What you are hearing in the background is Torn sung by the original band that produced it, Ednaswap. A bit bluesy, but i thought i captured the essence of the lyrics better than the all-so-familiar version by Natalie Imbruglia. The lead singer voice is fantastic and the accompanying acoustic guitar is absolutely magic. Enjoy!

201008, t3, r10, 1500..... 34 days to ORD..... The contrast between the two is ultimately great... haiz... oh well... it's like ending it with some fireworks ba.... I can still safely say that up till now there wasn't a moment where i regretted signing the VES form and i think i'll have the coy guys to thank for that... 7 days to kangarooland! They should issue an advisory to the kangaroos warning them to get out of our way when our vehicles come through... haha... i'm getting incoherent....

And while another nsf dies in camp doing chin-ups, we almost added to the stats the next day with a vehicle overturn. Who ever said driving was fun eh? haiz... Kangeroo land in 2 weeks time. then ORD after that.... Till then..

Thankful and liberated....

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

From The United States Declaration of Independence

"It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that? "

From the movie "The pursuit of happYness"

So, how do we define the pursuit of happiness? From wiki, we have...

"Among these inalienable rights, as proclaimed in that great document, is the right of men to pursue their happiness, by which is meant the right to pursue any lawful business or vocation, in any manner not inconsistent with the equal rights of others, which may increase their prosperity or develop their faculties, so as to give to them their highest enjoyment. "

I dunno about you. But for me, there's a sense of disappointment after reading that definition given. There's got to be something more, my gut insisted. And so what more was I/ were we looking for? After pondering a while, I can't come up with a specific answer and then I realised perhaps that's the reason for the particularly ambigious phrasing. That it was meant to inspire inspiration. The phrase "pursuit of happiness" struck me with a sense of idealism and hope which i think the person who wrote it intended. Note that happiness by itself is not a right and only the pursuit of it is.

I'm amazed by soundtracks. Unlike a normal pop or classical song, they dun have the time and space to express whatever emotions the composer intend. Instead, they are constrained by the visuals of the movie, needing to match them to bring out the mood and theme appropriately. So the end result is often very intense music that can stir your hearts in a moment and melt them in the next. The background music now is from love actually's soundtrack, where you can hear how intensity is created by the running notes the strings are playing against the brass and how it is sustained by adding and removing layers (flutes, bass, timps, etc). Aye... if you are impressed by that, then you should check out Glasgow love theme and Portuguese love theme by Craig Armstrong as well...



This is a snippet of Beijing Olympics victory ceremony music - 茉莉花(adapted and rearranged by Tan Dun and Wang Hesheng) similarly, the intensity is amazing here... and yes, i do hope they release the scores one day so we might actually get to play it.

And yes, with youtube, even amateur musicians like you and me get immortalised...



Tht's zj at his very best on the timps with GECO. He gets a lot of screen time.. haha.. but it's well deserved, not an easy part to play.. can check with mingjie if you dun believe... lol...

I was... thankful? when i found the next video on youtube.



hmm... the timps sound grossly out of balance. I din remember doing a sound check, tht could be the reason or that the mic is not a good one... haha.. the former more likely since the other parts sound okay... But in any case, that was the only time I felt that I was playing the music for myself as much as it is for the audience. Cos normally it is 奏来打动观众的心, but that time, it was a matter of having a way to show gratitude. So thank you chen wei, for immortalising that special moment, via both your composition of 心贤 and the posting of the video recording on youtube...