马六甲古城合唱节2008后记

期待已久的马六甲古城合唱节2008，转瞬间就这样过去了。当中，真的学习到了不少东西，除了在合唱技巧、合唱指挥，还学习了不少待人处事之道。我仿佛像个年幼的小孩，每一分、每一秒，都在吸取新知识、新概念。学习的过程，虽然劳累，但是是快乐的。也因为过程是快乐的，所以再疲惫，也都无所谓了。最重要的是，每一天都过得充实、愉快！

这次参加该合唱节主要目的是成为指挥大师班的“实验”合唱团，所以参加以前就得准备指挥大师班的八首曲子，好让上指挥班的指挥老师们能够有效的上指挥课。此外，我们还得准备两首曲子“阿拉木汗”及“青春舞曲”，在合唱演出时分别由杜黑老师，及田晓宝老师指挥。



田晓宝老师
先来谈谈田老师好了。虽然与老师接触的机会不多，但对田老师掌控多人合唱团的能力敬佩不已。我们第一天参加的就是合唱班。田老师要求的“天空”合唱法，虽然之前略有所闻，岑大伟老师也曾教过，但听过了上百人在做同样的合唱法时，出来的效果的确震撼人心，真是百闻不如亲身体验。

在田老师的第一堂课，我学到了“聆听”。除了听自己所发出的声音之外，还要聆听自己与身边团员发出的声音和不和谐。就算是同一个音，不同的人都会有可能发出不同素质的音。若找不到这和谐度，虽然同是一个音，也会听到参差不齐的声音，最后也就不能产生出动听的合唱效果。合唱不像独唱，合唱注重声音和谐，不管是声音的素质，音量，音准，都要和谐，才能达到合唱更好的效果。

也因为学会了聆听，虽然田老师一直要求全体团员反复同唱同一个音，也不会觉得纳闷，因为那样的反复练习是必要的，而最后尝到了优美的合唱效果后的感觉是兴奋的，再苦也是值得！

当然，所谓的“天空”合唱法并非一朝一夕能够完全掌握起来，需要多日的揣摩与练习，方能习惯，并掌握起来。往往身为合唱团员的我，知道了这些好的技巧，好的合唱法，却都没有时时刻刻警惕自己要保持、并时时刻刻运用对的合唱法。每次合唱练习时，都需要老师的重复提醒，方能再次“寻回”对的唱法。因此，整个合唱团的进度也间接受到了影响。我想在这方面，除了靠指挥或指导老师的提醒与指引之外，身为合唱团员也应该相互提醒，并自动自发的多加钻研及练习，把对的合唱法习以为常，这样也许会事半功倍吧！

杜黑老师
我们与杜黑老师相处的时间比较多，毕竟他是来教指挥的。而我们这“实验”合唱团难免要与他朝夕相对。在指导九位报了名的指挥老师的同时，杜黑老师也顺便给了合唱团许多指导与建议，使我们获益良多。


杜黑老师每次上课的处理方式大概如下：
1）对曲子的内容背景都给大家解释了至少一遍。例如曲子原自谁，什么时代，什么时候唱，什么人在什么环境会唱那首歌等，都一一叙述一番。
2）然后，再来解释他对曲子的处理方式，哪个地方该大声、哪个地方该小声、哪个地方该换气、曲子的线条等，都一一给我们讲解并示范，将歌曲演绎方式处理得有条不紊。
3）合唱团处理好后，再来教指挥们怎么指挥那首歌，并指出那一首歌指挥应该注意的地方，将指挥的难处一一解释并示范。而后再请其中一位上来试试指挥，若有任何不对，就马上纠正、改善。

与杜老师上了三天的课，发现原来指挥并不简单。或许作为旁观者看来这指挥只是跟着拍子挥动着双手，非常简单。其实要指挥一首歌并不容易，除了对一首歌要很熟悉之外，还要懂得如何指引合唱团员。指挥的身体语言、动作的大小，每一挥、每一点的轻重等，都能间接影响合唱团唱出来的效果。

也因为知道指挥这件事不容易，也开始了解到身为合唱团员，更应该懂得如何尊重指挥，并在演唱的时候，应该注意指挥给的指示。往往发现有时候自己本身只顾着背歌词，或注意自己的音准、拍子等，其实那些都是合唱团员自己在家本应该做好的功课，而在合唱练习或演唱时，是应该注意指挥的。因为指挥才能告诉、并指引合唱团演绎一首曲子的方式。若每位团员都没做好功课，每次的练习或演出只顾着背歌词或听自己的音准，那指挥存在的意义就被抹杀了。结果，合唱出来的效果，自然也大打折扣！

合唱演出
合唱节的第三天晚上，有一场独唱及合唱演出。而我们合唱小组准备被了“阿拉木汗”及“青春舞曲”这两首歌。演出前，只有一段很短的时间与指挥排练，尤其是“青春舞曲”。只能在演出前彩排的时候，仓促的与指挥与钢琴伴奏排练一两遍。而演出当晚，我们先演唱“阿拉木汗”，由杜老师指挥。演唱前，杜老师给观众介绍了我饿么小组合唱团，并给了高度的赞赏与评价，也其实给了我们团员演出前一颗的定心丸。演唱这首曲子，满轻松自在。或许因为之前我们已经演唱过好几遍，与杜老师相处的时间也比较多，排练这首歌的时间也比较长，所以这首歌的演出非常成功，也获得了观众如雷的掌声。

演唱第二首歌“青春舞曲”，是由田老师指挥。老实说，演唱得并不如预期的理想。因素相信以下两项：其一，大多数团员并未完全掌握这首歌，歌词也刚背好，我就是其中一个。其二，排练时间太短了，也太匆忙。钢琴伴奏也未能完全与合唱团配合。所以，在不能充满信心的情况下演绎这首歌，唱出来的效果，自然也不会很好。值得一提的是，演唱这首歌时，就算再怎么不确定，团员们都懂得见风驶舵，一起将这首歌完完整整的演唱完毕。那种不气馁不放弃的精神值得嘉许，但演唱前的功夫/功课做不足，是不能鼓励的。

不能很好的演绎第二首歌，我本身真的深感不值得，也有点感到愧对田老师。内心底总认为，我们是可以唱得很好很好的！而田老师处理这首歌的方式，也非常的棒！本来一首已经很不错的合唱编曲，再由田老师处理，的确使整首歌更生动、更有趣！若真的能唱得到田老师所要求的一切，相信演唱这首歌的效果应该会震撼人心吧？！


指挥班音乐会
合唱节最后一天早上，是上指挥班的老师们表演的时候。杜老师在演出前，又向观众赞赏我们这合唱团，不但要准备前一晚的两首演出歌曲，还要准备八首歌曲让指挥们指挥，还说我们是来参加了“魔鬼合唱训练营”。说真的，真的好想参加一次合唱魔鬼训练营，相信一次的魔鬼式的集训，一定能够大大提高合唱团的能力及水平。因此，对于杜老师的赞赏，我只能以更加多的努力来提升自己各方面的能力，做为回报。

指挥班的音乐会非常简单，每一位指挥在杜老师指名的五首歌曲，选一首歌来指挥我们合唱。指挥们个个都紧张，我想我们多多少少也一样感到紧张。其实，每一首歌曲，无论对指挥或合唱团，都有它本身一定的难度，所以大家演出时都尽自己的能力做得最好。而在那时候，我都懂得如何看指挥，也大概知道指挥们要告诉我的是什么。更重要的，是我懂得如何去珍惜指挥给的每一个讯息。虽然有些指挥并未能完全掌握杜老师所教的技巧，但假以时日，多练习多钻研，必定会更好！若指挥和团员都能做足功夫，相信一个合唱演出，不会差！



自己的挑战
其实参加此次的合唱节，除了在当中学习到了以上提到的知识与经验，也跨越了不少挑战。除了在练习那总共十首不容易的曲子之外，也很兴奋能够在安排妥工作上的事务，而顺顺利利地参加合唱节。另外最大的挑战应该是驾车上马六甲吧！一直以来对驾车存有恐惧感的我，这次真的鼓起了好大好大的勇气，豁出去似地乘载了几位团员一同上马六甲去。我想应该是我生平第一次驶自己的车出外州吧！好有成就感！

虽然只是短短几天的事，但过得真的很充实、愉快！真希望下次还有这样的机会！

Counter Strike

One may not know how crazy an IT staff (programmers/system analyst etc) can be. They may look professional and technically skillful, but look can be deceiving! Many do not know that their mind can be abnormal at times. Extra-ordinary should be the right word to describe them, but who am I to judge. After all, me myself is an idiotic programmer.

In a super normal afternoon, feeling sleepy as usual after having the normal lunch, I found myself staring at the monitor in front of me as if I'm waiting something to pop out of the screen. Diamond or cash in US dollar, maybe? Unfortunately, nothing came up except more problems with the system and the endless programming codes are flying around or playing hide and seek on the monitor screen. To make thing worse, the earphone that I put on my ears don't always keep me awake! Most of the time, even the loud and noisy tech-no songs turned to be the sweetest lullaby that always put me into the sleeping mode. Consequently, I found myself "pancing-ikan-ing" (fishing).

Suddenly, I heard the a familiar voice. Oh yes, it's a voice of Gtalk pop up message. Let's see what's the interesting conversation we'll have :

Scene 1

Calvin Klein : .......[+]
......[+]
Me : *INVISIBLE MODE*
Calvin Klein: ...........................[+]
.............[+]
DAMN... where is him???!!
Me : muahahahahaha... Ocean OGC-ing... (OGC-ing = masturbating)
Calvin Klein: BANG
Me : Oops!?
Calvin Klein : HITS OCEAN'S ROBOTIC KUKU
Me : Agagagagaga....

You die! Die! Die!

Scene 2

Me:...[+] (targeting)
.................[+]
Ocean Blue : (Jump! jump, squat, hide CK came out)
Me : ............[+]
Ocean : Ck Run~ CK no way to hide!!!
Me : *bang bang* CK nipples kena shot
Ocean : CK shout : "ARRHHH!" Ocean jump out! throw bomb to Ryan
Me : (avoiding)
Ocean : Fire in the hole! Ryan din aware the wall beside him, hit the wall!!*
Me : fuck!
Ocean : fall back to original place! BLOWWWW~~!!! Ryan KUKU BROKEN
Me: Throw back bomb at ocean
Ocean : miss throw to CK. This time CK kuku kena BOMB! no way to avoid! BLOWWWWW!!! Ocean is the final person who stand at the war!
Me: 0_0
Ocean : Warrior!
Me: IMPOSSIBLE!
Ocean : RYAN KUKU spoiled! CK nipples & kuku SPOILED!!

Yes, this is how it looks like when we're out of normal. You have no idea how funny it can be when we're typing and laughing at our stupidity. Funny as it may seem, we love to attack one's private parts (kuku, nipples, fat ass... etc, you name it!). And we have our own way of attack : "KUKU HEAD SHOT" for example! And you should know where we're attacking! Weapon doesn't really matter. It's totally up to our own imagination. Who knows, we could come up with new strategies and our own imaginary weapons! Look at what we have : Robotic KUKU?! Aren't we clever?!

Undoubtedly, it keeps me awake and I love doing it! So whenever you find me typing enthusiastically while smiling ever so evil-ly, then you should know... Counter Strike is ON!

* This post is specially dedicated to CK & Ocean who always save me from the boring and sleepy afternoon.

My toe

It was mere bad luck seriously. I attended a seminar last night somewhere near my house. Apparently I will sit for a Buddhist examination at the end of the year. So, having no time to read all the reference books and articles provided, I thought I should go for the so-called seminar-like revision study so at least I could do some revision there with others.

After going through that horrible 3 hours (well, not all speakers are professional speakers which caused all the boredom to the already exhausted me. Couldn't really blame them though as those speakers had tried their best to share), the seminar finally came to an end.

Of course, being the kind and helpful person I am (alright, not always I know), I thought I should help to keep all the tables and chairs to the store room. Putting the book I brought to my sister, I nonchalantly tried to fold the fold-able table. When I tried to bring down the table to another side so that I could fold it, the table suddenly slipped down (as the floor was too slippery) and the table just dropped on my right toe!

Ouch! I kept my mouth shut and the pain was just unbearable. Almost jumping around with pain, instead, I wave my legs around as if the pain would be shaken off. It took me awhile to finally got used to the pain and proceed to fold the table and brought it into the store room. Luckily there's no blood as there was no tear of skin. I am thankful of that. You have no idea how I hate to see blood! But it is obvious that I have a bruise on my right toe.

When I got home, I was told to massage my toe with some oil (not sure what kind of oil it was!). Yes, massage the toe. Crazy as it sound as it will cause so much pain. Having not much choice, I pour the oil onto my toe and start massage it. Slowly and softly of course fearing that I could not bear the pain. And I felt ok. Not as pain as I thought. But when I start to massage it a little harder, gosh, the pain was just beyond explanation. Never really scream out loud though. I thought I still could cope with that.

However, the more I massage, the more better I felt. And at some point I find the pain is addicting. Hahaha... Crazy as it might have sounded. But seriously I kept on massaging it until I could feel the pain slowly subsided (or perhaps I already got used to it).

So, today the bruise is even worse. My sister's boyfriend told me that it is normal. Expected. It shows that the blood is circulating and that it is a sign of recovering. But I have to keep on massaging twice a day until the bruise is gone.




Now, no choir for me today. I stayed home all day reading those novels I bought recently. I have had a good rest. No shoe for me for a few days. But don't worry, I can still walk independently. Just don't make me run, please!

Gosh, it's time to massage my toe now!

The End of Fish Killing

I have killed four fishes!

Yes! I did! I am such a mean, cruel, inhumane and stone-hearted creature! All the fishes I bought had been killed! How? By suffocating them in a filthy water without sufficient oxygen!

Well, it was my first time feeding fishes on my own. Despite having large aquarium in my house last time, my father was the one who take care of all the water-cleaning, feeding and so on. I was just being the naughty one scaring the fish away by knocking on the glassed aquarium.

And now, all the fishes which I intentionally wanted to keep them alive had all died. Due to the lack of knowledge on taking care of the fishes in the fish tank. Beside feeding them daily and add some anti-chlorine each time I change the water, the fishes needs sufficient oxygen to breath. I was naive enough to think that putting lotsa grasses in the water would provide sufficient oxygen to the fishes. Unfortunately, not only the oxygen was not enough, the fishes have difficulty to swim through the water full of grasses. To make thing worse, I can't see the fishes at all because the grass has covered everything.

Not going to give up, I bought another two fishes last night (bigger in size) and brought them to the office today. Before lunch time, another fish died! Disappointed and feeling all guilty and sinful, the expert in the office (actually an office boy I would say) offered to help me buy an oxygen pump and a new fish tank for me. So, right after lunch time, I got the whole set of necessary equipment to keep my fishes alive.

Those equipment includes a new fish tank, food and air-pump. The office boy even bought me another 4 cute little fishes (knowing that all my fishes are gonna die soon). And guess what, all those things only cost me RM 20!!! That's freaking cheap!

So here are my new fishy home :




I am so glad to see that now my fishy fish fish all look very healthy and energetic. They even chase each other in that spacious new tank. Look! Now I only have a small amount of grass and a few colour stone to light up the environment.

Hmm... now I can enjoy my fishes swimming freely. One thing for sure, having that new tank on the table is just a lovely distraction!

Merdeka Day Performance Rehearsal

Yippie I was there at Stadium Merdeka to witness the not-so-significant event of performances rehearsal for the celebration of 50th National Day. I was informed that the rehearsal start at 7pm. But there's no way that I could reach the venue at 7pm. Besides I only want to see the last performance of the whole performance. So I estimated the performance I want to watch is gonna start around 9:30pm to 10pm.

In that case, after work I went to the California Fitness to have an hour of gym session, pumping and stressing every possible body muscles I have so I would bulk up! (Watch out! As if the next Incredible Hulk is on the way!) After that I enjoyed a short moment of sauna and steam, took my shower and waited at the lobby with my sister's boyfriend for my sister, who was taking KTM, changed monorail to meet us.

We waited almost half an hour to finally see her and we went to IZZI Restaurant to have our dinner. Poor my sister, ain't gonna let her eat mamak after all the way from home to to KL. It took almost 1 and a half hour for her to reach here! Stupid Malaysian public transport! I don't think it will improve any sooner. All of us should start sending tonnes of complaint letters to the pertaining ministry! ~ "We care, therefore we complain!"

Anyway, back to our IZZI Restaurant, we ordered pretty lotsa food. As we got to know that using HSBC or Citibank credit card will have 50% off for a single receipt which is more than RM 100. Oh, we ordered a few expensive food and make sure they exceeded RM 100 so we could enjoy the discount.

So the following are what we ordered:







All the above cost RM 106.60 (exclusive gov. tax). So we got to enjoy 50% off and we only need to pay RM 55.97 (inclusive gov.tax). That's so freaking cheap! Next time should bring my family there.

After that we took the monorail and headed to Stadium Merdeka. When reached there, I couldn't find my dad who was already there. So we found ourselves a place to stand (yeah no more seat as the place was crowded already!). Surprisingly, the performance rehearsal not yet started. Some group we still having some practice. Later I found out from a friend Koon Loong (who was a volunteer there) that they were all waiting for the Prime Minister. Great VVIP!

We didn't have to wait long to see the PM finally arrive and the whole rehearsal started. I ain't gonna go into detail about everything. Basically the whole performance is based on the 5 Prime Minister. So there are 5 big grand performance ended with the most fantastic performance by SGM (Soka Gakkai Malaysia) group.

I didn't really took much photos at the beginning of the show as my phone was running out of battery. I have to save the best for the last! Let's have a look on what I have here:












Finally when talk about the 5th Prime Minister, SGM group performers appeared and filled up the middle field.

MERDEKA KE-50

MODAL INSAN

MISI 2057

Once again, I am deeply touched by the SGM performance. The performers successfully proved again that unity can achieve greater things. I saw the discipline, the energy of youth and the mission they carry to bring joy, hopes and happiness to everyone there. I felt their enthusiasm. I felt their passion. I could imagine their every practice under the merciless sun or the heavy rain. But they never gave up. And the pressed on steadfastly. And the result are undoubtedly fabulous! Wonderful! Amazing! Fantastic!

I felt great and lucky to be there to witness the rehearsal. I couldn't really enjoy watching the great performance as I was busy taking photos. But I can watch it on TV on the actual day. Now thanks to my new cellphone for being able to capture better quality photos. Love it so much! Muacks!

Can't wait to see the actual performance on TV on the 31st August 2007. I am praying earnestly that the performance will be a very very successful one! An even better performance! Also praying hard that all the performers are in good health and have the wisdom and courage to overcome whatever obstacles that might comes in their way!

Proud to be SGM member! Proud to be Malaysian!

Malaysiaku Gemilang!