Life and Letters

Shut up
Just shut up
Shut up [3x]
Shut it up, just shut up
Shut up
Just shut up
Shut up [3x]
Shut it up, just shut up ...

Today i started to wonder if politics even exist between the best of friends... Between two good friends, how much do you hide from each other? Do you hide things from them in order not to hurt their feelings? If as a friend i hide things so that the other party isn't hurt, doesn't that make me insincere?

The music circle is so small in Singapore - offending one 'famous' person can possibly be offending a whole lot of people indirectly. Rumours spread. I apparently distort truths. No one bothers to look back at the scenario when that statement was thought of in that person's head, to actually investigate what led the person to think in such a way. I'm not famous in the music scene, but so what? The famous might think that I'm a story-teller. Fair enough. It doesn't stop me from proving myself to them.

I live my life for myself. Not for my mama, not for my sis, but for myself. I've had people look down on me cos of my background, cos i'm not a chinese (i'm serious), cos i'm scared of defying my mama... but someday I just want to prove it to myself that despite what people say about me, I can make my mama proud and be able to stand on my own two feet. If i become a teacher, if my students hate me and think that i'm a crazy loony teacher who's mad about Brahms and 19th century violin playing, let them think that... if my scolding pisses them off, go ahead. One day they'll look back and realise that perhaps i'm not that loony after all.

All i can say is that i'm very disappointed. Just that one sentence the other day was quite enough for me to see what was expected of me. Mum's right. In life, one problem leads to another problem. Once you have a problem solved, the next one comes your way. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. You tackle the edges first, then you look for patches of colours and you hope that in the end, you get a pretty picture. If life were as simple as a 10,000 piece jigsaw......

I had a music teacher. He used to be really strict with me. I frequently failed or didn't do well for tests, harmony exercises, practical exams. it was a very depressing period of time for me. At that point, as a top student in music from my secondary school, i couldn't accept the fact that i sucked at music. I hated that teacher and constantly wrote horrible things in my diary. But when i graduated from college, i wrote a card to him and thanked him from the bottom of my heart for causing him so much trouble over my two years there. in fact, till today, i'm grateful to that teacher for making me who i am today and also for not giving up on me. To that teacher, i owe a lot to him and as i type this, i think back to the days where he coached me in harmony exercises till 6.30pm, i'm filled with regret that i never treasured my harmony lessons for those two years. I hope that one day I will do him proud as his student. When i won the concerto prize, he was the first teacher i informed, not even my violin teacher then... Thank you Mr. Sim...