--- I ---
First year soldier.
"On this date I handed in my Pink IC
See it well; won't get it till ORD
It's surrender of my civilian life
And now I start a new life as a slave to drum and fife."
--- To the tune of "On My Own" from Les Miserables.
--- II ---
On the train to City Hall I declare to myself: I am going on a sabbatical from composing and arranging music.
This morning, I lose my groove to write. In fact I've lost the feeling for the past two weeks already. I tend to write halfway, only to realise that what has been input sucks to the core. I attempt another version of it. Again, I give up halfway. I have no impetus to continue.
Perhaps I'm burnt out.
In case you are wondering this means giving up music, throw that thought away. The spirit of music will always be there.
--- III ---
Marina Square has been renovated so much that Loh Wei and I get lost inside the mall.
Suddenly, there are so many atriums. There used to be one main atrium, and you can spot it by looking for the translucent and cylindrical lift columns. Now they seem to have disappeared.
The Hans Café has been moved all the way towards the end of the mall, near the Oriental Hotel. Anyway now it has a chic setting - a better ambience than the outlet facing One Raffles Link.
At least this time the dessert is a generous serving of Swiss Roll. The worst and suckiest and not-your-worth dessert was a bar of Kit Kat for each person.
Please, I don't pay money for a set meal to come and eat Kit Kat bars.
--- IV ---
Is it me absent-minded or did my vision is blurred?
I am at the ground floor of One Raffles Link; I am about to board the escalators going down to the basement mall, just beside the great water wheel. There are three rows of escalators - if I can remember clearly, two of them are heading upwards.
I make my way to the one in the middle, because it is empty. Everyone seems to want to ride the down-going escalator at the corner. I think: why so stupid to squeeze with other people?
So I step onto my choice of escalator . . . to my horror I am going backwards. It takes me some time to realise that I am on an up-going escalator! I hop off the moving steps onto the landing because I get myself in further damage.
Damn scary.
I have no idea how I ever thought that escalator was a descending one . . . when I first approach it, I see it's descending. I think nothing of it . . . only when I step onto the machine itself do I discover my mistake.
--- V ---
Mr Leong invites me to a concert of contemporary music by living Singapore and Japanese composers. It is an exchange programme - a mutual showcase of works by people living in different countries.
I meet Jun Kai at the concert - he's back from London for a month's vacation. Emily is there with Miss Chew and Jie Bao; to my surprise I spot Sergeant Sheng Ming and his girlfriend. There's also Emerick, who was at the Young Composers' Forum in September last year.
The most interesting combination of instruments has got to be from the pieces of Motoki Takeda and Michiharu Matsunaga. The first one uses bassoon, viola, cello and harp. Each stand out from the other - throughout the performance I feel that the bassoon penetrates the most.
I think Matsunaga is trying to imitate the sounds of traditional Japanese music in his piece. The wailing sho is brought out by putting the clarinet and oboe together and making them play at a high pitch. The harp could possibly imitate the koto, although its tone is much rounder. I don't know what the cello represents. Anyway I can't understand what the composer is trying to bring forth in this piece.
There is one point where the scraping of a page of the score against the metal stand is damn loud during a pause in the last movement of Phoon Yew Tien's String Quartet, such that Miss Ku, the violist, looked up in shock at the second violinist who did it.
In Kentaro Shimizu's work, the higher range of the vibraphone works well with the same range on the violin. It's such a happy, bright sound - the warbling of the vibraphone, especially.
--- VI ---
On the train home, Jun Kai tells me: the next time I ride the MRT after booking out from camp, I ought to close my eyes and listen to the sounds on the train. Peel it layer by layer like an onion, filtering the noise from the human invaders, until I get to the gentle roar of the air-conditioning.
This is real music. Music of the spheres. All that we've listened to on the radios, at concerts, on Discmans and MP3 players - they are all artificially-produced music. Pitches created for remembrance's sake. You can't possibly "notate" natural sounds, can't you? Perhaps monotones like the hums of engines can be taken down. On the bumboat ride to Ubin last week, I tried to figure out at what pitch the motor was emanating, but I couldn't. There was a mass of sounds - and the sounds didn't correspond to the pitches that we know.
Go and read the chapter of "Equal Temperament" in Howard Goodall's "Big Bangs in Music". The concept sounds cheem at first, but when you read and re-read it, you'll come to appreciate the topic and you will stun yourself: "Why didn't I realise or notice that before?"
--- VII ---
To my dismay I discover my CCHMS friendship band has gone missing.
It has been with me since 2002, when I went back for the 64th anniversary carnival. I thought the colours - red and white - represented those of CCHMS - obvious from the polo-T-shirts we wear for PE and the inverted-triangle school badge.
When I got my stationary pouch I attached the band to the hook, and it has been there ever since.
Until today.
It detached itself from the hook and dropped off. Where, I don't know. I've been to so many places: the MRT stations, CityLink Mall, the Esplanade Library, Marina Square, Suntec City, Raffles City, Victoria Concert Hall . . . I really don't know.
