My Blue Heaven

Stuff

Long time no post again. I always seem to miss the first few days of the week. Anyway, I took a day off yesterday so I have an excuse this time. 🙂

I had a very fun-filled weekend. Went clubbing on Fri AND Sat night! Two nights in a row.. don’t think I’ve ever done that before! Me and a girlfriend went to Twisted @ Cave on Fri night (not bad really, the music was pretty good, not too crowded coz we got there at like 2am, lots of room to move n groove), and then to Juicy @ Minc on Sat night (pretty crowded, and absolutely stinking hot… they really need to get some ventilation going in there). My thighs were so sore by Sunday.

I also went to Maroubra beach (and swam) on Sunday with some friends, which was fun in a masochistic sorta way – it was absolutely freezing! T’was a cloudy, windy and not-very-warm day.

Well. Nothing much to blog really. I had a dentists appointment yesterday (checkup and clean) – which I always hate. And will be going to dance class tonight.. Yay!

Current listening :: “Times like these” – Jack Johnson

Miserable weather

Gee what is with the weather in Sydney lately? One day it’s broiling hot with blue skies and sunshine, the next it’s giving London a run for its money. Not to mention severe thunderstorms and bucketing rain. Here’s a piccy I took the other evening on the train, on the way home. For some reason I like the view of twilight and rain from a train window..

I watched some of the special features on the TTT Extended Edition dvd last night. T’was very interesting, hearing why Peter Jackson made the movie the way he did, why he changed bits and left out bits. And it was really mind-blowing to see just how much work, money and time went into making this movie – finding locations, building sets, forests, cities, creating the creatures of middle-earth, the armour and everything. The scope is mind boggling! Anyway, I sooooo can’t wait till RoTK comes out!! I have my ticket already – for the 12:15pm session at Fox Studios on Boxing Day. Woohoo! I’m looking forward to this way more than Christmas Day! As I did last year. Heh.

Anyway, so glad its Friday! I’m planning on going clubbing this weekend. Either tonight or tomm night.. not sure yet! I’m soo needing an R&B clubbing fix. Haven’t been for yonks.

Current listening :: “Can we still be friends” – Mandy Moore

Ouchie

This morning, I slipped on the bathroom floor (coz it was wet), and hit the sink cabinet doorknob with my knee so hard that it broke off. OUCH. 🙁 And I hit it with the soft part of my knee too, that bit just below the knee cap.

Anyway, as promised, I’ve uploaded the mp3s finally –

• Wisdom (~9mb) – with my thurs night jazz fusion class. My solo (the 2nd piano solo) starts at around the 3:50 mins mark. At 3 mins, you can hear a buzz, which was caused by our 2nd guitarist just arriving and plugging in, also at which point the bass dropped out, and didn’t come back in till after my solo. (Great. Not.) Anyway… personally I cringe when I listen to this solo.
• Mosaic (~11mb) – the Fri night jazz fusion class. I subbed in for their keyboardist coz he was sick. My solo is the electric piano solo, at about the 6 min mark. I felt this one was somewhat better than my first solo. Listen carefully to the bass solo in this one… he rocks… and he’s asian!
• Softly As In A Morning Sunrise (~7mb) – A jazz performance group class, probably the best one of the night. I didn’t perform in this song. This is just to show you something different.. some traditional swing jazz, instead of the modern jazz fusion that I’ve been doing. I might go back to doing this next year. Its somewhat easier than jazz fusion (at least the chords are!) The pianist in this group is quite good!

So there you have it. 🙂

Last night I went to dance class, hoping to learn the rest of that Britney dance. But Ramon wasn’t teaching!! Grr. So guess I missed out. Poo. 🙁 I went instead to Michael Boyd’s class, which is always pretty funky. The routine he taught was actually an old routine that I’d learnt when I went to his class earlier this year, to Gerling’s “Who’s your daddy”. A very fun and.. err.. raunchy routine. Heh.

Then, when I got home, Coltrane was soooo adorable!! He was being really affectionate.. whilst I was eating, he sat next to me gazing up at me with those big green eyes, waiting for a little morsel from my dinner. Then every so often he’d reach up with his front paw onto my arm.. like he was saying “Aw c’mon give me some food…. preettty pleeeeease… ” Hehe. So I gave in, just coz I love him so much. 😛

Afterwards, he was all happy, leaped onto my lap, snuggled right in and purred away sleepily. Hee. 🙂 Then he nestled his head into my jacket, and wrapped one paw around my arm. Sooooo CUTE! 😀

Current listening :: My jazz concert recordings

Summer time

Thanks to people for their kind words regarding the previous post. Things are much better now, and it probably wasn’t even as bad as I’d thought. 🙂

I went to Avalon beach with some friends last Saturday. T’was very nice. It was a beautiful day.. though a bit on the windy side. And the water was absolutely freezing.. heheh.. but after you get used to it, its not so bad! 🙂 I only managed to catch one wave with my boogie board. 🙁 Coz to catch a wave, you had to go out to the sandbar, which was pretty tiring on a board. My arms were really sore the next day from all that paddling. My friend Paul taught me how to duck under waves with the board, which helped. But it’s a bit of a rough ride doing it.. feels like you’re going through a washing machine. The reason I only caught one wave was because the other times I tried, I lost the board on the way out there, which gets carried back to shore. Grr.

Anyways, here are some more piccies I took during the day. Got some nice scenic shots of the beach too. 🙂 (More scenic shots here.)

Man, I can’t believe its December already! Where has the year gone. It is now officially summer… and the weather is pretty miserable. Not cold – just cloudy, rainy and humid. Yeuch. I can’t stand humid weather.

Another BBK gig

Almost forgot to add, on Sat night I went to see Bluebottle Kiss at the Annandale. I ended up going by myself, coz everyone else piked. But I met my friend Leo there, so it wasn’t too bad. And once BBK started playing, it didn’t really matter anyway! They were awesome!! It was their album launch of sorts. Dunno what difference it made to the gig. They played stuff mostly from their latest album, and from the previous “Revenge Is Slow”.

At the end, in the last song, they went crazy! Thrashing their guitars around, like they were gonna smash em on the ground. I think Jamie ended up dropping his guitar, and hence grabbed part of the drums and threw it onto the stage, then started banging it whilst holding his mic to it. Meanwhile Ben was still thrashing round, and ended it by dumping his guitar onto the drummers lap.. while he was still playing! Hehe. So funny.

Oh, and I got their set list. 😀

Kitty

Andrew’s sister recently acquired a new little thing, about the size of your shoe and goes “miaow”! 🙂 (As Andrew likes to describe it!) His name is Toby, he’s about 9 weeks old, and is soo cute!

Post-mortem

Its been a week, I know, and I still haven’t gotten around to putting up the recordings from my jazz concert at the Conservatorium. I will soon.. I just keep forgetting to bring the cd into work. I do have some photos now though. Check em out. (For more clicky here.)

As for the post-mortem.. My performance went ok. I actually ended up playing another song for the Friday jazz fusion class coz their keyboardist was sick. So it was a little stressful being pulled in last minute. Of course I knew the song (“Mosaic”) coz we’d done it in our class too. The funny thing is, I think my solo for that song went better than my solo for “Wisdom” with my class. I guess it didn’t help that one of our guitarists arrived half way through the song, and plugged in, causing a few technical difficulties, which caused the bass player to drop out, so I got totally lost during my solo. Not that anyone noticed.. me getting lost that is. 😛 Anyway.. listening to my performance… I’m not that happy with it. There is definitely ALOT of room for improvement. *sigh*

I will upload the mp3’s tomorrow. I promise! 🙂

Current listening :: “Breath in now” – George

Reharmonisation

I had my final jazz fusion class for the year last night. Aww.. *tear* We did something a bit different.. instead of our usual warm, play songs and practise our soloing.. he gave us an exercise in reharmonisation! He first taught us a few techniques, played through 2 typical jazz standards (“Just Friends” and “All The Things You Are”) and a reharmonised version of those standards, done by himself or someone else. Then he gave us some manuscript paper, and for the rest of the lesson, we wrote our own reharmonisation of one of the 2 songs. (All of us chose “Just Friends” coz there were less chord changes.. heh.)

It was fun! We played to each other our reharmonsations. They really liked mine! My teacher actually wanted me to give him a copy when I finished it so he could play it for some of the other teachers! Heh. 🙂

Its not that hard either. You just take the melody note, and then think of all the possible chords that would go with that note, and which note of the scale it falls on. Some hints he gave for a real “bent” jazz sound, was to make the melody note an extension note of the chord (eg #5, or b9, or #11) as opposed to a guide tone (ie 3rd or 7th note of scale). He also suggested incorporating chord progressions like the “II V I” to make the melody and song flow better.

Erm. I know that probably went over alot of your heads.. but for those who have some musical background.. it might be useful. You can funk up some old and worn church songs this way. Marki used to do it for the music team when he was still at WS.. hence we have a really cool, jazzy version of “I love you Lord” and “Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah” and “O Mighty Cross” and “Amazing Love”. I wouldn’t mind trying this myself sometime! 🙂

Thievessesss..

“Thievesss… filthy little thievesss.. they ssstole it…”

My gym gear that is. A few months ago I lost my gym clothes and showering stuff at the gym. Just yesterday I saw a plastic bag containing *my* long-lost gym clothes on top of one of the private lockers. Hrrmmmmm. Were they actually dumb enough to steal my gym clothes, and then wear them to the same gym? Also, on the same day I found those gym clothes, I discovered my current set of gym clothes had gone missing, along with my showering gear… again.. including my new Tigi honey & oatmeal shampoo/cond!! Grrrrrr!!! Not Happy Jan. 🙁

Weekend Plans

So this weekend I’m planning on hitting the beach! Woohoo! Tomorrow is looking warm at 25 degrees. Yay! We’ll probably be going to one of the northern beaches again. Maybe Palm Beach! Then at night I’m going to see Bluebottle Kiss at the Annandale Hotel. Its their album launch gig. Should be absolutely awesome! 🙂

Oh.. I have pictures from my performance on Wed night… and recordings on cd! I’ll put up some mp3’s soon! And the pics. Hold your breath. 🙂

Current listening :: “Sisters head on” – Bluebottle Kiss

Diagnosis.. delicious!

Well, excluding Coltrane. He’s adorable, rather than delicious. 🙂

Dinner last night was soooooo yummy. *drool* I haven’t had this nice a meal in a long time.. (and that possibly includes eating out at nice restaurants). The rare roast beef and nifty potatoes were scrumptious beyond words. I absolutely stuffed myself silly, and still wanted more! The beef was not quite as pink as we would’ve liked.. we left it in the oven a touch too long. And I probably added maybe a little too much soy, but otherwise it was perfect. 🙂

After dinner we watched “What A Girl Wants”. I really like that movie! Its so very girly and *yay*! 🙂 A very nice feel-good girly flick with a decent splash of comedy & romance. And have I mentioned Colin Firth is in it? 😛 Heh. I like Amanda Byrnes in it too. Hm.. think I might buy the dvd…

*sigh* I’ve just finished the roast leftovers for lunch.. yummo. I’m stuffed. 🙂

Gig @ The Con

Eek! Tonight I’ll be performing at the Conservatorium of Music, for the 2nd time in my life. As mentioned before, our jazz fusion class will be playing a song in the end of term concert. We’ll be performing “Wisdom” by the Yellowjackets. And I’m gonna be soloing too. Eeek! I hope I don’t stuff up TOO much….

Current listening :: “Wisdom” – Yellowjackets (Eek! Performing this tonight!)

In mouth-watering anticipation

Tonight me and Vron are having a long-awaited girly night! Yay! *girly squeal* Heh. We haven’t done this for a while.. it used to be a bit of a regular thing. But I guess we just got busy.


Anyway, we’ll of course be cooking ourselves a scrumptious dinner. Rare succulent roast beef with a crust of herbs, marinated with wostershire and soy sauce. “Nifty” (heh :P) roasted potatoes (first boiled, then lightly tossed in a pan with some butter, then roasted in the oven till crispy on the outside, yet soft and moist on the inside). And of course some sauteed veges, lightly pan fried with some butter. Yummm….. My mouth has been anticipating this meal all day! :P~

And a girly night is of course never complete without a girly dvd to watch. We’ll probably be watching “What A Girl Wants” – since we both saw it a the movies ages ago and both quite liked it (Colin Firth!) Either that, or we’ll watch Ever After… for the 100th time! Depends on whether we’re in a girly *yay!* mood or a girly *sigh* mood. (As Vron so eloquently put it.) 😀

Current listening :: Standing in the Shadows of Motown OST – The Funk Brothers

Which Austen heroine?

And as Monday afternoon boredom sets in…

Take the Quiz here!

You are Marianne Dashwood of Sense & Sensibility! You are impulsive, romantic, impatient, and perhaps a little too vocal in your honesty. You enjoy romantic poetry and novels, and play the pianoforte beautifully. To boot, your singing voice is captivating. You feel deeply, and love passionately.

Though it was a close one.. change one answer and I could have been Emma Woodhouse of Emma. Not that I mind. I like the heroine in Emma… Hehe.

Lifestyles of the rich and…

I had a fairly enjoyable weekend. On Saturday a bunch of friends came over and we watched (my newly bought) The Two Towers extended edition dvd. Woohoo! T’was awesome!! I love LOTR… soooo can’t wait till RoTK comes out! 😀 I’m so swept up with it at the moment, that I’ve renewed my efforts to read the book again.. and finish it. Heh.

On Saturday night, my family and I went out to a fine restaurant called Orso, in Mosmon on the Spit, for my dad’s 60th birthday. It was very nice.. beautiful views of the water, yummy food, lovely interior. Here are some pics.

Now to the point of the title. There was also a birthday dinner at the restaurant that night. I found it interesting to observe these people. They were young, a combination of white and asian people.. must have been uni aged.. somewhere between 18 and 20 years. Yet the way they dressed and looked… were beyond their years. They looked… I dunno… like models (except they weren’t).. glamourous… with stylish upmarket clothing, perfect hair, perfect skin, and perfect makeup.. but too young to look that stylish. I guess in a word.. they looked rich. I dunno if its the fact that I’ve grown more observant (and cynical) over the years, or if I’ve just never ventured into areas in which these people reside.. but I couldn’t help noticing all this. And I suddenly felt frumpy and ugly.. with bad hair and cheap, unfashionable clothing. *sigh* And then… I got over it. I know I’m never going to be rich enough to be able to afford to look and dress like that. Well.. perhaps just on very special occasions (like the launch :P). And its not like I’m not already rich compared with most of the world.

On Sunday I went to the baptism of some of the youth at Glue. Afterwards, at one of the after-baptism parties, one of my glue girls had recently received a kitten… of only 4 weeks age! It was black with white paws… and was absolutely adorable!! It was the smallest kitten I’d ever seen and held. Soooooo cute!!!! Argh! I’ll post a pic of it as soon as I get it from a friend. I never saw Coltrane that small.. but then when I bought him, he was already almost 10 weeks old.

Current listening :: Innocent Eyes – Delta Goodrem

The pain

I am soooo sore today. This morning, I got out of bed and I wasn’t sure if my legs were gonna hold me up. And yes, this is all due to dance class on Wed night. I guess it takes a day to hit me. And I guess I’m not as fit (or at least my muscles aren’t as strong/toned) as I’d hoped.

I must look very silly, plodding up the aisle at work to the kitchen or toilet, looking like I’ve a stick stuck up my *cough* backside, or perhaps like my legs have been replaced by a wooden ragdolls legs. Meh. Its the inner thighs that are killing me. Never underestimate the power of a plie.

Methinks I’ll take a trip to the gym soon, to stretch out those muscles and have a much needed steam in the sauna.

At least its the weekend finally…. yay!! I’m gonna hopefully be watching LOTR The Two Towers (Extended Edition) on dvd tomorrow!! *crosses fingers*

Current listening :: “Into You” – Fabolous Ft Tamia