You Were There

This is the current hit song in my choir (SMU Chamber Choir).

You Were There by Libera.

I hope I’m not the only person that thinks the video is cheese sandwich. I mean, ugh. It’s like somebody just took their pictures and tinkered around with iMovie or the likes (Windows Movie Maker? Eeks).

But it IS a really beautiful song, kudos to Takatsugu Muramatsu. I just think that the song (at least in the mp3 I got) got too much enhancement, echo and stuff, that it lost some of its magic. Also, the strings. Ugh, the strings. The piano was fine, but the strings was downright “ordinary” for the amazing song.

By the way, this song is actually a soundtrack of a Japanese movie called “Dare mo mamotte kurenai” which seems to be a very interesting movie. This is the plot summary (from Eigapedia)

When the older brother of junior high school student Saori is arrested for murder she is separated from her family for her own protection. She ends up living with a police detective named Katsuura and his family. Katsuura has to get information from her without making her already-troubled mental state any worse.

Can’t seem to find the trailer with English subtitles, but I think the movie (trailer) is powerful enough without subtitles.

Intriguing, eh? I wonder where can I watch this movie…

Btw I found another video.. I believe this was the opening of the movie?

BTW, I totally have a crush on You Were There’s soloist. Hehe! His name is Tom Cully.

(something like) Spelling Bee in My English Exam

So if you guys follow me on Twitter/@sylvdoanx, you should have seen my public breakdown over my then impending grade 8 piano exam.

I know it’s not a school exam or something, but let me tell you, piano exam is much much worse than school exam. Because unlike in written exam when you can try hard to access your memory, practical piano exam is a one-off, now-or-never thing. Once you slip when doing something – that’s it. That is it. From passing with distinction to passing with merit in just one slip.

A little more technical here, one thing I hated the most (because I’m no good at it – simple, right?) was the 6th apart scale. Just for you laymen, basically you have to play a scale (something like doremifasolatido-dotilasofamiredo), but your hands/fingers start on different notes (6 steps apart). And you have to play it 4 octaves up and down (simply saying, you play it 4 times continuously).

Wait, what? So difficult?

Oh, yes, apparently. Now, I understand the importance of playing scales in order to play piano well – it’s all about balancing the power and making the lines as smooth as possible (if you don’t get this, don’t worry, not important), yet I don’t understand making it compulsory to test these freaking scales on piano exam. At the end of the day, playing these scales requires more brain-teasing work instead of paying close attention to how I play my piano correctly. It’s more like they’re trying to test my brain, or muscle memory, instead of my musicality.

As per my title, it’s just like they ask you to do a spelling bee or a tongue twister and you’ll be graded for it in your English exam. It’s not how you can use English or how you can play piano anymore!

I know, I know. Maybe I’m just bitter coz I didn’t do well on my 6th apart (and my 3rd apart) scales. Whatever. I hope the examiner is nice enough not to let me repeat this hellish grade 8 exam. Ugh.

Image by myself! Press on Deviantart

From Baby to Biggie (or so we thought)

I, like many other people in the whole world, am sometimes peeved by the way my parents still treat me as a baby. Thankfully they don’t call me up at night and ask me whether I’ve eaten anymore (ugh, so Asian!), but they still feel that they have an authority over me to decide some stuff.

Perhaps it’s this “adult syndrome”, or perhaps more appropriately “21 syndrome”, when you feel that you have reached that stage where you should be allowed to make decisions solely by yourself without any influence by any other people.

Too many people correlate this privilege with age though. Which is age-ist. Sometimes I don’t think numbers really show how mature you really are.

Though I have thought of myself of being more mature than people my age, then again, who am I to say? I might be 20 going on 21 but I still cry like a baby whenever I miss my dad/people at home.

Furthermore, I’m a first child of the family. After +/- 20 years babying me, it must be pretty hard for my parents to adapt to the fact that I’m all grown up (or so I thought!).

And hence, I think I’m gonna enjoy this baby-ing stage a little bit more until my parents become too busy to baby me. Haha!

A Case of Too Many Choices

Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish that I had gone to a “specific” school.

If you go to a medicine school, you become a doctor.
You go to a nursing academy, you become a nurse.
Go to a teacher’s institute and you become a teacher.

And yet I go to SMU and soon enough I’ll hold Bachelor of Science in Information Systems Management degree with second major in Corporate Communications.

That’s both the wonder and the curse of it – I can apply to a really wide spectrum of jobs. With my IT(S) degree I can apply to many IT-related jobs. Or I can start in PR since I had a double major in it. Perhaps a little marketing too since I did an internship kinda related to it.

Sometimes I just wish my path was kinda narrower, and it was clearer.

But I wasn’t sure about what I wanted to do (unlike those people that voluntarily entered specific schools because they knew what they wanted to do), and I’m not even sure if I know now…

Are you what you listen?

We’ve heard a lot of cliches around this : you are what you eat, you are what you wear, you are what you do, etc etc. But are you really what you listen? And do you define what you listen by how you define yourself?

I’m pondering about this since my choir (visit SMU Chamber Choir Fan Page if you’d like to) was visited by a vocal coach from Philippines. He did technical stuff like breathing, posture, sound production that I would not go into detail else I’ll bore a lot of you out. Not that there’s a lot of you in the first place.

After all technical stuff, before he left he said that the way to improve our singing is to listen to more choral works. He then went on to recommend some people, or rather groups, to listen to. And I just couldn’t stop pondering.

You see, if you have followed my blog from the beginning, you would know that I don’t only listen to choral or classical stuff. Review my music category. I listen to some pop, some rock, some electronica, some lounge music, and every other thing as I feel like it. In fact, I think my choral music collection is like… 5% of my whole collection?

Do we really have to listen to music that defines who we are? Do they have to match?

I don’t think we should choose a music, or any interest, first then decide how we should act. If I like emo songs (I do like some), do I have to sport the over-one-eye hair cut and write sad poems? If I like rock songs, do I have to sport studs and funky hair? If I like classical songs, do I have to act all nerdy? Do I really have to fulfill all those stereotypes only because I like a type of music? And is it fair to judge a person just based on what music they listen to? (or based on their interests?)

All I’m saying – sometimes people identify a group, and then identify themselves. Isn’t this backwards? I think we should identify ourselves first and then join a group.

But then again, this is only a personal opinion. But I’ll stand true – I don’t want to listen to choral music just because I sing in a choir. I don’t want to limit my choices – there is a lot of great music of any genres out there.

What do you think? Do you think you define yourself by your music – or does your music define you?

Sorry I Don’t Speak Bahasa

I think I just wanna write this post as a public service so that people will stop the misunderstandings that the language that Indonesian people use is called “Bahasa”.

“So, do you speak Bahasa?”
“Er… Yeah?”

You see, people, the word “bahasa” actually means “language” in Indonesian. Bahasa Inggris means English language. Bahasa Cina means Chinese language. So when you ask people whether they speak Bahasa, then the answer will always be yes, right?

I think a lot of people tried to “localize” their figure of speech by saying “Bahasa”, but really, sometimes it just seems stupid to answer a question whether you speak a language.

So, bottom line – it’s either Bahasa Indonesia or Indonesian language, or even only “Indonesian”.

Sorry, I don’t speak Bahasa.

Hello Twenty Ten

I realized I haven’t really ushered in the new year 2010 and to me that’s like a customary tradition on my blog.

Yeah, right. Like you have any tradition, Sylv.

Anyway, this year shall be a scary year for me. A lot of transformation will take place this year. I’ll be 21, legal for everything, considered adult for everything (like, finally???). I’ll finish school life and begin a corporate life (that is, if I find a job, of course). I will lose weight for good, and I mean it! I’ll look like what I used to look like and probably better

I have mixed feelings about those big, possibly life-changing upcoming events. It can be drastic, mind-boggling, but I’m excited about them anyway.

I hope this year will be an exciting one for you too.

A Term of Writing

I have taken a lot of crazy terms in SMU, what with 5.5 courses and all computer-related modules mixed in with difficult business modules stuff. But perhaps my very last term in SMU is the craziest. Perhaps. You decide.

So I’m only taking three modules this term. I know, I know. Freaking three modules?? How can you say it’s crazy, Sylv??? The reason it’s crazy is because you’re only taking three modules!!!

Ahem. Anyway.

My three modules are : PR Writing, Creative Writing, and Current Issues in Business, Culture, and Society. If you see a recurring theme… You’re probably right. They’re all writing. Yes, even that third course which has a name so long I don’t want to bother typing it. Although I might have typed a longer sentence just by typing that. Anyway. These three courses require writing, writing, and writing, and all with different styles. PR Writing is, of course, PR Writing. Concise while keeping the important details, and making it interesting enough so that those journalists will pick it up. Creative writing is, I suppose, more liberating. Although excelling in Indonesian creative writing, I suppose it was time for me to pick up the English one. Had a great fun experimenting. And that third course, we need a business type of writing – really simple, to the point, no flowery words or hard vocabularies.

Hey don’t get me wrong. I like the third course. It’s the only course in SMU where you can get free food. I’m not kidding. (Click that)

So I figured it would be quite a paradox if I take a term full of writing and I stop writing in my blog. After all, this blog was the one that elevated my writing skillzors. If you have the time to sift through my archives from 2006 ’til now, (I hope) you can see the level-up.

So here I am, back in full force of writing!

….I think.