitting here and I'm listening to 'Liberty City'. It is infectious. I wonder what it must be like on the other side, if just listening is such a moving experience. What's it like behing the score, behind the instrument, putting out such wonderful noise?
You couldn't listen to his music and not be moved. You couldn't play his music without being changed forever.

I found a vid of Jeff Carswell and Richard Bona covering the piece with the Jaco Pastorius Big Band. They're grinning like idiots. I wonder if they've seen that same performance and that same huge grin that I saw.

I wonder if they felt the same bittersweet regret that the world might never see such a smile again - at the same time knowing that a piece of him lives on regardless. Maybe they somehow felt inadequate.

Few know that 14 years before the 2001 terrorist attacks made the day infamous, on the same day ocurred a smaller but no less profound tragedy. Jaco Pastorius was beaten fatally in a club on september 11th, 1987. He died 10 days later. Until I saw that laugh I didn't think anything of it...

It is heartbreaking, it is heartbreaking.

Nu-metal. What a stupid name.

Disturbed has renewed my faith in modern rock.

Let's just say, if, for the last year or so you were to place a little camera in my room, unbeknownst to me, you would be hard-pressed indeed to find me headbanging to anything.
I mean, Velvet revolver, yes. Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Nirvana. All great, but not really headbanging-like.

I can truthfully say i've never had the urge until about 10 minutes ago. Nu-metal is my one weakness when it comes to modern rock-derived music. I've never given a second thought about anything from punk-rock to death metal - but from the start i was sort of attracted to linkin park. I recall intensely liking a Korn song from awhile back. I shamefully admit having listened to limp bizkit for a short, short period.

Those were dark days.

Eventually linkin park's teenage-angst lyrics and hip-hop leanings began to annoy me. I never heard another Korn song in my life. Limp bizkit thankfully faded from any of my playlists.

Never once though have I had the urge to headbang. I guess it's one of those things I figured was for uncouth teenagers with pimples and bad breath - at best, woefully unrestrained, and at worst just utterly silly. Which intelligent rock band would want their fans all to develop whiplash? Seems kind of counter-productive.

Anyway, GETTING TO THE POINT. Disturbed is fantastic. They've got the nu-metal thing going on. They've got a groove, and some fantastic song-writing. They have a half-decent guitarist (far better than the quarter- and eigth- decent guitarists present in other rock bands.)

So i guess i sort of broke down and headbanged.
A little.
I'm watching my pimples.


adam

I can't shake the feeling that sitting alone at the Coffee Bean, reading a book and nursing a vanilla Ice Blended somehow automatically brands you as a social outcast without any friends.

I tackled that hypothesis gallantly this afternoon with a copy of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Haven't finished it yet, but it is proving to be a fantastic book with thoughtful (as opposed to mindless) humour. And it is Very Funny.

For me this is a good reprieve from the apocalyptic we are all machines doom-n-gloom drugs-and-sex-and-violence imagery of Neuromancer (which i'm doing for h3 lit... go me).

On the other hand, incest isn't much better.
Haha.

adam

We can NEVER win against the world. It's like a casino on a mind-boggling scale, the odds constantly and consistently weighted against us. We claim our victories in the mute flashes of our lifetimes. The sudden jingle of slot machines. The sound uplifts our sordid, lonely souls for enough the time it takes for us to fade into the mists of eternity, forgotten.

I think it's the greatest irony that those of us (and I speak categorically) who reject what we perceive as a 'system' and rebel eventually become systems ourselves. Only now we are systems of rejection, the scientific method. But we claim our bright moments of victory before we are trampled and forgotten.

Destruction is beautiful. It's a sordid, animal impulse. Tell me you've never experienced a moment of catharsis seeing a fallen tree, mangled by fire. It's as if the world for a moment became a voicing of the hatred that burns inside all humans. Or if the dust of our bodies for a brief moment felt the kinship of the oblivion that is our inevitable destiny.

Haha you have got to try this.

I was playing Pat Metheny's 'all the things you are' on itunes in the background while surfing the net - then I (somehow) navigated to someone's (super emo) blog which was playing that 'how do i breeeeeaaaaaathe without you' song. The resulting mix was quite shocking. I almost laughed.

For nonteknischen, that version of all the things you are is a fairly liberally interpreted (even by modern standards) version, and mixing it with sappy love ballads is HILARIOUS.

My next project is to find 'my heart will go on' and mix it with Song X. Maybe i'll call it 'performance art'.

Giggle.


adam

I feel horrible... open house rehearsal was such a screw up. We didn't know what we were doing... mostly underpracticed and underconfident. Everything was off... timing, tuning and stuff. We can't keep playing like this...

I promise we'll do better. I promise.
And to Julie Andrews, i'm sorry for mangling the song that you sang. We'll do better next week.

adam

sonya* it only hurts when i breathe / freedom! (= all the things i wanna do with my life, here i come says:
A BAT IS IN MY ROOM!
HELP

sonya* it only hurts when i breathe / freedom! (= all the things i wanna do with my life, here i come says:
HELP
HELP
MAKE IT GO AWAY


If i wasn't wondering what on earth I should do, I would've fallen off my chair laughing :P

adam

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/144186.asp

Shit. They managed to execute the people. The 3 Christians accused of inciting violence against Muslims.

The promos are like breakfast cereal.
Except without the sugar.
... and most of the carbohydrates,
and the dietary fibre,
and the 7 essential vitamins and minerals,
and come to think about it, without the fancy packaging...

and all you're left with is crunchy despair.

Life sucks bad.

adam

Global Personality Test Results

Stability (40%) moderately low which suggests you are worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious. Orderliness (30%) low which suggests you are overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense too often of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment. Extraversion (50%) medium which suggests you average somewhere in between being assertive and social and being withdrawn and solitary.

Take Free Global Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Glancing at my blogger dashboard, I realise that I have six blogs: This one, WB, triploidy, portfolio, logblog, and the never-even-started band blog. (The band went on hiatus before we managed to do anything. Haha.) I blog entirely too much.

Unrelatedly, I keep thinking that poetry is an easy way out for writers without the patience or ability to come up with plots/compelling characterisations. Probably isn't true one bit, but at least at the amateur level it does seem that way.

I mean, on one hand it is meant to be extremely dense, meaning-wise, but coupled with the fact that it takes some skill to extract this meaning, it isn't hugely difficult to come up with some nonsense claptrap which sounds philosophical.

On the other hand, I guess poetry does fulfil functions unsuited for prose, or story-writing. I mostly find stories more compelling than poetry, however, and it infuriates me how I can't seem to write any stories. I just don't have the knack. Will keep trying.

adam

Steve Irwin's dead. I don't even know why I care so much. He was always on the verge of getting on my nerves.

Yet something deep inside of me - the primal snake-grappling, crocodile-wrestling savage that exists inside all of us (die, Josef Conrad!) is profoundly sad. The world has lost a great man.

I'm stilling grappling with it. People like Steve Irwin don't die.

This is a cruel world, but we will remember you in it, Mr. Irwin.

adam

*Edit* It was a fatal sting from a stingray, I just found out. Oddly poetic, but I would never wish it on anyone. Truly, the man was an icon; a loud, blustering, manly, enthusiastic icon. He is undoubtedly taking this new development very well; but the world will not so soon recover from its heartbreak. Rest in peace, Steve Irwin.

The air this morning wasn't raw or sandy. When i woke up it was an awful taste of purple and depression. Not the artsy kind either. Wake up and grope for the stimulants depression. No amount of teenage angst will make that pretty.

I've never felt so confused. Angst is our way of making depression beautiful. But when you're just depressed, it sucks - not low enough to indulge in self-pity, just low enough to feel awful, awful. Everything I do reveals some new silliness, some ugly scar (I thought was healed over). Not enough honesty to finish this hundred -

100 words
13 May Saturday

adam


edit: Thanks to everyone for the concern, really. It's better to angst here than to be off in some dark corner slitting my wrists or doing LSD. Actually... doing LSD... mmmm.

Haha. I hope that left you all suitably non-comforted. But thank you anyway.

Mother

NO! You and your silly strings
you putter 'round and fixing things
you stay on your spot and turn about
you head is made up of undoubt

You makes the kitchen very clean
you makes the party you isn't seen
you do the work you do the time
you makes the words in poems rhyme

you tie things up you tie things down
you sings your happy songs but frown
you de-mar-kate, you draws the line
you injured but you still is fine

You eighty-five you living done
you got daughter you got son
you dying but not wonder how
you tired but you happy now

by adam

"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."
- Ecclesiastes 1:2

So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.
- Ecclesiastes 2:17

i guess i've had time to re-examine my value systems.
I'm not a good person by far... I really have no spiritual qualms about lying, cheating, vandalism and various forms of petty larceny... The reason i'm not a criminal is because I can't deal with the consequences. Does that make a person virtuous? That on it's own isn't half as disturbing as the fact that i'm not disturbed by this at all.

I don't believe in anything. I guess I'm a bona fide cynic that way. Nothing moves me. I don't believe in happiness. I don't believe in love.

I don't even like people.

I believe in God, but I believe even more that the people who also believe in God are sometimes the most screwed up.

Sometimes I think I only wake up to thank God for the fact that I can lie to people about how much I dislike them and how unhappy I am. I hope that isn't true. I hate myself for the fact that I have no justification to be miserable. Life hasn't been bad for me.

I guess you could say something for the purity of my dislike for everyone... like Iago's evil, it is motive-less and enigmatic. It isn't hate, not at all. I wouldn't, for example, suicide bomb a building to alleviate my discomfort. It's just a certain feeling I get in the mornings that the world is out to get me. It is not a noble lust for vengeance, or a tragically misguided hatred for all living things. It is a limp, futile dislike, an annoyance and an irritation.

I am twisted and perverted in that way. Honesty is what I value most in other people. I feel sometimes that the worst way to insult someone is to be conciliatory. People should have their feelings out at one another. The highest good is to be honest with yourself about what you are... lie to others, not yourself. Sometimes it means you face something terrible and ugly, a brooding monstrous gloom. The people who tell me we are fighting a 'spiritual war' against wordly temptations are idiots. I am my first demon.

adam

Treatise on improvisation

"Since I can't read music and everything, I find out that I do the best when I just... listen for where, where i'm trying to go with it, where it can go, and not try to rush it, not try to make up things as i'm going, just let them come out, then I'm a lot better off, if I start trying to pay attention to where I am on the neck, or this is the proper way to do this or that, then I end up thinking that thing through, instead of playing from the heart I'm playing from the mind, and that's where I find that I get in trouble."
- Stevie Ray Vaughan

I was just listening to some records of yesterday's gig. My solo sounds truly awful... noodly non-phrases everywhere and no resolution whatsoever.

I realise the problem now, having just a minute ago done a few recordings which are surprisingly satisfactory.
The phrase given by some of the musicians i respect the most : Zhaohan, Shawn, Xiumin, Hyqel - 'Just whack" is far more profound than I initially thought.

On one level, you need to understand why a solo works. How the artist manipulates notes, phrasing, harmony in order to create an effect.

On the other hand, I realise that thinking about your solo ruins it. There is a place in the soul where both art and the appreciation of it comes from, which slowly assimilates every revelation in listening, in reading or in viewing and makes it part of you. Innately, just by appreciation of it, the musician understands intuitively the effect of what he hears, and this intuition goes here and becomes part of you, and this is the only part of you which understands it well enough to use it.

No amount of theory will correct for a deficiency here.
Solos come from here, not from analysis, and to force an effect on your solo is tantamount to editing your very being. It doesn't work; human beings are far too strong for that.

This is not to say that musicians (or, for that matter, writers and artists) should not transcribe, memorise and analyse other people's work. This is essential; it adds a body of physical technique that can be drawn upon when improvising. Without physical technique musical ideas cannot be realised. Thus when the musical sense demands the sound of, say, a tritone substitution of D7, one must actually be able to play it in order to have any effect.

That is the beauty of any art, be it music or writing or visual; it cannot come solely from the rational mind which is so easily duplicated with circuitry; it must come from the part of humans (call it the subconscious, call it the soul) that responds to the world with a wonder that may never be replicated.

adam

*edit* in a quick update, i'd just like to note that having spent 2 hours on my dismal soloing I have FAILED COMPLETELY to do my lit essay. GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAh.

I am a bundle of empires
and towering desires
held together by the singing of a song.

HOLY SHIT I AM GROWING OLD BEFORE MY TIME

You Are 24 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

I took this 6 months ago and I was still 14 i believe. Shit!

Abby's blog reminded me to re-take the quiz, btw.
lifethrujesus.blogspot.com

adam

the blind man is singing in Irish
He get his money in a tin dish
He just a corner serenader
once upon a time he could've made her, could've made her


Lyrics from Dire Straits (still in my opinion the best rock band EVER, up there with Queen and Nirvana)

That could be me. Siggggghhhhhh....


adam

In one fell swoop I will shatter the chains of tradition, and prove to the world that I have no life.

I will blog because I'm happy.

I am inexplicably happy - it's like there are a million things that happened today, none of which would justify having a good day (in fact it was rather terrible, adding to the inexplicability) on its own, and ...

I guess in total it just makes you happy, which, as I have established in previous, angst-filled diatribes, is rare. The world is good, creation is good, and wonderful and colourful and even processed air feels alive, like there's a little song and a little story in every note of a cricket's call

or the sound of the TV outside, that's someone's story too. And all the little stories they add up and you can feel them humming on the air, and with a contented sigh you let back your strained eyes and know for sure that your story... MY story... is up there, in the air, and somewhere is making someone else happy as well.

adam

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education."
- Bertrand Russell

Actually, mostly because I'm just bitter about my GP marks and need to rant about something.



I can't muster enough vitriol to bitch about the school anymore. Actually, i think school really is kind of great. I really enjoy it. Education, on the other hand, just sucks. I wish we could come to school and not learn anything... I don't believe in learning anyway.

Ryan D suggested to me earlier today that we should just be given straight As for our 'A' levels in the true spirit of the raffles programme, because they've already assumed for the 'O' levels that we're the top 3 percent of Singapore, academically and thus going a step further isn't such a logical leap. Sounds like a good scheme to me.

So CTs were bad.

Somehow I wish I cared more about them. My studies are in shambles, but I don't think i'm quite agitated enough to do anything about them. Siggghhhh... It seems like everyone else has been shocked into a state of frantic mugging.

The last few days have ground my willpower down completely. I think i'm caught in a self-destructive cycle... when I can't find energy to do anything else, I practice. It cleans the soul, I think. When I practice, I have even less energy to do anything else. Net result : homework suffers.
Is it better to have a clean soul and be a failure at life?

adam

I've gotten back on the piano. It feels quite good, even though my hands are stiff from months of neglect. Looks like I'll have to re-learn everything, which is, to tell the truth, quite an exciting prospect.
Maybe i'll even get xiu min to teach me something about jazz piano, hmm. But I don't think i'll actually start official lessons again, that's way too stressful. And somehow i enjoy the process of self-learning. In any case, my piano-playing aspirations sort of died with my ABYSMAL grade 8 results. In a way, it forced me to prioritise, but the more immediate result of scraping a bare-minimum pass was that I doodled on gershwin for awhile, tried half of poulenc's novelettes, made a rather pathetic attempt at a Beethoven sonata (pun intended. Score!), then eventually just gave up the whole thing.

Feels good to have it back.

adam

The Teenage Textbook is a cheesy, obnoxious little novel that would be completely insufferable if the author had not written with such ferocious honesty that any form of linguistic silliness becomes permissible, and beautiful.

Adrian Tan possesses a quirky, raw sort of genius.

-adam

Ah! an original poem by adam

this is the sound
this is the sound
this is the sound the raindrops go

pitter patter
spitter spatter
on my window a bitter blatter

a scritch, a scratch
a rhyme that won't match
between the spaces the raindrops flow.

-adam

uncampable! haha.

CCAL camp was a rush, of mud and rain and seawater and stick-like things. I think I shall not recount the happenings, so as to allow epic verbal recountage, but it was very, very fun.

Group D3, you guys made the experience possible. I think we sort of clicked earlier on, and we just drove each other with humongous enthusiasm. If there's one quality i respect more than any other it's enthusiasm - not bubbly haha enthusiasm but seriously putting your entire being into the one thing you love. That's enthusiasm, and we all somehow know that.

Having been through a number of camps/similar programs I'm actually quite cynical about the whole 'team spirit' thing. I don't believe that people somehow magically click and work together as a team without months if not years of knowing each other.

So. I won't say we'll be wonderful friends. I won't say we'll never forget each other. I say we might, but for group D3 my cynicism was tempered with a lot of respect for you all. It was a good 4 days, we cheered and we achieved, but the journey starts now I guess. We WILL keep in contact, and at the end of this year at least I hope to call you all friends.

Verbose thanks are directed at QM James Lee, who is an inspiration to me, and i have immense respect for. Thank you for the letter. You embody all the qualities of leadership that we were supposed to learn in camp, and I know you're a much better person than I'll ever be. I suspect I'll eventually fumble my way through with Jazz Club, but you'll succeed whatever it is you're doing.

For the last time maybe, D3 power! Will see you all in school... for now it's back to the jazz.
adam

the holidays are here

School ended just in time, I was starting to lose control of everything already. Responsibility is such a screwed up word. I've got to keep up appearances to everyone else to keep doing the job that I love. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing... but it just sucks.

Last few days of school were a desperate stretch to make it to the safety of holidays. I scraped through, skipping lessons and rushing homework. Now everything's in a mess. CCAL camp from 26th to 30th, then some performances.

I think i'd better start cleaning up.

adam

I'm turning 17 tomorrow. I'm anticipating a little more love than last year (hope it goes well) but i guess i shouldn't ruin it with too much expectation. There are so many things I want and can't have, and so many things I have and don't need. I think though, that this year I shall just be happy. I shall call it a birthday present, and no-one will know any better, least of all myself.

This year I vow not to play it safe, to do too many things and make more mistakes than I’ve ever made in my life.

100 words

- adam, who is 2 hours and 29 minutes short of officially being 17.

Little Wing

Well she’s walking through the clouds
With a circus mind that’s running round
Butterflies and zebras
And moonbeams and fairy tales
That’s all she ever thinks about
Riding with the wind.

When I’m sad, she comes to me
With a thousand smiles, she gives to me free
It’s alright she says it’s alright
Take anything you want from me, anything
Anything.

Fly on little wing,
Yeah yeah, yeah, little wing

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This one's another hendrix tune. I've heard 3 different versions (SRV and ZZtop, Clapton and Sheryl Crow, Satriani and Vai) and they're all amazing. They sound completely different, but the beauty of hendrix's songwriting still gets through.

I really can't say much. It just hit me so hard - this is why I play guitar. I could cry playing this, i really wish I could.

adam

Mornings. Hazy, dusty mornings in the dun-hued sunlight; these are the essence of life. Not Nights- nights are dark and angst-filled. Evenings are just pretentious.

Mornings are real and gritty and sleepy-eyed, intruding on your comfortable sleep, nagging like a mother. You can feel the sandy air in your lungs, the last dreams escaping from beneath eyelids. The clumsy, bleary-eyed first steps.

The shower shocks; and then it's railings, staring out at the sun and the buildings. It is a quiet brightness, raw and unmitigated. Smiling at the sun and the dust, I turn away.

100 words

adam

It seems that now everyone's angsting about their lost secondary school days. Various blog entries, conversations and even a chinese model essay (!) serve as evidence.

I don't get it, am I missing something?
Was I asleep, comatose or incapacitated for a good 4 years while time flickered by?

I have no memories of secondary school life. No nostalgia. Ms Kuang told me in sec 3 that i'd grow to love my class by the time graduation came. I never did stop despising them. I'm sorry Ms Kuang. Nothing about any of my CCAs struck me as particularly engaging. Bowling- i quit out of boredom after 2 years. String ensemble- I was a second-rate violinist anyway, and I didn't feel connected to the performance the way some did. Debate- I never got anywhere. JGs RI team 2 was great, but we were team-mates and that was pretty much it. Half the team was juniors, and I don't meet them anymore.

I never found the joy of shared experience because I was angry at everybody.

I told myself i'd give a new start in JC. I did - no-one else did. Like dissolves like, and the rest float and linger.

I'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'm sorry.
Now I'm stuck between people and the afterimages of others' remembered past.


-adam

Jazzpiration

Jazzpiration was a huge success, and i thoroughly enjoyed the performance. I think thanks are in order...

to band-mates Boyle, Chermaine, Gao Yuan, Sara, Tania - Thanks for putting up with me. You people are wonderful. Thanks also for the smiles and reassurance - i really needed that at times.

to other jazz club people who also worked tremendously hard for the concert. Especially the j1 bands - kelly's band and sneha's band, who've had to learn everything in slightly under 4 months. I know what it feels like.

to the seniors for teaching us everything in such a short time, and organising everything. And also for still being very, very l33t.

to the senior-seniors (or basically Mark) who came down to teach us stuff despite having NS.

to classmates from 07S03N. Class <3! Thanks for putting up with my complete non-functioningness these 2 weeks, and for covering for all my undone tutorials, assignments, all the lectures i've missed, and for lending me money to buy coffee. Also, for buying tickets and supporting.

On a more personal level, i need to thank God for everything that went right, and some more for everything that didn't. Yay to Sara for instant pre-concert prayer meeting. And perhaps most of all, i want to thank God that it's over.

adam

EASTER !

Easter is wonderful.

I feel inexplicably happy today, which doesn't happen often to people like me. :D I even used an emoticon in a blog post, woot.

I guess it started in the morning. Woke up on decidedly the right side of the bed, and even no breakfast before church didn't dent my spirits like it usually does. The grin stayed on through easter mass (which is the best mass of the year. trust me on this. My heart does a little jump whenever the choir sings 'Easter song' no matter how out-of-tune, out-of-time, sleepy and drugged they are. ) We had to stand up too because the church was too crowded, but somehow it didn't matter. Verily we are slaves to our own negativity- the amount of good things that happen to you is proportionate to how happy you are.

Went out to meet some relatives who're over from indonesia/australia for lunch at Sizzler's. DECADENCE! The fast is over, truly. Then just shopped for awhile, ate more sushi than should be legally allowed, and went home.

Easter is really great. I must be allowed to say that again. Easter is really great. There was something horrible and looming on my chest for the entirety of lent, and suddenly it's off and it's great. Maybe that's supposed to happen, hmm...

adam

Christ is risen, Hallelujah!
Happy Easter to you. That means you.

it's a small world...

I returned to my old house today with my dad. We're moving back in a couple of months, and since the tenants have moved out we now have to refurbish the place, which is in quite an awful state.

I'll say it quickly: the place has shrunk. I've caught myself many times in the past year dreaming of going back to the vast open-spaces, the tall angled ceiling, the endless corridor, the attic with so many doors. I grew up in that place, and growing up somewhere kind of entails the assignment of the size of imagination to places that seem so little now.

Going back was eye-opening - I felt like it was no longer a house, but just a miniature scale model. I could remember everything about the rooms, the corners, the precise shade of blue that the toilet is. I could say, here. Here is where i sat and stared at the way the wall meets the ceiling. Here I lay down sideways on my upper bunk and dreamt of leaping off, sprouting wings before I hit the ground. But it no longer holds any fascination for me; I can almost reach the ceiling by jumping now. It didn't feel like it was the real house; just a scale model for me to point and say, here, here are where my childhood memories are.

I walked through the house. They've chopped down the tree here (it's dying, they said) and that thought seemed to present an ominous symbolism in my mind. I couldn't help but think that ten years ago I would never have walked somewhere assigning ominous symbolisms to dead trees.

It saddens me to think that I've now lost something. One might say, with added height comes a diminished perception of size. With added experience comes a diminished perception of importance. Rubbish, I think - I squatted down and the garden didn't seem any bigger. No matter how I flattened myself against the stucco wall the corridor refused to stretch to encompass infinity.

Have I lost my childhood? No, I still remember everything as vividly as the day; and those were (in hindsight) some of my happiest. But that is sentimental nonsense.

The house is still there. I think i've grown with self-awareness, awareness that my body occupies some space that is far from negligible, and now the rooms are smaller for it. I've lost the carefree idealism (which expands like an ideal gas to fill all available space). I've lost the ability to colour and fill, with the infinity of imagination, the white hard walls.

I've grown up, one might say. But has the world really just gotten smaller?

adam

be happy ALL THE TIME

Be happy all the time.

Because if you aren't happy at any moment, you may die the next second of an aneurysm and then you'd die miserable. How much does that suck?
Even if I've had the shittiest day of my life, the thing I should do is sit down somewhere and force myself to be happy. The human capability for self-deceit is one of the few truly infinite things in this world; even so in most cases there's no need for such.
If there's the tiniest shard of good news buried in my angst-ridden soul i assure you there's some way I can be happy about it.

adam

angst!

It seems RJ has awakened a wellspring of angst in me. Maybe it's the environment, the girls, the competition and the need to impress people.

Lol. Since when did angst impress people?

Anyway, I long for days long past when I was younger, carefree-er, perhaps slightly more conflicted, and far less sane (yes 3n, you have been spared the worst. haha. ) The most surprising thing about life so far is to realise that I harbour and treasure a little part of myself, perhaps buried deeply sometimes, that is proud to be just a little mad. I think to be completely sane and well-adjusted is to give yourself up to the world and become part of another inanity.

I believe you should keep a part of yourself separate, always questioning, and always laughing, always cynical, always slightly dead to the world, and always slightly disjointed, malfunctioning, slightly disconnected and dysfunctional and slightly disillusioned. It gives me a perspective on things. I think people who are truly sane are also truly silly. Then again, people who are truly mad are also perhaps not worth being.

"I went mad for a while,' said Ford, 'did me no end of good." - Life, the Universe, and Everything by douglas adams

adam

All along the watchtower

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
This song just exploded in my head. A combination of Bob Dylan's inspired songwriting and Jimi Hendrix's furious guitar playing, it manages to be cacophonous without being heavy, and Jimi manages to capture the quiet melancholy even while playing loud and fast.

A dead simple 3-note riff behind the entire song really drives the song but never gets boring because Jimi keeps the lead part interesting with constant changes in rhythm, register and texture, jumping from a spacey, echoing phrase to a dramatic fuzz-wah and many other changes which manage not to be gimmicky.

In today's scene, with many musicians doing the hundred and two-hundred beats per minute, and many other effects made available to technology, it's easy to discount simple lyricism and musical sense. But while he may not be as fast as modern players, the genius of Jimi Hendrix is timeless.

adam

one more member

The call must go out again.
I'm looking for a vocalist for my band, tentatively referred to as No Thesis Statement. Contact me personally for samples of the kind of stuff we'll be playing.
Also, I'm looking for a keyboardist/saxophonist or blues harp (that's harmonica to the rest of you). Improvisation is necessary, and preferably you should be able to sing, especially if you're a keyboardist. [because keyboardists are cumbersome and you must be able to do something if there is a) no keyboard part or b) no keyboard]

Respond please. If you know anybody who can do the above, even if they can only sing, please tell them i'm looking for a vocalist, even a temporary one.

Current band members are Huang Lu and Jian Wei.

adam

The rest of the mosaic festival was predictably amazing. After the Blues event, it started on wednesday with the Pat Metheny concert. The man is a genius.
After starting with some light acoustic pieces, he quickly melded into serious, avant-garde jazz. Admittedly I didn't really understand the more experimental pieces, but the rest of his set list was... brilliant, to put it one way, and enlightening, to put it another way. I didn't know so much sound (and so many sounds) could come out of 3 instrumentalists. Also, the double bassist is scary. At the end of the concert he received a standing ovation and performed 2 encores - I believe the second one was entirely made up on the spot - check for a guitar lead-in, check for 12-bar-blues progression. Amazingly, by the end of the piece, the whole band was marvellously synchronised.

I am awed, impressed, and determined.

adam

(more on the other events later)

Thanks Chermaine for arising new feelings of self-doubt in me. I stopped writing because writing is a silly, facetious, sel f-indulgent thing to do and I only ever did it to impress people not because I actually enjoyed it and even if I became good at impressing people I gained nothing from it except other people's adoration which I don't need currently because my ego is swollen enough as it is and I'm trying to focus on more important things.

I needed to get that out of my system. Who the hell am I kidding?

Haiku 03

watching from my window
the quietness
of the leaves

-adam

wish list!

I'm looking for the following albums, if anyone would like to buy/lend me, that would be really, really amazing.

John Mayall's Bluesbreakers - the 'beano' album. i don't know what else it's called. it's got Eric Clapton reading a copy of 'beano' on the front.
Cream - Wheels of Fire
Cream - Disraeli Gears
Derek and the Dominoes - Layla and other assorted love songs
Miles Davis - In a Silent Way
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (both of these are VERY difficult to find, according to mark)
Eric Johnson - Bloom
Eric Johnson - Tones
Anything by the following artists:
B.B king
Pat metheny
Chick Corea/Thelonious Monk/John Coltrane
Yes
Pink Floyd
Stevie Ray Vaughan (anything but the 'Texas Flood' album, i have that.)
Louis Armstrong
The Electromagnets (that's Eric Johnson's band... apparently quite difficult to find too)
Alien Love Child (also Eric Johnson's band)
Wes Montgomery

the blues is a feeling

Paul Ponnudorai has restored my faith in the Singapore music scene. I went to watch the "Blues Men' event at the Mosaic Music festival yesterday. Quite stunning. He possesses a huge, fantastic stage presence that i've never before seen in an actual Singaporean, not even Winston Hodge (sorry Mr. Hodge); the audience was quite helpless other than to stand around and scream and clap. Performing is about more than good music, evidently.
All 3 performances (Tania, Paul Ponnudorai, ublues) had something to offer, musically- all excellent singers, guitarists, bassists, keyboardists, and yes, harmonicas and saxophones. These are no laid-back musicians, there's plenty of screaming, hopping, just dancing about, and silly theatrical tricks. In the end though, i was very impressed, and thoroughly satisfied. Paul puts it right - 'the Blues is a feeling. It's an attitude'

adam

The RJ band concert and jazz performance at Suntec are looming. Sometimes (when it's really quiet) I think that I've really gone in the deep end and I'm going to drown in my stupidstupidstupid commitments. NO! I'm sick of being useless. I'm going to get something done, even if it kills me.

In other news, jazz today didn't happen, because the J2s had some surprise GP common test (just how do you achieve that?) but I showed up anyway with my guitar and jammed a bit with huang lu and kelly. I think (despite what he says) huanglu's picking up the bass pretty quickly - I've asked him to join my band already since terence is giving up. So far the lineup is
Jian Wei - drums
Huang lu - bass
Myself - guitar
- making for a nice power trio. Now we just need to round off with a vocalist... i'm not necessarily looking for quality of voice here. RJC has plenty of good singers, but scarce few frontmen. I need a frontman. Charisma, personality, and if you can scream like Kurt Cobain, that's a bonus too. We're playing mostly blues, maybe a bit of early rock, but I want music to stay focused on one thing at a time.
All of the above is subject to change. If anyone is interested in fronting for my band, you can tag here or email me.

adam

product placement

Franz Ferdinand is so horribly, unforgiveably infectious, that they should be made illegal.

--

Dear Diary,
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the harder I try to put something wonderful and profound and philosophical here, the more and more of an idiot i'm going to look like - and maybe I can't think at all, but I'm just pretending. Do you think that if I try too hard I ruin the art or the flair or just that magic of it... or am I trying too hard already?
The irony of it is, the more and more I try to tell you about it coherently the less and less I know what I'm talking about - have you felt that before? Sometimes I think that the world is too caught up creating profundity to stop and listen to themselves blither in a horribly, beweaponedly silly manner.
Dear diary, sometimes it's tempting to think that there's no such thing as honesty- only different degrees of fabrication and contrivance. But that's a horrid thing to think - let me tell you something. You know, sometimes, you can look at the world and what a terrible time other people are having because they're so forsakenly blind and then you think, 'wow, that's terribly silly', and then - you suddenly realise, wow, that's ok. I can still live on. Sometimes being the most profound doesn't matter. And that's the most wonderful feeling.

adam

Talentime's over. The results came as a massive surprise, especially since the judges gave us one of the lowest scores (if not THE lowest). Okay, let's not fool ourselves- i think we screwed up quite badly, and the good results could be due to any number of things quite rather unrelated to how well we played.

I think that a musician's ability falls under two important spheres: technical ability with the instrument, and ensemble ability to work with other musicians - and for last night I quite feel that we somehow didn't manage to click together like during rehearsals. The judges said it quite well- we looked like 5 individuals on stage. Gah.

Anyway, immense respect for the other performances, especially the other 2 bands who I think are MUCH more deserving (esp. the first one), and will definitely have to tighten up for the next gig.


adam

EDIT: 7 good things about this week.
Standard tuning is good.
Listening to the blues is good (die rockers!)
Single-coil pickups are good.
Working cable jacks are good.
Colours which aren't black are good.
Gain set to anything less than 9 is good.
Best of all, not having to play the bloooooody riff from 'slither' is good. I have no idea Dave Kushner does it all the time and doesn't go completely barmy.

Metheny vs G

http://www.carrothers.com/pat_metheny_vs_kenny_g.htm

This is hilarious. Pat Metheny slams 'smooth jazz' and their sax-blowing head honcho, Kenny G. Okay, it was a little shocking to hear this sort of comments from a professional musician, but it WAS on a relatively personal forum, and I completely agree, so Pat is forgiven.

Apparently, Pat was majorly pissed off when Kenny G overdubbed himself over a louis armstrong track. He calls it 'defilement', and "spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over" all of which I agree with.

On the other end of the spectrum, it is (as Metheny mentions) immensely frustrating to musicians as a whole to see people with the fewest bits of talent making it successful. No, I wouldn't exactly hold it against them for being successful, but if the world has come to this state then perhaps musicians (and other people) should take a couple steps back and see where exactly our entire culture is headed - and I can assure you that it's a fairly ugly place.

Simple Plan is like the Kenny G of our generation. Again, nothing against them for making money - after all, there are PEOPLE who buy their records. However, it's kind of sad to see grown men still making music for 13-year olds, and perhaps even sadder to see people of MY generation listening to it. It's kind of frustrating, as a budding musician and writer, to see that this kind of standard is given even the tiniest iota of professional credit.
I honestly hope Simple Plan stays well within their teeny-bopper circuit, because if they trample on the long and noble roots of contemporary and classical music like Kenny G did to Louis Armstrong, there will be an uproar.
Please, sell your records, but don't step on my music.

adam

I only write this because the pain on my fingertips has rendered me incapable of practicing.

I was doing my daily practice, having finished the scales and the finger exercises and the playing of the 'crazy little thing called love' solo over and over and over again. I turned up something by Clapton, I think it was 'Crossroads' or something. It is, if you don't know, a pretty trepidating song as in the past I've found myself pretty much unable to get my fingers round the fast bits, so I was feeling a bit trepidated. I figured, what the heck, screw Clapton's solo, I'll improvise something. That wasn't out of the ordinary. The track started.

It was a full half a minute into the song before it occured to me that I was already playing. The notes just flowed out. I wasn't looking at the fretboard, I wasn't squinting at a tab, or trying to figure what to play next. I escalated, moving up the fretboard to higher notes.

Of course, at this point, the surprise pretty much ruined the rest of the song, but it was really... odd. The most surprising thing was that it sounded good. I wasn't shredding or playing faster than my normal or anything, but every phrase suddenly seemed new and inventive, I was making intervals and licks that I'd never really done before.

I guess as a guitarist the hardest bit is to forget that you're playing a guitar in the first place, and get the music out. Everybody's got music in their head, but when it comes out that's a really great thing. Anyway, I didn't get the feeling back for the next hour or so, so obviously trying doesn't help.

My fingers didn't start hurting until after I took a bath. Now they feel like they've been sanded flat.

adam

I can't help wondering if I've already given up on writing. It used to be something I did so often, for so many reasons, but somehow I don't enjoy it anymore, and, well, recreationally anyway, I can't bring myself to do anything I don't enjoy anymore.
I'd like to believe that writing requires a certain breed of anal-retentiveness which I somehow no longer possess, but that's bunk, even if it's quite amusing to think about.
In any case, i read some of my old blog posts and (gasp) some of my old poetry a few days back. It isn't as bad as I thought it would be, so I guess I really was kind of good for something in the last few years.

Gay music!

I've realised something -

Many of my favourite composers, writers and musicians are/were all gay. Gay as in homosexual. Let's list them out...
Tchaikovsky
Francis Poulenc
Oscar Wilde
Freddie Mercury (who was also Indian, and in fact one of the first famous rock stars with Asian descent)

In fact, many of their works strike me as hauntingly familiar, but until I've completed my degree in Sociology i shall remain unable to qualify this strange similarity.

It's like they share some strange, iconoclastic, outsider perspective which is lighthearted and somehow angst-free. Perhaps it has to do with the ostracism and prejudice experienced by gays historically. Then again, many traditionally ostracised and prejudiced-against groups have also contributed notably to the arts, and a shocking lot of them write incomprehensible angsty rubbish. What makes this set of homosexuals different?

Ideas pls.
and I am NOT GAY.

adam

Just had meetings for my 3 different CCAs on thursday and friday.

Writers Inc meeting on thursday. We played some ice-breaker games. There was this interesting game called 'name mix-up' which is sort of like Whacko (you have to call out someone else's name when your name is called) but you have to respond to the name on a piece of paper which you find on your chair. It's more confusing than it sounds. We were all so lifeless! Maybe we were just tired or something.

On Friday, Raffles rock auditions at 3.45. I of course didn't prepare anything, and scrapped my last-minutep plans to play 'smoke on the water' when I discovered somebody else (Edmund) was auditioning with Van Halen's 'Eruption' and some piece by Joe Satriani. Clearly, my technique loses here. So I grabbed some other guy named Boyle (sp?) and we jammed 2 minutes of improvised electric blues. ><. I think I panicked halfway through and my soloing kind of lost its feel. Oh well, they seemed impressed.
Overall i've seen a few Raffles Rock performances: not entirely impressive to be honest, but I'm in it for the CIP. We were told that we'd go once a week or once a fortnight to teach people about music, and I'm all for that.

Jazz workshop at 5.00 on the same day. I went early and we jammed for a bit - it turns out there's 2 different versions of 'the girl from ipanema' with completely different chord progressions, so there was quite a bit of confusion. The workshop opened with the J2s performing a brilliant rendition of 'the way you look tonight' in various styles (I think I still like the Bossa Nova best), following which we split up according to our instruments for more detailed lessons.
I just want to register how impressed I am with this club. They're a bunch that really knows what they're doing and what they don't, they're committed to learning. It's almost scary to conceive that the J2s will be gone in a year, and that's the amount of time we juniors have to replace them.
Anyway, auditions are next week. Will be practicing like a madman, and Wang had better follow suit.

-adam

I have a group on my msn messenger labeled "Raffles". Today that list has a female contact on it, in fact, several. I'm not trying to be misogynistic or anything, but for so long 'raffles' was just a guy affair, and now having both genders included feels a little weird.
Then again, I've been in a guy's school for so long... maybe I'm the weird one, not the circumstances.

Food for thought, haha.

by the way, orientation was great.



adam

new year

45 minutes to 2006. I'm in my room blogging, and I can't really think of anything to say. Something melodramatic? It's been, all round, a rather shitty year, and I don't want to dignify it with some pompous soliloquy. People change after having shitty years, and in retrospect this one was a good change, and I think I'm happy about it.

Next year I will be happy more often. That's a resolution.

God Bless,
adam

The "5-question bloggy thing game". Thank you, denise.

1. 90% of the music I listen to dates before 1990.
2. I know 3 other people who share my birthday.
3. I have 2 unrelated surnames!
4. I can play 3 instruments! Piano, violin, guitar. And i'm currently learning the harmonica. thanks to anne. (casually)
5. I like dolphins. Yay!

I want the following 5 people to do this...

Tim swee, anne, joel, jessica, and mark the new guy.
If you've done it already just tag.
merry christmas!
adam

halo

The winter-een-mas celebrations begin early this year.
For information on Winter-Een-Mas, go to www.ctrlaltdel-online.com

Celebrations kicked off with a run-through of the venerable Halo campaign, cooperative with Derrick.
We started at roughly 3.00 pm, blazing through the first two missions in a speedy 30 minutes, and rushed through Truth and Reconciliation. Silent Cartographer and AotCR proved easy missions as we circumvented large portions of both. The good bit, however, comes after these introductory sessions.

343 guilty spark brings back bad memories of my first time on halo - getting lost for hours is not fun at all. This mission set the pace for the next one - run-and-gun up close shotgun action, squabbling over shotgun ammo, and many, many many "oh SHIT" moments when flood combat forms drop in behind you. Nasty.

Following that, everybody's least favourite level. The Library is the product of some twisted mind, with its repetitive corridors, numbing colour scheme, and hordes and hordes of flood. Combine that with a Gargravarr-esque little floating ball of light (follow the humming) and cheesy scenario names (wait, it gets worse!) and it's little wonder that Nobody really wants to play this level. Unfortunately for the purposes of our run through we had to do it, and with grit and sweat we did, hating every moment. Curse you, Bungie!

After the furious up-and-close shotgunning of the last two levels things quickly got tactical in Two Betrayals. Twitch reflexes no longer suffice in this very open mission - often we had to re-play a certain section due to incompetency in the field of tactics. A multitude of different enemies and sometimes three-way-conflicts makes prioritising targets a very strategic affair. Also the large areas mean you are easily outnumbered which makes cover a very important consideration. I think this area counts for the majority of our deaths.

The penultimate level, Keyes, shows a combination of the above two styles of gameplay. It's got several open, tactical sections, and much corridor-crawling blasting action. A slog across kilometres of covenant ship and we escaped for the final mission. But first, dinner. I have a glass of wine and Derrick tells me that I'm not driving the warthog. Bugger.

We excused ourselves early and rushed back for the final mission, the Maw. A frantic finale, this mission returns to the earlier style, diverging from the more cerebral Two Betrayals and Keyes back to corridor crawling. While the style is similar, the action certainly isn't. Even returning to the ship that opened the first mission, we're no longer casually shooting covenant grunts and lobbing grenades to clear out elites. In fact, a testament to Bungie's skill at making games, this level is one of the most horrendous nerve-wrenchingly fast-paced ones, a fantastically satisfying ending. Twenty minutes of up-in-your-face with the flood gives way to the grand final section, a warthog race against the clock across kilometres of exploding ship infested with flood. Derrick drove, of course, and I rode shotgun, and we finished with a minute to spare, ending our run-through of one of the greatest campaigns in gaming history.

A bit on the game itself. Halo is revolutionary because firstly it brought the FPS genre to console gaming, something before considered impractical. Secondly, it introduced the concept of vehicles to FPSs, and indeed has some of the greatest vehicle sequences in any game. While not a pioneer, Halo re-established the credibility of not only the science fiction genre, but the story-telling capability of FPS, of which some earlier ones lacked. (Doom, hehehe. Doom.)

Lastly, the master chief is just badass.

Thus starts Winter-een-mas 2005-2006. Watch this space for more tribute matches and run-throughs of the greatest computer games ever.


adam

from urban dictionary http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=simple+plan&page=1

SIMPLE PLAN

A French Canadian band (French Canada, the worse kind of Canada) that mopes about how hard it is to be white and upper-middle class. Fuelled by teen angst and armed with extremely bad talent.

Simple Plan band member:
"You never understand me mum and dad, im going to play my guitar on the roof."
Dad of Simple Plan band member:
"But it's raining outside."
Simple Plan band member:
"Good!" *runs of sobbing with his hands in the air*

It's monday. Monday feels like breathing with your head under a tap. It's hot and it's fuck-humid. Parents are in KL. Brother's in school.

So I start to think. Thinking makes me feel important, which is better than feeling bored. I feel obliged to feel important.

I think I'm really glad that RI ended when it did. Sure, good memories, good times, yo. In all honesty I was beginning to hate it, and hate the world, a little more and more every morning. Sometimes I still feel persecuted when the world imposes itself so violently on my sweet unconsciousness.

So. Sit on comp. Listen to various shades of angsty music - Tchaikovsky and Nirvana. Dire straits. But dire straits makes me feel happy, and when you're happy you stop feeling important because you STOP THINKING.

Do you know
that if you
listen to something
for too long
you stop liking it?

dadadadadaddadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadadada. __--``---->.

Peace, love, empathy - are you scared now?

Got you there. But RI lasted for as long as it did - you know when people say 'I wish it would last forever' they don't actually mean it because if it ACTUALLY lasted forever they'd fucking hate it and they'd wake up everymorning feeling persecuted because forever imposes itself on you horribly. 4 years is good.

I stopped listening to classical music for a bit. Take a dive into modern stuff. Metal, punk, yo. I just flipped to tchaikovsky's 5th just now, and wow. Stop listening, stop writing, stop reading, stop watching, just sleep, take a break and feel the air. I needed to stop RI. I wish it would've lasted forever.

Everyone should be happy. Everyone should STOP THINKING.

Peace... love, and empathy.


Got you there.


adam

the fundamental interconnectedness of everything

What's left to say. Fake sentimentality has been around longer than fake boobs. Greeting cards, presents, concerts, plays, all coming to an end. I could sit here and smirk (it is tempting), but I have no right to smirk away the four years. I was really there, I felt the wind and the water and the mud, the late nights and early mornings, the last-minute studying, the frantic LAN parties, drinks and potato chips.

At the end of the tunnel, the end of the road, or a million other cliches I could draw to describe the end of four years I was there, I was there. As for sentimentality, I only remember what Mrs. Chandra once said to me:

"Keep it. These are memories."


What's left in cynicism but silicon and a smirk?



- adam

"Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff beer."
- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

On a totally unrelated note, I think I've been taking drugs. The fact that I have no recollection of doing so is obviously a case of drug-induced amnesia. Better check myself into rehab one of these days.

Also, on the word 'fuck'. I have this thing about swearing, which is that i'm fairly liberal about it, unless the other party might be offended or something. I think though, that language should be allowed to evolve... words take on different meanings. 'Fuck' no longer has solely sexual connotations and should not be treated as such. Statements like 'Fuck, Mark Knopfler really sounds old in that track' use the word merely as a statement of surprise. What's new? the word 'Quaint' used to mean vagina, and we use it pretty liberally nowadays.

Fuck it, let's just let the language move on, shall we?


adam

Elections! Whoopee

Prefect board elections are pretty heated this year, and the field has split itself into two camps: "look at me i've got a cool name" prefect candidates and "RIPB sux" Gordon and associates. Both are at each other's throats, limbs, and genitalia. Of course it would be dangerous for me to state any partisan view in a public forum (which this blog is...). Luckily, I don't have one! As far as I'm concerned, both camps should go stick their collective heads in a pig. So this post is mainly here to state my utter, total and complete apathy towards the whole situation and to elucidate the true motives of each camp, as seen by a neutral observer.

The topic of Rafflesian politics is at best a depressing one, bitterly divided, and the highest reason I can find for blogging about this is because I'm bored and slightly aggravated by the sheer level of dingo's-kidneys meaningless conflict that threatens to ruin my morning classroom sleep. So. We have one group of bubbly, energetic, youthful, self-important children aka prefect nominees who see it their holy duty to plaster every square inch of school walls with posters in varying degrees of colour, size, and bad taste. Of course nobody likes this.
On the other hand, we have a collective of mildly anarchic pseudo-liberal freedom-fighters, whom of course find fulfilment in making cynical remarks about everything, and taken away from this pastime will eventually resort to snarly comments about the weather, God, each other, and all of the above. Nobody likes this either.

Despite protests about 'freedom of speech', 'duty to the school', 'right-to-this-and-that', 'responsibility', and 'rafflesian' (whatever that is), the prime reason that anybody goes through the whole shebang is just to feed their own sense of self-importance, telling themselves that they're doing new, wonderful and progressive things, improving the general state of humanity, et cetera. Nobody likes this, and they often say so. What I advocate is that feeding the self-importance of either camp is ultimately going to be an exercise in futility. Just don't do anything! The prefects will ultimately grow out of their juvenile phase, become mature and responsible and snarl at new bubbly self-important candidates, and the freedom-fighters will eventually tire of the whole tirade and go pick on something else. Nothing anybody does or says is ever going to change that.

So let the kids play grown-up.

adam

recommended reading

I just read through Larry Niven's Ringworld in 2 sittings, which would be a personal record if I hadn't finished Neuromancer in one.

It's an undoubtedly fascinating book, hailed by some as one of the greatest works of science fiction. I'm inclined to agree here; the book manages to mix everlasting themes of human relationships with the splendour of an imagined future - a strange cocktail, but one that's defined the sci-fi genre since the early 1900s.

Without giving away too many details - Louis Wu, a 200-year-old veteran space explorer and a little bored with how prosaic his life has become, is invited by a strange (but not altogether surprising) alien on a four-man mission to explore a strange (and mind-bogglingly huge) artifact described rather astutely as "a star with a ring around it". The team (Louis, the human Teela, a felinoid Kzin known as Speaker-to-Animals, and the alien puppeteer Nessus) arrives at the ringworld, and are faced with a series of highly disturbing questions, the answers upon which may depend their own lives.

Larry Niven has managed to construct an epic that involves deeply, with intensely personal and believable characters. Highly recommended reading for science-fiction fans, and all you nonteknischen out there as well.

cheers,
adam

Which peanuts character are you?

You are Schroeder!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Now I'm emotional. We've all been through far too much. We are more than people.

I'm sorry for being vague



out,
adam

"the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul. " - Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee

!

Forgive me, I've been listening to pop music again. Or whatever you call it, in today's world it's hard to find the right label for anything. I shall call it 'pop' because that's what it was called when I was growing up, now it's probably labeled 'alternative-something-something', which I feel is unjustified and also, ludicrous.

Sixpence None the Richer - breathe your name

Smooth vocals, beautiful lines and a wonderful bass riff which really defines the sound. And I love the lyrics. What's not to like?

basket

Being a basket-case online isn't my idea of fun.

I won't lie; I have my problems. Lots of them, in fact. However I don't feel justified in bitching about them online (except certain ones reserved for online bitching - see the hate list).

Sometimes, however, you just feel so wasted sitting at home and trying to be cool about the state of your life.

Bah.


adam

arguing is a lot like gaming.

1. It's fun if you're better than your opponent at it.
2. Is a major contributing factor in domestic violence.
3. After a certain point x which varies depending on your mood, the amount of chocolate you've had in the past two hours (in kg) and the colour of your left sock (if you're wearing one),
it starts to seem really, really, really pointless.
4. If you continue to do it after said point x, your brain will melt and start to leak slowly out of your ears in what is generally accepted to be a reeeeeaaallly creepy fashion. And then you'll die.

Do you disagree with me?

adam

Writer's Blog

started a new blog at
http://yesitsapun.blogspot.com


for people I know who like (or try) to write, so we can have a space to post writings and get feedback and discussions. If you'd like to join, email me.

adam

wish I was you.

Wish I was you.

You are spirited, always excited by the challenges you seek every day. You recognise that you are your own limit, and your life is a series of goals to be achieved, each in defiance of the last. The knowledge that you are special does not escape you; it is your greatest ally in times of difficulty. You build your solutions out from yourself, relying on others only because you know that they are your extensions, just as you are theirs. You believe you are destined for greatness; this belief is not a prophecy but a mantra in your aspirations, each day pushing to new heights.

adam

wish I was you.

Wish I was you.

You are powerful. You see the world as it is in all its intricacies and you refuse to lose yourself even as you navigate the wash of constantly changing trends. In the toughest of crises you prevail with indomitable strength that will not back down and will not change because you know that you can make it. You are never embarrassed to be different because you understand of all people that you, like everyone, have a power to succeed and you of all people know how to wield it. You are passionate and energetic in everything because you refuse to be held back by expectations and opinions.

adam

wish I was you.

Wish I was you.
You are intelligent. Your success is not the product of some freak accident, but the accumulation of years of dedication. You wrestle with principles, but that makes you strong because nobody can topple what you think is right. Because of that you hold a rare sincerity that means you value everything but refuse to be subverted by the inane, and the unfounded criticism of others. You are one of the few who is constantly bewildered by everything, and you take solace in the fact that you yourself are bewildering, as is the spark of beauty you find in yourself and everyone.

hate no.2

2. Technology
I despise technology with a passion. I hate it with all the sullen fiery-ness that a desert hates water. And yes, contrary to popular belief, deserts do not 'thirst' for water or anything of the sort. They hate it, that's why it's so dry.
Last month during RMUN the IT department (whom I firmly believe are some secret devil-worshipping cult) issued me a centuries-old laptop. It's called a Compaq Armada, in some sad tribute to the resilience that it obviously lacks. The first couldn't start up. Hong Quan made a trip back and demanded a replacement, which promptly crashed after five minutes of work. The third crashed when I plugged my ipod into it to store files on, and grudgingly started up when plugged into a power socket.
Also, it's the only computer i've known to actually lag seriously on microsoft word.
What gives?
But there's more. Within the last year, i've had to get a replacement for my palm (which crashed within 2 weeks of purchase), had to deal with a millenia-old phone which won't register if you press a button more than twice in a second, had to reformat my virus-plagued computer, and finally had to repair my NEW handphone which crashed within two weeks of purchase.
There's more!
The computers and printers in the library have caused me to lose my stored data at least 3 times now, and have forced me to waste $2.50 of my money printing out 5 copies of somebody else's multi-colored social studies report. Also, the internet only works sporadically, with healthy encouragement in the form of good solid thwacks.
Computers are the sort of thing spawned by the twisted minds of centuries of bureaucracy and customer service, built only to make sure you get nothing done, and go bleep when they do so.
You know what else I hate about technology? EVERYTHING. I say go back to good ol' hammer, chisel and tablet. At least they don't go bleep.

-adam

hate list!

Ever had one of those where everything screws up for you and you really start to despise the world, deep down somewhere?
Well, today isn't one of them. However, I've taken the liberty of compiling the lists of the things that pop up on my 'hate' list whenever these days happen.

ahem.

1. Simple Plan
Without offense to the band members, Simple plan is the worst music conceivable to mankind. Simple plan is not just a joke, it is an insult to music, and a pathetic one at that. To those less mathematically inclined, I would like to just point out that there are only three different ways to play chords I, IV and V and no matter how you juggle them it gets nauseating after awhile. And that's just the music.
The lyrics are without doubt the worst lyrics - now I won't say 'in the whole world' because i've definitely heard worse somewhere - to make it into the popular music culture. Drab, whiney, teenage-angst, oh-god-hates-me-life-sucks bad. I'm serious. After listening to some tracks that's about all I can distill from their songs. I starve for adjectives.
Yes, Simple plan in all it's off-tune, unimaginative, angsty-oh-my-life-sucks-so-bad-please-pity-me-by-buying-my-records glory has to make it to the top of my list.
To all you simple plan fans out there, you can damn well go stick your head in a pig or something suitably offensive.

more to come.

adam

words for july

Just started my official batch of words for the month of july, so I won't be posting them here. When the month is over i'll give a link to all of them.

I encourage anybody who's interested to try, though, it's an amazing excercise in discipline and writing.

- adam

June 30th thursday 9.30 pm

My mind won't stop. Even on sleepy evenings, on and on. I listen to music sometimes I take it like a drug sometimes even that won't stop. Covered in blood and shaking slowly, because I'm tired of trying to fix myself trying to wipe the mess. It comes from inside you know? I might cut myself and find I'm wrong on the inside horrible sticky guts and blood it's a mess. The mess - Better try to put it back - IT'S NOT MINE! . I need to stop yelling need to stop myself I need to find him and watch him bleed.

- adam

29th June Wednesday 9.30 pm

He sat there, deafened. The machinations hummed and buzzed around him, the screeching rattle-clack, rattle-clack building to a devastating crescendo. "The derivative,' the lady said ' of x with respect to y..." Clockwork. It was all clockwork. He clenched his teeth with the strain of stopping it all. The gears were in motion, he would be crushed amidst the steady click goddamnit, my pencil click... click... there were tears on his hand crushed amid the gears- slowly, painfully, each bone taking its time to shred and break and all the while, he would stand there, winding, winding, winding, winding.

- adam

MOAN!

Rayner IS right! The more work I have, the more time I spend bitching about it here. Whee. The difference is that I think I've done it this time, even if my maths portfolio IS several weeks overdue and is starting to grow a thin civilisation of sentient mold. Work sucks.

- adam

26th June, 2005 Sunday 9.40 pm

Will I spend my life searching for a feeling? A little piece of this life, a tableau that I can stretch and twist into meaning? No, I say! Throw yourself into the deep end, only because the bottom is real. Why splash about in the shallows, creating ghosts and legends out of mist? Why should life cover me only to my ankles? No. I refuse to spend my time chasing currents while I slowly suffocate. The only reality is action - I move therefore I am. Breathe in the saltwater! We drown eventually. But I moved the ocean, not vice-versa.

June 21 2005 Tuesday 9.50 PM

I'm not profound at night. Maybe a little damp and a little groggy from dinner and pillows and lack of sleep. sitting about trying to be profound brings about the most abject depression. It is also futile. Sometimes I get up and wonder about God for awhile. Or jellyfish. Sometimes He speaks to me in the little noises. Sometimes I just hear things. Sometimes I sprawl about with dripping languor and dream about craters and tunnels of my childhood. That wonderful misty red air. I grip the blankets and am fitful for awhile. Lost in the dream of little stars...

- adam

hundreds

Participate in the 100 words project. (Link is to the left) I've gone and used this as an excuse to force myself to write, so here's my 100 words for the 25th of june. I never edit, hardly ever delete a sentence that's been written, and blatantly flounce all rules of proper grammar and sentence-structure.

25th june, 2005

On the other hand. When you aren't sleepy thoughts become precise. Point one. Point two. Sub-point one point three point seven-six-five-four-two-nine-eight. Short sentences punctuated by anxious punctuating punctuation. It says Lucidity! Clarity! The breath of day is dry and light. Only brighter. Difficult to recede into the mist because there is so little of it. Adjectives, bah. Verbs, bah. Condense! Words are king and queen (and the rest) and never, ever artifically lengthen by using phrases like 'never ever' or allow a little madness to get in the way of short concise writing.

-adam

So long and thanks for all the fish

I am the biggest hypocrite I know. Boys and girls, never, never, EVER post song lyrics on your blogs. At least not without some form of commentary. There's nothing worse than ripping off somebody else's badly-written lyrics to cover your own badly-written posts.
With that, here's the lyrics for so long and thanks for all the fish, OST for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

So long and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this
We tried to warn you all but oh dear...

You may not share our intellect
Which might explain your disrespect
For all the natural wonders that grow (around you)

So long, so long, and thanks
for all the fish

The world's about to be destroyed
There's no point getting all annoyed
Lie back and let the planet dissolve (around you)

Despite those nets of tuna fleets
We thought that most of you were sweet
Especially tiny tots and your pregnant women

So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
So long, so long, so long, so long, so long

So long, so long, and thanks for all the fish

If I had just one last wish
I would like a tasty fish

If we could just change one thing
we would all have learnt to sing

Come one and all,
man and mammal,
side by side in life's great gene pool

So long, so long, so long, so long, so long
so long, so long, so long, so long, so long
so long, so long, and THANKS!
for all the fish.

adam

back and bigger.

Whee, I'm back from camp.
I'm back, and I'm still super-high from the success. It wasn't to be unexpected, and it's really a good thing. Sometimes I think happiness is so rare, so I grab at it. Still, i'm not going to feel great forever, things are going to go back to the repetitive humdrum, and I want to remember that I've changed more than a momentary happiness, and feeling good won't solve my struggles.

So I'm writing it here, so if I forget, you all can remind me.

adam

I will be

away for 6 days until sunday, 12th June. Have camps to go to.
don't flood my tagboard!

Cheers, all of you!

- adam

trixie

In honour of my piano teacher's cat, Trixie. It should be illegal to be this adorable.

The languor of a morning nap - she opened her eyes to slits, taking in the sleepy sunshine. The cat lay splayed out on the front porch, tawny limbs tangled amongst the nest of shoes and footwear on the ground. She yawned widely and stretched - extending first one leg, then another, her claws extending as if reaching for some invisible plaything - She seemed to take exquisite pleasure in the act. Then curling back to fiddle with someone's blue pair of slippers, she yawned again, her sides expanding to take in the warm air. It seemed the cat could lie there forever, in the splendid, languid glory of a greek goddess basking in the morning rays, her ears twitching in miniscule movements to the sounds of other people who couldn't appreciate the joys of a morning repose, the tickling of fur against the stone tiles, the music of some distant pianist, and, just standing there watching her, I wished I could too.

technological advancement.

Just went to the comp exhibition-fair-thing at singapore EXPO. (can't remember what it was - but there were a lot of people around selling electronic stuff.)

They happen a couple of times each year, and whenever I go to them I come back loaded with junk. Make no mistake - not junk I actually PAID for, but all sorts of cables, wires, peripherals, cards, brochures, pamphlets, business cards, hands-free sets, screen protectors, and occasionally curry puffs.

This is a rather alarming trend. Last year I came back with a dubiously-acquired desktop replacement computer. This time the free gadget is a mysterious bit of white plastic called an ipod shuffle. Now, this thing confounds me.

Why, I ask, is Apple, capable of fitting 20 gigabytes of memory into a space not much bigger than a deck of cards, unable to place a screen on this device? It's not like I haven't seen smaller devices with screens, because I certainly have. The makers of Digimon did it. Creative did it. It can't be that difficult, especially for a company like Apple. And I'm not even asking for the kind of screen that shows you the song name with all sorts of graphical bells and whistles: volume meters, play time, battery life, graphic equalizers. The ipod shuffle, which looks like a little white stick with a button on top, doesn't even feature a little counter to tell me which track I'm playing. Ten out of ten for style... minus several million for functionality.

Unfortunately, Apple decided to take a revolutionary step, backwards, and market this new screen-less concept. No doubt I am intrigued that at any time I'm completely unable to tell what track is coming up next, oftentimes what track i'm currently listening to, and what other tracks there are, save memorising the order in which I downloaded my mp3s to the ipod.

This is not to say, however, that the thing is completely useless. It isn't - it still features Apple's wonderful itunes technology, allowing seamless synchronisation and uploading of mp3s. It functions as a fairly large USB flash drive. It still features good sound-quality, and most of all it is absolutely tiny, making it extremely portable.
Also, it has this immensely cute LED button at the back which lights up green when you press it if the battery is charged. A major selling point, that.

I can't complain - I got it free. But I wonder if I might've been better off trading my old cd player for a casette walkman... which is five times the size, and only slightly less functional.

-adam

words!

Here's some words for you people to ponder. I just learnt them in the last few months.
1. Partisan. An enthusiastic supporter, or a large pole with an axe blade.
2. Verisimilitude. Similar to reality. adj. versimilitudinous.
3. Corollary. something that results from something else. e.g. 'violence is the inevitable corollary of such a revolutionary change..."
4. Droll. amusing, especially in an unusual way. Anne McCaffrey overuses this word.


Expand your vocabulary.

- adam :D

this is not a poem.

Come to the dark side
resistance is futile- stand down
rule as father and son
what, no hyperspace?
we are the borg - trust in the
there is no spoon
force : mass times acceleration
captain, cruising at warp
Orange trees in the field!
Fire
you were
proton the
chosen
torpedoes! We've been hit
Master! I promise -
Promise me -
structural integrity

I'll train the boy!

falling.

Falling.
Seventy...
beam me tell your sister
You are a child of the universe.
You were right.

bitching abt blogs.

What is it with bloggers?

DISCLAIMER: This is purely my personal opinion on how blogs should be run. It IS ultimately up to you, and I'm not suggesting in any way that you should change your blogging style just to please me. Just realise that it is ridiculous.

rant

Blogging, in my humble opinion, has brought out the very worst in writing (and people as well).

Firstly, on Content. Honestly, who wants to know what you did today? A quick and simple answer would be 'nobody'. Now of course this isn't true, but it certainly is the case for the majority of us. If you absolutely MUST tell me what you did at 3.54:32 this afternoon, please, please make it brief, and explain to me how that is significant. Of course you're entitled to write about something if it was significant to you, but please be interesting.

Coherence! I know you like your pretty ellipsis and semi-colon. It doesn't mean they should be sprinkled like icing all over your entry. It makes you sound stupid. Poetry, unless you happen to be good at it, is also a strict no-no. Bad poetry is... bad. It neither reflects your current mood, current activities, nor aesthetic talent. Avoid it.
If bloggers are exhibitionists, you are running around with your underwear on your head.

EDIT. post-bitch: please be clear when using the second person. Lines like "Why did you do it? Why? Why?" often leave the reader confused as to whether he just unwittingly killed your parents. Unless you are referring to the readership in general, always identify when you use the second person. EDIT-EDIT - Otherwise, just don't bloody post it on your blog! MUST you push the limits of exhibitionism? I really wouldn't terribly like to know if you just had a spat with your girlfriend/boyfriend/pet.

Secondly, on Style. Lyk OMG. Plz lrn some proper speling kae? I mean, aftr over 10 yrs in sch mebbe its abt time you learn proper grammar an spelling and mebbe how to EXPRESS YOURSELF PROPERLY! Yes, I AM a bigoted, elitist bitch. Live with it, and fix your grammar. Appending 'sh' to the end of every other word does not make you cute. It does not make you interesting either. It just makes you sound like an idiot with a lisp.

EDIT - 2 hours later. I've realised I get amazingly pissed at people who love to use italics.
It IS annoying. You know you do it. I know it's all new-age and novelty and all, but for goodness's sakes, it's just a bunch of slanty letters! Get over it! The old-fashioned, obsolete "double inverted commas" often work just as well!
Oh, please save me.

Thirdly, on Strategy. LAYOUT! If you must blog, and I'm not saying you should, maybe make the main text of your blog the MAIN section of your website. As much as you're an interesting, fun-loving, enlightened person, I think most others are tired of reading your elaborate vital statistics while squinting at the narrow column of words that happens to be your latest entry. I don't know, maybe this is some inherent limitation in html coding, which i'm quite honestly useless at.
What's worse than this is refusing to use paragraphs. Paragraph breaks are the heart and soul of legible writing. An already badly thought-out, ungrammatical, badly spelled article which rambles on and on with no hint of reprieve can be quite off-putting. On the other extreme, having a respectable space for you to post your latest entry on, but actually
blogging
like
this
is
kind
of
irritating
don't
you
think?
Maybe not. It IS your blog after all. All I'm saying is that if you blog like that people might not go to your blog, and you might be flamed by me, and my supreme almighty self-righteous anger.

Bloggers were invented to torture people like me. Do me a favour, yeah?

/rant

I feel better now.

-Adam

can't think of another lame title.

I'm listening to the ABRSM recordings of my grade 8 exam pieces. Shit. Compared to this my playing sounds like me trying to play with the middle of my forehead and my two big toes. Most notably, I can't produce a good variation in tone colour... it all sounds kind of wooden. Will work on this.

Webcomics I frequent.

Order of the Stick
Ctrl-Alt-Del
Count your sheep

Just a few things I thought you might like to check out.

- adam!

16! w00tness.

What's so great about being 16? I think it's overrated. I mean, yeah, wow. I can have sex now. It isn't like i'm the sort of person who's really inclined to be having a lot of sex at this age, nor do I know anybody who'd be inclined to be having sex with me. So there isn't anything great about that.
I can watch NC-16 movies. Which is great, but I hardly watch movies anyways. So it isn't likely to affect me. And if I really was that bent on watching a movie I'd have found some way to get in. NC-16 or not.

So yeah, nothing great about being 16. So? We need an excuse to celebrate. There's never enough of that. Do you know that I have been alive for 5844 days? I initially thought it was 5843, but upon inspection I've realised that WHILE years divisible by 100 aren't in fact leap years, those that are also divisible by 400 are. So 2000 was a leap year, and I accidentally subtracted an extra day from my age. 5844 days, man! Soon to be 5845, but that's tomorrow's business.

Yay.

- ADAM!

the land of Cescus.

For we are on a boat, sailing towards the land of Cescus.
There , across the ocean, lies the glory of a years-long voyage, lie a thousand wonders never before seen by the eyes of man, rivers and springs and forests and trees in abundance, and animals new and old, and all wondrous. Yes, we're sailing for Cescus, and the fruit of all our labours.

But what shall the sailors do on the way there?

We Swab Decks.

Because! It is of utmost importance that we swab decks.

So the mighty Captain says (when he isn't throwing up over the stern): We are! My men, on THE most important journey! To! the other side of the world! To! The land of Cescus! Where all things grow! In abundance! And! It is of THE utmost! Importance that when! We get there there isn't going to be ONE! Speck o' dirt left on this deck! We are PIoneers of humanity! And! we better be making a good impression! Grab yer mop, sailor!

Throughout my years on the high seas, I have not seen a stouter man, a finer leader than our captain. We were brave sailors, facing the wind and the rain and the storms, even sneaking an extra hour or two after dusk to scrub the last of the salt and seagull-droppings off the deck.
It's just been a month since we set sail - the sea's begun to take its toll on some of the rookies on board. Had a man, yesterday - swabbed until his hands bled. Poor fellow. But we all know we've got the most important jobs to do. Pioneers of humanity... I like what the Capt. said. Has a nice ring to it. I do hope there're monkeys on Cescus. They'll be impressed how clean this ship is. I can just imagine them, sitting on the shore, munching on their bananas or whatever tropical fruit, chittering and pointing.
Yeah, they'll be impressed.