I think I need to be on caffeine IV drip. The benefits of caffeine:
1. Gives energy to carry cello
2. Gives energy to lift hands to play cello.
3. Notes do not swim before your eyes on a dark stage.
4. Even if notes do swim before your eyes, your mind is still awake enough to remember what you played the last 400 rehearsals. (Actually it's just 7 but it feels like forever.)
5. Helps you match energy level of the Energizer Bunny conductor and
6. still have strength to take bus home, and wake up for class in the morning.
Maybe what I need is ADHD medicine, to accomplish the above and more. One more reason to get a kid - so I can make him fake ADHD and then steal his prescription.
Even if caffeine only manages to accomplish some of these things, the placebo effect is enough to compensate for the rest of the list. And if by some fortuitious reason the heart gives out, like after running 21 km, all the better.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Monday, August 27, 2007
haemorrhage
I am terribly depressed now because I have become a cello orphan. Since the mother of all cellists has contracted long-haul conjunctivitis and is specialist-hopping, and my other cello teacher has jet-setted off, I am now being farmed out to other alien people, whom I have no intention of going to because I have not settled my separation-loss issues.
It is not helping that after 2 KoolPurpleSkool students dropped out, now I have 3 more new ones. (All older, thank goodness - 5th, 7th and 11th grade respectively.) Strangely enough, all Caucasian females. I kinda expected more ethnic diversity.
The highlight of today was attending some social work seminar. It was fascinating because there were many people from Relevant Organisations, and I learnt a lot, especially of how Ministry staff can be condescending, superior, and self-lauding all in one sentence.
"Oh I have found Other Methods of disciplining my children that doesn't involve caning. Maybe because I am social work trained. Haha...".
I experienced internal organ rupture.
That was just one of the many random gems that Black Suit spouted. The overriding theme of her gems was that government policy is all encompassing. And everything reeked with the stench of the Saviour Complex. I'm wondering if that's what you need to qualify as a helping professional - this absolutely certainty that you have the ability to help, and that people need your indispensable advice on how to run their lives, their families etc..
I am feeling more and more dissociated from this social work business.
It is not helping that after 2 KoolPurpleSkool students dropped out, now I have 3 more new ones. (All older, thank goodness - 5th, 7th and 11th grade respectively.) Strangely enough, all Caucasian females. I kinda expected more ethnic diversity.
The highlight of today was attending some social work seminar. It was fascinating because there were many people from Relevant Organisations, and I learnt a lot, especially of how Ministry staff can be condescending, superior, and self-lauding all in one sentence.
"Oh I have found Other Methods of disciplining my children that doesn't involve caning. Maybe because I am social work trained. Haha...".
I experienced internal organ rupture.
That was just one of the many random gems that Black Suit spouted. The overriding theme of her gems was that government policy is all encompassing. And everything reeked with the stench of the Saviour Complex. I'm wondering if that's what you need to qualify as a helping professional - this absolutely certainty that you have the ability to help, and that people need your indispensable advice on how to run their lives, their families etc..
I am feeling more and more dissociated from this social work business.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
screechy cats, salty beef, chicken and egg...mushroom cloud
Today I met my accompanist for the second time. Halfway through playing the Elegy when I heard the noise I was producing , it reminded me of a screechy dying cat and I couldn't help laughing.
Immediately after I stopped playing, I said
"I hope I get dengue the following week. Then I won't have to take my exam."
"People die of dengue, you know." she said.
Then maybe I'll get someone who can play the Elegy better perform it at my funeral.
Speaking of funerals, my cello teacher who is 69 years old is uncontactable by phone for many many days since her attack of conjunctivitis. I keep getting her voice mail so I checked obituaries, but didn't see her face, thankfully.
Who takes 6 hours to finish an ethics application form?! I frustrate myself with my perfectionism. I'm starting to see it as a problem - together with my death wish (not really, that one's for real) and my penchant for labelling people with unsavoury labels like 'cow' (but cow/beef is savoury, no?). I begin to see how this is my reaction to the incredible NICEness of people in the social work class. It disturbs be because I believe no one is genuinely nice and I don't know how to talk to people who are nice because they are at polar opposites to my gleeful evilness. I think, in a gross mis-application of family therapy theory, my being evil is an attempt to differentiate myself from the people around me.
I am not sure if that is a result of my increasing sense of alien-hood, or the cause of my sense of alien-hood. The perennial chicken and egg question, it all comes back to.
Maybe because social work is not just a professional identity but a way of being, something you radiate internally, and it appears that knowledge is not enough to compensate for the lack of that...internal glow.
What rubbish I write.
But. It's starting to feel like I'm in my nightmare-inducing secondary school all over again, except that now there are more English-speaking people (but not really), and there are more people I can talk to. But I can't shake this increasing sense of difference. Everytime I hear the 'Next time when you all become social workers' refrain, my eyes glaze over. And people are flitting around now in the Amazing Race for Thesis/ISM supervisors, and the existential angsty part of me says that school and everything attached is so inconsequential.
Immediately after I stopped playing, I said
"I hope I get dengue the following week. Then I won't have to take my exam."
"People die of dengue, you know." she said.
Then maybe I'll get someone who can play the Elegy better perform it at my funeral.
Speaking of funerals, my cello teacher who is 69 years old is uncontactable by phone for many many days since her attack of conjunctivitis. I keep getting her voice mail so I checked obituaries, but didn't see her face, thankfully.
Who takes 6 hours to finish an ethics application form?! I frustrate myself with my perfectionism. I'm starting to see it as a problem - together with my death wish (not really, that one's for real) and my penchant for labelling people with unsavoury labels like 'cow' (but cow/beef is savoury, no?). I begin to see how this is my reaction to the incredible NICEness of people in the social work class. It disturbs be because I believe no one is genuinely nice and I don't know how to talk to people who are nice because they are at polar opposites to my gleeful evilness. I think, in a gross mis-application of family therapy theory, my being evil is an attempt to differentiate myself from the people around me.
I am not sure if that is a result of my increasing sense of alien-hood, or the cause of my sense of alien-hood. The perennial chicken and egg question, it all comes back to.
Maybe because social work is not just a professional identity but a way of being, something you radiate internally, and it appears that knowledge is not enough to compensate for the lack of that...internal glow.
What rubbish I write.
But. It's starting to feel like I'm in my nightmare-inducing secondary school all over again, except that now there are more English-speaking people (but not really), and there are more people I can talk to. But I can't shake this increasing sense of difference. Everytime I hear the 'Next time when you all become social workers' refrain, my eyes glaze over. And people are flitting around now in the Amazing Race for Thesis/ISM supervisors, and the existential angsty part of me says that school and everything attached is so inconsequential.
Monday, August 20, 2007
outrageous fortune
I wrote a total of 8 emails today, some to my KoolPurpleSkool students and colleagues, some to lecturers, some to acquaintances, and I experienced this sense of disconnect, the soul-leaves-body experience. Or rather, the 魂飞魄散, what-am-I-doing-with-my-life feeling. I haven't written this many emails in a day - and not the few lines kind - but even if it was the few lines kind, word choice is always tricky. And word choice takes up brain cells.
Watch SingaPopera, the music's funky.
I am about to have another student with the surname "Pollard" and I laughed out loud when I saw it, not the the surname is funny per se, but it just reminded me of Vicki Pollard from Little Britain.
Watch Little Britain, it's hilarious. Good laughter therapy.
Yeah but... no but...The Hamlet syndrome is plaguing and I can't write another word.
Watch SingaPopera, the music's funky.
I am about to have another student with the surname "Pollard" and I laughed out loud when I saw it, not the the surname is funny per se, but it just reminded me of Vicki Pollard from Little Britain.
Watch Little Britain, it's hilarious. Good laughter therapy.
Yeah but... no but...The Hamlet syndrome is plaguing and I can't write another word.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
bluish
I would like to say I haven't been this swamped with work and stuff before )but I seem to end up saying it everytime, it's getting stale). Let me count the ways.
For starters there's the P.A's "best of" local musicals thingy 31 Aug - 1 Sept. (I am not revealing the name of the show to prevent the blog from being hit when aliens google.) The music's not bad actually, even though the cello part looks uncomfortably similar to a violin part. The cellos have to play demisemiquavers together with violins - but no, this is not a normal scale-with-open-strings thing. We have 3 position shifts per CROTCHET (not per bar) - and this extends to the whole bar, which amounts to 32 notes in a bar.
**If you can't count from 1 to 32 in 1 second, how is it possibly playable?**
And these position shifts also include crossing multiple strings. This recurs for multiple pieces.
So I have to practice insanely for a gig, AND find time to practice for cello exam on 7 Sept, which I am so doomed to FAIL, because I have no time to practice and do my readings and do my thesis proposal and trawl databases for the literature review.
The honours class is large and giggly. Square and Circle and Stitch and Cow are there. Cow has dropped her voice a few octaves and is attempting to ask non-duh questions and sometimes she succeeds. Stitch is tripping over himself to answer questions. He talks like a zen master, in abstract concepts and words randomly plucked out from the sky and hastily put together. I hide behind my spectacles, trying to avoid people because talking takes up too much energy.
But tomorrow morning I am actually going to the Thesis Support Group. I think you'll only find this kinda thing in a social work class. It's so ironic - my main motivation for doing a thesis was to escape from Three Whole Modules worth of people and group work etc. And now there's another group.
Whatever.
For starters there's the P.A's "best of" local musicals thingy 31 Aug - 1 Sept. (I am not revealing the name of the show to prevent the blog from being hit when aliens google.) The music's not bad actually, even though the cello part looks uncomfortably similar to a violin part. The cellos have to play demisemiquavers together with violins - but no, this is not a normal scale-with-open-strings thing. We have 3 position shifts per CROTCHET (not per bar) - and this extends to the whole bar, which amounts to 32 notes in a bar.
**If you can't count from 1 to 32 in 1 second, how is it possibly playable?**
And these position shifts also include crossing multiple strings. This recurs for multiple pieces.
So I have to practice insanely for a gig, AND find time to practice for cello exam on 7 Sept, which I am so doomed to FAIL, because I have no time to practice and do my readings and do my thesis proposal and trawl databases for the literature review.
The honours class is large and giggly. Square and Circle and Stitch and Cow are there. Cow has dropped her voice a few octaves and is attempting to ask non-duh questions and sometimes she succeeds. Stitch is tripping over himself to answer questions. He talks like a zen master, in abstract concepts and words randomly plucked out from the sky and hastily put together. I hide behind my spectacles, trying to avoid people because talking takes up too much energy.
But tomorrow morning I am actually going to the Thesis Support Group. I think you'll only find this kinda thing in a social work class. It's so ironic - my main motivation for doing a thesis was to escape from Three Whole Modules worth of people and group work etc. And now there's another group.
Whatever.
Monday, August 06, 2007
the last throes
And just like that it's already the last week of the holidays.
In the past 2 weeks I
1.Wasted money watching the first half of a rather lacklustre Hey Figaro! So much for the exclamation in the title - the otherwise not-bad music was weighed down by the weak acting, at least on the first day, where the ensemble cast couldn't carry their characters through, much less handle the comic aspects. I think to pull off comedy requires a certain amount of thickskinnedness, or at least a lack of self-consciousness, which some lacked, and drew weak laughs from the audience, which I think is worse than having no laughs at all. And some had weak voices. I'm never watching local opera again.
2. Bought a hiragana/katakana workbook, because I am not busy enough (Ha. Ha.) and am itching to try something new. Writing Japanese characters is very therapeutic, especially during times when I refuse to touch my cello anymore due to pure exhaustion frustration and fear.
3. Made a List of Commitments I have this semester, and am still in the process of deciding which one I should cross off my List. So much for all 'assertiveness training' we talk about during social work modules. I haven't been able to say no to a lot of things, but sometimes I think it's a lack of desire to say no i.e. I want to do everything. However, in light of the fact that I am going to FAIL my cello dip and have to try to practice at least 4 hours a day from now till the exam, it is enough impetus for me to shut out the world and enter into the tortuous blackhole of cello hermitdom.
4. Practiced cello. What else is there to do. Am taking a break to blog, because I just overpeeled the skin on my left index finger, which is looking more and more like an onion. I didn't know there were so many dermal layers. Everytime I slide, the string gets further under the skin which is freaking gross.
5. Put off writing my program notes. 600 more words have never been so difficult to write. Give me a social work essay anytime.
Am terrified of the prospect of returning to school. I might just vapourise.
In the past 2 weeks I
1.Wasted money watching the first half of a rather lacklustre Hey Figaro! So much for the exclamation in the title - the otherwise not-bad music was weighed down by the weak acting, at least on the first day, where the ensemble cast couldn't carry their characters through, much less handle the comic aspects. I think to pull off comedy requires a certain amount of thickskinnedness, or at least a lack of self-consciousness, which some lacked, and drew weak laughs from the audience, which I think is worse than having no laughs at all. And some had weak voices. I'm never watching local opera again.
2. Bought a hiragana/katakana workbook, because I am not busy enough (Ha. Ha.) and am itching to try something new. Writing Japanese characters is very therapeutic, especially during times when I refuse to touch my cello anymore due to pure exhaustion frustration and fear.
3. Made a List of Commitments I have this semester, and am still in the process of deciding which one I should cross off my List. So much for all 'assertiveness training' we talk about during social work modules. I haven't been able to say no to a lot of things, but sometimes I think it's a lack of desire to say no i.e. I want to do everything. However, in light of the fact that I am going to FAIL my cello dip and have to try to practice at least 4 hours a day from now till the exam, it is enough impetus for me to shut out the world and enter into the tortuous blackhole of cello hermitdom.
4. Practiced cello. What else is there to do. Am taking a break to blog, because I just overpeeled the skin on my left index finger, which is looking more and more like an onion. I didn't know there were so many dermal layers. Everytime I slide, the string gets further under the skin which is freaking gross.
5. Put off writing my program notes. 600 more words have never been so difficult to write. Give me a social work essay anytime.
Am terrified of the prospect of returning to school. I might just vapourise.
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