Distant Worlds in a Not so Distant Land of Singapore

*26 May: Update with Photos taken with my phone cam. It's bad, but something to remember for...(after some trouble with the bluetooth...Thank you CC! >_<)*

Wahahaha.... went for the Distant Worlds concert at the Esplanade!! Yiiiippppeeeee!!!! (dun worry Xiu, I've bought the CD for ye to listen! Packed with lotsa Nobuo goodnessss~~ XD) Let's see..where to start from...

Ticketing troubles

First started off with wanting to buy tix... for the Friday show. Hui Ling told me about the high possibility of Nobuo gracing the first concert of the Asian Premiere. Tix were selling damn fast... on the third day, many of the good seats were sold out and the cheaper ones were kind of in a half gone stage. >_< I was waiting for the student discount then, but nevermind... just went to the sistic outlet in Jurong Point and grabbed two, one for myself and another for Huiying, who gladly agreed to accompany me to the concert. Kept asking Alton if he wanted to go too, cos he was pretty interested in FF music, gave me a whole bunch of it to listen to T_T... I intended to buy a tix for him as a bdae pressie (cos just can't think of anything else...), but wondered if he could make time for it and if HY wouldn't mind me dragging a stranger along. By the time both parties are ok with my intentions, the tix for both days were gone... Sad... but surprisingly, another slot opened for Saturday. Grabbed the chance and got two tix again... ah well. Dun mind watching it again, besides, it's student discount this round, a lot more discount than the previous buy.

First day! 22nd May 09


View from my seating!

There was a very very high atmosphere in the concert hall... >_< Seats all taken up, and the audience were very eager to cheer and applaude. When Arnie Roth (the conducter) took stage and made welcome speeches, there were applause every where, and even before the mention of Nobuo Uematsu's name, someone in the audience just burst out screaming Uematsu sensei's name (a guy... super hyper). Of course, applause there immediately, and Uematsu sensei just rose from his seat (WEEEEEE~~~ he's just 3 rows behind me, a few seats away >_< faint ar...) The ojisan was really all cheerful and smily, wearing some beige jap clothing and slippers, with a bandana covering the head. The conductor seemed pretty tight before that, but at the sight of the super enthusiastic audience, he seemed to loosen up "oh yes, Nobuo Uematsu san, we're all here to fall on our knees and worship him tonight!" XDXDXD For once, I felt super hyped up about the concert.

And so the fun starts! Liberi Fatali was nice, but from my seat, the sopranos was quite drowned by the violins... Oh yea, there was a guy who takes charge of the tuning at the start of the concert, dunno who but he reminded me of Tony Leung (due to his eyes and brows..), the way he played the violin was really good... >_< you can see that he was enjoying what he was doing there. That aside, 'To Zarnarkand' quite gave me the chills... (Too bad they dun have that track in the CD...sob sob.) Maybe the video, which showed Yuna's dance for the dead souls, was very impactful... Oh yea, the music was very in synch with the video too, there was applause when the next song 'Don't Be Afraid' (FFVIII Battle theme) started, cos the timing was super good. The video was showing the start of the fighting scene in FFVIII, and the conductor came in just right, exactly as if you were playing the game (adding the applause and screams right after the start... whao... Just gotta love the atmosphere.... XD)

Went on and on, and the next thing which was super cute and unexpected... the guitarist who performed for the songs 'Dear Friends (FFV)' and 'Vamo' alla Flamenco (FFIX)' forgot his handphone underneath the music scores on the stand he was using during the performance ! >_< And it rang halfway throguh the song after 'Vamo' alla Flamenco'!! >_< It was pretty hilarious, a break from the serious tone of the song 'Ronfaure'. Since I was only 3 rows away from the stage, I could hear the faint 'ring ring', and the 'Tong Leung' tuner violinist gave the shocked look as he dug beneath the scores to find the phone. It drew some chuckles there, but I thought it was a nice touch of comedy. XDXDXD



Intermission! Wow, I was really chionging for the toilet.... learnt my lesson not to drink any water before a concert... But hey, queues for the toilets may be long, yet it goes fast. (That's the first time I saw guys queuing up for the toilets...)

After that, they started with FFVII Bombing Mission, ahh... when will they ever think of doing the main theme of FFVII or even the battle theme... >_< Just love 'em >_< !! While I looked through the program list of the concert, I was wondering what 'Fisherman's Horizon' might turn out in orchestra version. FFVIII music had never really stuck to me other than Faye Wong's 'Eyes on Me' and the piano version of it, 'Julia'. Turned out pretty good, I find, and I was really glad to find it on the CD too! XD

Anyways, those are the pretty memorable parts of it, the ending song, which was an opera, gathering three great talents (sang really well >_<), was nice, but gets a bit draggy at a point. And when all ended... yea, of course!! Encore!!!!!! XDXDXDXD The applause remained, and shouts for encore could be heard. Hehe, I was eyeing the performers on stage, the tuner violinist giving some smirks, and yeap, there was encore. Haha, Arnie quite played with the audience a little, and yea, he surprised us with an unexpected song of 'Terra's Theme' from FFVI. I was surprised too, but someone in the audience was close to the answer when he shouted 'Tina's theme'. Anyways, yesh, surprises. We were asked to vote for the song that would be written for the next tours held other places. Haha, the enthu crowd upstairs even shouted 'Dancing Mad' before the conductor could list out the battle themes for us to vote. And yea, seems like it's 'Jenova's theme' and 'Dancing Mad' which the world will await the performance!



He was standing so near, omg.. But my phone cam is bad...



And surprise surprise! The most anticipated song 'One Winged Angel' performed following that voting. Nobuo Uematsu sensei actually joined in the choir and sang along. Cute guy... he bounced to the rythmn too >_< !! Glad that they thought of incorporating FFVII: AC vids into the screening... The 3D models of the old game vids are gonna drive me up my (inner mind's) wall. A little bit of laughter could be heard when the old FF game screen vids were shown for the FF1 to 3 medley, but it was understandable... But for FFVII, why use the old models when you have super duper life-like new ones around?!?!?!?!? >_< melt arr.....


The question and answer session. Someone in front was video-ing the entire session...



Stayed back for the question and answer session... and realised that many of them in the audience were foreigners from neighbouring countries. Seems like Singaporeans have not much to ask, in which the organiser of the session was pretty desperate to get SG people to ask questions (especially females...) On the question of Uematsu sensei doing voice acting, it seems like he did cast for a role, dunno which, but most probably a really cute one, cos he just suddenly went into a really high pitched voice similar to __NameSomeCutePokemon____, crying pleas of 'help me!' in jap. Anyways, after the session, HY and I came out of the hall, we found a long queue waiting for the autographing event to start.... T_T the CDs were sold out then!! >_< I felt sad... and lookign at the crowd, both of us decided to leave... Hui Ling called me up to locate me, and even offered to help me get an autograph. Ah well, I was already on the bus by then... and hey, I get to go again yea. XD

Second trip on 23rd May 2009

Yes, I wonder how many are itching to bash me this moment. Even my neighbour was screaming and shaking me when she found out I have tix for both days. Wondered if she should go in my place... but I promised I'll get a CD back for all to listen to, even for Xiu. And hey, Alton and I arrived pretty early then. The que was shorter than yesterday's, which was a huge relief. And yea! I got my CD! And YEA!! Got it autographed!!





(Psst... I didn't realise that the conductor was the guy who also conducted the Play! concert Xiu and I attended a few years ago >_<)

That was after the concert, skipped the QnA session, and we were somewhere in the front of the que. Seems like they were pretty strict on the autographing part, only allowing one signature per person....

And yea, Nobuo Uematsu was there again! The same things happen again, encore and last encore performance. However, the atmosphere wasn't as crazy as last night's, when screams and applause just burst out suddenly from the crowd. However, from my new seating in the foyer stalls, I could hear the sopranos better, an overall better balance than yesterday. And something happened again with the guitarist, this time probably the aircon disturbing the pages of his music scores too much, that the conductor came down personally during the performance to help him flip the page while his right arm continues to swing to the beat...XD

And yeap, that's about it! Took a few photos with my phone cam, but dunno how to get them down onto the pc.... T_T Maybe I'll figure it out sometime soon....

Waaaaaa..... XD Yea, young men and women dun always scream for pop star idols. It's the person with talent and passion that inspired, bringing forth a craze...... All respects for this old bubbly fellow!

Rat in the House

Yeap, there was a rat in the house this early morning... Pronounced dead at 0415 on May 21... I think.



Haiz.. I was woken up by the sudden screams of my sis, who went 'RAT!!! RAT!!! RAT!!!" It was a very terrified tone, like those you see in movies and dramas when the female lead gets haunted down by a serial killer or something. It was still dark, so I couldn't see, until someone turned on the lights. It was dad. He was trying to comfort the girl a bit, denying there was a rat, although physically, he was already examining the scene. Then he started chasing a grey creature, which scurried off under the blankets nearby Yang's sleeping area. (The three of us slept in the same room, me on the bed, Ting and Yang on mattress laid on the floor cos it's cooler) That boy was still sitting there, kind of half awake. Dad quickly grabbed the creature along with the blanket, head and body. I could see it's hind legs and tail there, it didn't seem to move much. The elder man left the room with the rat together with mum, trying to find a way to keep the rat away.

As for that woman... that was the first time I saw her in a hysterical state. Crying, screaming (I doubt I can reach that loud a tone) and in fact, shivering, her arms hugging the knees kind of posture (didn't seemed very right to me...). No words seemed to go in, so I tried hugging, which calmed her down a bit. Mum came in again, giving her a cup of water, telling her to sleep on the bed with me for the night. Amid the weeps, Ting said she felt something biting her legs then, which led to the discovery (and drama).

Truthfully, she scared me more than the rat.... Going into the kitchen, Dad and Mum had caged the rat up in a mouse cage, but the rat was kind of lying motionless there. Dad had kind of accidentally suffocated it when he took the rat by the head. (or was it on purpose, I dunno...) They placed the rat outside the house, waiting for the morning sun to shine... I tried to get the kids to sleep, Ann was laughing at the entire situation.... Yang was moaning from pain (cos Mum accidentally stepped on his toes while moving in and out of the room). Ting was (for once) sleeping beside me on that king sized bed. She had a few layers of blankets covered over her (to the head), but I could still her sniffing away. She was still afraid, I think, cos I started to realise I had no space to turn my body with... A back to back situation...

Didn't quite want to wake up at 9am today, but still did. Ting was back to her old self, despite the drama. Mum was wondering what the girl had been using these days, since it wasn't the first time she was attacked by pests. Previously, I saw a cockroach running through her hair one night. Another incident was a bee hovering around her in the morning, and mum got stung while trying to get rid of it. Dad was laughing at how such a thing could happen, cos there wasn't a need to agitate the bee, but seeing last night's drama, guess no one could not help it but just go into the terminator mode... Guess her wailings proved to be a good auto-defense. I couldn't do that, given that situation on me, the rat have chance of living maybe.

Wonder why it would get into the room there... Inspection this morning has led to a floor mat with its corner bitten off. There was a hole in the covering under the door too, though I really wonder how could such a thing could squeeze in? Anyways, there I go again, clean up clean up... Hopefully dun need to face this situation again, it's pretty horrifying to see Ting in a teary, shivering mode.

3rd week of hols

Feels as though I'm doing some counting down... Let's see... Haven't done much this time, haven't prepared anything for cosfest too... T_T It feels som aimless when you have all the time in your hands. To get yourself down on the chair and plan what to do is tough too. Good thing I had a simple temporary job to keep me going a bit, but how long can that last?



A view of the scene right outside the office I was at today. The place was in Tanjong Pagar, the buildings pretty old and nostalgic on the outside. Done while waiting for the teacher in charge of the exhibition work to tell me what to do. I've completed my tasks in the three hours... and wonder if I should have taken a bit longer to earn some more money... heck, I don't like that.

The teacher called and told me I could go home, cos the stuff that I was supposed to cut today was gonna take a couple more hours before it is ready for me to work on. Well... there goes an mrt and lunch fee... While on my way home, I saw many beautiful buildings along the way. I wonder if I should just take a random drifting around the island and draw whatever I fancy? Maybe with that, I can start that old singapore sketchbook idea again.

Went home and had some rojak at the coffeeshop with ann and mum. The little girl loves to see the rojak uncle make his stuff, and we elders end up eating the rojak instead. (Quite scared of it now...)

First Zouk Trip

*Updated with photos 26th May*

Yeap, me bad little girl, went Zouk. Ah well, Yina's singing competition was held there, and since many of us DMD alumni were gonna be there to support her, why not? So I went there... in t-shirt and jeans. Kind of super out, haha... But that's just me. Anyways, the place is pretty dark, the thing that kind of sparked my interest is the UV light, which made white look bluish (yea, thank God that my shirt was black...). The atmosphere... if it ain't noisy, would have been a pretty nice place to chill out and catch up on the old times. Every entry ticket was given a free drink, and I was pretty excited about that. Thought there would be those guys who mix drinks and throwing bottles up (dunno what's that called), but turns out it's just another order, make, take kind... Pretty sad that the non-alcoholic drinks are the just soft drinks and juices... wonder if they mix them, but didn't ask. Reluctantly got a glass of white wine, didn't quite want to take alcohol anymore. Didn't like that aftertaste, still find the one that Wush had a year ago at Clarke Quay area was the best (just one sip and you remember it), sweet and smooth... Didn't know Huiying takes red wines.

Since I was there to just hear Yina sing, I sat down at the table, wondering what to do before her turn comes. I tried talking, but it's hard to converse in that place, especially when there is a singing competition going on. HY mentioned that she brought my autograph book, but she wasn't done with it, cos she wanted to do some last minute watercoloring. I offered her my watercoloring set (yea, brought my pencil box along, cos I thought I could maybe just draw the place... but it's too dark to see the place well...), but it's pretty crazy to paint there, cos of the UV light. Seeing the watercolor set, Ada, who was sitting in front of me, asked to try the tools. I gave a simple demo, and she took the tools and started painting on my sketchbook. We can't really tell what color she used, but think she had some fun making a picture out of the 'demo' piece I did.



The browns appeared a dark gray under the lighting, but she used the same color throughout, varying only in the shades. Turns out pretty nice :D



This one was our first collaboration. I started off with random strokes of paint on the paper, using brown (I know what's on the palette, hehe). The yellow appeared very bright under the UV light, and at first look, it looks very odd. But when looking under the normal lighting, it's actually pretty ok.



This one started with me drawing the man with a question mark shirt. The music was pretty loud, so I drew him, hands on the ears, kind of like 'I can't hear you!'. She continued, adding a pig... pointing at me after that... Gave her a 'what the...' look, and drew a bunny with a pen knife, in action to 'kill' the pig (yea, her chinese horoscope is pig actually). Haiz... her next step was to draw a pile of shit under that rabbit.... which I counter with a big toilet bowl. Then she got quite stuck... Told her that she can draw anything lah (that this shows how much she can 'suan' me in art mwuahahahahahahha...) That's when the more fantasy stuff started. She did some fishes jumping away from the toilet bowl, so I made a 'fishy wonderland' with a wine glass to catch 'em. She doodled away from that, drawing the shiny ball that was hanging on the ceiling, some buildings by the side. Me added people around it, kind of like an explosion, also added some life-line there. I kind of like the candle she did, added a keyboard for her, and extended the candle into some 'Changi airport terminal' structure, joining to the underwater world. Doodle doodle doodle.... ending with a starfish band in the wine glass (there was a band group playing then, pretty noisy).


Someone concentrating very hard on her drawing process...


And someone popped his head in and kaypoh....

We stopped there, cos the gang was getting hungry and decided to leave for some food elsewhere. Yea, Yina's turn was over by then. She was very nervous, went off key on a high note...

Had some hard time eating my supposed non-spicy mee goreng... T_T T_T T_T Haiz... dun wanna talk about it... Anyways, when we got back there, the competition had ended and the prizes given out. Yina got a consolation prize. So sad we weren't there to cheer for her then... missed it. The group was kind of restless, wondering what to do. Many of us left the place, guess we're pretty cut away from 'life' (designers.. haha). Anyways, that's my zouky trip. Dun think I'll wanna go there anymore...

Frame u...

Yea, just something that is really beautiful... A collaboration across borders... Mum was asking Ting to search it up the internet when she saw Feng Huang TV featuring it as the most watched videos online. It was said that the producer spent 10 years+ to gather all the clips for the video. Wonder if that old guy is still alive? O_o
(More info here!)

Finally got the job call and went for a day of framing.. kids work. Yea, Huiying intro a temp job to me at the art school she is currently teaching in. It's an education company that goes around the kindergardens to conduct art lessons.

The lady Maya showed me to the office nearby Tanjong Pagar MRT, quite a small and quiet place. Met an uncle who just started work 10 days ago, an admin there.. pretty holy guy who even brought the bible into the office nia.. After being briefed about my work, I set off to do it. It's just to prepare the kids' artworks for their mini exhibitions in their school. Given a whole lot of black paper frames, I had to stick these frames onto the artwork... I realised how a good piece of work could end up all ugly with a bad frame. Some artworks are pretty big (the kids love to draw big). Having a small frame kind of makes the artwork look crammed up... so I had to cut my own frames for quite a number of works.... Couldn't finish up the pile, but at least the more pressing ones are done.



Two of the works that I kind of like.

While pasting the artworks, I kind of realised these kids are pretty cute. For every piece of artwork, the kids would write their own names behind. Many had their names all scribbled behind, the writings about 5 cm tall... there was a boy who wrote his name big enough to fill up the entire page. Some drew some cute motifs along with the name, most names are written in caps, and there's one who wrote his name in english, chinese and even han yu pin yin.... talk about the government's campaign... maybe it worked for him.

Another thing I realised...was that Gradsign was a pretty good art school after all. Looking through the artworks, I sensed some monotony... as if one can imagine the teacher showing the kids an example and all of them follow it exactly. For the different projects from 4 different schools, taught by 3 different teachers... the colors, the techniques, the items, at times even the positioning of the design elements are totally similar for all pieces within a single project. I was quite surprised... For the two kids at home, I can immediately tell apart which kid did which. For the works that I framed up, I couldn't see much of a difference. Maybe I'm not that skilled to really differentiate that, or maybe they are doing still life, resulting in the similarity. However, I really wonder how to even teach art... Like what Mr Ho said last time when Gradsign was still around, it's hard to teach art. You hope they do this, but if you interfere too much, it's not their work anymore, their uniqueness gone. And there are the parents who will wonder what are the kids doing in art schools if they don't see results, in which these results are not necessarily to draw like da vinci. Argh.

2nd week into the hols...

yeap, so fast... Let's see...

Spoon
Well.. settled. It didn't go very well, but if I can pass, that would be great. Met Chris while Siew Khim and I were walking towards the adm school building. Chatted a while (sort of, around 10 minutes instead of the usual 1 hour nag nag), the same old starting of 'How?' ...

'...Like that lor.' I replied.

Sian ar.

He said the grades for the class are pretty averaged out, we aren't very very good, neither are we very very bad. ...taking that as a pass for everyone, I hope. Somehow, I hope not to see him again as a professor, but maybe... a random person who I can just stop and chat about stuff other than school...

Visit to Ms Sunshine's House!
The very first person I caught up with when the hols started... As promised, we had a generous helping of BnJ + Haagen Daz ice cream at her place. At least her house isn't as messy as the last time I visited. Things isn't going very well for her, other than listening, I couldn't do anything else for her... To think that it's her bdae this month... Gonna invite her for some dim sum soon...

Concerts...
Mwaaaaahh... so many lined up in May... the season of the Singapore Arts Festival, I guess. Huiling invited the gang to her Chinese Orchestra concert, performed by the Singapore Polytechnic CO. It was far better than the last one that she was involved in. All the sections seemed to be even out and balanced, despite her pointing out the weakness and strengths of the orchestra. Looking forward to the Distant Worlds concert! Weeeeee~~ Not to forget Yina' performance at Zouk! >_< Never been there, mum told me to expect an environment noisier than the arcade, but I wonder... if it's a singing competition, it shouldn't be that bad.

Job....less
Yesh... Thinking some other stuff now... I wonder if this was the factor affecting my mood these days. Bank's drying up... should have been months ago, I'm pretty proud that the few hundred can last me so long.... T_T T_T T_T but never forever... Ngaahhh...

Maple maple maple
Back to mapling... somehow, felt pretty pressured to level up when I see guildmates leveling at insane speed. Finally could have a conversation with Rabbit, was quite surprised she would just ask about my gender right after I logged in. Wonder if I've been behaving too male sometimes... Back in cass, there was a male mapler who got jealous of me being too good to the ladies...

Continued the two old accounts, created two new spearmen. Probably the very first time I chiong-ed out a spearman from lv 1 within 3+ hours... the fellow mapler training in 'henesys training ground' was like stopping, hanging on the rope everytime I lv up there, probably wondering if I was hacking or something... Scary what 3x exp can do when it meets a 2x event...

Drawing
Slow progress... I hardly did much sketches... The near completion picture of Mira Jane of Fairytail... Have been trying to imitate Mucha's style. Thinking of doing a series of it.



Went for Joan Kelly's Anatomy class today. My does she reminds me of Mr Calvin Tan nia... T_T (somehow, the latter is always the best in my tutor rankings....) While she described about how and where the specific muscles are attached to, I began to relate it to the art of rigging in maya... It's pretty amazing, how each muscle is built up and attached to specific areas to make every part of the body move... Never looked at them so detailed before, it can take a long time to really put the info into the head. I was pretty fascinated by what the muscles can do and decided to name my new spearman after Latissimus Dorsi (XD). Hmm... maybe if there's a new archer, I can try trepezius, pectoralis or deltoid... No one would use that i guess...wahahahaha~

Gotta catch up with Dor soon, time to discuss the next convention.