Time can change everything?

My friend der had free tickets to Harlem Yu's concert on saturday and invited us to attend. Jy, zz, xh and myself went. The concert was entertaining although I felt that something was lacking. Harlem included some humour and fun into the concert with audience participation and making fun of his band mates. Felt a bit like Super Sunday show.

I have known this group of poly band friends for a long time and I often miss the days we had back in poly. The time we spent together during practices bonded us. There was once we practiced outside foodcourt 3 and my conductor, tt, took us for symphonic overture. Our ending part drew the attention of some passer-bys and they actually stopped in their path to listen to us and applauded our rousing end. I love it when people like the sound that my band have practiced hard for. My clicks was a large group and we always head to clementi central after band practice to have supper and to chat and gossip at the coffee shop next to the bus interchange. I miss the outings we had like supper at geylang (Teowchew Muay and Tau Huay...the empty bowls of porridge will be stacked high on the table), movie gatherings, concerts, performances, christmas and CNY gatherings, band camps, overseas band trips (how I miss Sydney!) and the endless banter of jokes and conversations.....sigh...but as time goes by, everybody just drift apart as each of us got busy and involved in other things. Some of them went overseas to study and the rest of us are just busy with work and other stuff. Among us, I am of the few who is still playing. Lately I feel that my group has fewer meet ups with each other and we talk less. Our group has dwindled over the years but this is not unexpected. I wonder if we are still as close as before but I guess we probably know each other well enough that we don't need much updating or chats to know what is going on in each others' lives. At the very least, I still care about them and appreciate the little things that we do for each other. I do hope I can visit teow and wl in melbourne with jy and zz next month..haha....

It was peaceful today...boss was on leave...

26 May 2008 9:57am

Sounding better

Sectional practice on tuesday was not bad. Jos worked on techniques and foundations with us instead of taking us through the pieces. Learnt double tonguing and slurs and he gave us some exercises to keep and practice. After the session, I tried playing other things and for once after a long while, I sounded better than before and have hopes of reaching the peak that I had two years ago for the competition : )

My boss went missing for the whole afternoon today. She informed me that she was attending a meeting outside at 11am with my GM. My GM came back just after lunch but my boss was MIA and only came back at 4:30pm! No word from her as to where she was. She got anxious when she saw the long list of unread emails on her PC and quickly asked me to help her reply some requests and other tasks that she wanted me to do. There was actually a rather important email about an edm sent to her which my colleague and I wasn't copied in and it needed her approval before it could be sent out . Till knock-off time, I still hear nothing about that email from her until my colleague called and said it was quite urgent. If she was back earlier, this wouldn't have happened and we could have replied that urgent email and get the matter settled. I was so fed up with her that I just left office on time. I think its unfair if I have to stay back and clear up the backlog that she created just because she was skiving off work somewhere. She needs to be more responsible. All these could have been done in the afternoon if she forwarded me the email but she wasn't in! I just don't want to be bothered with all these nonsense from a boss who don't have any leadership skills at all! Instead of staying late, I went for a run just now. Cannot take it anymore! sigh...... tomorrow morning will be hell....

I just don't care....

22 May 2008 8:52pm

Uneventful Weekend

It was the start of a long weekend...but not before a crappy day at work again on friday....

My office engaged a professional photographer on Friday to shoot some interior shots for use in our branding campaign. Its a full-day shoot and I was supposed to meet the photographer at 9am to start the shoot. As expected, my boss called at 9am and asked me to attend the morning meeting on her behalf. : S I was irritated and told her I have to meet the photographer. And then she said my colleague, Ag can meet the photographer but she had to attend to another matter that morning as well and someone has to be at the office. If I attend the meeting, Ag goes to attend her matter and J stays in the office, who will meet the photographer? My boss said its ok that I attend the meeting since its only 15 mins and Ag will meet the photographer. J had to settle the matter for Ag so there was no one in the office. And my boss should not be late that morning, knowing there is a photoshoot that day and should have come on time but created inconvenience for everyone. When the photoshoot was going on, she didn't bother to be on site to approve the shots and my other colleague had to run up and down to get approval from her director as her sales & marketing department requested to have the professional shots. My S&M director asked why my boss is not working, seeing that she is not helping to approve the shots at all. I think she will give my boss a good scolding pretty soon. She is the only one in the whole office who understands that my department do not have any directions at all due to our lazy boss. sigh.....Besides taking turns attending to the photoshoot, my boss wanted me to help J with her publicity and I couldn't do my work at all! Its my boss's fault that the publicity circulation was late....becaaue she only checked the files from Oct 07 to Apr 08 till now. I can't believe it has been so backdated......

After band practice on friday, sy, eil, ms and I went to mel's place to play mahjong. While we ate supper at his place, we watched the 2nd half of our concert dvd recording. Mel was telling us how he forgot to take his el camino real score after the lidss performance and actually slipped backstage to find the score when the slow movement of el camino real was playing. And so we saw him in the recording, walking nonchalantly to the backstage and reappeared a while later, holding the file in his hand and trying to hide it as he walked back to his snare drum. Haha.....I didn't know this was happening. Heard my solo and felt it was not as good as I thought it was. Must be better for the competition...We played only one round of mahjong and finished at 4am! My luck wasn't good that night and I lost a bit. Mel actually won money from us girls this time...

eil mentioned this is her last friday in singapore as she is leaving for an internship overseas soon which she only just received the offer and was not mentally prepared. Good luck eil! I hope everything goes well for you!

I reached home at about 4:30am...really tired and slept for a few hours only. I woke up early to meet xl for a swim and so I was stoning as I made my way to meet her. I didn't swim very much as the pool was a bit crowded with the morning kids swimming lesson . Think I have not swim for too long and was feeling a bit scared. I'm not a good swimmer so I kept to the side. Chatted a lot with xl as we baked in the sun. We saw this hunk with six-pack abs conducting life-saving session with a group of guys and his actions were pretty show-offish. He looked a bit like an ex of mine from my poly...reminded me of someone...

During the wee hours of sat night, I was woken up by my ringing phone. It was a private number and I ignored it and it rang again. I answered it, half asleep, and it was my friend who got really upset after a phone call with his ex as the girl has moved on with another guy. I was thinking whether it is his fault because he chose to break up with his ex even though he still loves her. Also, its been a long time since they broke up....Anway, I will talk to him on another day as he was in Malaysia when he called....

Went to the gym as usual on sunday morning and then met Lj in the evening to watch Accuracy of Death. Takeshi Kaneshiro is so damn gorgeous! Its a nice movie to watch and funny as well. Giving a person one more chance to live can bring about unexpected changes which could lead to a fruitful life. Who knows that "suspending" the death of a young woman would lead Chiba (Takeshi) to judge her again when she became a 70 years old woman and she was ready to die at that point, having lived a full life. And I think Chiba was also glad that he finally got to see clear blue sky. I am waiting to see my clear blue sky as well.....:)

Lj and I had coffee after the movie and I told him about the late night call from my friend. He said guys actually take a longer time to get over relationships although they do not seem to feel much pain from the breakup. Whereas girls feel the pain at their greatest when the relationship is over but takes a shorter time to get over it. That was new to me and I wasn't so sure if this is true but I guess everyone takes a different amount of time to get over relationships. Some just recover faster than others.....

Music is Humanity's Greatest Invention....(as quoted by Chiba)
19 May 2008 5:32pm

Yummy Cakes...

I was reminded of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when I was watching Speed Racer on sat because I find it so colourful like the former. The storyline is alright but the visual effects were stunning. Sharp, rich in colours and the races were exciting! Rain makes a rather good debut in his first hollywood feature in English. But I didn't catch the movie because of him, more of for the effects. Caught the movie with CH and its been like 2 years since we last met up. He's into coral collection lately and also changed a new job a few months back. We promise to meet up again after he returnsrom a business trip. I envy that he gets to travel in his job.

I was so tired during band practice yesterday. By the time I reached school, I was like really sleepy and yawning throughout the warm-up session. Didn't get enough sleep the previous night. Luckily it wasn't full band with my conductor. Jo came to take us for sectional practice. I was still very frustrated with the john williams march, certain parts sounded terrible with all the mispitched notes.....sigh...hopefully friday's practice will be better.

My colleagues and I wanted to celebrate j's birthday yesterday with a lunch at NYDC but it went pretty quiet and unknown because we didn't get her a cake. The cakes at NYDC were too big for us to finish. Instead, ld ordered a lychee martini cake from Pine Garden(Blk 529 Ang Mo Kio Ave 19 #01-2369 Tel: 64576159 http://www.pgcake.com/) in Ang Mo Kio and arranged for uncle to collect for us today. We gathered in the boardroom, lit the candles and turned off the lights. Then ld called my boss to bring j in but she took quite a few minutes to bring her in and we were wondering why my boss took so long (but its not unusual anyway, she is late in everything). So my boss finally entered the room with j and we surprised her with a birthday song : ). The cake is heavenly : ) Tasted a lot of cakes today....feeling a bit sick now.

Happy 21st Birthday J!

tired from a run.....
14 May 2008 9.39pm