Beau Bristow

On the 2nd July 2009, Beau Bristow came to ICSJ to put on a show for us all. It was quite an interesting night. The concert was suppose to have started at 7.00pm but of course, Malaysian timing got it to start at 8.30pm instead. Luckily the people who organized the concert were smart and told everyone that it was going to start at 7.00pm when it was actually going to start at 8.00pm. So overall, it started half an hour late than expected.

I was a little bit skeptical on how it was going to be. I've never actually listened to any of his music before so I wasn't sure of what to expect. I didn't really had a group of friends to go to during the concert at the time. But later on I found some people to hang out with so that was okay. I was thinking at the time if I would regret going to the concert. There were plenty of bright lights and people there so I would just end up worsening my migraine even further. But I just said what the hell as I already missed a lot of events because of the migraines.

The music by Beau Bristrow was incredible. He was quite good and was good at improvising even when there was something wrong with the PA system. I ended up liking the concert very much. Alexis, Jessica, and many more people including myself were standing infront cheering and clapping so loudly together. We were doing all sorts of things that night. The rest of the audience on the other hand were quite... dead. They were so passive. I mean a clap or a wave once in awhile would have been great, instead they just stared and when the music stopped, they clapped for awhile and stopped again and listen to more of his songs. Repeat that step throughout the whole concert.

When the concert was over, I went to buy his CD to get his signature as well. I was short on cash that night so I had to borrow from Suzanne who was also borrowing from other people hahaha! Anyway I managed to get his signature but he signed my name wrongly. Instead of writing Qisti he wrote Quisti. But of course that was to be expected I guess. A lot of people had written my name wrongly before and still are. Could be worse. Overall I really enjoyed the concert regardless of the audience's attitude. It was a good night and I got my first ever signatured CD! Yay!

MPO Experience

Hey all,

I'm back to blogging now at the request of a few people I know and of my own will of course. I miss writing down everything so that I won't forget all the things that has happened in my life so far. Good times and bad. So, it's time to start out fresh again.

On June 28th 2009, I went to my first orchestra concert with my Music Appreciation class. It was a blast!

Concert hall of the MPO

The day started out with me meeting up with YQ at the KTM station. It was my first time going anywhere by KTM in Malaysia, so I was a little bit confused on what I was suppose to do. I just followed whatever YQ was doing. We were the only ones dressed formerly on the train which was quite funny as a lot of people were staring at us. Especially to the guy wearing formal with a cast on his hand hahahah!

Afterwards when we reached KLCC, we met up with Kar Wei and went out for lunch as all of us were hungry. I suggested that we ate at Kinokuniya and both of them were stunned to find out that there was a restaurant inside Kinokuniya. The waiter sent the wrong order to our table so we had a sort of free tasting session before we got our real orders. It was quite delicious hahaha!

We met up with everyone outside the concert hall to experience our first orchestra concert. Well, it was a first time for most of us. Some of us had been there before. The security were quite strict with the dress code and Kar Wei was wearing sneakers instead of formal shoes so he couldn't go in. He had to go and buy some new shoes which costed a bomb to his wallet. Sad for him, but at least he got some new shoes to wear hahaha!

The concert started quite nice, the audience was quite at the beginning and the music just flow into our ears. That of course lasted only a few minutes as the rest of my classmates started making noises within the concert hall. I was surprised that we didn't get the boot out of there. The orchestra music showed great variations within mood and tempo and it was just amazing to see all of those people playing their instruments together, making beautiful music together.

After the first few songs, the guest violinist, Mr. Li Chuan Yun then joined the orchestra and it turned from a symphony to a concerto. They played music from the romantic era and the violinist showed great expressions through his mastery of the violin. I could see and hear from how he plays the violin, how expressive he was into the music. It was just incredible and I was in a state of awe and amazement.

The violinist was in a good mood that day I guess, as he played an extra piece for all of us in the concert hall that was not stated in the program. He played a piece by the great Paganini, which was filled with feelings and emotions. We could see that his hands were tired already from playing all those notes and songs, but yet he still continued to play for us. He inspired me musically, through the greatness of his songs as well as his dedication to music.

I will never forget this experience. My first orchestra experience. What I've learned from it will always stay in my mind as well as my heart.

Updating!

Hey everyone, I realize that I haven't updated the blog quite often as I promised before. Sorry about that, going through some hard time right now so I couldn't write much. I still am going through a hard time but I should start updating the blog at least once in awhile. Anyways, picking up from the last post! I'll post a few stories all in one.


Terminator Salvation

First up is the Terminator Salvation movie that I went to watch along with LP, Han Sen, Naomi, Paul and Jerusha. The movie was quite okay. It did justice I guess. A lot of action pact inside of it. It had a lot of moral values within it as well as a lot of explosions ahaha. We managed to get the last six seats of the movie during the premier which was very very lucky ahaha!

We went there by three cars, one driven by LP, one driven by Naomi and one driven by Paul. Naomi, Jerusha and Paul went ahead first to get the tickets as Han Sen and I were waiting for LP to finish his class. Originally we were going to watch another movie which I've already forgotten what it was, but when we heard there were seats available for Terminator Salvation, we jumped to the opportunity.

The movie was quite good. Naomi and Jerusha never watched Terminator before so we had toeducate them during the movie ahahah! LP enjoyed the movie more than he expected. He's considering of getting the movie in Blu-Ray disc format. We thought of maybe making this a once every two weeks kind of thing, going to the movies together. After the movie was over and done with, we were thinking of going for some dessert but everyone felt tired so we all went home after that. Next story!

ED BOARD CAMP JUNE 2009!!!

Yes people, you read correctly! It was the first time ever done before by ED Board. A camp getaway! The camp was a great success although we had some problems along the way.

First, the bus tickets. We didn't manage to book them in time so they had to leave the bus station from KL Central to Genting at 1.00PM instead of 10.00AM. That was still okay though. While the rest of them were going by bus, Alexis and Jessica were going there together by car to prepare the food. LP, Han Sen, Sie Hui and I went there way before anyone else as well to clean up the place and get everything ready for the others. We finished cleaning the place quite fast so LP, Sie Hui and I took a cat nap while Han Sen was cleaning the chickens for the BBQ later on that night.

When all of them reached, they were all starving so Alexis, Jessica and Sie Hui whipped up some sphaghetti for everyone to eat. It was really yummy ahaha! After that, Alexis the briefing to the station masters aka the OomPaLoomPas' on what all of us had to do during the Amazing Genting Race we were hosting for the rest of them. She gave me and Naomi Walkie Talkieswhich saved us a bundle on phone credits.

We were expecting all of them to take about 2 hours to finish of the race, but surprisingly all of them took around 5 hours to finish the games. Apparently they got stuck on the 2nd clue of the game that Han Sen and I did. The fastest team took 1 hour to figure it out ahahahahaha!!

After we played the race, it was getting late. Too late to make a BBQ. So we settled for leftover spaghettis and some mashed potatoes. The rest of the night everyone just bonded with each other. We played Dead Or Alive 4 on the XBOX 360, Grand Turismo 5 on the PlayStation 3, some Cho-Tai-Ti which was hilarious, and the funnest game of all, Mafia! That was ridiculously hilarious ahahaha! We created a whole story from it and tried to find the killer and ended up killing some innocent bystanders hahahaha!

Most of us stayed up all night until 4.00AM. Then it was lights out and everyone went to sleep. Except for me of course. I couldn't sleep too well due to a few reasons I can't really say. Anyway, I spent most of the night at the balcony, looking up at the stars. It was quite hard to see any with all the fog around that night. But when I do see some stars, it's quite nice and peaceful. I could think more clearly and enjoyed the night, mountain air at the same time. I should go to Genting more often ahahah!

The next day, LP was the first one to wake up in the morning. He began his job as a Paparazzi and started taking photographs of everyone sleeping in an awkward position hahahahaha!! But too bad the lighting was bad so he couldn't take much shots.

Everyone started waking up as Alexis's group from the other apartment unit visited us in the morning to start cooking breakfast. It was impossible for anyone to continue sleeping after that. We had some baked beans, chicken balls and hot dogs for breakfast which were delicious.

After that, everyone started showering and getting dressed to go home. When I was done, Alexis and I had a little chat while we were alone in one of the rooms. She heard that originally I was planning of not coming for the camp at all and so asked me as to the reason why. I answered her because I was feeling quite depressed at the time due to *Fill in the blank _______________* and if I went for camp in my depress state, I'd just bring everyone down and ruin the mood. After that she asked if I regretted my decision of coming to camp. I answered her no because we don't get much of these kind of chances, and I had a lot of fun at camp. We were discussing about some other stuffs as well, but was interupted by someone so we stopped there. After that she told me to prepare a speech to give later on for the ED Board sentimental moment.

We made the announcement to everyone and had our speeches ready. First, Alexis started out and told everyone of how ED Board has grown and her first experience when she joined it last year during her first semester. After that, LP started talking about his experience as well, and then Alexis made the announcement that from now on, Naomi would be the Chairperson of ED Board and I would be the Vice-Chairperson. After that, it was Naomi's turn to give the speech. When she was done with her speech, it was then my turn to speak of my experience in ED Board. I told them what I was expecting when I joined, what I got instead, how I've grown from ED Board and the reason why we had this camp. After that we toasted to a lot of things, and finally drank our glasses of sparkling juice.

The ones who came by bus had to leave then as the bus was going to leave soon. After that, only LP, Han Sen, Sie Hui and I were left at the apartment. We cleaned everything up until it was squeaky clean. We played Cho-Tai-Ti for about 2 hours before we decided to go home. It was incredibly hilarious as we screamed after almost every round when someone wins ahahah!

After that, we went back to Subang Jaya and ate at the mamak near INTI. Everyone felt drained after the trip. When we finished eating, everyone went home to rest. It was one of the best weekends I've ever had. Next story!

Mid-Term Mania!

Right after camp, I had 3 Mid-terms waiting for me the next week. First was the Music Appreciation mid-term. I was worried that I had not studied enough to pass it, which turned to be true. I did quite a lot of careless mistakes within it such as spelling errors. Urgh, coming from a journalism major that is not something fun to have. But I did okay on it I guess, even though it could have been better.

Second test I had was my World Religion which was not fun at most parts. I didn't do good in this one either as there were some things I forgot during the test. There's just too much to remember at once! I got a little bit more than half of the paper on that test.

Last test I had was on Public Speaking. This was quite an okay test. I didn't do too badly, yet not good enough either. Although I had the highest mark in my class, apparently it was the average mark on the other class. Sad... but oh well. I can only try to do better next time!

Lesson learnt. Never study last minute as you'll only regret it in the future.

Lab Rush Hour

Today we had a lab class for biology. It was quite interesting from before the class started. I was at the Ed Board workshop from 1.00pm to 3.00pm. My class was at 3.00pm. While I was at the workshop around 2.00pm, Han Sen came and asked, "You look free, you finished your lab report from last week already?" Eyes widened, mouth opened, a shriek came out from me as I forgot to finish up the lab report. Yes.

I rushed my work as fast as I could. While I was stressing on the work, Han Sen could see that I was losing my mind already. Actually, it's quite obvious to everyone in the room. I was laughing lke a maniac while I was rushing on my lab report. Yeah. Creepy, but true. I was laughing like a hyena non-stop. Must have picked that up from Kartini last time ahahah!

Unfortunately, I was a few minutes too late to finish the lab report as our class had started. So we rushed to the lab with me still laughing like there's no tomorrow and feeling disappointed at the same time. When I entered the lab, I started laughing a little harder. Reason? Only about, 3 or 4 people passed up their lab reports that day. Everyone else hadn't finish theirs yet. That was funny.

Luckily, our lecturer was kind enough to give us some time to finish up the lab report. We have to hand it in by Monday which is no problem for me. That's actually a lot of time. I just need to draw a few cells and I'm done with the report already.

Today's experiment was quite easy and less workload comparing with last week's experiment. We finished it up quite fast and answered all the questions in the manual with 15 minutes to spare. After that there was some cantonese/hokien language class for the last few minutes going on among some of my classmates and friends. That was interesting ahahaha! Labs are usually so fun, but our lecturer told us something that made us feel sooo... lazy? Apparently, June's lab classes will be more packed as July's lab classes are canceled so we have to rush the rest of the experiments in June. Yay for us~ Okay, time to finish up that lab report!

Life of a Stray Cat

It seems that I've been recognized as a stray cat among my friends. There are just so many reasons for it as well as an explaination with it. First being that they always see me sitting on the stairs outside the CAE Office or infront the reception area of the new building near the pillars. I prefer sitting in those places rather than a room with air-conditioning. Reason being simple. The air is less congested and the noise is minimal to none when you compare it with the offices like INTIMA Office and CAE Office. I could focus more on my studies on these areas as well as keep my migraines at a check.

Another reason being that sometimes I would forget to buy breakfast, lunch and/or dinner for myself. Mostly because I never really felt that much hungry during those times. Don't know why though, just lost the hunger. It could be either a good thing or a very bad thing. And I have a craving for tuna and milk right now. Meow. Still, nothing beats my craving for some italian food though ahaha! Man, all this talk about food is making me hungry. I want a can of happiness! Meow~

...Ahem, moving on. I get back home kind of late nowadays. Mostly because I can't focus at home and another reason is because I don't want to suffocate under the chimney when I sleep. Not that I sleep much but more than I did last month I guess. I stay back in college and study or just hang out with some of my friends and goofing off doing that. Mostly it's the 2nd option. Must get that schedule done soon.

Other than that, it's back to the first point I made. People see me everywhere in college! At the stairs, at the office, at the reception desk, at the pillars, at an empty classroom even! This seriously categorizes me into the stray cat category for sure. This stray cat also stones around a lot with his music as well. Sometimes I blast the music so loud that the whole classroom hears my music while I was wearing my earbuds. Yeah.

Well, time for this stray cat to get his act together and work on his assignments and schedules. See ya people! Meoooow~

Relaxing Spa Day

Last Sunday I was thinking that it would be my working day and I would be finishing up all of my work that day. Turns out that I had a migraine that day which made me incapable of doing any assignments or work at all. So instead of pushing myself in doing things anyway with the migraine, I decided to take the whole day off. Relaxation spa!

First order of business, I tossed my handphone away for the whole day so that I wouldn't have to worry about anyone calling me regarding work or whatever. That was a good first step. I have always kept my handphone near me 24/7 like a prepared secretary who's waiting for an important call or something. This was a new development for me. I guess it would be for anyone nowadays since handphones have become such common practice that it's a necessity for doing anything. I can't imagine any college student who doesn't have a handphone.

After chucking the phone away, I played around with the laptop for awhile. I didn't play any games though, other than Restaurant City from facebook. The game is so addictive I can't seem to stop playing it. Besides that I was checking out some quizzes I found on facebook and started doing some of them. Then I thought, "Why don't I make on of those how well do you know me quiz?". So then I started working on my quiz which took around one hour to finish up. Reason being that it's 25 question and each question has about 5 possible answers. Then I made a challenge out of it for all of them. I posted a reward for anyone who can score 90% and above that I'd buy that person a Starbuck's Coffee. Any flavor, any size. Too bad no one scored higher than 68% ahaha! I even lowered the bar to 80% but no one succeeded yet. Oh well, offer still stands until Sunday.

When I finished writing the quiz, I chucked the laptop away and spent the rest of the day watching tv and listening to my MP3. It was so nice not having to worry about anything for a few hours. But alas, nothing lasts forever. When it was about 8.00pm I decided to check my handphone and there were a few missed calls and messages. Oh well, back to reality I guess.

I was going to start on my assignments already that night. Laptop prepared for research and suddenly! My internet connection died... So yeah, no research could be done so I couldn't do any of my assignments until Monday morning when I go to college and leech the WiFi. Since the internet connection was down, I decided to just listen to my MP3 until I slept and out like a light I was. Lesson learned. Never put off work when you have a stable internet connection.

Bad Time Management Skills

Nowadays I seem to have a very poor time management ability. Before this semester started, I had pre-planned what my timetable and schedule would be like. But now, it all seems to fall apart. I don't even have time to update the blog at all because I'm so busy. Everything seems so cramped up this semester that it feels more like a short semester than a long one.

I've been trying to get myself reorgarnized but there doesn't even seem to be any time that I'm free that would allow me to do so. It's quite frustrating not being able to be as organized as I was last time. I use to have fixed time for breakfast, lunch, dinner, tv time, listening to music and etc.

And so, this weekend I shall be reorganizing my life with what I should consider as priority. No more bad time management! First thing that I need to do to make all of it possible is to decide what time will I be studying and what time will I be having free time to hang out with my friends. I'm thinking at the very least have 4 hours everyday to study. Can't afford to slack off this semester as I have 5 subjects to study for.

Other than that, I need to be sure of what time would I consider as free time. I'm considering that Saturday would be my free day in which I'll take the wholde day off and not study at all. Come on, it's a Saturday for crying out loud! I don't want to spend my time studying on a day that's suppose to be all about relaxing.

There are still a few other details that I need to plan out as well as a fixed time for me to just relax for myself and either play my PS2 or listen to music. Also I need to set a specific time for me to practice on the guitar as well. Besides that I also need to divide time for me to do my assignments and then there's the Ed Board working time period that needs to be fixed......... Crap.

So many things need to be planned out in such a short time. I'll have to work on the schedule for myself ASAP. Most likely I'll only be able to start next week. Oh well, back to the drawing board.