Welcome to the charming city of Paris, with 6 footer girls aplenty, and the strictest inspection system ever!
Also in the process of composing this post I've had to go through a flight delay, wait for supper to end and quite embarassingly failed in many attempts to find the correct adapter for the laptop charger and getting the 'charging system' (whatever they call it in planes) to work just for this lappie. All of the latter done when the plane lights were off, and the commotion caused due to calling the attendants, switching the lights on and off and whatnot woke up some big-sized French guys, which made the situation doubly awkward. So thank me!
Anyhoo I'm pretty glad to be up here, quite literally. (eating nasi lemak over the skies of Europe really is quite fun!) At least I can relax and blog about what's to come instead of scurrying about desperately buying ink for my failing printer. Mind you I've got 60 or so pages printed out, so that's equivalent to the thickness of your exercise book! Speaking of which I'm ready to work like mad at Apple Hill, and lets hope they have a piano in each cabin like Korea did. And if all else fails there's a Steinway over there!
I read The Star today that Malaysia's very own curry laksa had made it to no 7 in CNN's best tasting foods of the world, and quite amusingly Singapore is grumbling about the fact that their chilli crab only comes in at 35th, and their chicken rice at who knows where. Thankfully the article also mentioned about how the crab and the chicken rice recipies originated from Malaysia itself. Couldn't agree more really. And I couldn't be more bemused by the randomness of this paragraph.
Anyhoo again, here's to two weeks of fun and torture, and I'll see you guys in a fortnight max.
Cheers! :D
P.S: You Malaysians had better be grateful for KLIA, due to the simple fact that it humiliates Charles de Gaulle's bottom.
Confessions of a bonehead
So gone were the days when Grade 8 piano was the highest ever achievement, the pinnacle of your career, a time when I naively assumed that I could talk to people with my head held high. Well, I was horribly wrong.
Frankly speaking I never even knew the diplomas existed until just six months ago, and I was preparing for my Grade 8 examinations at the time. I remember when I was still at Yamaha, and my teacher literally jumped out of his seat when he heard that I only had a Grade 6 certificate at 15 years of age. Well I can't say I was surprised - I knew quite a few friends who had already conquered pieces such as the Pathetique sonata, Fantasie Impromptu, and the Grande Valse Brilliante. All of them from government schools though, so in a way I'm fuming at the fact that there's really not much competition in Alice Smith's musical sector. Heck I played the first movement of Mozart's sonata facile and that garnered quite a big round of applause, while playing that in the dewan kuliah of your school would just be pointless.
So I'm really glad I've met xin ning, otherwise I wouldn't have known what to do after the grades. I've been pretty blessed, having met a friend from Garden international two years back, helping me to make the crucial decision of switching to an international school. In fact without him I wouldn't have thought of going to the UK to further my studies. And without xin ning I would be tinkling away at one of Clementi's unknown works right now thinking that that's pretty much the most difficult piece ever. And I wouldn't have started the violin for that matter! So a big thanks to you two for literally changing the course of my life.
Of course I'd also like to thank Ms Fan for everything she has done for me, especially believing in the fact that I can actually achieve something in Korea. I've made some lovely friends over there, and it's a pity we won't be seeing each other very often. So till we meet again, and I'd be lying if I said that I didn't miss you crazy buggers!
Cheers :)
Crunch time
Ever heard of Martha Argerich? Yep, that's me. In my wildest fantasies.
I really could go on ranting and raving about my half-an-hour repertoire, but I'll seriously leave it to god to decide, while my anti-fatalistic side starts arguing about practice being essential and whatnot. I mean it is, but how long can the human body last? I'm down with a serious flu (presumably due to me constantly trying to put up with (I quote) window shopping and hair blowing in Korea) and it's late at night. Ah well.
I guess putting aside all the tension that awaits in New Hampshire, it's really leaving to UK for good that terrifies me. And that's actually quite an understatement. Frankly speaking I'd rather finish up college in HELP or Taylors, take a gap year and audition for Julliard just for fun. But who wouldn't want that? The world (well, the west) needs more Asian guys around to help them with calculations and billion-dollar contracts, and that's the gap in the market some of us have to fill.
Back to earth, there's no doubt quite a psychological barrier between east and west. Don't get me wrong, I'm not starting a flame-war about racial segregation and whatnot, it's just that I've been to an international school, and there is that difference, whether you like it or not. As Asians the majority would tend to be more reserved and over-analytical, while our counterparts can be exceptionally oblivious and outspoken. And that's what made me quite the oddball in the Anglo-infested world of Alice Smith, which I hope doesn't emulate again during my time in Sevenoaks.
It's going to be a wild ride. The days of relaxation are over. The days of being able to come back home grumbling about your day to your bestie are over. It's pretty much crunch time, whether it concerns music or studies. And I'm just hoping for the best.
Cheers!
Korea!
Yes I've posted it on facebook, but I need to be fair to my non-fb followers as well!
Admittedly I could be doing better things on the flight back to KL than typing out this note. Still I've decided to ditch watching Red Riding Hood, for the past five days in Korea has been absolutely fantastic. And if you're reading this expecting an interesting read, you'd better scurry if you're not particularly used to the wonderful world of musical jargon.
Arriving at KLIA with no clue about what's to come next was only one of my worries. Having to be the only boy in our travel group of six was starting to bother me quite a bit. Yes I'm usually more comfortable being around the opposite sex, but it dawned on me that I would be staying with them for a couple of days, which ultimately meant adhering to the unwritten rules of window shopping and hair blowing. Still it was my first time travelling to foreign soil without my parents, and what could be more exciting than that?
For Ms Fan however it was just another of her kazillion events. Having rushed back from a recital in Bangkok to be our 'guardian' for the next few days, it's her sixth time at the Ewon Cultural Centre in Cheonan, approximately 1.5 hours away from Incheon, Seoul, where they have their annual international meet involving masterclasses, performances and recitals, with groups from Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Phillipines. More cultural variety came however from the professors who came as well, notably Israel, Hong Kong and Poland. And you never mess with the Polish when playing some of their beloved Fryderyk Franciszek.
Issa like Narnia in summer!
We landed at Incheon, and were ushered to the bus, which took us straight to the town of Cheonan. What was interesting was the ruralness of it all, which seemed like a trip from Kuala Lumpur to Pahang. Course there was no time to admire all of that, glancing quite often at Professor Sunico, a tall burly man from the Phillipines, Professor Yeo, apparently 'a name synonymous to the classical music in Indonesia' due to her expertise in guiding 14 year old students to glide through Liszt etudes with ease, and Professor Sudarno, who seemed...pretty nice.
Turns out all the other profs were 'pretty nice' as well, having dealt with prospective young children for ages. Prof Reichart from Israel knows how to make up a story for almost every piano piece, and prof Benjamin Loh (Benji as I'd like to call him from now on seeing as he calls everyone by nicknames anyway) from Singapore can really crack jokes, just to name a few. But I was yet to find that out, as I went to my room with ze roommate, Risang Daharna Giri. Race is obvious.
Each room comes with an upright, which is pretty darn sweet. However the moment he played La Campanella was when I (you would too) nearly defecated in my pants. Here I am with a Bach prelude and fugue, a hopeless ballade and a half-boiled Chopin nocturne (as Ms Fan likes to call it), while I managed to make out a few pieces the others were playing:
- Liszt/Paganini Etudes 2, 3 and 6, Hungarian Rhapsody no 6
- Rach Piano Concerto no 2, all mvts, Piano Sonata no 2, mvt 1
- Chopin Scherzo no 2, Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brilliante, some etudes
- Beethoven Sonatas all mvts: Pathetique, Tempest, Les Adieux, Waldstein
Piece those together (no pun intended) and you get WW3 in second floor.
Finally I can annoy the heck out of my parents
Still, could be worse. Our group wasn't that shoddy either, with captivating pieces such as Widmung and Liebestraum 3. That ultimately made jay jay one of the least achieving pianist of the entire camp. Also another Korean guy joined us shortly afterwards, but that was all. Which accounts to only three males in a nearly all-girl festival of 40. Joy.
Just to give you an idea of the whole thing, there's an orientation session on the first day, where they invite some profs to perform some music for the newcomers. It sort of defeats the whole purpose of an orientation, because instead of making us more comfortable, you get hit hard by the subtle complexity of Jeux d'eau, the epicness of Rhapsody in Blue as well as the length and boredom of the Polonaise-Fantasy and some Moszkodlwsgskfski whatever his name is. You sort of get demotivated cause you've heard that apparently some people in the crowd know how to play those stuff. Or maybe that's the way the Koreans say hello.
Anyways the next two days would be full of masterclasses and performances, where each person would be allocated two masterclass sessions, and will have to perform at the end of the day. Still on the bright side you're not graded no matter how crappy your playing is. The real fear comes from the masterclasses, which I shall blabber on about later. On the second last day the competition begins, and that's where everybody starts to do whatever I almost did when I heard Risang play. And finally we were free to do whatever we liked on the last day before we departed for Malaysia. I think you know where this is going.
Having no masterclasses on Saturday meant that I could laze around doing nothing, well apart from following the group around for the whole day to take notes based on the profs' advice for them. Before that however we went to the handsome Prof Reichart (Ms Fan's yummy 007), teaching some stuff to a Hongkie. Arguably that was one of the best masterclasses ever, however I'm subject to bias cause of the fact that she plays the ballade no 1, and that he told a story. What more could you ask for?
I'll try and resurrect the 'story' of the ballade:
'...think of the first five measures of the piece as the grandfather of the village calling out to his men, with thousands of children flocking over to hear whatever he has to say. The booming forte and pesante octaves represents his voice, and you can imagine the children asking him 'what story are you going to tell us grandfather?' in the sixth and seventh measure. Only one child remains asking him the question, as shown by the tie into the Moderato section. That is where grampa says 'Once upon a time...'
Then he starts talking about heroes, war and ceasefire, like any wise grandfather should. And if you piano ignoramuses think that bedtime stories have absolutely no link whatsoever to music, you're dead wrong. At least it helped me get a pretty decent looking girl knocking at my door asking who the heck was making such a noise. But in all seriousness, it was my first time ever experiencing a masterclass session, and it was an amazing experience. Still, not as bonkers as Professor Ma Cong's one. (shall skip the others to actually incentively make you guys read on)
We already had quite a bad impression of Ma Cong before Petrina's masterclass, simply because Ms Fan just casually told us about a student's horrible experience with him, not telling us that that was the worst case scenario of course. It also didn't help when the girl before her was playing the 1st mvt of the Pathetique sonata (and being bashed severly for it), while Petrina was getting ready to play the third, along with her Liebestraum. And it definitely didn't help when he asked her to play Beethoven first.
Turns out that he was quite the eccentric funny type, and due to us being on the same wavelength (he's a Honkie), his esoteric jokes became all the funnier. Imagine a Hong Kong soap opera, with a crazy guy screaming 我要杀死你 (meaning I want to kill you for all you ang mohs out there) at his fifth wife who unusually went out of the kitchen to do some grocery shopping. Then bring that into bars of five-note running passages galore, and it should make a little sense. Though when I see them do it they usually say 我要 and breathe heavily for a long time to build up dramatic tension before the 杀死你, but that's not the point. The most hilarious part was when he said that char siew fan is not char siew fan without either of the rice or the char siew, basically emphasizing that both the melody and the accompaniment cannot survive without one another. 'Also, pedalling is like gravy, there cannot be too little on your fan, nor can there be too much'. Just some words of wisdom to make you crack up each time you perform.
They serve some random food over there (prepared by the locals presumably), and if you're interested in trying out kimchi for the first time, it's seriously not for those who hate pepper in their soup. In fact when the Malaysian team walked 15 minutes to town for something different, it was kimchi veggies as well. And the exact 'sushi' of sorts which they served in the restaurant was exactly the same as the one served in the centre the next morning!
Wrong country mate
The night of the second day was when I decided to move up to stay with the girls for reasons forbidden and ignorant to be unveiled (Note: it gets slightly awkward, so if you're under 13, go back to playing Pet Society). The thing is that the toilets are being shared with both Venus and Mars, so if there's a door malfunction while you're doing your thing, you'd be best off being relatives with the ostrich family. Oh and for all the boys out there, it's also important to note that girls can bully you gao gao, especially when it comes to asking about your love life. Haiya indeed...
(I'll really skip the competition because it's too long winded to talk about, so here's what happened after that)
Professor Sunico was very interested to give masterclasses free of charge to all of us, so we were more than happy to forgo the Cheonan trip (which apparently brings you to the Samsung building, just to tell you that it's there, and immediately bringing you to see a Buddhist temple). He's the type who's very intricate with every detail, which in my case knew which bass note I should play for my nocturne at any given point, and which fingering is best for the running notes of the ballade, both without looking at the score. We learned a lot from him, such as the fact that tempos should be based on Andante, for it is universally known as the 'walking pace'. Anything faster than Andante would be faster than how we walk, and the same theory applies for the slower speeds. Fingerings suggested in any edition should be followed as closely as possible, for they are usually the best ones. It literally made me think of how much I've missed for the past decade since I started the piano, and the amount of wrong beliefs I've had of the classical world.
At night we were treated to some Korean music from the Korean Arts School or something like that, and you could literally compare their vocal range to Freddy Mercury. The really disturbing thing was the fact that the lead singer confessed the fact that he loved me (is that normal in Korea??) due to my singing voice I think? cause we had to represent Malaysia earlier on by singing Sejahtera Malaysia. Ah well.
'빠르게! Send this to my ex!'
Our flight was scheduled to be at approximately 4:30 pm, which meant that we had to wake up bright and early if we were to have a remote chance of shopping in Seoul. So we slept for 3 hours, woke up at 4 and got ready to take the bus at 5:30. Unfortunately we had to wait for the Indonesians to come along, and being the slower bunch we finally set off at around 6:30. Korea's a charming place, whether at the countryside or in the city. You get cute doggies in Cheonan which the girls go wild about, and guys with makeup on in Seoul, which ironically garners quite the opposite reaction. Underground shopping isn't as interesting as it should be though, and the only thing which seemed worth looking were SNSD posters pasted everywhere in shops. The food is worthy of a shoutout, especially the yummy yummy bibim naengmyeon, with loads of chilli paste :3
Not to mention green tea and vanilla in perfect harmony
So that's basically it, and a big shoutout to Ms Fan for being such a wonderful organizer, Le Shea for being sweet, Wan San for smiling during awkward occasions, Amanda for making the absolute lamest jokes ever and Petrina for proving that branded luggages can still stand some serious check-in abuse. Thank you guys for making this trip one to remember :)
Cause tumblr's just too mainstream
Just so you know I've copied my one-month old post from tumblr, so treat it as if I'm in the preparatory stages of my trip to Korea. Tumblr really doesn't take itself too seriously, so...back to blogger for me :)
Facebook has clearly taken over the limelight, and as one cleverly pointed out - Facebook has taken over the world, so much, yo mamma has one. No fat joke can bring you out of the humiliation that you’re sharing the same internet base with your ex and probably some child prodigy who invariably crushes the hell out of you in Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody, a piece in which he’s happily tinkling away at Carnegie Hall while you proudly present to your parents the first eight measures of Lento galore. To which they’ll look at each other and simultaneously give a nod of disapproval.
Take that, Western parenting!
Speaking of which I do have my own pieces to work on as well. Four grueling pieces to practice in a month, not helped by the fact that I haven’t started on two of them. Try listening to the first ballade by Chopin, makes for a good listen, but practicing is definitely out of the question, unless you’re either one of three of these things
1) You’ve finished your Grade 8, and have nothing else better to do than to go for masterclasses and six-hour daily practices.
2) You have a great passion for music, and would love to share the joy and emotions of classical music to a wider audience.
3) You’re me.
So on paper, I’m pretty much ready to bask in the joy of having nothing to do after a long two-year GCSE journey, apart from the occasional preparation for A-levels or IB. Add piano into the function, and you’ll end up with a schedule so miserable you could die. Survive that however and you’ll end up with a most rewarding repertoire, which will be supervised by professors of music from all over the world, and played for the Koreans and the Americans, to which some asian-educated morons would respond with Cziffra’s piano transcription of Saber Dance and La Campanella. So I can’t say that I didn’t warn myself.
Alternatively you could take the safe route, and play for a bunch of furballs which couldn’t care less.
That’s basically my rambling coming to an end, and I’ll be reading my copy of ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’ to pass time. Definitely makes for an amazing read.
I’ve just realised that comments are in its beta stages. I mean why post something so meaningful to you if the public can’t appreciate it with you? Being frank, I find tumblr very much a conceited platform of sorts, stealing a bunch of quotes and pictures in order to get worldwide attention, albeit in your own recalcitrant world. But hey I’m just trollin’, and I did steal parts of that previous phrase from a U.A Fanthorpe poem anyway. Does that make me part of the tumblr community?
Not with this essay of sorts it will.
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