一顆蘋果

by Mayday
經過了漫長的等候 夢想是夢想 我還是一個我
那時間忘記挽留 最美時候 不經意匆匆的放過
曾經想擁抱的彩虹 盛開的花朵 那純真的笑容
突然有風吹過 那一轉眼 只剩我

我不懂 人世間的那些愁 他為什麼要纏著我
到底這會是誰的錯 還是我不放手
喔 人世間的那些愁 這世界給我的幽默
這是不是要告訴我 潮起終究潮落

總要有人來陪我 嚥下苦果 喔 再嚐一點美夢
要等你先開口 那冬天才會走
有些人經過我身旁 住在我腦中 在我心裡鑽洞
有些人變成相片 堆在角落 灰塵像雪一般冰凍

時間如果可以倒流 我想我還是會 卯起來蹉跎
反正就這樣吧 我知道我 努力過

我想到 遙遠遙遠的以後 會不會有人知道我
在這個寂寞的星球 曾這樣的活過
喔 遙遠遙遠的以後 天長和地久的盡頭
應該沒有人能搶走 我永遠的感動

總要有一首我的歌 大聲唱過 喔 再看天地遼闊
活著不多不少 幸福剛好夠用
活著其實很好 再吃一顆蘋果


I've always loved this song. Not just for its significance but for its lyrics and its melody as well.

I remember this song as the familiar song that I had anticipated so badly to hear after catching a live webcam of Mayday recording the song for their album, ren sheng hai hai. It was at that time, that for the first time in my life, I knew how arduous a recording process could be. For the first time in my life, I watched on as Mayday went moved between the control room and the recording studio. Of course, at that time, little ole juvenile me was too caught up with looking at guys more than wat went on in the studio and so I couldn't remember if they were actually recording guitar or percussion, or maybe both.. hmm...

But that hour plus of peering into mayday's recording session got me caught on to the melody... a song with no lyrics sung out at that time... neither was the main melody even played out. All there was, was accompaniment, but that tune went into my head. How could it not if it was repeated countless times? yup....once again, i emphasize the difficult process of doing a recording. Although other fans in the chatroom were busy saying how good the tune sounds and hoping that ashin would sing to the tune that was being recorded, he only actually hummed probably a few phrases and stopped. What the song was, how it sounded, or wat its title was... nobody knew. But after watching that live webcam session.. it left me dying to receive Mayday's 3rd album which I had ordered online for the first time in my life.

Finally, the day came when the album arrived at my doorstep. I quickly popped the cd into my hi-fi and my pulse raced the moment i heard the familiar rhythm of the first song. yes! it was that very song that I had watched Mayday record. The song now had a name, it had a tune, and it had meaning...

So many times, I just wish to hear this song live, but its not very often performed live... and not ever once in Singapore (surprised they took it out of the rundown in our Tian Kong Zhi Cheng concert, when it was actually performed in Taipei). It wasn't performed at final home, so it'll be a long time before i'll have the chance to hear it live ever again.

what a brilliant song..
mundane title and simple lyrics but they cut deep into the everyday details of our lives - our dreams, our friendships, our day-to-day troubles and our thoughts of the future. But essentially, this very simple song isn't just about an apple...... it is telling us that we should always count our blessings..

something that i hope that i myself can do. at least life would be much happier :)

crawling through life

time passes so quickly, that its so scary...
didn't even realise that i haven't blogged for a week already. and the best part is, i don't really know what i have done the entire week either. that has probably been the way life is for me since the start of 2005. haven't been updating news to the website much less to mention all the other information on the web =P... its just a sense of weariness. I don't feel like i'm getting enough sleep most of the time either.

So what have I been doing all this while? I don't know!
time just seems to be slipping away...

plenty of things to think about and to worry about but i think my mind has shut that part of my life into a corner of my brain. All i want to do is go out and have fun. Well, maybe i've been too deprived for very long.. all the years of intense studying, the paper chase and the climb up the education ladder had made me very much of a nerd for so many years.

It is probably so that now, all i want to do is relax... but in contemporary society... its what you'll call bumming around, being unproductive and a leech in society, not contributing much.. just floating around, and letting life pass day by day.

no idea how come my brain and my body has slowed down over time. is it because i'm getting old? or maybe because i used up too much of my energy from the start?

just earlier on, i've told myself, i have to pick up from now. I have to speed up my engines and just finish up with all the work I have to complete this degree, to pucker up my courage to get to where I need to. But i'm still feel lethargic...

yes, i feel like a snail right now, with everything else passing me by.
if only everything else ard me could slow down along with me...

zzzZZZZzzzzZZZ

What did I do today? I went to school, drank a can of redbull, sat in class, and began my nap. hahahah... what was the redbull for? I have no idea...

There I was just 3 rows away from my lecturer in a class of sparsely spaced out students, in full view to the lecturer, dozing and awaking and dozing and awaking, fighting real hard to stay alert. But towards the end of the lesson, I didn't have much control anymore, I think I really slept... and at times, there seemed to be in the distant, my lecturer saying the words 'fell asleep' twice as part of his story(wonder if it was on purpose hahaha), which made me sit up for a while, but, yup... only for that while :P

Why did I go to class for anyway? To show my stupid sleepy face haha otherwise he might refuse to give me the legal exam paper on wed.

What a boring blog.....

but hey! don't fall asleep yet! here's something exciting, as I came back on the MRT headed towards pasir ris, it suddenly appeared very hazy, thought it might be because of some forest fires in indonesia (since pasir ris is at the east of singapore) but it wasn't. it was not just haze but moving smoke... could even smell it in the mrt. And as kaypoh as everyone was on the train, I looked around and saw smoke coming out from a forested area. Instantly I thought, bush fire... must be serious.

Know what the best part of this story is? As the train passed by that forested area to an open clearing, I saw a bunch of guys playing soccer in the field, as though a fire next to them never existed ||| (x infinity).

I mean, this is the general mentality of Singaporeans isn't it? Fire next to me, no big deal, will be put out soon, at most the trees just get burnt down. I believe each and everyone of you have experienced fire alarms going off in department stores or in school sometimes and what goes through everyone's minds would be 'stupid alarm, so noisy, go off for nothing', then we just sit there and continue with our business, hoping to ride out the noisiness after a while.

If there ever was a real fire, we definitely deserve to be burnt. Don't blame the alarm, it did its job.

But then I'm guilty of such passive behaviour myself hahaha.

Think its gotta do with the environment we've been so used to, free from disasters (man made or natural) that we take safety for granted. If not, the garmen will take care of it! In short, we have all developed in us the bad-things-don't-happen-to-me mentality. A dangerous mentality if one day, bad things do happen to us.

Choy!

suggestions?

actually, i'm asking on behalf of SH, coz we have been thinking for quite some time.... how to promote a lighting shop (its his dad's shop). They sell lighting and fans, and the customers are really varied, so much so that there is not a particular target audience.

The problem is that, it is not sufficient to rely on walk-ins for business and they need ideas on how to increase the traffic to their shop.

my dearest friends who study business (you know who you are, and I know who you are too =P), any great promotional ideas please feel free to suggest! Its time to put what you have learnt to work hehehe.

Post Valentine's Day

Guess everyone must be thinking that I'm gonna start blogging about how I spent my valentine's day right? Well, I am, but its not as romantic as it should sound hahah, so don't put your hopes too high up.

We did go out that day, as we usually would, but not for the purpose of celebrating vday per say.. we were out hunting for something for his father. So I waited him to get off work after I finished school, then off to City Hall we went.... the perfect location to observe the full workings of how valentine's day should be, to the common folk of this blinded world of conventions and boring trends.

I seriously didn't really remember that it was valentine's day until we reached cityhall, where flowers, balloons and girls dressed as though they were going to 'bai nian' flooded the place. And so began SH's cynical commentary. Let me quote:

"see the girls with the stupid smiles, holding the expensive flowers. then the guys looking silly-ly happy" (not in his exact words)

And of course, that very day at work, his colleague was asking him whether he got flowers for me, his answer was

"no la, she doesn't like this kind of thing, she told me not to waste money" (of course, I never told him such things before, he only imagined them so that he won't feel bad not getting me flowers hahahaha)

I mean, which girl doesn't like flowers? (I do want, you know?? haha) I just don't want any on valentine's day.. I'll feel too 'paiseh' to hold them. I'll hide them in my bag, coz I don't want to be like everyone else, carrying a sheepish smile on my face with a flower in my hand =P.

So, what did I get for valentine's day this year?? If you consider it a gift, its a $3 CD case that holds 12 CDs we got from Carrefour... from a cheap messy stack of CD cases that we dug and dug and dug and found 4 specials ones, each at $3. So exiting ya? Alternative Vday, gian peng-ing... yeah ^_^\/. Then we eavesdropped as a couple and a guy argued there, after the guy's trolley seemingly knocked into the girl's leg and refused to apologise; and pondered over whether to buy some Tom and Jerry VCDs.

Oh ya, I forgot to mention the critical Vday dinner!
We queued at Seoul Garden for a while but gave up coz too many couples were eating inside and the queue seemed to take forever to move and it appeared to cost $51 for 2 people. So we went to the new foodcourt at Marina, to get a cheaper and more wholesome meal where we paid less than $15 for japanese food and dessert, with a view of the Singapore river too! Not bad huh. Go to marina's foodcourt and you'll know what I mean... foodcourt with a great view!

Actually all these things, we would do on any normal day too. But what's special about Vday is that we can start observing other couples hahaha. Yes, our favourite past time, observing other people and making comments. These comments, I shall reserve them to ourselves =P

In SH's words, Vday is essentially "the best time to look at couples" and i would add, the best and worst of street fashion. If you didn't take the chance to do so this year, try it next year. Its really the best thing to do on vday whether you are attached or not rather than go with the stereotypical giving of roses, chocolate or jewelery and having an expensive dinner, dressed to the nines; or mope over the fact that others have a date and you don't.

Ok, before I finish off, I've gotta mention the phenomenon of roses on vday. A week before vday, roses cost a bomb, on vday roses cost a load, at the end of vday, roses are for free. I'm serious!

As we walked away from suntec that night, among a bucket of red and white roses red 'Free, please take 1". Nobody took them of course, who dared to? Typical singaporean mentality... how come can be free? Sure its not a trick? I take free roses, later throw face, no image.

Even the 2 of us who were very gian peng by nature, didn't take them haha. If you were there, would you?

Those poor roses are probably tucked away in a bin by now...

Its time to move on

ahh, my long neglected blog. been wanting to blog but didn't have that mental energy to do so.
What have I been up to all this time?

Well, apart from the usual CNY visiting that was made more arduous by the intense heat of last week, I've been helping SH at his father's shop too, acting as a coolie =P. Doesn't help with the heat and the dust. But learnt a few discoveries the couple of times I was talking to his parents.. that this once 'shao dong' (young master, but no longer hahaha), never ate from hawker centres but only in air-conditioned restaurants, including 5-star ones... used to snip off monster cables together with his brother, just for the fun of it. If you know monster cables, you'll know that snipping it off "just for fun" is the ultimate decadence and terribly sinful to people who value monster cables hehe. To put it another way.......Its like cutting up a levis jacket or an adidas bag >_<.

I think..... I have 'bao' enough 'liao' for now hahahahaha. Want more inside info? ask me privately hahah.

Ok, I've also gone back to school once again. Didn't turn out to be as bad as I thought it would be... baddie seems to be better this time, less sacarstic, or maybe my own perceptions have changed too, or maybe its just that this batch of students just made him less pissed off haha. Whatever it is, at least things have gotten better and I can be one more step closer to the end of this degree... even though there are still alot of important things to be done.

One thing though, I miss my classmates.. who already seemed to have disppeared ever since we completed the diploma.

I missed the days where we all would go for class then go for roti prata breaks.

I missed the days where we would book studio sessions together and even overnight ones where we would do work for the beginning of the night then go for supper at geylang and come back to stone and have fun.

I missed the time too when we boldly converted our studio into the ultimate karaoke room, only to end up being banned from the studio for one week (we weren't banned because we were singing karaoke... but because the studio was messy.....duhh, studios are messy most of the time, if you are really doing work in them =_=). But thanks to the ban, it made everything even more memorable hehe.

I miss the times too of lugging my keyboard countless times back to school to record for Chris' song. Just to record that 'yong qi' took us really a lot of 'qi' literally to get it done right.

I also miss the afternoons where we would slip into the studios to try to play the drums and get ryan to teach us some techniques and even when sky would bring his guitar along and they would do a mini jam.

And then, I miss that session of recording with 3 of the wackiest guys i've even known, with a brilliant song that took us just one day to record without a break and without eating, until the very end, when they ordered a pizza which I didn't eat. Why do I say these guys are wacky? Other than the fact that they rattled on in japanese then laughed and laughed, that I didn't understand, they were busy amusing themselves with the keyboard stand, treating them as if they were stilts. The wackiness did make it all more fun though ^_^

That... was when I thought how my life should be... encircled by music, being able to create music and be with a bunch of people who could aid me in doing so. But when the diploma ended, all these seemed to have just dissolved away.. I became disillusioned.

Ryan went back to m'sia even after we agreed that we would form a band together.. a couple of the rest didn't continue with the degree... and the rest who did, never turned up for lessons oftened. Everything just became very different.... including the evil lecturer who was totally unlike our wonderful diploma lecturers who were very close to each and every one of us.

I'll have to admit, that threw me off balance for quite a while. But now I'm trying.... trying to get through the rest of this road, even if I will be alone. I was alone when I stepped into this direction anyway. Maybe one day, fate will finally arrange for me to meet the right people to carry on this musical journey with me.. this is the band that I have always dreamt of but never came close to before. But even if this dream was never meant to be, I know I'll always have those memories of the diploma days to fall back on. At least, once in my life, I have finally gone to experience what I could only dream of in the past.

my very new possession

if money can buy happiness, it comes in this form

I am now the proud owner of a Nokia6170! My first clamshell phone :)

Took me 2 years of nail-biting, hair-pulling wait.. to finally get a phone that I truly like. Why nail biting? coz i was tired of my old 6610 long ago but i resisted.. and waited for my hp plan to pass its 2 year contract, so that i can get a new good phone at a low price of $268.

Together with my 6610 traded in, this, is the result. And i'm very satisfied with it.

I have dumped in everything Mayday.. cut versions of Mayday's new songs as my ringtones, self created wallpapers hehehe. Exciting.. certainly more exciting than thinking about school. Well, everything else beats thinking about school hands down anyway =P

The keypad is really great to press, the phone can support mp3, it can allow me to have my own screensavers using any animated gif.. currently mine is what you see at the top of this blog now haha. The only bad thing about this phone is the lack of memory. So I've had to delete away all the pre-given stuff in the phone and limit wat new stuff i put inside, so that I still have a substantial amount of photos that I can take with it.

Other than that, its wonderful... at least for now, till i get tired of it hehe.