This week

I don't even know where to start. It's like the earth shifted its position in the universe and is now located at 31B Rhododendron Ave, Kansas City. Ya anyway, so my life is completely different from the week before. I dress different, I talk different, I'm engaged in entirely different activities. I even wake up at a different time. (the shift in time zones is most disorienting.)

So I've been whining to LSB, and I've been experiencing for myself the great Venus-Mars divide that everyone talks about. LSB keeps giving me advice and telling me not to go to work in a monochromatic gothic clown-suit, making silently mournful but very obscene gestures at passers-by. And then I'm like, du-uh I know that already, whoever said I need your advice? And LSB goes, so why are you telling me all this? *sighz*

I never thought I'd say this, but TGIF.

Colbie Caillat - Bubbly ( With lyrics)

Yay new LSB song!

From the CNA site

This is a screenshot from the Channel NewsAsia site. I was highly amused to see the un-PCness of the Google ad (highlighted in yellow):



Yes, teaching you how to attract girls in Singapore! Tested and proven methods! (click image to enlarge. you probably know this, but you know... just in case you're er, me.)

Many thanks to A/G for teaching tech-idiot me how to get a screenshot!

Music

So the music diversification programme is in full swing.

After exploring the Sex Pistols & some folk music, I went on to take a look at Velvet Underground. I don't particularly like the recordings with Nico, her voice grates on me for some reason. But the song I actually quite like is this somewhat NC-16, not particularly safe for work song:



I was at HMV the other day, and seriously considered buying their CD, but resisted the temptation to splurge. But I did feel quite superior, looking for Velvet Underground CDs instead of whatever people like to listen to nowadays. Hilary Duff or something. Then I went up to the Asian music section and started looking for a couple of bands Kobe Girl's (hehehe) colleague recommended, as well as Dir en Grey CDs, which my sis introduced to me a couple of years ago. Again, feeling superior to people looking for Ayumi. Think my cool factor just increased exponentially.

Anyway, I successfully stopped myself from buying anything till I hit the classical section, at which point I simply died and went to Waterloo. I came across a CD by Heifetz with Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto D major and Mendelssohn's Concerto E minor, and I was totally like, girl you can't buy this, it's 26 good bucks and don't you have that Mendelssohn (albeit played by Joshua Bell) already? But I was also like, hey it's Heifetz and didn't I save myself hundreds of dollars by NOT buying all those previous CDs? In any case let's get a listen to this CD. And then I was like, damn this is good stuff, but maybe I can get the Itzhak Perlman version of the Tchaikovsky at 21 bucks, so let's listen to that as well. And then I was like, damn I don't like the Perlman version as much as Heifetz's. So in the end I was like, if the Heifetz version is better than the Perlman version, that's saying something, so I have no choice to get it. Seriously man, the exigencies of this world compel me to buy this CD.

And that's how I broke my no extraneous purchases rule. Not in the rock n roll or Japanese music section, but in the good ol' Classical & Jazz section. As usual. Which just shows that diversify as much as you want, there are some things that you can't diversify away from.

I don't think my music classes taught me how to play my instruments well, but they certainly taught me to love music, and that's good enough for me. And now I'm feeling really sick, which doesn't have anything to do with music or music classes, but has a lot to do with sniffing and tissue and general grossness. Shall spare you guys from that.

The Sex Pistols

I've been checking out the Sex Pistols because, well, of a manga/anime that I'm too embarrassed to admit I like. Let's face it, their music gives me a huge headache, and all that jumping around doesn't help. But they're really incredibly entertaining. I've become a big fan of Youtube interviews of John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) who's still alive and kicking as far as I can tell.

This is him in 1987:



And trust me, when he said he'd mellowed, he wasn't kidding man.

This is 1980:



That's the 1st part of that interview, you can poke around Youtube and I'm sure you can discover part 2 on your own.

Amazing that red hair and a pasty, skinny face could be so cool. And if you accept his premises, his attitude and actions are actually understandable and acceptable. Then again, if you accept their premises, anyone's actions could become acceptable. (kill the Jews anyone?) But not just anyone could pull it off with such incredible coolness. *squeals and attains fangirl status*

dulcimer = yangqin

Oh pity my ignorant soul!

I watched this youtube video (below), and was shocked to my socks (even though I'm not wearing any now, not having progressed so far in age that I'm wearing socks. in the tropics. at home. in the middle of the night. while typing at my comp.) that the dulcimer in the video looked totally like a yangqin to me.



I'd always known a dulcimer was some sort of medieval instrument, always thought it was English, always thought it was somewhat guitar-like. Bless me poor soul, I was actually thinking Appalachian dulcimer (thank goodness for Wikipedia). The HAMMERED dulcimer is totally different, and apparently the yangqin (according to Wikipedia again) is (probably) an imported Persian dulcimer. (so not all dulcimers are English then)



I've always been impressed by the yangqin, largely because it looks as if you need ultra-good eyesight and super-fast hands to play it. I've also been fascinated by traditional Chinese music (yet another topic I'm totally ignorant about dammit). I'd love to learn more, and even better, to learn how to play a Chinese instrument, but woe is me, I don't think I'll ever get around to it. *sigh* I really want to learn the guzheng (along with a million other things).



I really love the 'voice' (I can't think of another word) of the guzheng. Here I'm especially looking at the way you can control the sounding of the notes. (ok, I really really don't know anything about the guzheng, and I don't know whether anyone understands what I'm saying, but this is what I like, and I'm saying it in the only way I know how, so suck it up.)

I've been looking at a lot of Celtic songs and forums (because somehow when you're searching for folk songs online you end up smack in the middle of Celtic land) and the orientation tends to be nationalist. While I have no problem with the nationalism, and in fact, think the national history (myth or otherwise) contributes to the appeal of the music, it also saddens me that along with the nationalism comes a lot of xenophobia and tonnes of flaming.

Wild Mountain Thyme

Mudcat Cafe reminded me of this old song. Love this! Literally tears in your eyes stuff...

I found it!

Yes! I finally managed to dredge from my memory some keywords to search on google and I found the folksy forum again! (see links The Mudcat Cafe) Yes! *punches fist triumphantly in air*

Blog updates

Yay I updated my links to more accurately reflect my interests/what I like to read these days. I don't read all the sites I've linked to often, but that's because some of them aren't updated very often. And it says something about them that I love them anyway.

Also, I thought of categorizing my links, but I don't have enough links for that to be meaningful, and besides, I've no idea what categories to use. For example, what would PingMag go under? Curiosities? Social commentary? For fun? Other important things to know?

You guys would have noticed the Cute Overload plague has extended to the links. And my not so recent perfume obsession has also infected the blogroll. (Yup those are the perfume blogs I get inspiration from. I don't always agree with them, but dammit, they get most of it right. Plus the writing is usually beautiful.)

I also have to make special mention of the links to music sites Musicovery & Classical Music Archives. Follow those links! These sites are, if I may say so, bloody good. I used to go to two wonderful music forums, one focused on really obscure folk music, the other focused on your 'sound engineering'/electronic type of music. Yes, both aren't my type of music, but maybe that's why I was so fascinated by them. It's like peering into an alien mind in a good (and non-gooey) way. I loved the slightly kooky music-crazed people on those forums... They had such knowledge of their music, and many of them were musicians. The folk music forum especially, had musicians who played in pubs etc, and it was such fun reading about their performances. I also loved all those anecdotes about never-heard-before folk songs that they all seemed to know. The electronic music forum seemed pretty northwest Europe, and loads of cool people who are amazing tech-savvy as well hehe. Unfortunately I've lost both sites and can't find them again! *cries*

Also *ahem* I've updated my wish list. Just pointing out. I'm becoming a big fan of Hermes perfumes, and I'm sure if I sniffed Kelly Caleche I'd fall in love with it as well. But I'm trying not to because it's someone's *ahem* signature scent. So help me God.

Have I mentioned I love Nodame Cantabile? Like, really really love?

To the relevant authorities,

From icanhascheezburger

Hehehe. Me cute.

I hate the cold

I wonder if some part of me retains the memory of when I, believing myself a tropical baby to be born in some warm equatorial country, popped out and discovered Scottish weather. I think that might have been when I started screaming 'let me back in!' but everyone ignored me :(

That sounds a lot like today (yesterday). Ah, to be kicked mercilessly out of a nice warm sleepy bed into the freezing night, what heartbreak! Oh cruel world! But I also got LSB to plaster my paper-cut finger, so I got a Taiwanese drama moment out of today. *giggles madly*

I hate the cold and the endless rain. It makes everything damp and miserable and, of course, cold.

Warning: needs holiday

One of the HR people suggested I take a holiday before I started work. *sighz*

These days I've been feeling as if Life As I Know It is going to end forever, which is probably a close approximation of the truth.

Regrets

I'm being unusually open today, am I not?

Ran into my ex-lecturer in school today, and he alerted me to the publication of his article (I was one of his research assistants). So of course I looked it up and scanned through it. Coincidentally enough, today was a big day for me (more on that later, hopefully), and I also had a conversation with LSB on a related topic (related to what I'm going to blog about, of course).

Some time ago, a friend asked me whether I regretted not going to LSE. I told her no, but the truth is, at times I do regret it. Reading through my prof's article, I suddenly really really wished I was still on track to becoming someone like him, someone who could write an article like this.

A few days ago another friend commented I have very low self-esteem when it comes to my academic essays because I never think they're any good. I retorted that it was because I have high standards, and don't kill me but it's true. I was, on hindsight, a very competitive student except that I never competed with my peers. I always compared my essays (those that I cared about anyway) to my profs' essays, and of course my essays always failed miserably in my eyes. In all my years in university, I've never written an essay that I'm satisfied with. No, not a single one. I do believe that somewhere in my head there's an image of what a good essay should be like, an essay with perfection so abstract that I cannot actually say what it would be like, except that I've never written one.

My impossible standards and resulting dissatisfaction with myself made for a very neurotic, insecure academic me. I think that as a result, my life in university was a very stressful, emotional one, being always mired in angst and insecurity. I didn't care what anyone told me, didn't care what the grades indicated. To me I was never good enough, and if I got good grades/compliments that made it worse because I felt like a pretender. I never deserved any of it.

Back to the point.

I think that somewhere in my very screwed up mind, I still want to compare myself with my profs, and I still want to be my profs. So do I regret my departure from academia? Some times more than others. Tonight the regret is especially acute.

But I do think that I need something besides the standards of academia with which to measure myself. I do think that I need to experience something outside of academia, face new challenges to prove myself to myself. I also think that the hordes of people who've just assumed that I was going into academia have pissed me off with their assumptions so much that I simply decided to flip them the finger and do something else. (kidding!) More importantly, I have other goals very important and very dear to me that could be served better by a non-academic route.

I'm hoping, really hoping, that what I've done pays off, that I didn't make yet another bad decision by opting out. I've got a bad feeling that in a few years, nay, in a few months, I'll be taking back every single word of this post. But I've got another bad feeling that it won't be the first time and it won't be the last, and life in general is like that and sucks very badly.

Goodness, I do regret it tonight. But there's a price to be paid for every decision, and I hope that regret is the heaviest cost of this decision. I'll cross my fingers, hope for the best, and live with the regret.