secretss

I had this cool dream last (last?) night! (The sleeping period between Thursday and Friday). I dreamed of Anakin Skywalker! And he was kicking major droid butt. Enough said.

Woo! I hope I dream of him again! I hope I dream of myself being him!

I hope I dream of myself being him taking down Ventress!

Click here. No, don’t do that.

I don’t think my MA3264 professor likes me very much.

Well.

If I don’t like you, you won’t like me either.

Green skin and little orcs running all over it you’ll spend more time with me..

New theme! I spent over three hours tweaking it. There’s just something with me and tweaking/modding everything I see. It took some time getting what I want onto the site and removing what I don’t want. My favicon link tag was gone too and I had to add that back. I like my favicon.

I’m still not entirely done, but exams are coming and I just took the longest study break ever. The previous theme I modded had more personal touches than this one does. No more lost bunnies who can’t find their carrots. No more leaving poops on my posts.

I really like the taskbar and button.

Maybe when exams are over I’ll try to sift through the phps again and figure out what goes where and maybe get my pages and subpages displayed the way I want. By default all my pages are displayed on the taskbar (and I have 50 of them) and some of them are meant to be mentioned in one post and subsequently forgotten about (i.e., they’re not meant for permanent display). So I had to remove that code from the template file and manually list just those I want instead. However, that makes me lose the childsubpage pop ups, which are little boxes (ala Vista’s thumbnail preview) that list the childsubpages when you hover over the parent pages.

I spent an hour last night just figuring out how to make the taskbar buttons appear depressed (like an active window) when you’re viewing the corresponding pages.

In other news, I really want to eat a mega mcgriddle.

An integrated graphics processor freaking sucks.

Oh, and, YAKULT FTW!

Update:
I’m now done with MA3236 (Stochastic Processes I) and MA1104 (Multivariable Calculus). Yay! The remaining two are MA3264 (Mathematical Modeling) and MA3110 (Math Analysis II) and the latter is the worst module ever. Especially for this semester. According to the Math.NUS site, Prof Quek will be teaching it next. Damn it! I should have waited to take it next semester instead. I like Prof Quek, he’s my MA1104 professor.

That 26th Nov MC is sounding really sweet now.

I’ve had Maksim on my laptop for ages and didn’t pay attention to him until now.

Beautiful song, this. Hana’s Eyes, performed by Maksim, written by Tonči Huljić.

Croatian Rhapsody is another beautiful song made between these two musicians:

I went to Murray Perahia’s piano concert on 24 Oct at the Esplanade and I’ve been excessively depressed about my playing ever since.

Copyright © Xiaoling. Intellectual property. Do not steal.

Uh, yeah, that’s right, obvious

Can’t you see now, how obvious
I’m st-st-stuttering my way through this verse
Can I deny, I’m terrified
This effect you have on me, you make me lose my appetite

Yeah, step up on stage, grab a mic, let’s go
Let me compose a song for you
The soundtrack to the way I feel for you
There’s no rhyme and who cares about reason
Throw them out the window, let’s make this night real

Let’s play a game, your host or mine
I’ll be the cleric to your dark knight
Or the other way round
If that’s fine with you, I’ll even kick your butt in Halo 2

Yeah, step up on stage, grab a mic, let’s go
I wanna swim the coral sea with you
Create a whole new world with you
So tell me, can I have this dance with you
Just nod, say yes, seal our love to the beat of this tune

I’ll run a thousand miles
Frag every enemy in the field
Hit every ball into the hole

Just don’t wave goodbye

There’s no rhyme and who cares about reason
Throw them out the window
We’ll make this night real

Copyright © Xiaoling. Intellectual property. Do not steal.

This one was pretty rushed, most of it (the two choruses and a bit more) came in the shower, and then I spent some time at the screen filling out the lyrics and touching up. Sounds a bit silly, really.

Quite a few double entendres and references: Coral Sea, A Whole New World, and Can I Have This Dance are all duets. Coral Sea is Shan Hu Hai by Jay Chou and Lara; A Whole New World is from the cartoon Aladdin, sung by Aladdin and Jasmine; Can I Have This Dance is from High School Musical 3: Senior Year, sung by Troy and Gabriella. The “hit every ball into the hole” line has nothing to do with golf and everything to do with pool. There are three gaming genres mentioned in this song.

I really do want to sing those duets with someone.

And seriously, there is no rhyme in this song.

Street Gigs went well I guess. It was really fun! I got to wear a “Chamber Official” name tag and sit behind a table with a sign on it that said “Performers Registration” and write on a clipboard and stuff!

I was supposed to write up the program for the performance but the end result was probably far from the initial draft. Some people could only arrive after a certain time, some could only stay for half an hour, some wanted an early slot, stuff like that, understandable. I think in the end we had too much material and too little time, so the program had to be edited and re-edited time and time again.

Khairi and Danial were there to perform, and just like I told my piano teacher (who is the principal of My Musical Chamber), a lot of people commented that Khairi’s very handsome. Lol.

Vincent, Fanny, Charlotte, Hui Qing, Samantha, Sheng Yang, Joshua, Nicholas, Shu Ying and Wei Da all went! Thank you guys, so so much! =D Although I didn’t manage to meet Shu Ying. Gah. I WANT TO MEET THE FAMOUS DADA™. And no, I’m not going to grab him by the neck and drop him off a roof. Like, wtf, I’m not that scary. Very very much appreciate that you guys came =).

Oh, yeah, in the end I didn’t wear those heels. Figured I’ll probably sprain something trying to pedal (on the piano) properly with shoes like that on.

I’ll interrupt this post to bring the news that my mom now has access to this blog.

And I now have a curfew at 11:30pm for staying out too late on Saturday and returning home at 1:30am on Sunday. Well, I deserve what I got.

The street gigs event ended around 10pm I think. We went to play pool and The Mind Cafe. The guys decided on the Clark Quay/Boat Quay branch, probably coz it’s nearer to where we were than the one at Douby Ghaut (I can never spell that name right on the first try). Took us ages to find that place! We crossed the bloody bridge twice and walked one whole round around the place to find it. Ugh. As such our session (of two hours) started at 10:40pm. They all ordered main courses while I ordered an apricot and peach tea. That’s rare, that, very rare: me, not eating, when other people are o.O.

We tried Taboo first, but we only played five rounds (the food came at that point of time so we stopped). We formed into teams (Josh and me versus SY and Sam. Nick was the referee.) and one member from each team was given words that he has to make his team member guess, and with each word comes a list of “taboo” words that he cannot use to aid in the guessing. Josh and me won. After the food was gone we played Lifesaver, which is about as aggressive as I’m The Boss. Not physically aggressive, no, but we had to vote people off their boats (which means they drown and die). Somehow, we ended up ganging up on SY again (?) for at least a couple of rounds but he still won anyway. I lost terribly. The last game was an unnamed one with no box. The cards and totem pole were stored in a cloth bag. Sam was the first to win the third game, followed by Josh, and then time was up.

Right, I should probably get back to studying.

It’s already November! Where did September and October go =(.

I love this pair of shoes! Samantha gifted them to me on my 20th birthday but there hasn’t been many chances of wearing them… I’m thinking of wearing them on Saturday at the Street Gigs event. Possibly together with this skirt:

But then there’s the risk of looking like a damned hooker (the skirt may not look it but it’s short).

I’m trying to learn the lyrics to Jay Chou’s new album. She Wu is kind of hard. This is the first time since Qi Li Xiang that I actually printed out all the lyrics, sat down, and tried to learn the words and melody and rhythm. Heh.

Oh my god! I just had this sudden thought. Capricorn is Jay’s ninth studio album, and there’s this ninth symphony jinx or something.. Hmm, I’m not very well read on music history (and to think I passed my grade eight theory) but I remember Beethoven died after composing his ninth symphony, and so did Mahler and Schubert. There are exceptions of course, I remember either Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich survived past their ninth. Er, I always mix these two composers up >.< I think it’s Tchaikovsky. I’m not trying to jinx Jay though =X.

This blog post and the accompanying comments sparked the following thought process.

I don’t think being a recent fan makes anyone less of a fan. I believe hobielover is as much a Jay Chou fan as we are. I think it is perfectly natural for a latecomer into the fandom to be skeptical (for lack of a better word) about albums that are released after he becomes a fan.

Let’s say the person (the latefan) was converted into a fan during the Still Fantasy release. He buys all the previous albums and listens to them all in a relatively short space of time (since the older albums are available without having to wait for a year each). This “listening to a lot of songs in a short space of time” thing will affect him in a way that does not affect fans who have been growing with Jay since his debut album (day-one fans). For the latefan, these songs will sort of jumble up to form one large album (instead of 7 distinct ones) and they, as a whole, will subconsciously form his idea of Jay Chou.

However, day-one fans have been waiting a year each for each album’s release and as such we would feel a distinction among these albums. But the latefan may be unable to fully digest the differences between albums 1 to 7. For him, Jay’s discography will resemble one big mass of songs up until Still Fantasy, then followed by distinct albums Wo Hen Mang and Capricorn. Hence he will tend to see the follow up albums (released after his fan-membership) in a different light compared to the big mass of songs he listened to in a rush. He may think that Jay changed with the new album, that Jay sounds different from his previous works, that Jay has not lived up to his past because he now sounds so different. But the thing is, I won’t expect the latefan to be able to tell that Jay has been changing all along with each album from 1 to 7. As such, the latefan thinks that this new “change” is a sudden thing, and will invariably start to look at the new album in a different light.

On the other hand, day-one fans can tell the distinction between every album and hence they see every subsequent album in the same light as the previous ones, and they understand that this change has probably been going on all along. I’m not saying that latefans are any less of a fan, and I’m definitely not saying that day-one fans are the better fans because that’s not true. I’m just stating the difference in the ways these two groups of fans think, and I’m trying to point out to day-one fans that, on a psychological level, latefans view albums in a different way compared to day-one fans. Perhaps this difference leads to why some day-one fans think that some latefans may seem a little biased. I just hoping that these two groups of fans can understand their differences and quit fighting about how someone’s “not a true fan” or how “you don’t get Jay like I do because you haven’t been a fan long enough”. If you follow the latter argument, NO latefan is ever going to be a fan “long enough” to satisfy you because it’s not like he/she can turn back time.

The same effect applies to books and their sequels. If a latefan decided to start reading Harry Potter after book 3 came out, he would be reading three books in one go, before having to wait years for each subsequent book. His feelings towards the subsequent installments would be subtly different from that towards the first three. He would finish the series using two pairs of glasses with different shades of color. If he could turn back time and either read the books like day-one fans did (with breaks between all books) or read all 7 in one go, his opinion of the books would be different because in either case he would finish the series wearing only one pair of glasses with a single shade of color.

I think I’m thoroughly confusing everybody.

Home!

Just got back from my first visit to The Mind Cafe and we played I’m The Boss. It was a double date with Samantha and Sheng Yang. I think SY was a little miffed at the way we played the game.. (not aggressive enough? =X) Let’s go again next time and play it for real! And maybe we can dine at Absolute Haven too! Whoo.

Earlier on we went to watch High School Musical 3. I love those dances. I want to learn the rooftop waltz!

I’m going to shower and hit the sack.

It’s here! My Jay Chou Capricorn album. Yes, yes, I know, you’re all wondering why I only got it now when it was released two weeks ago. I preordered the Capricorn (CD+DVD) (Metal Case Limited Edition) (Taiwan Preorder Version) for US$27 from YesAsia. It was released on 20th October. I figured since I already have the leaked songs I can stand to wait a bit for the limited edition to be shipped here.

I don’t know if you can tell from the photo, the metal case has an embossed Jay and airship as well as the rock and gargoyle he’s standing on. The album came with a Rubik’s cube and a pack of playing cards. The inside of the album: lyric booklet, a pair of stickers, CD, DVD and that piece of paper that comes with every album that I never read.

I also bought the Secret - Piano Score.

=D