Life and Letters

So the tour is finally over - I can finally breathe a huge sigh of relief. No major accidents/medical emergencies/lost passports/ smuggling of conductors back to Birmingham.... WHEW!!!! I'm glad that I had a wonderful lot of helpers to get me through the ordeal and we made it all back in one piece! :D

It was a fantastic tour - the adrenaline of performing to a full house and then getting a standing ovation is just undescribable. It was FANTASTIC! Lots of new friends were made, getting to know people much better, coming up with weird hand actions and sounds (CA CAW!) ... I just wish we could go on tour for another week now!

Anyway, it's back to reality and time to move out of my little room in Spinney Land and count down to the number of days to flying home in a jet plane.

One thing I like about packing and moving is the stuff I come across which i didn't realise I had like a little card from someone or a book or something random. Perhaps this can be said of someone I know - she seems to have food that has been around since her first year in Uni and hasn't eaten it since. There's currently about 6 carrier bags full of food lying on my kitchen table which might pr0bably still be around this time next year! That makes it 3 years since it landed up in a kitchen and probably WAY PAST its expiry date! Gosh...

I'm actually quite glad that moving this summer just involves getting myself out of my own room. Last year, it was moving 2 other people and myself which was OK if my aim in life is to be a bodybuilder but no thank you - i think my muscles do enough work from playing the violin and lifting timpani on tour.

Moving is also a time for me to reflect on the past academic year - what i've achieved, what i've not achieved and what aspect i should improve on in my life.

I think that I've gotten to understand more about inter-personal relationships a whole deal this year especially with organising the tour and stuff. Closer to heart, i've gotten to know someone a whole lot better - it's not just the fun times we had for one term, but its more to the point that I've realised how two-faced this person can become. For one, she spent a whole year (yes one whole year) calling a fellow singaporean names but only seem to be able to put on such an act in front of this girl recently by being a 'friend'. And then she bitched (and i mean.. really bitched) about her flatmate and calling her 'black faced'/'du lan' (here's another singaporean vulgarity for you tour people...) but then end up being good friends with her. It got to the point in May when I finally saw through all this and realised that getting myself more involved with the person in question would just be detrimental to myself cos God knows what she says about me behind my back. Such people are categorised in my mind as 'Very dangerous' people. If they can do it to others, they can do it to me! That's my philosophy.

If there's anything I've learnt in the academic year is to watch my back and make sure I stand firm on my morals and beliefs. Having people come up to me to try to get what they want out of me or put me down by saying some rather cruel words, or as I've illustrated above - display their capability being a back stabber only makes me more cynical and cautious about how I choose my friends. I started the year with the aim to make the UMS Tour 2007 a successful one and I think I've achieved that and managed to not let anyone come in the way of my goal. The same can be said of my PhD work - I managed to squeeze an apology out of a Research Fellow for 'stealing' my work and I think I can safely say that attending 5 conferences and presenting at 3 in the year, plus getting scholarships and bursaries to attend conferences and pay off tuition fees is a feat for any PhD student.

Proko has just proved that success is possible even with the crappiest of tools and instruments (CONGRATS PROKO!!! Can't wait for you to be in Birmingham!). Maybe its a Scorpio thing.... My aim for the next year is to get my thesis at least 50% done and write as many conference papers as I can.

Oh yes, and I mustn't forget that before I choose to help anybody get through uni or move out of flats etc., I must think very carefully about who I'm helping and whether that person is capable of being a malicious person.

Bring on the Summer Holidays ... :)