Thursday, January 22, 2004
Gong Xi Fa Cai!
Holidays are no big deal to me now… the only deal is that the house gets damn noisy because everybody is at home. Another deal is that we’ve got the tedious job of doing house visits.
I wake up at 12pm today; slept at 2am this morning “shŏu sùi” – i.e. the tradition says that if the kids stay up late on New Year’s Eve the parents will live longer. Whether it’s true or not I don’t care… anyway it’s an excuse to start work on my new “money-less” commission from the TJC Symphonic Band. Alas, I end up chatting on the net instead. By the time I want to start writing I’m already dozing off.
So I have no chance to work on the score when I wake up. While bathing I had sudden ideas to how the arrangement of “First Love” should open, and how “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” should work. So I dash down (with clothes on, duh) and begin to scribble notes. As we’re about to leave Mother says, “Take your papers along with you; we’re running late.” YES! I get to bring my manuscript book along!
We’re the first to arrive at my grandma’s (paternal side). While we’re lunching my First Uncle and his family arrives, followed by my aunt and hers. The house is freaking crowded and noisy. There’s sixteen people squeezed into the living room. And there’re four kids – my aunt’s three young children and my brother. Now isn’t that bad? And when there are four kids it means that we are entitled to watch cartoons on Kids Central. My brother has been watching that fucking channel since morning, and now we unduly suffer the same fate again. Anyway I’m writing my score, I don’t care what’s on the telly.
Consider my luck to fit in braces around this feastive season. When you fit in braces, you are deprived of sweets and chocolates and other foods that will induce cavities. I’m discouraged from eating chocolates because they will stick to the braces and make it hard to brush thereafter. Anyway other types of food already jam onto the metal when they go in; it makes almost no difference.
Later we go to my maternal grandmother’s house. Hurrah! Now I’ve got the chance to listen to Vitali’s Chaconne in g minor at full blast on the computer! To hell if it’s sad and unfit for a festive occasion; tragedy appeals to me! How I get goose pimples every time I listen to it! It just induces me to dance around the room and cry and sing madly and loudly and to burst into tears! It’s an escape from the fucking Kids Central, which my brother is still selfishly clinging on to. I desperately wish that channel is not free-to-air and that we have to pay for it. Then Father will refuse to subscribe for it and then I will not have to endure that on the television anymore.
Back home I slog on the score of “First Love”, having prepared the reduction score earlier at my grandma’s place. It’s a very brash piece, none of the yucky intimacies of romance, and it definitely doesn’t sound like a J-Pop arrangement under my charge. I think it’s more of a Hollywood style. Perhaps lovers should be open and outright and not play hide-and-seek, of which unfortunately I am an epitome of the latter. ¶ 1/22/2004 05:09:00 pm
Holidays are no big deal to me now… the only deal is that the house gets damn noisy because everybody is at home. Another deal is that we’ve got the tedious job of doing house visits.
I wake up at 12pm today; slept at 2am this morning “shŏu sùi” – i.e. the tradition says that if the kids stay up late on New Year’s Eve the parents will live longer. Whether it’s true or not I don’t care… anyway it’s an excuse to start work on my new “money-less” commission from the TJC Symphonic Band. Alas, I end up chatting on the net instead. By the time I want to start writing I’m already dozing off.
So I have no chance to work on the score when I wake up. While bathing I had sudden ideas to how the arrangement of “First Love” should open, and how “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” should work. So I dash down (with clothes on, duh) and begin to scribble notes. As we’re about to leave Mother says, “Take your papers along with you; we’re running late.” YES! I get to bring my manuscript book along!
We’re the first to arrive at my grandma’s (paternal side). While we’re lunching my First Uncle and his family arrives, followed by my aunt and hers. The house is freaking crowded and noisy. There’s sixteen people squeezed into the living room. And there’re four kids – my aunt’s three young children and my brother. Now isn’t that bad? And when there are four kids it means that we are entitled to watch cartoons on Kids Central. My brother has been watching that fucking channel since morning, and now we unduly suffer the same fate again. Anyway I’m writing my score, I don’t care what’s on the telly.
Consider my luck to fit in braces around this feastive season. When you fit in braces, you are deprived of sweets and chocolates and other foods that will induce cavities. I’m discouraged from eating chocolates because they will stick to the braces and make it hard to brush thereafter. Anyway other types of food already jam onto the metal when they go in; it makes almost no difference.
Later we go to my maternal grandmother’s house. Hurrah! Now I’ve got the chance to listen to Vitali’s Chaconne in g minor at full blast on the computer! To hell if it’s sad and unfit for a festive occasion; tragedy appeals to me! How I get goose pimples every time I listen to it! It just induces me to dance around the room and cry and sing madly and loudly and to burst into tears! It’s an escape from the fucking Kids Central, which my brother is still selfishly clinging on to. I desperately wish that channel is not free-to-air and that we have to pay for it. Then Father will refuse to subscribe for it and then I will not have to endure that on the television anymore.
Back home I slog on the score of “First Love”, having prepared the reduction score earlier at my grandma’s place. It’s a very brash piece, none of the yucky intimacies of romance, and it definitely doesn’t sound like a J-Pop arrangement under my charge. I think it’s more of a Hollywood style. Perhaps lovers should be open and outright and not play hide-and-seek, of which unfortunately I am an epitome of the latter. ¶ 1/22/2004 05:09:00 pm
