I have been busy preparing for my Grade 8 violin exam which I hope I can pass this time round. But a part of me is like… I doubt I can pass since I feel so ill-prepared. I haven’t finish memorising my scales, not to mention that I am still not particularly strong in my exam pieces. My aural skills is lacking and I am not very confident of my sight reading. Argh what to do? I thought I will get the September slot for the exam but I ended up getting the late August slot. Now I am feeling the stress and losing motivation to work hard too. Thanks to God’s blessing, I managed to get September slot. Apparently my examiner got injured a few days before my exam so it got delayed by a month.  

Hopefully things will get better and that I find my motivation to practise more. I need to make sure that I don’t overpractise as well or I might hurt my finger again…

I’m spending my last day of unemployment listening to Stefanie Sun’s music… Just fall in love with one of her songs, Windbreaker. Those triplets in the chorus are really nice hooks.  

I went for songwriting lesson earlier (after nearly a month break because my teacher is too busy with endless musicals, concerts and his first album release). I was tasked to pick a song to practise and I have chosen 3 of them. Actually, I only picked 2 songs but thought maybe I can try out Stefanie Sun’s new song to practise at the last moment.

These are the songs that I picked. Hehe.

In the end, my teacher picked the last song – Stefanie Sun’s A Dancing Van Gogh. It’s a tough song to analyse with lots of modulations and stuff. But it will be an interesting material to study in the next few weeks…

Happy birthday to myself! 

I’m now 1 year older and is getting busier too. I bought Yamaha SV-200 for myself as my birthday gift and it’s awesome. Pretty expensive since it is Yamaha Silent Violin series and it is one of the professional electric violins in Yamaha. Lindsey Stirling has a Yamaha SV-250 while the model I went for, SV-200, is just 1 level down from her professional electric violin…  

I didn’t buy the SV-250 since there is no discount for it. There’s some discount for SV-200 since Yamaha is clearing their stocks (they are discontinuing SV-200). Sadly, I don’t have much time to play with my new electric violin…  

I wonder how my life will be in the next 50 years… Oh, I am changing my job as well. I’m joining a startup next year. Leaving the comfortable life in an US MNC to join a US startup is going to be interesting (and scary at the same time!)

I will probably post my birthday cake later… Finally posted! It’s not a chocolate cake, unlike other years. Haha. It’s an ondeh ondeh (pandan + coconut) cake from Butter Studio!

I have been really busy with school (and work, of course) recently that I am neglecting my music and perhaps, photography aspect of life. Guess blogging from my laptop has taken a backseat as well. Speaking of which, I am thinking of getting a mechanical keyboard for personal use… I guess it makes typing feels more shiok? Haha. But first I need a proper mouse since the batteries in my Microsoft Arc Mouse is leaking and I can’t use it anymore…  

I have also started my investment journey and is making paper loss. Well, I guess it is all about long term investment? Hopefully I am going to see paper gain soon… 

It didn’t help much when USD is depreciating too. Sigh. It has been on a steady decline ever since someone has become the President. Oh well. 

Joanna Dong went to take part in the Sing! China competition and her second performance for the competition is really awesome! Just watch it below.

Okay, back to school work now.

I was doing my school project and reading up on the resources on OWASP site and listening music on Youtube (with my Beoplay A2 playing the music so it sounds really good) and I came across my favourite IU music again. Hehe.  

I blogged about the same music here too!

The old music video I posted in my previous blog post here is not working so I decided to update the blog entry with the updated video that I found.