Shock Value.

ALOT OF PHOTOS. this is a super long post. haha

went for band concert two days before the trip. was not bad! sat with peikhee and eunice haha

bad camwhoring skills. hahaha. anyway the next day we had pre-trip lecture. remus and jinjun were sitting behing me and i was bored so-

on the day of the trip! ben and tedson came to the airport to send me off. so nice! they arrived at the airport earlier than me haha.

then random group photo with our banner haha:

on the plane!

finally touching down at manchester airport at local time 6plus, but the sun was already super bright. haha.

waiting at the airport for the coach to arrive. when it arrived and we went outside we all started blowing air haha. cos there was condensation haha must have been an embarassing sight. hahaha!

me and steph on the bus

scenery from the bus. we saw cows and lambs and horses! super nice. and the pastures were beautiful. all green and nice.

reached birmingham after a 3 hour bus ride! went to the barber institute to wait for the organiser to pick us up haha. it was really quite cold. haha.

visited the library. there were very few books on bass. scores too. sadly. but the library was impressive. haha.

we had tea in the professor's office. he was the one who organised everything for the trip. his piano-- super cool!

then we had a lecture on debussy's work, and learnt some skills about analysing 20th century pieces. think the lecturer was quite impressed by us. haha.

saw the clock tower. apparently there's this saying that if you walk under the tower when the clock is ringing you'll never graduate. haha

after our composition lecture, we went to cadbury world! they randomly hand out free chocolates as you walk around the exhibitions. haha. the whole place smelt of chocolate!

free chocolate! we got to choose our own fillings haha

chocolate rugby ball!

random shoe in the gift shop. didnt buy this but bought others haha.

after cadbury world we went to our hotel. its a travelodge, something like for backpackers i think. its quite expensive, but there wasnt much in the room, so i didnt take any pictures. put down our stuff and took a short walk to tesco, the nearby supermarket and bought stuff.

eccles cakes for ben! hahaha.

after that went to the chinese buffet below the inn. wasnt much, didnt have much variety anyway. went back to the inn and had debrief then slept. i slept on the sofa cos i was having the flu. haha. steph and joanne slept on the bed.

morning-breakfast!not too bad haha had a fun time eating:D

after breakfast we headed to the barber institute. took a look at the place that we were going to perform in. some people got abit of practice time too

thomas ang practicing on the piano. steinway. super loud.

after practicing, we had an early music lecture. the lecturer gave us alot of handouts and got 4 students to perform for us an aria, and recitative, harsichord, baroque cello, baroque recorder and voice. was beautiful. then she invited us to see the collection of old insturments that the school had and we all gladly followed her haha. saw a baroque double bass! super cool. gut strings, cool scroll, small and light. small sound too, but sweet and mellow

the baroque bow is super straight! has the hair tightening mechanism too haha

french bow! so weird. thought french bows were invented only around beethoven's time for the double bass, and we started out originally with german bows? and this is a baroque bass. hmm.

after looking at all the instruments we got back to the barber to practice haha. rehearsal was okay, performance was quite screwed. people actually came to watch. mostly professors i think. oh man. though mrs chee said that some people in the audience said that they thought we were already in university. haha. after that had an electronic music workshop. didnt really learn much from it. spent some time online! haha. check emails and i talked to ben who was the only one i could talk to online!

finally. dinner! we walked down from our hotel to this place called bombay mix. eating indian food for dinner! couldnt stop laughing during the dinner, apparently peikhee and steph were doing a footsie underneath the table hahaha.

jinjun. very hungry.

me and steph whos not looking properly!

joanne and peikhee!

not sure what they were doing to steph. haha

starters:

main course:

all the curries! we left them half finished. ordered too much. every5 people shared like 5 bowls of curry plus naan and rice! gosh.

then we walked down to the town hall. saw many interesting things. it was quite cold too, the wind was blowing.

outside birmingham town hall where the concert was to be held:

the performance was great. though i was really falling asleep during the second half, it was still very good. should have seen her hands flying like nobody's business. and the piano cello and flute actually sounded good together with the sitar and tabla!

last day in birmingham! we checked out of our lousy hotel and made our way down to stratford, shakespeare's birthplace.

two actors acting out a scene, lines taken from the various plays by shakespeare!

bought souvenirs and icecream. haha. then we left the area.

on the way from stratford to london, me and joanne were busy taking photos while the rest slept. haha. was quite a long busride due to the jam.

reached london. pretty architecture as well. haha.

reached covent garden. its actually a square, with alot of shops and shopping malls with a flea market. bought quite alot of stuff from the flea market. haha.

in covent garden, one of the shopping centres. we saw people busking at the basement too! they were really good.

left super quickly, didnt have time to visit the shopping mall! our coach fetched us to outside the train station. this building was outside the train station. filled with all of quentin blake's drawings! (if you dont know, that's roald dahl's illustrator)

went to the train station and stoned for quite long, reached at about 4 plus and think our train was at 7. so hung around and bought food from marks and spencer. changed my remaining pounds to euros!

random pictures in the train station:

singapore noodles! im sure...

waiting for the train and eating dinner:

our train had some problem. as in the ticketing system. we all tried to get through the gates by inserting our tickets and realised that it didnt work. turned out that there was some change in the seating so the people collected all the tickets back and reissued the tickets. we had to run to get on board the train as it was pulling off, from the middle of the section to the end of the platform! no joke, i was quite scared that we wouldnt be able to board the train on time. phew.

the train ride was pretty uneventful, went across the english channel quite quickly, the pressure buildup was really fast and furious. me and peikhee sat opposite two french guys and thought that they were gay. haha. when we finally reached paris, went onto our coach and headed to the hotel. its really small, something like a bed-and-breakfast inn. i roommed with joanne, cos jane wanted steph hahaha. the room was pretty! though there were stains on the curtains. turns out that our room's the biggest cos we have a longer corridor from the door to the beds but we dont have a bathtub! haha

me and joanne fell asleep quite quickly. haha.

first day in paris. took a coach and the driver was pissed with us cos we were 5 minutes late. our tour guide was very nice and knowledgeable with a nice accent!

the notre dame. i have pictures of the inside, its beautiful but lazy to post- too many! they were ending mass when we went in, heard the organ, so powerful and bombastic with (according to thomas and jinjun) many polytonal chords. haha

forgot what this is, but its one of the many palaces i think.

of course, the eiffel tower!

went to the opera granier, an opera house in paris designed by charles garnier. that guy seriously is a genius, he made many new inventions like changing the shape of the concert hall from an oval to a semi circle, banning food in the concert hall and opening up a restaurant, making the colours of the deco red and gold and using gas lamps cos its better for the women's skin colour etc etc! if you want to know more ask me. our guide was super interesing as well. haha. had nice eyes and a mysterious look!

the intermission room was gorgeous. there were 10 chandeliers hanging from the celling and everything was gold. and there were 3 random people from korea following our group. must have thought it was a free tour -_-

the beautiful room.

after the opera house we went to the montmarte area. waited for our guide. he's american! anyway he took us around and we had to walk alot. seriously. alot. cos montmarte's like up a hill. haha

the famous moulin rouge. wasnt that scary like in the movie. haha

where satie lived!

view of paris from on top of montmarte, outside the catholic church. bought strawberries and honey. started to pour and we had to run down to where our bus was haha. ate at some random shop near the hotel, everywhere was close cos it was a sunday. everyone was really high and couldnt stop laughing. me joanne thomas gabriel ordered a banana pizza. hahaha. it didnt taste that bad afterall!

2nd day at paris. waited for the coach but he was late. so we took the metro. its quite fast and efficient actually! though abit old. went to the louvre!

yunsong and charles looking at each other lovingly- shepherd and lamb. haha inside joke!

outside the louvre!

after the lourve we took a bus then walked to IRCAM area. where the pompidou was. ate lunch around that area and me and joanne went off shopping. think we were the only ones who did that! bought alot of postcards and a bag too. then we visited IRCAM, it was really cool to see how people actually work with digital music.

the anti encho room. the room which made john cage compose 4,33. quite an interesting room, though joanne screamed it wasnt really loud. haha. and each piece of the foam thing costs 150euros and are specially imported from germany. if you stay in there for more than half an hour you'll lose your sense of balance!

me and jinjun outside the anecho room.

after visiting IRCAM we went to some shopping centre. everything was so ex. me and joanne didnt buy any clothes cos everything was really ex. but i bought two cds. such as steal! beethoven and brahms. then we met up with jinjun and thomas and went to the toy section haha

joanne being squashed under 4 teddybears at the shopping centre!

after the shopping trip we had dinner at some chinese restaurant and joanne tied a knot in her mouth with a beanstalk. hahaha. had fun on the last night of the trip.. but cannot say anything here haha.

last morning in paris: took the metro and went to this garden outside the bastille stop i think.

went to musee d'orsay. art gallery. saw impressionist paintings and me and joanne had a free guide- thomas! haha. everyone was playing with the smile detector in my camera haha

on the train. playing with the cam. first one not sure who doodled. second was melissa. haha

took the train to some random music shop to get scores. i bought 2 double bass scores! should have bought more. shucks. charles was very sad throughout lunch cos there wasnt anything substantial for trombone! after lunch we went to cite de la musique. showcase of ancient instruments, just before we went to the airport. they closed 7 out of their 9 galleries though! so irritating. could not get to see the octobass.

me outside the museum

all of us waiting to go into the galleries

the display outside the museum. very cute!

this thing is some bass instrument! haha. with only one string and a funny bow. looks like a modern electric upright bass haha

clarinet! so cute haha its an alligator!

Glass Flutes! the predecessors of the modern flute

why dont instruments look like that nowadays? haha

a hurdy gurdy. it sounds like bagpipes!

beautifully ornamented harpsichord with two manuals.

harps! very pretty.
random book in french that introduces the instruments of the orchestra. i bought a book that cost 3euros cos it said "Le Contrabasse" in the front. hehe.

me and remus! playing with our sleeves haha

j2's jumpshot! i dont have a nice J1 jumpshot in my cam. =(

me and mel on the plane! we changed seats so many times. haha. long story.

after i came back i had abit of jet lag so didnt go for math on thurs. went for YO and was happy to see everyone again! on friday was supposed to go back to RJ for DSA auditions but had a splitting headache. went back to ny in the afternoon and forgot to take pictures with ed and shir! but had a nice dinner at macs with the exco plus kaihui who's the only senior playing with the juniors for the coming trip! they are leaving next friday, too bad it clashes with YO camp or else i will definetely go send them off!

me pinyan and marissa. HCSE just came back from bangkok and mars and py bought some kueh things for the ensemble. they taste quite nice!

kristie jiale and kaihui!

unglam photo of jiale. but still shows how pretty she is!:D

on sat morning met up with ben and tedson at queensway. it was raining super heavily gosh. something funny happened but shant elaborate. the outcome of it is i must lose weight. haha. only one random shot cos they didnt want to take photos

ben in the shop. we didnt get our tees in the end cos all the jerseys we liked had no stock! why dont they stock more orange jerseys=/

after rehearsal we had sectionals conducted by rayner. it wasnt that bad actually. but i left early with sandra. she has some camp which lasts until before the YO camp. poor girl! jiayou okay=) rushed back to yishun for my grandmother's birthday celebration. i was the 2nd latest (lastest was my cousin's husband haha)

my grandmother's super cute! haha

all of us cousins and cousins in law (minus one elder cousin who's working i think. only her husband came!)

me sis anders alvin grandmother

mum and sis! my mum's pretty:D

me sis grandma! my aunty helped us take this picture and she didnt know how to use the camera. she almost took a picture of herself-faced it the wrong side! and that explains her finger on the left side haha

all of us laughing at our other cousin who just went into army

ohmygosh. FINALLY im done with uploading the photos! spent the whole day. hahaha. okay tmr must really start work already. this week's going to be another fun week, going out with pri sch friends, YO camp! :D

5:58 pm