Trip down to the land under..

.. well, not quite. Just more like the land under the peninsular: Singapore.

A friend and I decided to join this piano festival thing since April, and have been working quite hard on a duet piece. After some pushing, and toiling, and some highs and lows, we managed to confirm our flights and details in time for the event.

Initially, I told myself that I should be in Singapore to attend the festival, and there's all to the whole trip. Who knew. Singapore is having their Mid-year Sales. School's off for the week (or so I know since I came here). So many attractions to see, so many things to do.

Furthermore, Tower Records is obsolete in Kuala Lumpur, and most likely the whole of Malaysia. The only place that offers original classical CD recordings is Rock Corner. And the selection. Pft. Hence a trip to HMV is a must when I get to Singapore.

And when we got here for the festival, the organizers, Music Essential (a music shop), is having a big-ass sale for their score collections. Definitely what you can't find in Malaysia, and by that I mean, the city I grew up in, Kuala Lumpur.

So, instead of spending time at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory (NUS), I ended up spending time at Orchard Road, food stores and concerts other than the festival's; and spending money on CDs, scores and food.

CDs - S$ 93
Scores - S$ 237 (over a span of 10 books)
A pair of Esprit jeans - S$ 40
A shopping spree of a lifetime - priceless

Oh, and one more thing. The hard work I mentioned before did pay off. Our duet was one of the 76 participants who got a Gold ('twas second to best: first was Platinum) award for our performance.

Hooray for us!

Note: Writing this at the airport at 5.50 in the morning without any decent sleep, waiting for the flight, which stupidly was re-timed (rescheduled) from 6.25am to 8am. What a waste of my precious time when I could have just stayed in my room to sleep till early morning and rushed over to the airport. Woe is me.

Happy (stinking) "Chinese" New Year!

It is the year of the tiger...

Isn't it ironic? Life IS ironic.

First, to clear off controversies just from the title alone.

• It's "stinking" because instead of having fun of the festivities, all I get is boredom and time-wasting from all the holidays we get.
• It's "Chinese" because, frankly, it's not really Chinese. To be precise, it's the new lunar calendar year. So why do we call it "Chinese"? That's just plain racist.
  

So anyway, I've been bored my pants off. That's the consequence of going off, away from civilisation, and away from technology and my hobbies. It's just sad. Now, seeing that most of my friends are not around YET from their balik kampung-ing, I'm still having the "time of my life" (ie, even if I'm back in civilisation).

After 3 years of not spending the new year around with my family, I initially got really excited about it. The thought of having really good food, being around family and relatives, fireworks and firecrackers popping everywhere, and not to forget, red packets (the best part of the new year XD).

That was soooooo last year.

I realised the new year mood has totally declined, seeing that there isn't much decorations around town, not much hype going on, the city is still the same colour (so to say).

I don't feel it anymore.

To add on, I didn't get as many red packets as I used to when I was a young lad.

BAH, Humbug.