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the writer
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Dopod 838 Pro Howarth XL Cor Anglais + Howarth XL Oboe Cocobolo Wiseman Double Case in Forest Green Nikon D2Xs AF 50mm f/1.4D AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED AF-S 300mm f/2.8D IF-ED II AF-S 400mm f/2.8D IF-ED II $10000000000 to drop from the sky Yeah, I'm greedy, but wishlist, what! | ||
worldwide readers since Sept 2004 
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| f j o z n | ||
| my thoughts |
For some weird reason, I watched the “exclusive” William Hung MTV on Channel 5 just now. William Hung: *dances* Me: Argh!!! My eyes!!! William Hung: She bang! She bang!~ Me: Argh!!! My ears!!! This basically sums up my reaction to She Bang. Let's put it this way, I'm impressed by his determination but for the greater good of mankind, he should stop singing. Still I was quite amused by it anyway. Haha! And no, XP, I won't mimic him to traumatise you. So don't worry. =P fjozn at 9:31 PM
La Donna e Mobile from Verdi's Rigoletto La donna è mobile qual piuma al vento muta d'accento e di pensiero Sempre un'amabile leggiadro viso in pianto e in riso è menzognero La donna è mobil qual piuma al vento muta d'accento e di pensier e di pensier e di pensier È sempre misero chi a lei s'affida chi le confida mal cauto il core Pur mai non sentesi felice appieno chi su quel seno non liba amore La donna è mobil qual piuma al vento muta d'accento e di pensier e di pensier e di pensier XP> Heehee! fjozn at 7:55 PM
Uncensored, Uncut, Untalented. That’s really quite a funny tagline. Sometimes I really think that a tagline either makes or destroy an advertisement. Although so many people admire William Hung’s determination, I still think his singing is trash. Not to say I can do a better job, but at least I don’t try to produce an album for people to know I’m a horrible singer and to let them have a go at me. No way! Speaking of singing, I’m still thinking of going for singing lessons. No, not those singing classes where they groom you to be the next Stefanie Sun, Ah Do or those boybands. Classical singing, yes, that’s what I’m going to learn! fjozn at 9:25 PM
For those who are interested, please call 64505895 during office hour to reserve your complimentary tickets. For more information, please refer to my earlier entry, e-mail me at the link above or go to the SAF Bands website here! Details at a glance: 13th May 2004 Victoria Concert Hall 1930 Hrs Hope to see you people there! fjozn at 8:28 PM
One word to describe the concert: Inspiring! It must have been the best concert that I’ve attended for a very long time. It’s one concert whereby I truly enjoyed myself, whereby I enjoyed every piece, whereby I didn’t cringe at some players playing out of tune. True, the performers were all professionals but not all professionals impress me. I was impressed by the bassoonist’s high notes, the T’ang Quartet’s rapport and the pianist, just to name a few. Some of the other players didn’t impress me that much although I have no doubt of their performance standard and abilities. I think some players just have the flair to perform. Music is sometimes about what you see too. Listening to a recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 is always so different from a “live” performance. I haven’t got the chance yet, but once any orchestra attempts that piece in Singapore, I’ll be there to witness it! One person to single out from the concert – Leslie Tan, cellist of T’ang Quartet. He appears as someone who really enjoys what he’s playing. I could see him smiling throughout the pieces he was playing. He looks at the other players when he’s playing. Awesome. It seems to me that he was the bridge of communication between the violinists and violists. While the players were looking at their scores most of the time, I noticed that Leslie was perhaps the one with the most eye contact with the ensemble. He smiled and played with them, enjoying himself. Now, that’s the attitude to learn from! I must seriously put that kind of attitude into my oboe trio on Monday. The concert had indeed been very inspiring. I suddenly had a newfound urge to sell my oboe immediately and start to develop the new type of sound I have in my head. Now that my reed-making is making reasonable progress, I think it’s a very time to start developing a new sound, but first, I’ll need a new oboe, hopefully the Marigaux 2001. Speaking of reeds, I went and bought the gayest colour anyone can think of: HOT PINK! I can’t wait for it to arrive see how it looks like! Heehee! fjozn at 2:39 AM
The SAF Bands would be presenting its 4th installment of the “Chamber Repertory” series in May. Details are as below: Date: 13th May 2004 Thursday Time: 1930 hrs Venue: Victoria Concert Hall Tickets are complimentary and will be given away on a first come first serve basis. The official booking is not ready yet but you people can e-mail me and let me know if you are interested. Limits are set at 4 tickets per individual and 10 tickets per educational institution. The repertoire is not fully confirmed yet. Confirmed performing groups are the brass and wind ensemble, with the wind ensemble playing Mendelssohn’s Overture for Winds and more. I will probably be playing Cor Anglais for Beethoven’s Oboe Trio. I’ll post more information here as soon as they are made available. Watch this space! fjozn at 10:09 AM
There must be ten thousands things that I want to get man! Let’s see: 1. Marigaux Oboe Model 2001 2. A bigger house that is nearer to camp 3. A Cor Anglais (haven’t thought of the brand yet) 4. New clothes 5. New shoes 6. Anything else u can think of! Ok, I’m seriously considering whether to change my oboe or not. I think I’d probably sell it when the band gets a new oboe. Right now, I need to submit a report on “The Conditions of Oboes in the Band”. Hopefully it would help my cause. =P For anyone who is interested: My current oboe is a 4 years old Rigoutat Symphonie. It was hand-selected from the Rigoutat factory in France by Alix Pengili, former Principal Oboist of Singapore Symphony Orchestra. It was played professionally by him in the SSO before it was sold to me. It has a very free and gentle sound. The low notes are easy to produce which is consistent with the characteristics of a Symphonie. The instrument is well maintained without any known problem with the keys. It comes in a professional case. The bell ring is intact without any breakage. It is stored in a dehumidifier when it’s not in use at humidity = approx. 50%. Asking price: SGD 5300. fjozn at 9:58 AM
My physiotherapist told me today that my right leg was longer than my left leg by 2 cm! This, he said, was causing my spine to be crooked, which in turn was causing my backache. Oh man! Now I would have to wear this funny little “heel-rise” in my shoes to make up for the difference in height. It feels quite uncomfortable though. I really hope I will get used to it. So my friends, if you ever noticed that I’m leaning to my right when I’m sitting, please nag at me to sit up straight! No more crossing my right leg over my left. There are so many things to change and to take note of. So troublesome! fjozn at 6:36 PM
It’s been quite an uneventful week. Nothing special happened to me, no significant event. Is it a good or bad thing? I was supposed to pick up my specs on Thursday. When I got to the shop, I was horrified by the thickness of the lens! It was like nearly 1 cm thick. I look like some kind of nerd, except my specs isn’t those black plastic frames, but rather a thin blue metal frame. I’ve blown so much money this month on eye wears. A few hundreds on my specs and another few hundred on another pair of sunglass I bought yesterday. I seriously need to change my spending habits. Anyway, there was a cock-up with the shop. When the guy mention high-index lens to me, I thought he was talking about glass. I ended up with plastic lens. Good thing he is nice enough to offer to change the lens for me without any additional charges. That was really very nice. So you guys can try the OPSM shop at Marina Square if you ever need to buy a specs or any type of eye wear. I’m really quite impressed with the service. Hopefully when I collect the specs this week, the new glass lens would look thinner. The frame is rather long, so the sides tend to be thicker. My myopia is really getting bad. -7.50 and -8.75, horrible eyesight! I bought this pair of sunglasses from Johor Bahru yesterday. I think it was quite a bargain. The original marked price was RM 598 with a 25% discount. I just couldn’t resist. Anyway, I’ve wanted to get a “sportier” sunglass for quite some times already. It took me about 30 minutes in the shop before I finally decided on the “ONE”. Here it is: 
Nice? Nice? Give me some comments ok? My good friend had just signed up on Blogspot. See his blog here. Its pretty new so actually there’s nothing there yet. It seems that the whole world is blogging now. From the few people I know who actually blogs, it had since gradually increased until like half of my friends, my brother included! I myself had also moved out of my initial planning of to write only “articles” here. I’ve been writing about my life for the past 2-3 entries. I need a more interesting life so I can get more inspirations to write my thoughts about the weirdest thing I can find! fjozn at 10:36 AM
I think there is something wrong with the blogspot server. I tried to upload my blog yesterday morning and couldn’t. Guess what? After I’ve successfully managed to upload my blog in the evening, I found 3 identical posts! Well, I’ve tried to delete them. They don’t exist anymore in my blogger account but they are still visible on this page. Hopefully they will disappear soon! Anyway, did anyone watch the NKF charity show last night? The stunts are really getting out of hand! Fine, standing on knives can be done with proper training, sharing a space with 50,000 bees can be done with proper training, BUT using your body as a dartboard??? This is absurd! Crazy! Madness! Stunts may be attempted but please keep bodily damage to a minimum! The NKF should be doing something about this. The recent hooha about their $189,000,000 in reserves. And now this? Having a huge sum in reserves is actually nothing much. As they said, these reserves are just enough to last them for 3 years. Perhaps there should be a much higher level of transparency in their accounts. I think the general donor deserves an explanation why only 52% of the total funds raised eventually went in to the recipients? It could be a justified amount but still the figures should be published to appease the public. Anyway, I’m trying to build a webpage. I only have the homepage right now. Go see it here if you are interested. Leave me a comment or something. I’m going to carry on working on it, hopefully there will be by something decent up within the next 2 weeks! fjozn at 9:05 PM
It’s been quite a quiet weekend. Rather long weekend I must say! MC on Thursday, Good Friday on Friday, and add in Saturday and Sunday… 4 days! I didn’t really get down much to doing anything. For once, I shall not talk about any subject today and maybe talk a bit on what’s been happening to me the last few days! Thursday I met Xueting in the afternoon at Jurong Point to pass her my camera. She’s going to some island in Malaysia for a holiday, wish I could go too, but rather broke at the moment. After all, I met Jiahui, Yong Xiang, Sue Anne and Calvin to watch "Hellboy". It’s not a bad show, rather interesting and with its fair share of humour. Go watch it! Friday I went to teach at Tampines at my student’s house. It’s really tiring to travel there all the time just to teach for an hour. Well, at least she’s improving. It makes the effort much more worth it. I went down to town area after the lesson. I actually wanted to go to the Esplanade Library but somehow I found myself wandering about Marina Square. I walked into a few optical shops as I wanted to look for a pair of specs which I saw the previous night at Jurong Point. There was this shop which had a “closing-down” sale, so I went in. The employees didn’t seem very interested in doing business when I went in. One guy just came out from the back of the shop and stood at a distance observing me. He made no attempt at all to generate any sales. The attitude of salespeople these days! We should have more people who are more customers-oriented. I remember this person from the Esplanade; I think she was the manager or something. She has a firm handshake, look-at-people-in-the-eye attitude, good PR skills. This is what people in the services industry should be! It makes a huge difference when someone introduces him/herself to without the air of confidence. Even the grip of your handshake makes a huge difference. Anyway, I shall not side tread too much. I eventually managed to find what I want at another optical shop. I saw my friend while standing outside the shop, trying to decide what I want. He was in a similar situation, as in he just finished teaching and there was nothing to do. He told me that there is a shop at Suntec which has sunglasses on sales at 50% off! Anyway, we spoke for a while and he left to carry on his shopping while I went into the shop to make my purchase. I will link a photo here as soon as I get my new specs! =) I went down to the Suntec shop after buying my specs. I couldn’t find anything I like, so sad! I think I want to get a new pair of sunglasses as soon as I have the money! Haha. On my way home, Jane called me and asked if I wanted to meet her for dinner. We ended up going to Saeke Sushi at West Mall. There was this fashion show going on at the main atrium. For a while, all the models came out onto the walkway all wearing similar, or should I say identical black tubes and skirts. Weird. What a long day it was! Saturday I essentially spent about the whole day at my friend’s house playing mahjong. Not to say I’m superstitious or what, but I seems to normally have bad luck at his house. Thankfully, I was quite lucky yesterday! I managed to qiang gan hu at the very last tile to hu 7 tai! Shiok! I think my friend was perhaps much luckier. In the next round, he won a 13 yao and a 4 ang ke. Stunning! Whatever I had won in that round all went to him. Lucky guy! Sunday Today shall be a relaxing day for me. I shall relax the whole day at home. Boring. Haha… well, if anyone has any plans please please please call me! Oh, I’ve just watched the first VCD of the series “Hitler: The Rise of Evil”. It’s actually quite a nice show. I’m not sure how accurate the show is, but I think it portrayed Hitler as an intelligent and extremely patriotic person. A huge pity that he had all the wrong ideas. Sigh. “The only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for the good men to do nothing” – Edmund Burke fjozn at 12:55 PM
A joke I took from my Mei's blog. In the forest... Bear: (to a white rabbit) I'm going to shit, you want to come along? Rabbit: Okay. (tags along behind the bear) Bear: Are you afraid of dirt? Rabbit: No, why? Bear: Nothing. Just curious. A few moments later... Bear: Are you afraid of dirt? Rabbit: No. After the bear had cleared his bowels, he used the rabbit to clean himself. Hope it brings a smile to you, I do need one myself now. fjozn at 9:50 PM
I watched The Passion of the Christ yesterday at Cineleisure. It's quite a nice show to me. No doubt the whole show was about Chirst and Christianity which if Reader remember, I had an entire article devoted to religion previously. I somehow think the show is not very "non-Christians" friendly in the sense that a non-Christian movie goer would have problem understanding what's going in the show. People and all the magazines I read had me convinced that the show was extremely gory and bloody, of which I didn't think it was at all. Call me cold blooded or insane, but I thought the torturing scenes were not as bad as expected. Yes, they used those funny whips with hooks on it and the scene whereby flesh was ripped out was quite gory but I really expected worse. My friends all thought I was crazy man. Haha. I guess I'm quite immune to this since I watched Black Hawk Down, which was really the goriest movie I've even seen! I guess the goriest moment in Passion was when they crucified Jesus on the cross. The blood flying out of his hand. That was really quite bad. I guess the show didn't really have any impact on me, owning to the fact that I'm a non-believer. I'm not too sure about others. It's really quite a moving movie, a testimonial to a man's love for his, erm, peers? Or should I say subjects? Or is it believers? Someone please enlighten me, I'm not really sure of the right term to use here. I really think Mel Gibson should have made the movie more understandable. It's not the Latin that they speak. Some parts were not understandable. It started off right away with Jesus in a forest with his disciples. After a while, he collapsed while praying. There was this person next to him, as though he was talking to him. It took me a while to realize that this person was in fact the Devil. It's just that type of epic show which you would have to do in-depth analysis after watching it to thoroughly understand it. Afterall, you can't possibly make a comedy out of this topic, right? There are still many questions left unanswered. I shall go talk to my Christian friends when they watch it. fjozn at 7:11 PM
I’ve just played the most personally unprepared concert in my life! This must be the concert whereby I go on stage not sure of my parts at all, playing through as though it was a normal practice but only at Esplanade Concert Hall. Stressed! I felt so stupid during the tuning man! I was like playing an A for the woodwinds, a Bb for the brasses and a final Bb for the whole band. Somehow all the woodwinds decided to join in during the brasses and when I played the final Bb for the whole band, no one tuned after me! I was like... EEEEEEEEEEEH… Somehow the hall felt more resonant than the SAF concert I played in last month. There was an echo after I played my tuning A as compared to the SAF concert where the A disappeared immediately. Hungarian March I thought this was quite well done. The opening wasn’t as good as what they had practiced but it was still reasonably good. The band sounded very well balanced from where I was sitting. Not bad for the very first piece ever the alumni band is playing. Second Suite for Band – Alfred Reed Something funny happened during this piece. The emcee, Wilson, just walked out onto stage at the end of the first movement and started to say something. All of us were like: Oh no! I think he was quite embarrassed. The piece went well, slight cock up in the solos for 2nd movement, but otherwise was fine. I lost my grip on my reed and went flat on a prominent note! Sian man! Silly mistakes like playing A natural instead of A flat. Big Fun in the Sun Anyone who went to the concert might not believe this, but nearly half the band was sight reading this very piece on stage, myself included. Yes, sight reading. Thankfully, it went well except for quite a few wrong entries by yours truly. I think it’s overall quite a good performance by the alumni band. I don’t know how the concert goers will rate it, but I really I think it’s a very good effect given that it’s the debut performance of the band. How about some comments, people? PS* Photos from the concert are currently available at my link to my photos link at the top of this page. I'll look into linking photo directly to here ASAP. :) fjozn at 12:21 PM
My friend wrote this on her blog: I have this thing with mynahs, I don't know why..I'm simply so amused by their behavior. I've seen those birds attempt to land but however fell on their butts due to a slippery floor, I've seen one wrestle to get that piece of chewing gum out of its beak, and I'm still so amused by the way they walk like humans (instead of hopping about) and the way their butts go ridiculously high up when they peck at food on the ground. I am sure bored. But looking at these birds make me happy, because they are so comical themselves. I agree with her man, these birds are really interesting intelligent animals. I once saw this mynah trying to catch this big grasshopper. Those really big bright green types. It was about 2 inches? Hmmm… Oh well, I saw this grasshopper land on the floor in front of me in camp. I was marvelling its size when I noticed this mynah nearby looking at it. It was so interesting to observe the mynah trying to catch the grasshopper. Grasshopper jumped all over the place, trying to avoid the killer beaks of Mynah. After a while, Mynah gave up and hopped to a distance away. Grasshopper, sensing no more danger, stood its ground and remained at its original spot. Mynah, on the other hand, was looking the other way and seems not to be looking at Grasshopper when it suddenly flow over and snatched Grasshopper in its beaks. I was like: WOW! Even a mynah also know how to act blur! True-blue Singaporean! Heehee! fjozn at 12:19 PM
I've just got a new computer! Woohoo! Hmmm.. I still quite not very used to Windows XP. Man, I must be damn outdated! Anyway, got some complains that I haven't been blogging. Oops! Sorry! I promise to have some fresh readings for anyone who still bothers to enter this site by this weekend. Thank you Reader! fjozn at 10:51 PM | |
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