Thursday, March 25, 2004

Singapore Polytechnic Concert Band and Alumni Band in Concert

Hey people, one cheap advertisement here!

The Singapore Polytechnic Concert Band presents: Musical Delights XXVII

Date: 4th April 2004, Sunday
Time: 5pm
Venue: Esplanade Concert Hall
Price: $16, $21 (inclusive of $1 Sistic charge, no free-seating)
Conductor: Leonard Tan

Repertoire:
Toccata Marziale - Vaughan Williams
Highlights from CHESS - Johan de Meij
Inferno - Robert W.Smith
Japanese Graffity VII - arr. Masamicz Armano

The Singapore Polytechnic Alumni Band will be making her maiden appearance as the guest band of the night.

Conductor: Terence Teow

Repertoire:
2nd Suite - Alfred Reed
Hungarian March - Hector Berlioz

Tickets are available from SISTIC.

*PS. For your info, I'm playing for the Alumni Band. =)
fjozn at 9:23 PM

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Tall Buildings

Did anyone watch “In conversation with Young Ming” recently? The topic was on tallest buildings in Asia. It seems that the new world’s tallest buildings are located in Asia. One main building of discussion was the Taipei 101 in Taiwan. They discussed the need to build such a tall building in earthquake and typhoon-prone Taiwan.

I personally think it’s a severe waste of resources to build such a building in such surroundings. The cost would be much higher as compared to a similar building in more stable surroundings. The foundation would have to be much stronger and deeper to sustain such a tall building. I forgot the exact height but it’s above 500 metres.

Architecturally, the building would require external as well as internal framing to transfer not only dead and live loads but wind load as well. Hence, the need for external framing is extremely important if not the occupants at the upper half of the building will experience movement and visually experience it in worse cases.

Cities after cities in Asia are all literally “reaching for the sky” in their new buildings. Look at the Petronas Tower in Kuala Lumpar, Jin Mao Tower in Shanghai, Finance Building in Hong Kong, etc, just to name a few. Look at the list of the tallest 200 building in the world here.

One funny point the guests noted in the show: The buildings are just there to show off. As they put it, it’s a case of “ai zi le” which is something about “face”. Things like Taipei 101 to challenge the tallest building in Shanghai, China, Petronas Towers “built for the eyes of Singapore”. It’s quite funny.

If Reader scrolled down, you would have probably noticed Singapore IS in the top 200 list of tallest building. Another fact to note, Singapore’s tallest building are identical in height, all 3 of them stopping at 280 metres. This point was noted in the show whereby the guest speaker felt that Singapore’s decision not to compete for the tallest building was, in his opinion, wise. He felt that Singapore had all the finance means, geographical surrounding to create such a building. But why the decision? The rest is my opinion. The taller a building goes, the more problem there are. Singapore’s strict building and fire regulations are quite legendary. This is one main reason why we see headlines in the news like: Fire kills 50 in hotel in other country. This had almost never happened in Singapore.

Why? The people at the Fire Safety Bureau (FSB) make sure the chances of this happening are kept to a minimum. Just ask anyone in the architectural field and they will tell you that FSB have thousands of regulations that must be met. Imagine a fire breaks out on the 100th floor, you would have to run all the way down to the first floor. The 911 incident was extremely unfortunate (that’s an understatement). The main core was damaged by the impact, allowing fire to start burning in what was actually the fire-proof core, thus trapping people in the higher floors. The structure of the World Trade Centre (WTC) was such that it had a concrete centre service core with steel beams extending out to form the office floors (a service core normally have escape staircases, passenger lifts, building services etc).

Personally, I think buildings shouldn’t go too high. If we were to continue building at this rate, we are all going to have buildings that are 1 kilometre high! If that were to happen, the street level would be in constant darkness throughout the day. Can anyone remember the show “5th Element”? The designers sort of conceptualise the future with such buildings. Mile high buildings with multi-level highways. The human race is just going to self-destruct one fine day. Sigh.
fjozn at 8:21 PM

Monday, March 22, 2004

Thoughts of the week

More than a week had passed since my last post, not including my little informal “I’m back!” announcement. Quite a week I must say, to survive the entire week without my Internet. I’ve never felt so happy just to be online!

There must be an election fever recently, with the polls going on in Taiwan and our neighbouring Malaysia. I’m quite glad the political scene in Singapore is not like Taiwan, where the parliament resembles the World Wrestling Federation (I forgot what the new acronym, WWE stands for). Just look at the politicians who are swearing at each other, throwing their fists all over the place, calling each other names, behaving like a kid. Looking at this, how can one believe that these are the people who run the country? Total mayhem!

The election process is so drama-mama, I must say. All the actions going on. The bullet which skimmed past Chen’s tummy. Where else can you get this man?

Thankfully, the situation in Singapore had been peaceful and uneventful for the past few years. Perhaps some interesting things would stir up in the presidential election in about 2 years or so. If Reader can remember in the last election, there was a rather crazy member of the opposition? It seems weird that these “highly educated” people with PhDs are doing the funniest things that are totally unexpected of them! They don’t seem to think of their actions and consequences and how it reflects upon them. Put it in this way: if you are trying to convince someone to buy your products, you will put on your best behavior right? This seems like common sense, but somehow it doesn’t seem to be the case for some people. It just reflects so badly when you start calling your competitor names publicly in full view of your own supporters and worse, your target audience.

It’s a good thing that the particular politician wasn’t voted in the constituency. In fact, he lost by a huge percentage, only about 20% voted for him. What was that 20% thinking of when they voted for him anyway? I wonder.

Come to think of this, I will be eligible to vote when the next election comes along. It should interesting, I hope.

To carry on about the Taiwanese elections, I would ask Reader this: would you be so passionate about the results of the election that you cry over it? Would you go to the extent you feel so depressed that you kill yourself over it? I expect most to reply a simple NO immediately. But someone in Taiwan did hang himself just because he was so sad that Chen got re-elected.

This is so sad, whether it’s about the “passion” or should I say “foolishness” of the man or the general bo-chap attitude in Singapore. It’s just like an episode out of some martial arts drama serial when the patriotic young man choose to die rather than serving the ruler not of his choice. Can’t he choose to stay alive and try to change the situation?

The ruling government in Singapore had been the PAP since Day 1. I think the young generation these days, myself included, is just so unconcerned about what is going on around them. Personally, I think PAP has a very well proven track record and this is good enough to justify their long stay. I’m perhaps just one of those who prefer to leave things as they are.

The efficiency can be seen in many areas, the laws, the general life of the citizen, the defenses, etc.

Talking about defense, I think the 3 Indonesian robbers who fled to Pulua Tekong must have been one of the unluckiest robbers around. They probably fled to Pulua Tekong thinking it was one of Malaysia’s islands. Who know that it turned out to be Singapore, and worse still, a militarised island? 700 men searching for 3. Tough luck.

This sum up all about what I have to say for now. I'll be back for more!
fjozn at 9:19 PM

Sunday, March 21, 2004

I'm back!

*drum rolls*

Ladies and gentlemen!
Boys and girls!
Friends, countrymen, fellow Singaporeans!

I'm back online!

*bows*

It feels so good to be sitting here once again typing away at my keyboard. Having no internet sucks. Big time.

Anyway, I'll be back soon for more blogging. Watch this space. =)
fjozn at 11:52 AM

Sunday, March 14, 2004

Thoughts of the week

Here I am sitting infront of my computer on this quiet Sunday morning trying to add some new thoughts to my blog. This week had basically been quite low key. It’s pretty normal, always the same after concert, slacking around for a week or so before the pace starts picking up again.

The SAF Bands’ new White House Complex will be officially opened by our Chief of Defence Forces, Major-General Ng Yat Chung on 16th March 2004, next Tuesday. Preparations for this big day, a new chapter for the SAF Bands, had been going on throughout the entire week. It’s beginning to feel National Day’s around the corner with all the coloured flags and unit colours hanging all around the place. The White House now looks like some kind of plantation with all the new trees, real and plastic, standing around. I wish I could show Reader some photos but cameras are prohibited in camp.

Over dinner on Friday, I had a mini discussion with some of my friends on religion. For those who don’t know, I’m a free thinker. My rational is purely scientific; I had always viewed myself as a practical person who doesn’t believe in any superior being who controls your entire life. I always think that your own life is in your own hand! Perhaps I do say that I believe in fate, what’s destined to be yours will be yours. That same view is adopted by Christians as God’s will, am I right to say?

Frankly, I initially thought that this topic is quite sensitive and maybe I shouldn’t be even talking about this here. On second thoughts, this is MY blog and contains what I think. So it’s up to the Christian Reader to disagree with what I feel and think. It’s not that I’m aiming Christianity or anything, it just so happened that the other 2 friends who were sitting at the same table over dinner are Christians and so we just talked about Christianity.

I’m quite most of the non-Christian Readers would had have some experience whereby you are approached by Christians to share with you their teachings, etc. I myself had a very bad experience way back in secondary school. While eating lunch with my friend at an entertainment centre. This middle aged man just sit down next to us and proceeded to share God with us. In a way, I was quite disturbed and disgusted when he pointed out this verse in the Bible. I cannot remember the exact words but it went something like: People shouldn’t pray to wooden statues. Fine, I accepted that. What I couldn’t accept that was after that he went to criticise other religions by saying that the decorations on Hindu temples were hideous. That’s a TRUE quote. For the uninformed, Hindu temples normally have very high roofs on which there are many statues of Hindu deities. These deities may be in the form of a human being, animal or a human body with animal head. This man, in my opinion, was arrogant and extremely disrespectful of others!

True, I don’t believe in any superior being, but I respect all religions. It’s your own choice. I sometimes thinks Christianity is a bit “stuck-up” in the sense that it proclaims itself to the “correct” religion. Fine, that is correctly what a Christian should believe. But it doesn’t necessarily apply to the rest of us. If everything is true, I accept that I will go to Hell on Judgement Day if there is one. But there is one big “IF”. What IF it is wrong? There are so many religions out there. Some are closely related, like Islam and Christianity. Some are not. Just look at how Catholics and Christians don’t agree with each other. So who’s right?

I can list at least 2 relationships that didn’t work out because both girls were Christians. That got me to think a lot about religions. As my good friend put it, you can never be sure that you won’t accept anything at the end of the day. He labelled me as “proud” for refusing to accept God. Am I really “proud”? Maybe I am. Maybe I am not. I don’t know. I just seem not to be able to relate to anything. I’m still open to anything, anything could happen in the future. No one knows what’s in store for him or her. In my own view, life on Earth is just a small chapter in history. You make your own history. No one else do.

Just look at how the universe started. There is the “Big Bang” theory, or you can look at how God created the world. I’m more to the scientific side as I stated earlier. Had anyone wondered what was in the universe before the Big Bang? Is it like the Matrix? Another universe that had ended? Maybe the previous universe just exploded to create a new universe? The universe is so vast; you can take the whole surface area of Earth and draw a small dot in the middle. Even so, it would still be too big to represent the size of Earth in relation to the whole universe. Can we conclude that one God is looking after all this? Then what is His origin? What was He doing before the Big Bang? Why is God He? Why not Her? I don’t know. Let the learned and wise ones decide. I will just live my life as it is. For now.

Just in case Reader thinks I’m slamming any religions here. I sincerely tell Reader that I was not. Having grown up in a multi racial and religion environment, I had every absolute respect for ALL religions. These are just my thoughts. Should Reader have any disagreement or corrections to point out, kindly e-mail me from my e-mail link at the top of the page. Thank you!
fjozn at 11:02 AM

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

SAF Bands 10th Anniversary Concert - 5th March 2004 - Esplanade Theatres on the Bay

The Singapore Armed Forces Bands 10th Anniversary Concert was held last week at the Esplanade Concert Hall. It was the first time that I’m playing with a band at that venue. The hall is extremely projective, a whole new experience I must say.

Seriously speaking, although I had a lot of people telling them it was a good concert, I thought it wasn’t very well done. I would perhaps give a rating of 6.5/10 for the concert.

Light Calvary Overture
I thought this piece was quite well done, although the starting wasn’t really that stable. The band took up to the allegro section to stabilise. Other than that, the rest of the piece was good, energetic as it should be.

Concierto de Aranjuez
Katryna did a very good job! I always find her playing very enchanting even in rehearsals. She just have this flair around her. The accompaniment wasn’t very good, sad to say. I thought the arrangement was sometimes too thin in texture, and that the ensemble lack practice. The third movement at some point sounded like we were sightreading. The intonation wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely much better at some points during the concert.

Star Wars Trilogy
Something funny happened to me before it started. I had to give the tuning Bb and A to retune the band before the piece starts. Instead of the Bb, an A came out! I was like: huh! Took me a while to realise the mechanism wasn’t locking to raise the Bb key. Heng ah! I wouldn’t know what to do if my oboe die on me 1 minute before a piece.

Anyway, the piece was quite ok. I couldn’t really find any fault with it. Interesting thing to note, both Teow and I had this accidental “grace” note in our solos. Haha! Generally, the band sounded tired and some of my friends in the band agreed that the playing during the sound check was much better.

~interval~

I met 3 friends for the first time, all of them whom I got to know online. It’s always great to see new friends at concert, somehow it’s like a meeting ground for new friends. Saw a couple of other friends too, great to see familiar faces too!

March
Well played by the band. I don’t know why CPT Lee seems to have so much supporters in the audience. He seems to be the only conductor greeted with cheers when he came on stage. Interesting.

In the Miller Mood
This is a jazzy piece that I quite like. Although the concert is now over, I still would have prefer to perform it without all the fanciful standing, etc.

Belkis, Regina di Saba
As the showcase piece for the concert, I think this is one of the best played by the band. Nice solos by all soloists. I think the offstage brasses caught a lot of people in the audience by surprise at the last movement when the band suddenly went into “surround sound” mode. It sounded really loud on stage, with everyone around the hall playing away at fortissimo!

The next 2 pieces for solo trumpet and bugle was actually intended as encore, somehow they were added into the main repertoire for the night.

Personally, I think I must have set a new personal record for the mot number of mistake made in one concert! My lips were really tired from all the endless practices we had prior to the concert. Didn’t really destroyed any solo, thankfully. There was an additional grace note in my Stars Wars solo though, not very noticeable I hope! I was quite low profile for this concert anyway, didn’t have any outstanding, limelight solos to do, but! I have to stay on stage for the entire concert, one of the most tiring in recent time I guess. It’s always a bad idea to have 6 hours full band practices on the concert week. It just tires everyone out. My friend told me they have a 3 hours practice on the concert day. Really don’t know how they do it man! *kow tow to them*.

Conclusion:
I think if I was a paying concert-goer, I wouldn’t had regret going. The concert was still reasonably “listenable”, as my brother told me: the pieces were easy on the ears, not those sleep inducing pieces. I hope all those who I had asked to attend the concert enjoyed it.
fjozn at 11:27 AM

Monday, March 08, 2004

About myself

In case Reader is still uninformed on my identity, my name is Chua Liang You. I was born on 25th Oct 1982 which makes me 22 this year. I'm currently serving as a regular musician/oboist in the SAF Central Band. My interests include photography, architecture, music. I studied in Bukit View Primary, Tanglin Seconday and Singapore Polytechnic(Diploma in Architectural Technology).

I’m sure some of my friends are like sooooooooo surprised that I’m actually starting a blog. So unexpected of me ya? Anyway, who says I’m a predictable person? :P

I hope to communicate with some of my friends through this blog. Who knows, I might just disclose some unknown or lesser known facts about myself.

So my friends, I hope no one will fall asleep reading my blog, or rather, what I call “articles”. My e-mail address and shoutbox are available for comments for further improvement on this blog. All comments are welcomed. Thank you!

Oh yeah, special thanks to Sue Anne for helping me set up this blog. Thank you!
fjozn at 11:13 AM

Sunday, March 07, 2004

Interesting true story

Recently I was fortunate enough to make 2 new friends online in MIRC. Unfortunately, the process whereby I got to know them was quite, hmmm... confusing.

I first got to know one of them when she randomly chatted with me in MIRC, I'll just call her A. Nothing confusing about this until the next day when another girl, B randomly chatted with me too. Now this is where the confusion comes in.

B: hi
Me: hello
B: intro?
Me: 21m
Me: u?
B: 18f

At this point I took a look at her ISP address and I realised something: it was exactly the same as the person I've chatted to just the previous day. More interestingly, they both had the same intro! I started to think, is this a joke? Is it the same person from yesterday? Does she has split personalities?

Me: eh, are u A?
Me: or u hav a sis called A?
B: ya, A is my sis

So as Reader can conclude by now, A and B are twin sisters.

Anyway, the confusion is NOT over yet.

I tried to get them to go to the Central Band concert, both of them were actually interested to go but couldn't confirm with me till the very day itself. As I only have B's phone number, so I SMSed her on the concert day and asked if she's going or not? It turned out that she was! So I was happily looking forward to meeting them during the interval.

The first half came and went pass with considerate incidents. I'll elaborate more in a later posting. :)

I finally got to see the twin sisters during the interval. It was quite interesting. As expected, they asked me to guess who was who. Results: Failed. We chit chat a bit and took a photo together after which I rushed to meet another friend and rushed back to the stage.

~Concert ends~

On the bus back, I took out my camera and looked through the photos I've taken. When I got to the twin's photo, I realised something! I forgot who was who again.

* takes out handphone *

Me: hey, i forgot.. so are u the one with the star earring?
B: ya, I'm the one with the star earring.

~next day~

I met A online and started chatting to her about the concert, how it was etc.. until we got to the photo and she pointed out something: she's the one with the star earring!

Confusion!

Blurness!

After much discussion, it was concluded that they both shared a phone and the one who replied my SMS the night before was actually A!

I was almost ready to tear my hair out man!

Still, what are the chances of meeting twin sisters online consecutively over 2 nights? I should be striking TOTO soon man! Haha!~

fjozn at 6:44 PM

Saturday, March 06, 2004

High expectations

Recently at a concert I attended, my friend who was sitting besides me observed and told me this: You have very high expectations you know, I noticed that you clapped only after songs that you like.

This got me thinking, am I really such a stuck-up person with extreme standards who turn my nose up at sub-standard performance? Not to say that the concert wasn't good, it was not bad. In fact, it was an enjoyable concert except for the first piece, which I totally didn't agreed with the conductor's interpretation of it.

So, what do I actually expect? I don't play in such a world-class band that commands standing ovations at every single concert. I had played only one solo in my entire oboe playing career that I couldn't find any fault with. The rest all were in my own opinion, either just good or passable. True, I've had people coming up to me who compliment me for my "outstanding" playing. I don't doubt their sincerity but I somehow always think it's not what I want yet.

As some of my friends can testify: I'm not a person who is impressed musically. I think my idea of music had changed a lot since I started my music career. One thing for sure, my concert going had drastically reduced from an average of 10 a year to 2-3 a year. That's for local bands only.

I'm sure some people are just going to jump up of their seat and start protesting that I'm someone who supports foreign talents, etc... honestly, how many bands in Singapore are actually very good? Even the professional bands are just professional technically. Sure, the Central Band is much better than anyother band we have in Singapore, but I think there's still a long way to go before we reach our world-class vision. Most of the senior people in there are actually good workers who are committed to their profession. True enough, we need a good management in order to have a world-class band. These people are the heart and brain of the band. The players in the band are the voices. These 2 groups of people must work closely together to command a good performance.

There are good and bad players. I think I'm neither. I'm stuck in the gray area between the 2 standards. I'd just have to practise smarter and harder I guess. Wish me all the best!
fjozn at 3:13 PM