document of outlook

Things couldn't have been more nua than today. 10 o'clock class, end at 12, guitar lesson with junhong at 1 pm, then free the whole fucking day.

I'd thought I'd use the time to study. But it seems that this whole week's hexed. Can't study for this whole week. There's a vortex pulling me away from wanting to study actively, so unlike how I was in the previous 4 weeks. Somehow, with the coming of the term break, FireN'Brimstone became sludge and water.

Managed to do some research for my pop culture essay though, and it's... quite worth it lah. Damn cool topic i'm going to write about.

Damn sian with my guitar playing. Other than running the scales over n over, nothing seems to come up. Maybe that's because I don't practise with the amp. Even with the electric. Somehow this focuses me on my ideas on natural sound and composition I guess. I can't get the tone that Junhong or Kevin gets when they play the funk blues and all, cos their style necessarily involved using overdrive. My style is more fixed on melody rather than articulation I guess. Realise I don't bend as much as I used to, and I slide and run alot.

Maybe I should bend more.

I jammed with Kevin, who's from Firebrands, at the YIH student's soc room on Tuesday. The guy's got 14 fucking years of experience behind him man. You really know someone's been there long enough when he starts harmonising in thirds when u play a riff, and when you play an original minor rock sequence he plays a series of chords and changes the whole feel of the thing into a breezy, poppish thing. Not to mention god-like rhythm.

And he got me interested into the darker genres of metal for once. I've been stuck to SMG for so long a time now, and haven't really gotten into stuff like death metal and all. I guess it's the same addiction to low, hard thumping riffs and fucking-skrunching basslines that gets me into the whole thing. Damn.

So Kevin was doing the palm muting riffs and all and I realise, actually this was one of the simplest ways to improve my own rhythm muscle. For the longest time now I have damn lousy muscles for playing punk n heavy metal, they just can't cut it. Damn jialat, especially when you decide to write a punk song for your band.

Oh I have a new band btw, it's called Carbon Friday. Drummer position not very stable, which is a really big threat, might kill the band even before it starts.

But yeah, spent lots of nighttime doing those palm mutes and pull offs. Damn shiok. It's like when you reach the threshold and your tempo suffers damn lots, then you go take a break n get a drink of water, then after a while you come back and mete out the same punishment on yourself. After 10 cycles, your arm's ready to DropN'Roll I tell you.

The ache's still there, but it feels damn good. I guess I shall be working more on this in the months to come.




If u realise that I'm suddenly blogging about lots of stuff about my life, something that I usually don't do on my blog, congrats to you. Been reading my good good good friend's blog which extends from 2005 to till date while doing research, and the fluctuations in the passage in time for him is so obvious lah. It's damn interesting to read from post-NS all the way to now, what he's gone through and all.

I known Chang since 2005, he was looking for a vocalist near his place and I live in the north east. I can't rmb how our first conversations started, but it's funny to read how when I just knew him, he was a freshie, how he was in OMS when I was in NS, how we knew the same people only at different times.

Something more is perhaps the gradual change in the tone over the years. From the young, idealistic days of fresh-out-of-ns till today's studies, the change in outlook is very obvious.

And very sobering as well. Does 4 years in continuous study in a confined environment jade a person that much? Or is it other stuff that brings about such change: World weary, sober, jaded, a wider perspective but at the same time cautious and wise and conservative? Why do people virtually stay the same over the next full years of their lives, while some choose to grow silent, hard-bitten, cynical?


But that's me talking about another person you know. I read my own old blog and I realise that I myself have changed far beyond recognition. The past me has become such an unrecognizable person. I cringe at my own childishness and immaturity, as well as the fire and idealism I had back then. It's a real sobering thought that no one, no one in this world, stays static, and that change always occurs, because you enter different social settings each time you graduate from somewhere or go into a new year, or start anew phase of life. As you enter into a new sphere of social life, you learn that the ways you played the previous game don't go down too well with the new rules of this game, and you have to relearn everything. To be sure, the relearning process is always the constant thing that happens, but the fire and idealism is only a one-time nitro boost that unfortunately wastes out during our struggles with our pubescent selves.


Show me someone who still's got nitro at this age.

Old fucks.