My "Working" Philosophy

I daresay that if it isn't for money and surviving, most people wouldn't be working.

Being "forced" to work to earn money for survival makes us unhappy. There is proof! With only 19% of employees happy or satisfied with their job routine, most of the people we see out there are mostly just the same as us.

However though, that doesn't mean I am here to to encourage you guys to just lay back and hope for food to drop from the sky. Work for me is a terrible and horrible work. I define the world "work" as: "giving you a job title (for example Doctor, Engineer, Teacher) and running your designated responsibilities over and over again for the sake of earning enough money to feed you and your family."

I prefer using the word learning. Hence I am happy to admit that studying as a student was the best job I had ever got in my life.

 Being happy at work is the most important aspect. I used to be confused about the term "Love what you do" and "Do what you love". Of the two quotes, I see the former one more often, which I firmly disagree. Love is not something you can just wake up and find it there. It needs to be nurtured. Some jobs won't be able to be loved even if an employee spends the rest of their lives with it. "Love what you do" is a misnomer, which I think is poisoned into an employee's mind by the employer.

Doing what you love is a whole lot different! If you love music, then embark on a career that has to do with music! If you like cooking, then be a chef or a pâtisserie . In that case, working's main reason would not be for the money, but the passion and energy you are willing to give in and sacrifice for the love of it.

There are many kinds of work in this world. Most of them requires us to put in physical energy to get a paycheck. A better one would be requiring your intellectual capacity to help solving your employer's problems. The last one, which I think is the most rewarding one, is just supplying resources (for example money) for future dividends or rewards, in other words INVESTING.

Choosing a job where you are passionate about ain't easy. Because it may be "un-main stream". It may not be glamorous. But at the end of the day, it is about doing what you love, get paid for it, and be happy with that stretch of life where you are going to spend 40 years of it of your entire life.

Here are a few jobs which I am definitely passionate about, and won't even have second thoughts should the chance arises:

1. Singer
2. Member of a musical band
3. Tour guide
4. Musical instrument tuner (piano tuner for example)
5. Writer (just mainly a blogger)
6. Publisher
7. Problem solving team
8. Teacher (English or Music)
9. Filming industry (still not well verse and decided on this. But sounds exciting to me)
10. Book/movie critic
11. Food critic
12. Author (book form)

Although I do have plans to be rich one day in the future, but by the age of 30 I sure wish I can finally say that I am in a job where I am not slogging to earn money, but I am doing it for the love I am willing to give.

ZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Back To The Reality...

Of Perfect Pitch (and some basic music theory)

Hear something once. Play or sing it naturally, key by key, note by note, perfectly.

That would be the layman term for perfect pitch. How to know someone has it? Well with Internet now available almost everywhere in the world, it's easy to find an example of perfect pitch. Let's say a song just got released on Youtube. And then miraculously, you see a cover of the song by someone (a cover I mean dang a good, awesome, epic cover) just barely one or two days after the song has been released. That is perfect pitch.

They need no practicing. Their first try is good enough than you practicing something for weeks. Practice makes perfect just does not apply here. These people do not need music scores to play a song. They replicate the original score without having to copy from the original score.

Singing with perfect pitch is easier. The hardest part is finding the chords of the song. See a song is always made up by 2 elements. The melody and the chords. Singing is just purely melody. When a person sings with the aid of a musical instrument, he or she plays the chords of the song, while letting her voice do the melody part.

For those who don't understand a thing about music, I'll use Twinkle Twinkle little star as an example. The melody for this song - Twinkle twinkle little star, bla bla bla bla bla bla bla... THAT, is the MELODY. The chords, depends on the key you're singing in. Cmajor? Dmajor?

IF you're singing this song in C major, the chords will ROUGHLY be...

Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are
          (C)          (F)  (C)     (G)     (F)         (G)    (C)  <- (I'm doing this roughly, without a piano XD)

If you don't have any music background, this guy will not sound like he's playing twinkle twinkle little star. But if you start singing when he starts playing, you'll notice he's actually playing something that makes a good partner with your singing! WHAT HE'S PLAYING ARE THE CHORDS!

It's not easy to catch the chords from a song. Chords are the most important part of a song. They determine the tempo, the beat, the style of the music. 

Classical version by Mozart himself. This is THE ORIGINAL Twinkle Twinkle Star.

Lullaby version by ThePianoGuys.

You can have Bossa Nova version, Rock and Roll version, so on and so forth. It's not the type of musical instruments that give you the beat and feel. It is how a song is arranged into, which is determined by how the chords are played. If you play your chords fast, your song becomes a fast song. If you play your song soft, it becomes a lullaby. 

So, to be able to capture a song, in it's original chords and beat, is a gift that every musician yearns to have. Arranging songs will become easier, since you can visualize your songs in different genre, then choose the one that gives off the best feel. That, is what perfect pitch is about when it comes to making music.

For amateurs, like most of us, who don't really have much chance or talent when it comes to making new music, perfect pitch allows us to capture the whole song as it is- playing a lullaby song on piano with a lullaby feel, and not a classical feel, is what perfect pitch can give. 

To determine the chords of the song is difficult enough for me. For a self taught pianist, with no theory qualification, my dad says I'm good enough. But to determine the feeling of a song, is something I have yet to master. And with time running out, I know I won't have much time to spend my idle days playing the piano, seeking for ultimate self eargasm, when my working days come.

God. Please grant me perfect pitch. I don't need a girl to live together with me for the rest of my life. Just let me play and sing. Let music satire my hunger, and accompany me till the end of my days, even though I'll never have the chance to shine on stages and be etched into musical hall of fame.

K-Pop playlist - How to get addicted :3

Again the world once again gets a taste of "kimchi" when it comes to music. Gangnam style proves one thing - Doesn't matter that most of the world don't know a thing about what PSY is singing. It just feels good and awesome. :D

I used to hate this genre. Hate it alot. But if you ask me now, I'd say K-pop is my mainstream music now. I don't even have 10 English hits on my lappie.

So for you guys out there who still ain't got hold on K-pop, and you are music enthusiasts, I'd say you're missing BIGTIME! You are losing some serious music quality, eargasms.

So how did I got into the K-pop mania? Well I love good songs and music. So you can guessed why I'm into it now. Plus they look good too. :D

I never really tried to convert friends around me into K-pop. So here I am now, trying to "convert"! Haha... Here are my favourites without any rankings.

So if you are willing to give me less than 45 minutes of your time, I hope my playlists will convert you and may you be blessed with quality songs and music... Song names are stated in their English name, followed by their korean name in brackets. After the hyphen is the singer or group, and their korean names in hanguel (korean alphabets). Just copy the whole thing and paste it on youtube search.

1. On Rainy Days ( 비가 오는 날엔) - B2ST (비스트)
2. Fiction (Fiction) - B2ST (비스트). [I suggest you listen to the ORCHESTRA VERSION].
3. Fool (바보) - Juniel ft YongHwa (주니엘)
4. A Person That Used To Love Me (나를 사랑했던 사람아) - Huh Gak (허각)
5. I'm A Loner (외톨이아) - CN Blue (씨엔 블루)
6. Even If It's Not Necessary (꼭은 아니더라도) - FT Island (에프티 아이렌드)
7. Star Star Star (별 별 별) - SNSD (소녀시대)
8. I Wonder If You Hurt Like Me (너도 나 처럼) - 2AM
9. Missing You Like Crazy (미치게 보고싶은) - Taeyeon (태연)
10. Because I Miss You (그리워서) - Jung Yong Hwa (정용화)
11. My Child (동화) - SNSD (소녀시대)
12.Love Is Crying (사랑이 운다) - K.Will (케이욀)
13. Can You Hear Me (들이나요) - Taeyeon (태연)
14. If (만약해) - Taeyeon (태연)
15. I Still Love You (그래도 사랑해) - Suzy(수지)
16. Winter's Child (겨울 아이) - Suzy(수지)

Note that my selections does not involve hit songs. Most of them are sentimental. It really touches your heart. Most are emo songs, about heart break. Haha. But then again, emo songs are always the main theme of good songs. :3

Rest assured that these songs are chosen for their quality and not dance. In fact not one song here is a dance song, save Fiction ( then again I suggest listening to the Orchestra version, not the original one).

Now what? Go YOUTUBE! :D

P.S. - I am seriously in love with Taeyeon's voice... And she does look good too, NO DOUBT! 

Pursiut of Happiness

These days I've been thinking. Thinking of how my limited choices would have limited me.

Yes up till now I still don't have any preference in going back to the food industry. I dread working in a factory.

Maybe just because of a one time exposure, which hence gave me a phobia to stay away from food processing plants, is not really fair nor doing justice. Maybe after getting exposed to a few food factories will change my views and feelings for them?

All this while I thought I forsook food technology because of the low pay. But when I look back on my life, money never really did played a significant part of my happiness. I can live without good food, nor do I visit clubs and bars for booze and beer. I have lived my university days with just bread and Milo, biscuits, without a single grain of rice.

I admit I dread facing the working world. I dread to not be able to do what I like, what I want. People only work to survive (well most people). Out of the millions of people out there working, we all know that only a few find their ideal job.

I dread more having to face one of my nightmares, is to enroll in a job, in a field that I have almost given up on, where I study because I needed to.

But what dreads me most is being pressured to get a job. To be honest, the days I'm living in now are as bad as the days I dread about my FYP.

The Island

I've spent my uni days pondering and relishing about getting off the island as soon as possible.

And now that I'm finally off the island, I actually wanna go back.

It's just like the castaways in the drama Lost. They've spent most of their time trying to get off the island, until at some point at the series, when they show future cuts of some casts finally getting off the island, you see people like Jack trying to get back to the island.

Irony? Yes.

And yes, there is a part of me that wants to get back to the island.

Can You Hear Me?

Sometimes, I just feel so lost. Sometimes I feel stress, anxiety on how to start writing the new chapter of my life.

Its like having to write a new story, where all this while I have been used to continue writing pieces of my life as it goes on.

I have just reached a point where, I fear of not knowing how to start a new chapter.

Well of course the main idea is there. But what to write?

It is mentally torturing when your friends have all started writing, while you are still left scratching your head in the exam hall, while time is ticking away...

It is disheartening to have submitted your resumes and not get notified as time goes by. You begin to doubt your own abilities. You start to feel lousy...

I am, lousy....  Can you hear me?

Graduating

To me, it's no big deal. However, it's quite a big event. Because most of us get to do it only once in a lifetime. It signifies the end of the occupation as a student. It is a symbol that we have completed our higher institutional studies.

As I said so on my facebook, all the years spent on being a student, studying here and there for almost 20 years, and getting to be on the stage for less than one minute of fame... It feels so surreal. Feels so unrealistic. All these years I've never thought I would one day stop going to school or class. It just dawn to me that I am a student no more. It's a hard and cold truth to accept after getting used to attending class, reading notes, burning midnight oil for exams. It's a self inflicting stress and anxiety that I think would be a memory, wrapped up in  a parcel and left only to reminiscent.

Deep down there is a part of me that still have the desire to go on. To stay young forever. To be able to continue attending classes and lectures. Final semester of my final year was somehow my favourite semester. It was the only sem where I could take extra subjects, subjects which I really love. I miss attending Korean classes, guitar classes and English speaking classes. And I scored well too in the exams :)

To be not able to take and complete my level 3 Korean, is like having an incomplete Uni life. Haha. Sounds funny, but yeah. Maybe if I've completed level 3, graduating would feel more, real?

Funny how 4 years just slipped by in a blink of an eye. 4 years is almost as long as the 5 years one spent in secondary school. But in terms of fondness, I think leaving USM kinda makes me more sad or emotional compared to leaving secondary school.

Seriously, is there something in USM that is making me miss USM, or it's just me being a nostalgic fag? Argh I don't know... :/

*ps. Congratulations to myself for being a USM graduate. It's an achievement. It's not what everyone has a chance of emulating. However, it is not my greatest achievement. It is just a small hill that I've just successfully conquered.