realisation!

i spent an entire afternoon + evening today (friday) out with a friend. met up to buy The Present and to satisfy both of our apparel needs. well, mine was not fulfilled but that's besides the point, 'cause i know i'm awfully picky about clothes and since today i was determined not to buy the cheapo clothes as i usually end up - just to scrimp to spend on more cheapo clothes.

so, most of the trip was about my friend (and The Present), who eventually decided on a SUPERBLY NICE designer label bag. not the flashy sort, but the understated kind that will suit many occasions and his current wardrobe (it's not black in colour!).

i wish i had the courage to spend that kind of money. it's an investment that i can only see my friends partake but not myself, uh-uh.

ok, so we reached home, and had a short conversation online. i'm notice i'm much more interesting online than in person, maybe because i got the time (a few more moments suffice) for my brain to crank up a more thoughtful response. in person i'm usually nodding my head to the person who's talking to me.

"mmhm. yeah. ah-ha... yes yes. that's true."

hoho. have a look at this:

***
friend says:it just occurred to me...a leather bag would have cost only 10 bux more than mine

friend says:how come ah

cliff says:gd pt.

cliff says:which leather bag ah... the one in the shop is it

friend says:yeah

cliff says:i suppose the quality of ur bag muz b pretty good to be only 10 bucks cheaper than the leather one

friend says:lol what a positive way to look at it haha

cliff says:anw leather's hard to maintain la so i don't think u shld get a leather bag

cliff says:it'll prob dry up soon and u'll have a crumbler (haha pun.)

friend says:haha kk
***

i'm so lame. well, here's another part of the conversation. slightly better:

***
cliff says:well, are you going to use the bag anytime soon haha

friend says:how bout asap

cliff says:or just leave it at home to admire the physical form of $180

friend says:haha

friend says:justify expenditure

cliff says:lol
***

wait, but that's not the realisation i had today (friday).

my friend and i also chatted a bit about the near future for a while in the afternoon and evening. you know, university stuff and career opportunities. and i asked him, if music could earn you money, would you have pursued music? oh he's quite a good pianist, not bad at classical and better at pop/jazz stuff. anyway he said yes, and i was like, hey same here!

i've been exposed music not just as a form of entertainment but as a discipline since six years old. at first i didn't like it 'cause the uninspiring teacher (she only had a grade 8 certification) made lessons so routine and boring and would draw out a big 'R' and circled it on the score, which meant i had to repeat playing the song for her the next lesson, which is rather scary to a young kid. it's like, you can't promote from primary 1 to 2!

and i dislike practising the same piece over and over again for anything more than 10 minutes at that point in time, so i just didn't practise much. i mean, yeah, how interesting can 8-16 bars of 2-part homophonic song can get if you don't know much about song interpretation and techniques, in retrospect.

oh, i remember my grade 1 exams - theory and practical! i got 88/100 for theory - which is very easy to attain actually so it's probably an average score. and practical - a whopping 109/150 which is a BARE PASS (minimum score is 100/150 to pass). teacher complained that i was like, one of her worst students blah blah blah, parents unhappy but not angry and blah blah blah. haha.

then came grade 2. i think i got 93/100 for theory? and 123/150 for practical (yeah i know it's no big deal, but considering i did not put in much effort, the scores were decent) and the teacher was like, i'm her best student now and she never expected me to score that well and, yeah. (in retrospect she must have been a terrible piano teacher.)

come to think of it, i did have a little turning point in my musicality during that time. for the first time i really enjoyed playing one of the exam pieces 'cause it's emotions came to me, so i would frequently explore on the piano myself, different ways of playing it and stuff. and so she wanted me to continue learning from her, but fortunately we shifted house after that and i stopped learning from her. and all the subsequent teachers i had commented that i had the musicality and felt i should continue studying music.

there's quite a lot of things i learnt from this experience, as i typed it all out just now. well, obviously the teacher plays a huge role in nurturing the student, he/she can totally destroy the student's interest in the subject and worse, his/her confidence in the subject as well. another thing is that i tend to be a late bloomer (kind of bombed my studies in primary 4-5 and secondary 1-3 but that's another story).

and the most important thing: had i not been compelled to continue playing the piano since young (it was initally my dad's choice to make me learn the piano, 'cause he talked to this stranger and his daughter at the lift lobby one day and found the stranger's daughter was learning piano from a community club - not a logical reason i know), i wouldn't be what i am today.

so, if i were exposed to architecture since i was six years old, i might have as much passion for it as for music right now! this might sound sad, that presently my greatest interest isn't what i'm going to be studying, but i see it as a positive note? now, i'm really sure i will love architecture and design, the more i'm immersed in it.

already, i am festering a true interest in the topic. reading up stuff and all that. and hey, it's not like i didn't do anything vaguely art- or architecture-based until today. i always liked to look at design things, especially interior design and any visual art, including paintings, graphic, product and advertising design.

when i was young - maybe 8, 9 years old i just loved to draw my impressions of perfect bungalow houses, my perfect bedroom, and perfect treehouses. no, not just a tree with a shack embedded in it, but a gigantic tree that housed an entire village and had a monorail service coiling around the tree as the main mode of transportation, and the basement of the village, where the roots of the tree are, is a totally self-sufficient town centre. i even devised a mechanism for the lift which ran the entire column of the tree trunk - by people/animals (forced labour?? it seemed amusing then) to run on a treadmill!

wow! i was poised to become an architect, an interior designer, and a town planner! come to think of it, it's so uncanny and amazing, how all these bits of self-history turn out to become.

maybe i'm 15 years behind some people in nurturing and pursuing my interest, but i know i'll get there real soon! and i won't be shy the next time people ask me "why architecture?" - which 90-95% of people who ask me "what are you studying in university" will ask immediately after that. the other 5-10% instead say: "cool..."

(:

so, let us all maju in our quests and strive towards our wawasan~~~!