stop whining

yeah. so i've decided to stop whining. cos that doesn't help much haha. but thx for the comments, pple. been nice reading them :)

right now i'm reading books. organising my music. carving a stone stamp. buying myself some paints. helping a little with housework. cooking a bit. going around meeting relatives. suzhou hasn't changed much since last year, though the industrial park is getting more and more modern every year. i don't really like it that way, but my mom said that comfort is more important. i'm not sure if that's right. the city is getting more materialistic just every day. not that it's not been one. as a city living off tertiary industries suzhou has always been somewhat materialistic and money centred, but with all the rich around it was kind of a centre for culture too. all is lost. mom said that maybe we'll be better off without the traditions. maybe.

a friend went to egypt. how exciting. i got excited just looking at the photos. she, overjoyed, riding a camel with her arms streching upwards, against the vast desert with thousands of years of sorrows and pride, change and persistence. it's just a cool feeling. like hurling yourself into something big. something sophisticated. something meaningful. as if you yourself would become bigger, more sophisticated and more meaningful. like you can be synchronised to the rhythm of the ancient breath of the egyption people. like you could actually experience the ruthless change of time and space, with the sculpture in front of you, worn and torn by the forces of weathering. like the emotion of the dead would flood into you, out of the objects you see, hot or cold. man. i've got to go. someday.

so what is blocked is not actually blogger,com but blogspot.com. no wonder i can access the edit and post page from china.

yeah. felt the need to blog. i will talk about my super long trip back some other time. but here i am at home, my mom's nagging is killing me. she is naggging all about the bf business. apparently she desires a bf for me more than i myself do. as if she thinks i'm a mechine, that can shun the idea of finding a bf for the first quarter of my life and suddenly find one once she opens the gate. and she's talking about all this crap... like i need to look like a proper girl blah blah..appearance and all. i've always been educated almost the other way around. and i've always thought my mom progressive and cool. her reversion to conservativism is just annoying me.

FREEWAY and stuff.

so after i sent fm to the airport, i headed back. not knowing exactly how to get back though. i've always thought the traffic downtown sd confusing and, well, for someone who doesn't even know her way around the school well, that was indeed a challenge. i came back one piece. that's worth a celebration. my first freeway trip alone, outside school vicinity. it's not easy especially when i've slept 2 hours yesterday, had a final this morning, and didn't eat anything. (by the way, my brain must have been feeding on ketone bodies duringn my DOC final.) when i was approaching home, i thought i picked up the feel of the steering wheel again. i thought i'd love to drive. it took me about 40 mins to pick that momentum up haha. so that's that.

when i was back, my suitemates were gathering DOC books for the bonfire. i know it might been better to recycle them but i gave my readers to them anyways. it felt good. reminds me of the badge i received this morning. "i survived DOC" too bad that the readers didn't survive me. i hadn't eaten a thing since lunch yesterday, so heated up the leftover panda express from that meal, ate half of it and stopped eating again. i'm just worried bout exams, which is really my fault and nobody else's. well. i'll be like this till next week.

called home, my cousin was there. he has just finished the college entrance exam. like any normal candidate, the mildly shocked and very tired kid sounded pitiful. he has always been the nice kid in the family, and people adore him. that such a kid has to go through that kind of exam stress makes me sad. kind of. he just sound completely innocent and exhausted. and worried. more than me. so when i said that i was worried too, he said that oh, does you exam affect you a lifetime? no it doesn't. yes his does.

so were talking about uni choices. he said he liked math. or english. i thought it unnecessary to do a degree in english. it's a tool after all. thought a degree in math would be useful, that he could go into science or finance easily. scientists adore math-savvy kids, i heard. he didn't like engineering. or physics. hated bio and chem.(i'm sure he'll hate biochem more). "maybe georgraphy" he said. out of nowhere. i'm not sure i would like to see him coming out of the university without a job. other than teaching i mean. he was just a little lost among the choices. i know he would be. i once was. maybe less. but i was once lost too.

packing

i'm packing as i type this down. it's been too short. one year. now that the common room has all the crappy photos and posters and horny soft toys removed, it feels so empty. although i've never been very close to my suitemates, it's impossible not to feel a sense of. loss. i guess.
sorting out stuff, sorting out memories. found my slashing ring that britt bought me the start of octobor. it's still has battery. and still flashing. and i showed it and they smiled and exclaimed. yeah. been so long.

and my itune happens to be playing sarah maclachlan's i will remember you.

I will remember you,
will you remember me?
I will remember you,
will you remember me...


goes on and on.

it's strange..how sentimental i feel. i don't know. it's not that i'm leaving the school or sth, it's just the room. the room that i didn't even like much. sigh.

ah such a mess!

i'm done.

me has decided to move my chinese stuff over to Methinks so that my non-Chinese speaking friends do not have to suffer through the periodic "blank" posts

i'm so sick of metablic pathways. !!! i don't want to have anything to do with biochem in the future. damn it.

honestly i think i've wasted paul price's biochem class. he's such good lecturer and puts so much effort into teaching and stuff. now guilt stings me as i screw up the exams just because i'm repelled by biochem. man. why do i have to take it! genetics is much better. maybe there something in the bio logic that i just don't get. i've never gotten it during A-levels (Oh heck the A's i got) and i'm still not getting it. i'm just so damn puzzled why chem and phy seems so understandable and common sensical to me but bio is still just a puddle of muddy water... aren't they all sciences? don't they work by the same logic?

and i also realised that my will to suppress the reluctance to do certain things has dropped dramatically. i procrastinate without feeling much. i am not particularly afraid. just leave it screwed. just leave it! how terrifying.

Books to read

I need to make a list of books i am going to read.
the master (less than half way through. if only i didn't have to study.)
Line of beauty...(i'll borrow it someday)
the astonishing hypothesis
quest for consciousness. (i've been reading it forever. always get lost.)
odessy (recommended by a lab colleague in summer)
oedipus (sounds like a fine tragedy)
and i still have my da vinci code that i think i'll put off for a while...
my reading habits have gone from bad to worse. over the entire summer i started 4 books but only finished 2 and a quarter of them. damn me.

Beautiful morning. and spring is gone

it's a beautiful morning in the early summer, the sunshine so pretty that my heart aches. thinking me have let the precious spring time and half of the summer slip away through the phenyl rings and plasmids like a joyful string of notes, i feel a little pity for myself. others tell us, and as we grew up we tell ourselves, that we let a few springs go so that we can enjoy the other springs even better when we become older and more successful, but think, the precious spring of our lives are slipping away unnoticed just as silently. i'm not sure if i were ready to let it go, but nevertheless it's going.

modernism

both pieces that la jolla symphony played for the concert are very
modern. one commissioned for this seasonal finale, by a professor in
ucsd called Steiger. another one is Schwantner's Concerto for
Percussion & Orchestra, originally commissioned for new york
philharmonic. the perc solo this time is an award winning young artist
called Mathias Reumert, who is studying perc in ucsd. it is such a joy
to watch a percussionist's performance, especially when it is staged
with a theatrical flavour like that in the Schwantner piece. i think
both pieces are brilliant.

i'm just wondering, why is it that i have not heard many choral works
that sound completely modern? most choral music composed in recent
times sound no less coherent and "sane" than those produced before
modernity arose. for example, eric whitacre, copland, robert shaw. but the progressiveness in orchestral and other instrumental works are just going like crazy. the
choral pieces that copland arranges sound so vastly different from his
orchestral works. those choral pieces that show a sign of modernity,
for example some of chen yi's work and others', often omit the words,
or substitute them with nonsensical sounds. could it be that words
themselves demand a certain degree of coherence, and therefore
obstruct the complete deconstruction of music? the idea conveyed in
words has by itself a unity to its meaning, and therefore does not
facilitate the formation of multiple and conflicting narratives? in
other words, post-modernity in music cannot be as easily executed in
choral music, or songs, as in orchestral music. (or is it that singers
simply cannot stand extreme atonality or dissonance? that sounds lame.)

Exhaustion

why is it so hard to keep my interests while trying to be who i want to
be? it is not very easy to stand through a 4-hour rehearsal screaming
like mad right into 11pm in some lousy concert hall that aids hardly
anything in the acoustics. the conductor keep repeating passages. the
flute in front of me gurgling with air. the sop solo singing a note
wrongly repeatedly. the baritone is out of tempo. with the all the decent
lines taken by solo and coro piccolo and even the guys, i was left with nothing but boredom.
nevertheless have to stand there, holding that bloody heavy folder and looking involved in the music that has nothing much to do with me
after a day of classes and lab, i was so exhausted, still visualising
every minute spent in the hall pulls me a little away from the A in
biochem. damn.

HEAVEN AND HELL

Heaven is ...

Where the police are British,
The cooks are Italian,
The mechanics are German,
The lovers are French and
It's all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is ...

Where the police are German,
The cooks are British,
The Mechanics are French,
The lovers are Swiss and
It's all organized by the Italians.