In a moment of weakness and boredom (was a wee bit tired of looking around for resources), I decided to keyword search '新堀ギタ-' in youtube i.e. search for some authentic niibori videos. Fortunately was able to stumble upon these gems - try to see the HQ/HD versions, slightly better audio and video quality.
The prime guitarist here looks like Lionel,one of my SLs in year 1.
Concerto de Aranjuez - was just talking about this piece with ZQ at the wedding lunch. Warning, long long clip.
Personally, I prefer the MASAK version arranged by Alex - more technically impressive. This however, seems perfectly achievable by Xpose. Hmmm.
Truly seems to be a nicer arrangement than the one we tried out. Maybe its due to the cello? Ensemble is a wee bit soft, and the bongos get to you after a while. But the addition of the alto cem(or is it a sop? I wonder) gives it a nice Venezulan/Andean touch.
And finally moving away from the guitar, funiculi funicula as how it should sound. The Borcelli versions are marvellous, but seem to lack the visual impact of the pavarotti & friends version.
I guess seeing three middle-aged fat men sing adds to the grandeur of it all. Bravissimo!
I was reading the Digital Life supplement today when I came across this neat little game.I've reduced the height and width a wee bit so the in-game text might be difficult to read. Anyhow, you can also find it at www.miniclip.com
Try it out, its fun! Kinda Diner Dash/Pizza Tycoon-like. Gosh I remember playing the latter when I was in secondary school. It involved setting up an Italian restaurant and going through the motions of selecting/ordering ingredients for your own pizza recipes as well as dealing with the front end of the business.
I was so obssessed about it that I asked a friend to send me the cheat guide - a recipe book for pizza recipes - by fax. Nerdy and desperate eh? The nasty part of the game was fun too - that involved taking out hits on your competitors, sending a spy to inflitrate their restaurants and send rats there etc. Endless hours of SVGA fun.
I think its available for download if you look hard enough.
The missus had gone through some of my older posts at my previous blog while she was waiting up for me last week and remarked to me that I should go revisit those.
I thought it was a exercise in ego-indulgence at first (i'm not ashamed to admit that I like my own style of writing. But thats me.)
But I stumbled on this gem I wrote in NS about my dreams. How oddly prophetic, looks like I really took my friends' advice to heart. Here it is.
Forgotten Dreams Its 10pm in the evening and I can hear the laughter of the family next door. They’re watching Friends on telly as am I, different individuals in different households drawn together by the hilarity of situational comedy as displayed on the tube. With the telly on, I’m settled on the comfy couch, relaxed in the knowledge that as the years have passed this sextet of friends will remain the same people, people who have gone through trials and tribulations to entertain their unseen audience and have yet remained true to one another.
Of course this is all make-believe what with stars drawing on mega pay scales to continue appearing on the sitcom. Hence, its probably not so much of the fact that the six have entertained us for close to 8 years with their antics; but rather that alongside these characters we’ve each grown to be different or rather dissimilar to what we once were when the comedy first premiered.
The show aside, how much has each of us changed? For some all that has happened is the mere discarding of one physical form for another the very same way a snake sheds its old skin to reveal the new; for others instead of discarding the previous physical form we choose to keep it within the new. Is it the old within the new? Or the new without the old?
I remember days of long past where my childhood dream was to be a teacher and to spread knowledge to as many as I could, very much the same way a tent revivalist gathers his new flock. I had hoped to travel to distant lands and to teach those who really saw learning as fundamental and essential to their being; It didn’t matter if the ministry had decided to place me within some primary school and teach children the difference between 50 cents and a dollar, I had just wanted to bask in the exuberance of being able to be there for a student when he said thanks for being there sir.
I told my closer buddies bout this desire of mine and they told me to go for it, but I was warned by my parents to be aware of the tough road that lay ahead in a job were students rapidly grew up and became more successful then envisioned while I would still be there behind a plywood desk in an air-conditioned room grading the papers of students who were to come. Soon after that I had hoped to become a journalist instead, to write columns in the dailies and comment on the societal behaviour in general. This soon morphed into wanting to become a lawyer and live up to my family’s illustrious past of such, but my grades were pretty average and being content with my lot, I decided to forego that dream too.
It seemed that that’s all there was to these dreams, unfulfilled and impossible to accomplish. Whats more, which was worse I reasoned? To have a dream unaccomplished or to have it crushed when reality proved other wise? Some may say it is better to dream than to have not, but what of the dream that forever remains unfulfilled? Is it to be discarded like an old skin for the new, or to be kept within, shriveled up and hidden from view by the new, but alive nonetheless?
Whats my dream now? To get through the university and perhaps work as an analyst for some investment agency or defence organization. But is that a dream in itself? Or is it just a means of telling myself that dreams are that which should be within reach, not with-out? There is no true way of telling unless I go on to fulfill this dream.
I asked some of my friends what I should do about this dilemma, this inability to decide upon what dreams I want to pursue, and their answer was that we’ve all got many dreams, it doesn’t matter what they are, what matters is if you’re willing to make them reality. That, sure busted my noodle.
But wait, who needs dreams, when you’ve got Friends.
Had quite a lot of fun at this year's concert, which involved me playing the conch shell, kazoo, chimes, bass drum along side the guitar.
As we had been slotted to play in the second half, some of the old birds and I decided to chill in the dressing room and take some photos. Here they are folks! Enjoy.
I spent the past few days entertaining a german group from Pforzhiem, a town that bordered the Black Forest and a mountain chain, and is 20-30 km away from Stuttgart. They were here as part of a joint concert together with the ensemble.
Pretty nice, albeit sometimes forgetful chaps - there was nary a moment when someone or something went missing at some point of time. A german penchant for absentmindedness?
Anyhow, had a nice time playing tour guide to them together with some other chaps from Genus. I guess that once in a while, its nice to examine things in Singapore from the eyes of a visitor - they marvelled at the skyscrapers (theirs was a small town), cleanliness, cultural diversity and food choices that were present here. I'm just amazed that they had the energy to sightsee, visit pubs, watch movies alongside their jam-packed music making schedule.
They peppered me with questions, some eyebrow raising, others side-splitting. Here's a list (in no particular order)
1) Is it spicy? A primary concern for most of them
2) What is it made of? Most local food tends to contain unidentifiable ingredients
3) How much is an Ipod/mobile phone/movie ticket/liquor? They usually exclaimed in delight when they discovered how cheap these were in comparison to back home. One common grouse - movie theatres here are too loud for them! Some actually covered their ears throughout the whole show! Maybe it had to do with the film genre they caught - Terminator!
4) Is it illegal to be gay? This was sparked off by a query on the speakers corner (I had let slip that there had been a gay rights advocacy group that spoke at Speakers Corner when we drove past it).
5) How old are you?/Are you still studying? Maybe it was the bermudas. Maybe it was the bag. Maybe it was the black hair. Or the exercise. Whatever it was, they were always surprised when I told them my age, with physiological reactions to my age ranging from Saucer-sized eyes to the quick up down glance.
6) Sind Sie ein Gitarrist? Wie können wir geben Sie die Concert Hall? Woher kommt die Dirigent lehren an? Wie viel ist ein guittaron? These were side-splitting questions - mostly because I didn't speak german, and didn't have a babel-fish with me. I was mostly able to answer these with help from the english-speaking members. What got me was the manner in which the questions were asked - the chap would stop me (we would be walking/eating/drinking) and he would stare me in the eye and ask me the questions directly in German! Oh well, I guess its the same thing as me trying to speak english in those countries I visited and getting bewildered stares in exchange.
Through it all, I developed surprisingly strong bonds with some of them. One paid me a nice compliment - saying that if I were his history teacher he'd be a lot more attentive in class. The manager (who I had countless conversations with, a fellow educator too) also mentioned plans for the group to host us at a town music festival next year, and issued a personal invitation to me to visit and catch Turandot or some other opera with him there.
Something I learnt about myself - I can be disarmingly friendly to people whom I barely know when the situation calls for it, and distant to those who are accquaintances. A defense mechanism? Or is it just the old man in me? Hah.
