4.32am now. Very early I should say. My flight got delayed.

What happened was that my flight was supposed to be departing Hong Kong at 4pm, arriving at around 7.30pm here in Singapore. But they say that flight has no more space when we checked in. I think the business and first classes have no more space too, so I (was supposed to) took the 7.50pm flight. They compensated HK$500, plus a free upgrade to the next class (in which I used, so I took business class back) and a free visit to the Cathay Pacific Business Class Lounge.

The lounge was in the restricted area, and there were actually 2 lounges, both at 2 different ends. Went to "The Wing" which was opposite Gate 2. Not bad, I should say. There were many couches all over, there was a room with computers (and Internet connection supposingly, but cannot access), a games room, and a few places to eat! Haha, I ate quite a lot... and all the food and everything are all free of charge!

Yeah, went to play a bit at the games room. All PS2 games, played FIFA World Cup 2006 and Initial D. Then I was informed that my flight got delayed to 9.40pm. Not that worth it after all.. got home at 2am.

Last night, or rather on the 27th, I went out with my father to buy some stuffs. Went to temple street and walked around there. Well, better than staying at home anyway. Haha.

On the 26th my father, grandma, 2nd aunt, 4th aunt, her son (my cousin) and I went to Sai Kung to eat seafood. Very nice but cost a bomb.. HK$3000+. Sai Kung is a district near the sea whereby there are many seafood restaurants, and all of them said 10% discount. But in the end they claim they dun collect service charge... that is the 10% off...

27th afternoon I couldn't really access the Internet. Only place I can go was Yahoo!. Remembered vaguely during lunch that the news mentioned about some connection problems, but didn't care much about it. Went to check Yahoo! News and realised that an earthquake near Taiwan destroyed undersea cables. Late afternoon it was much better, can sign in MSN Messenger, and access most websites. Yahoo! Games was quite slow, but I guess it's because that I was using dial-up.

Anyway, now I am using my own computer, the Internet connection is way faster than the dial-up my father uses in Hong Kong. And the earthquake thing doesn't seem to affect me much... just when I got back to Singapore. Haha. Maybe they have fixed most of the cables already.. I dunno.


Class timetable is out. My Chemistry teacher changed from Mr Wong to Ms Yeo, Biology teacher changed from Mr Gabriel to Mdm Nabilah. I dunno why both Mr Wong and Mr Gabriel must pang-seh our class. English teachers haven't been confirmed throughout the whole sec 4 level. Chinese teachers should change, other than that my teachers remain the same.

Next Wednesday start school already. I am still left with the homework that I was left with 1 month ago. Meaning that I have not done any homework for at least a month already. Better start getting used to the pen already, and better chiong my homework, later cannot finish.

I need to sleep already.

Merry Christmas!

Last night was crap. Walked through the Avenue of Stars at night, then 12 midnight just passed like that. I was looking at my handphone clock... 11.57pm, ... ... 12.02am... no one counted. Then suddenly someone just cheered then everyone started cheering. So quiet and not fun at all. Dunno what happened to Hong Kong already.

Anyway, 2 groups caught my attention. The first was this group of around 10 people who got together and sang. Something like a choir but just that there were only 2 parts (female and male) and that the notes they sing are all the same (just different octaves). -.-

2nd group was this band of 20+ people. Very nice. Got around 10 instruments, no conductor, and they just got together and played a few songs. Impressive.

Yeah other than that, it was quite boring. Reached home at around 1.30am by just walking around.

Anyway, Christmas, according to Christians, is the day whereby Jesus was born (or something like that). So by right non-Christians shouldn't be celebrating, right? Well, like what my mum said, it's just a season to be happy, where everyone just gets together and be jolly, and probably forget about the origin of Christmas and why we are celebrating it. Haha.

24th December! 1 more day to Christmas and 8 more days to 2007. Of course 10 more days to school reopening.

Someone asked me whether whether I am looking forward to 2007. I said I am neither looking forward nor not looking forward, just let 2007 come. Well, I just have to synchronise myself a bit... going to be secondary 4 already, 'O' levels should be coming in 10 months' time.

These few days I had been sending e-cards to my friends. Got all the email addresses from my address books (MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Mail) and noticed that I have actually quite a lot of friends. I think I sent over 100 yesterday, with different messages for different friends.

Just realised that throughout my life I have known many people, as in really many many people. I may have probably known more than 500 people already, however most of them should have been forgotten or have forgotten me already. Looking through my contacts I noticed that some of them used to be my good friends, now I dun really know where they disappear to already.

So treasure your friends! Even though they may be going separate ways, but at least they remind you of all the wonderful past memories that were experienced together.

Wah, these few days it has all been the same. Waking up at 12 noon exactly, going over to Grandma's house (just opposite our house) for lunch, coming back over to go online, going there for dinner, coming back and go online again, wait for Dad to come back, watch him play some games, sleep. Haha. Very simple life.

Well except for one day when I went out with 2nd Aunt to shop. Bought a 2GB thumbdrive which cost cheaper than a 256MB one bought in Singapore. Lol. Unfortunately I lost it at home. Believe it or not? At night it was still there on the table, then I think my Dad accidentally dropped everything onto the floor, and the next day it was gone. Oh well.

I think that these few days I am going to be quite bored. Haha. Probably celebrating Christmas at my cousins' house.

Just arrived in Hong Kong! This very cool clock just behind me shows that temperature is 20 degrees and humidity 60%. Lol. Natural air-con. Heard from my dad that yesterday it dropped badly to 12 degrees.

Anyway fortunately there is a computer and a very slow internet connection here, so I am able to blog. I dun think I will be coming online frequently because it's a limited dial-up connection.

Watched this very nice movie "Scoop" during the flight. Expected yet unexpected ending. You will get what I mean if you watch it. Haha.

The last time I came to Hong Kong was last December, when my whole family came here before going to South Korea to ski. Then returned back here before returning to Singapore. When I signed in to MSN Messenger just now, I noticed that my display picture didn't change at all - it showed a picture of me and my 2 tour guides at the airport at Incheon. Lol.

I feel very bad.

I remember just before the Malacca trip I was having this funny running nose thing.

Then when I went to Malacca I was fine.

And when we all came back I was ok, but I think many people are sick, probably because it came from me. Haha. Oops I should not be laughing now, but I really think it came from me.

Yesterday during choir practice I heard from Pock Thong that I spent 30 minutes working on the "on on" part in Everyone Sang. In the end I still think it didn't work. Now I have thought of a better way to solve the problem, and I think it is around 90% foolproof (serious!). It's just that I dunno how to tell the choir that we are going to practise that part again. I mean, imagine...

[Me]: Oh you all are wrong again. Let's try this part once more.
[Choir]: (various expressions of frustration)

Maybe I should pretend that everything is fine and perfect and let it pass. Haha. Okay I think I shall see what I want to do tomorrow.

I will be leaving for Hong Kong on the 18th and coming back on the 28th of December. There is a very fine computer and internet connection there, but the connection is a dial-up one and I think it's limited, so I won't be online frequently.

My computer is finally fixed! Haha. The person said my computer's hard disk has got a problem so he changed the hard disk for me. Managed to restore my files though... he transferred (almost) EVERYTHING from my old hard disk to this current one, lol. Plus he upgraded my RAM from 256MB to 512MB. He said because I use too many heavy applications like Macromedia products, so I would need more memory.

Ok, so I returned to Singapore on Thursday evening. Oh yeah I forgot to mention that I saw Mr Kwei at the shopping centre on Thursday afternoon, so asked him about the workshop, which he said has been changed to 8.30am at TKSS. Lucky I asked, haha. Yeah so went home to shower, then unpack some of the stuffs and sleep.

Woke up at 7+ am the next morning and headed to TKSS for workshop. Mr Kwei was there with Dr Joshua Habermann. In the morning Dr Habermann lectured us on pronunciation of words, then gave us some examples from Spanish, French, German and Italian. After that he worked on some warmups before going on to correct a SSA choir (consisting of Bowen and Temasek Chorale) on "Everyone Sang", set piece for SYF 2007 by Ko Matsushita.

After lunch we came back and this time we were used as guinea pigs. Combined with AHS, Cat High and TKSS, we were quite a strong choir. Haha. Sang "Everyone Sang". He used us to teach rehearsal techniques.

After that we were each given 14 scores to sight-read. I couldn't sight-read most of the scores so I just tried to sing along with others. Could hear Mr Kwei singing quite loudly. Behind both Joshua (Cheong, not Habermann) and I were 2 male altos who were singing quite loudly. Their tone was really very nice. I wished I could have such an alto voice as well. Haha.

Okay anyway, at home I was re-doing the warmups Dr Habermann did and I realised that the head tone that I used to be thinking seem to be different from what Dr Habermann said. Or maybe it's the same, just that I managed to merge it with my chest voice subconsciously. I am not very sure. He gave this exercise which started from quite high and he said it's better to start from head tone down instead of pushing chest voice up. Hmmm.

Woke up quite early again on Saturday. Gabriel Chee, Tan Wei Liang, Jun Yuan and Benjamin Lin went to Parkway Parade first I guess, then I met them on a 43 bus (haha no lah, it was planned, because I did not want to wake up so early). They bought a card and a box of chocolate for Mr Pang. Oh yeah I just reminded myself that I haven't paid them yet.

It was kind of weird inside the church not because I am not a Christian, but because we have to say "Brian" instead of "Mr Pang". Gabriel was like telling the person, "We are Mr... no no, Brian's students." We met this very old classmate of Mr Pang who showed us the way up, and we chatted with him for a while. I was quite surprised when he asked, "So, who is your form teacher?"

Okay so inside the church, we saw Mr Alvin You and Mr Denny Aw Yong. Well we saw Mr Aw Yong only towards the end of the ceremony, he was a few seats behind us. And of course we saw Mr Pang, haven't seen him for quite some time already... he looked very smart and happy, of course.

By the way, I haven't heard Mr Pang sing before, other than the National Anthem (and he always tells us to "Sing the Anthem!"). He sang in front of his fiancee during the proposal (they showed us the video) and as well as in front of his wife in front of everyone in the church. It is really true that nothing beats the power of love.

I was like joking that everyone who attended the church were his students and he was there standing and lecturing. Well it turned out to be quite true. He accidentally said, "Before we dismiss... ..." Haha.

Okay after lunch at the reception area I went home to sleep. At night the guy who fixed my computer came and returned my CPU. So from last night until now I had quite a hard time transferring my files back to their original locations, as well as installing programmes that I use. I think right now I will just leave it as it is first, most of the programmes that I use frequently are already installed already.

By the way, this is one paragraph that I find quite meaningful. It looked quite dumb at first, but as I read again, I understand its meaning:

You always ask me why I love you so much. That is a tough question to answer because loving you needs no reason because if the reason is no longer there, then would my love stop?

I love you. Period.

~ Mr Brian Pang

Computer sent for repair on Saturday. They say they are sending it back soon. So meanwhile I'm blogging somewhere else.

Saturday night my house suddenly had a power failure. While I was sleeping, I heard the circuit breaker trip and my fan switched off automatically, so went to check. Luckily I read some Physics stuffs on electricity before, then manage to restore it back, but then it tripped again like 1 second later.

Went everywhere to check then managed to find one of the sockets was the cause. Unplugged the plug and solved everything, haha. Then tried to go back to sleep because I was feeling very sleepy.

Went to Malacca from Monday to Thursday for Jubilate II, a choral festival. Reached school at 6++ am and did some admin stuffs before going to Malaysia. Second stop at Malaysia was JusCo shopping centre. Miss Lau lame sia, went in then saw a jewellery shop called "Poh Kong". She was like saying, "Aiya, wasted, why not Pock Thong?" -.- Managed to find the food court after walking around a bit. Den ate and nearing our assembly time Justin, Maung Myo and I had to wait for Peng Hock (all my group members and apartment mates) to buy the cup noodles. Late by 3 minutes but I think Miss Lau was late too haha.

Went to Watercity Resort. Went for a practice with AJChoir and Mr Kwei first before we were issued our room. The only thing that pissed me off that day was when Mr Kwei asked Peng Hock to play the piano part for Gesu Bambino and he simply refused without trying. In the end Mr Kwei had to play and there was no conductor.

Then went back and went to our apartments. Only Eric Wong's group and my group had a 2-room apartment each (fits 4 people), the others stayed in 3-room ones, so many groups had to split. And in each room there were only 2 toilets so we are quite lucky haha. It's quite all right except that it was quite dirty. Haha. Luckily Justin bought a big bottle of water, then we all shared and the bottle was refilled every day. Lol.

Okay so at night was the performance for the 5 sing-along Christmas songs, as well as Gesu Bambino and Gaude Maria. Quite all right lah, except that because I didn't memorise the Christmas songs, and I was on stage for 2 Christmas songs, so I was simply trying to follow the others. I can get the notes but not the words, hehe. The other 3 Christmas songs were sung at our own seats and the 2 performance songs were okay. It's just that Johnnie (afterward) said that he can't hear us, only can hear AJChoir singing.

I think I slept at around 1+ am that night, because I was chatting with Maung Myo for a long while before sleeping, haha.

Okay next day we had sectionals and practice. I realised I could sing quite high in real voice, even in the morning, haha. Anyway, we were brought to JusCo for shopping again because Miss Lau was afraid that we might need to buy some food or something. I went to play at the arcade instead. Lol.

Went back and realised I couldn't sing high notes. I think it's because I talked too much on the way back and forth. But doesn't really matter, I didn't have to sing that night, had to conduct.

I forgot why I was not in a good mood that night. Then during the performance it was worsened because the choir didn't do well for all the songs. Wind Beneath My Wings was flat for most of the parts even with the piano, Tantum Ergo was messy and Wawaki was rushing like crazy.

Decided to hang out a bit at Robin's apartment (also Eric's). Played cards with Robin, Jonathan Teo and Sherman Lim. Then Chan Wei came and Sherman went to sleep, so 4 of us played Daidee. Lights out was supposed to be at 10.30pm but we were still playing until 11pm when Miss Lau knocked onto the door. Chan Wei and my plan was to hide in the toilet with one of the members then someone to open the door and pretend everything was fine. In the end Eric didn't open the door at all and spoiled everything. Miss Lau waited in the living room, Chan Wei and I decided to own up while in the toilet. Well it's not exactly Eric's fault or what, it's our fault for staying up in their room and disrupt their supposedly sleeping time. Sorry!

Oh yeah, and Johnnie told me that the choir disappointed him, or something like that. I dun think that was his exact words, but I guess that's what he meant. I mean, his gang (or maybe it's him only) was cheering for us just before we went up to sing. Haix sorry sorry.

Okay so 2nd day was the worst day of the whole trip.

3rd day. Just jump straight to the SYF presentation night. Screwed up. For the whole of Credo I wasn't really singing but I was actually listening to the choir. The chords were very strange and off. Noyosa was better than Credo, managed not to rush because of constant reminders just before the performance, haha.

Decided to slack at Robin's apartment again. Chan Wei and I taught Jonathan and Sherman how to play bridge. Fun and strategic game. Not bad, both of them managed to learn quite fast. Well that's thanks to Chan Wei and me. =D

Oh yeah, Johnnie came to that apartment and said he was looking for me haha. I somehow knew what he was going to say, but I didn't think he said it lah. I was quite sleepy at that time also.

Went back and Miss Lau knocked on our apartment door and asked both Justin and I to check the bags for Asaph's handphone. Peng Hock and Maung Myo were sleeping very soundly lol, we were quite noisy but they still slept lol. Then didn't manage to find anything. I heard that both Teng Wei and Asaph lost a handphone and RM$50 each. Coincidental? Who stole them?

Went to sleep at the couch afterwards. Justin was watching the television waiting for a soccer match but I heard he fell asleep too lol.

Ok so anyway, we had 3 workshops on the 2nd and 3rd day, 1 for each of the clinicians, Mr Arwin Tan, Dr Wong Su San and Dr Joshua Habermann. All 3 of them did Credo, and the 2 guys did Noyosa. They are really quite patient with us, managed to learn many things from them. Thank you clinicians!

By the way, every morning I realised that it was Maung Myo who waked me up instead of vice versa. Haha I am such a leader =D.

Last day: went shopping at some place. Well, not really shopping. Arcade again. Oh damn I lost to Pock Thong in Daytona USA, racing game. So malu haha. Oh our bus air-con had some problems so we had to stop somewhere to change bus. Changed to a bus which was very clean and cold. Haha cool sia.

Reached VS at around 7.15pm. After some debriefing and stuffs like that, we were dismissed.

Overall, I think that even though we didn't do well for our presentation of songs, the festival had really served it's purpose: to prepare us for SYF 2007. Like what Mr Kwei said:

This is only the start of the journey.

[Note: I may miss out some things, which I will add below when I remember about it. I will update about today's workshop next time.]

Rumours were spreading about this group of TKSS girls who find Bing Xing cute or something. Haha. I think it started from Leon's group, where (someone said that) they said the girls asked, "Who was the guy at the 2nd row, from Soprano, wear spectacles and is quite tanned?"

TKSS did a song which includes 2 beautiful lines which sounded like "Peng Hock, Peng Hock, Peng Hock, etc".

I think AJChoir and VJChoir both sang a song each written by Ko Matsushita, the arranger for next year's SYF Secondary School choirs Set Piece, "Everyone Sang".

A group of us found a playground after supposedly only trying to walk on the bridge. Played there haha. There were 2 very unstable swings, a small little see-saw and a slide, which was quite fast. Neng Wei fell on his butt after sliding down lol. I managed to stabilise myself though lol.