Boss ODB-3

I went to JB's Tebrau City on Friday with my family. Everytime I step into the mall, I will definitely go to Masai Yamaha Music Shop cause they have a bunch of music stuff(a lot more compared to the tiny Lemon Musical Store here in Kluang) and also that's where I bought my 2nd bass the Ibanez GSR200. I went there and I gave the Boss OverDrive Bass(ODB-3) Pedal a good 10-15 mins demo.

In short: I LOVE it.

I really wish I could buy that someday. It sounds super cool and as far as my ears allow me discern out of that bunch of fuzzy, overdriven tone, there are 3 distinct type of sound that I can make without many tweaks and turns. I tried to play Chili Pepper's 'Around the World' with it and it sounds so awesome(although I failed miserably cause I couldnt remember how to play it due to the amount of excitement in fooling around with the pedal). If any of you have an extra RM320 lying around, do consider buying that for me and I will be eternally grateful to all of you. ;)

Here's a picture of it so that I can look at it everyday and drool:

inspiration

Strange, how people often give up trying after failing to succeed. I suppose they focus a little too much on difficulty of the task instead of putting in even more effort in order to succeed. Maybe it's just me with my tons of overconfidence(which is proven in my personaldna.com test, which I will blog about sometime in the future). Or it could also be due to the lack of inspiration. I really don't know.

Well, of course, I give up all the time too and I really want to be able to stand strong in the face of adversities and improve myself even more in this area of my life.

It is also very strange that how things can affect or even inspire someone else by a huge margin. Take the guy on top as an example. His name is Bill Clements and he is a one handed bassist. You can check out one of his many performance videos on youtube.com. I've always thought to myself that with two hands and 10 fingers, I can do many amazing things on the bass(IF I'm good laa...) and it will be impossible for me to play without few of my fingers. Then I stumbled upon this video of Bill Clements playing and my jaw dropped. Well, I'm sure people would easily rate either Jaco Pastorius or Victor Wooten's playing wayyy above Mr. Clement's but with 5 fingers and a hand, that is amazing. There are lots to learn from this guy, my friends!

This man is amazing and you can definitely see the kind of effort that he has put in to play the bass. I'm sure he felt like giving up for a MILLION TIMES at least but he didn't. This guy definitely inspired me to take my playing up till the next level.

If you're a bassist and you're reading this, go pick up your instrument and play. For God.

high in the head

I'm feeling so high now. That adrenaline rush in my head is still there although the message was 5 hours ago. Still feeling very very light-headed too.

It was a very different experience to be given the honour and opportunity to share God's Word in front of people. Although it was in front of mainly Christians but I really thank God for this experience. Not sure if there would be more opportunities like this in the future but if there is... I would definitely take it up again.

It's not that I want to show my face more often in YF or get light-headed again and again but it's because I notice that through this opportunity and this time of sharing, I was able to bring my spiritual life to a totally new level. It's like a breakthrough in my life. I recorded the session on my phone and I'm gonna check it out later. It isn't so much about me teaching when I speak in front. It's more like I'm learning much myself too. I'm still learning how to trust God even more and I believe that when I do trust God with everything, for e.g. the message, God's gonna do something in my life. A................................MEN!

Much thanks to all the folks in the counsellor's group for helping me during 'preparation time' in YF, Uncle Ven for teaching in Class 3, Jit Pang and Yoshua on inspiring me and teaching me on how to speak as well as everyone else who prayed for me.

Well, with that over already, it's time to get back to planet Earth and plan my next course of action in life. I'm so tired now but I'm still gonna praise God.

A.................................MEN!

sea monkeys!

Yup, I finally got myself into a writing mood and this time, I'm gonna talk a bit about those little buggers(also known as sea monkeys). Okay, it's been roughly a month or two now since I dumped them into their little torture tanks and have my siblings take care of them. I took a bunch of pictures of them about 3 weeks ago and I guess I should just post them now for you all to see how creepy they really are:
























And so, there you have it! Right now, these little buggers are nearly half an inch long.

Those little buggers...

recap

Wow... lot's of things have been happening lately.

Parent's Day would be on the 17th of June 2006 and yours sincerely would have to share on a topic that have yet to be discussed with the event coordinators(Pek Ying and Mei Qi). That's currently on top of my 'To-Do' list at the moment. Hmmpf... 2 weeks to prepare a 20-minute long sharing... Yikes. My first time too. *scratches head*

Anyway, besides that, there's also the whole badminton thingamajig. Every Sunday, a bunch of us, youths, would go to the Convent school here and play games/exercise/have fun. The youths could play anything; from football to captain ball to basketball to badminton. There aint many issues with all the other games at the moment besides badminton. Apparently, one has to pay to use the school's badminton court. "Fair play", I hear you say. You're right. It is only right to pay to use another person's property but I remember that back in the days, we were told that as long as we have Convent girls playing with us, we don't have to book the court. We've got tons of them playing. And so, we thought we don't have to book the court. Even the security guard said so. We continued like that for months, if I remember correctly. 2 weeks ago, while the youths were having fun playing badminton, 2 sisters(or nuns) came in their green Nun-mobile and blasted everyone present at the court. I wasn't there when they came because I was walking Yin Ying home because of something I can't remember. Which is good. If I was there, I might have clobbered them. Anyway, the moment they stepped in, they blasted everyone by accusing that we didn't pay to play on the court. Which is bull, because I did book the court for a whole month and many of the youths know that. By then I was at the court already. They claimed that they will NEVER loan the courts for a whole month... well, until I showed them the receipt, that is. Pity the others too. Just because we didn't book all the courts for the whole month(eh... money don't grow on trees), many of the youths didn't know that. So, they played anyway and got scolded by the Nuns of love and happiness. Ah well. It was a sad day. Daniel, his dad and I had to carry on to play because we did book the court for the month. But Daniel's dad didn't quite realise the awkwardness of the situation and insisted that we continue playing. It wasn't fun after that. Really.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAanyway, we've come to a conclusion of collecting as much money as we can from the people who wanna play badminton and book as many courts as we can for the month. I'm collecting RM5 per head for those who wanna play but apparently RM5 is really not enough. It is, in fact, too little. I had to use my own money to pay for the rest. Seems like the most we can book are 2 courts. I can't always pay for everyone but heck, who would want to? Still, I want to thank everyone who contributed to the "Badminton Love Fund".

There's also the upcoming jam with Mervin to warm him up a bit on Monday, I think. Then there's also the training session for vocalists and worship leaders on Thursday night as well as a small recording session with all the song writers who wish to have their songs recorded and archived on Friday afternoon. On the same day itself, we will be having training session with drummers, I think. On Saturday morning, Ryan and Jaeson will be conducting piano and PA training sessions, respectively. All that, happening in the church.

What can I say? It's gonna be a full holiday for me. Nevertheless, I think it's gonna be a fun one.


What Am I Currently Listening: Stadium Arcadium by Red Hot Chili Peppers
What Am I Currently Reading: Eros Defiled - The Christian and Sexual Sin by John White

can you really blame me?

You know... sometimes people tell me that I'm being too insensitive at times and my words are crude, mean, sharper than a ninja's sword, fatter than lard as well as all sort of other unpleasant things. Especially being too frank at times.

Consider this, everytime I do something that I know I am not excellent at, people would come and knock me down. I HATED it. Everytime. I don't get it. Why must people always do that to me? So what if I'm not so good at something? Must you really come and embarass me in front of everyone? Is it necessary? IS IT???

Maybe you do that to keep my head level in check and prevent it from bloating up but it's definitely not the right way. It's not like I made any mistake. It's really not necessary. So, stop it! If you don't want to, fine. You are just gonna keep on pushing me right till the edge and then I will snap. If I do snap, I will in turn become the bad guy who couldnt control himself. The evil little man that everyone will despise.

So, whatever it is, I'm still in a lose-lose situation. Whatever my course of action is or will be, I will still lose. Guess I can't do anything about it. If you're reading this, which I am 100% sure you will never, my words to you is this:

Sod off and leave me alone.
___________________________________


Guess I really have to do that once in a while to keep my psycho level in check. After all that, can you really blame me?

back

I'm not back from the Family Camp and I think it was a lot fun. I got to check out lots of a cool nature stuff like how awesome the beach can be as well as the chance to hang out at a very beautiful island about 10-15 minutes off the mainland. I will try to get pictures from Paulus and put them up here.

Anyway, now that I'm back as well as the lads of Kitchen Utensils, we're gonna have a recording session soon; probably this Friday.

Wish us luck.

Kitchen Utensil's demo songs

Alright, here are the promised songs that the band did so far. I'm afraid this is the most I can put up since the band didn't want me to put up the full songs. Anyway, here's a small(literally) insight of how we sound like and the kind of songs that we write.







Hope you'll enjoy them and there will be more in the future from the pots and pans of Kitchen Utensils! :)

bumble-foot guitar

Someone please get me a spoon to gorge my eyes out. This is called the "Bumble-foot Guitar".






Oh dear....

cuas cover

Yep, it is official. Mucho gracias to senor David for this fine piece of art:



Click on it to enlarge it and bask in the awesomeness of David's photoshop mad-skillz. David agreed to let us use it as our cover for our coming 'album' although I haven't really discuss about this matter with the lads yet. Yes, I will, soon enough.

And again, thanks again, senor David!

sigh...

Well, Arsenal may have lost the Champions League Final to Barcheatalona but at least they went down fighting. They went down not because they were outclassed by the "top favs", Barcheatalona but because the men in black strips were playing for them as well. Much injustice but goons will always know that the gunners are gonna come back stronger next year.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let's talk a bit about my week.

It's been really great so far. The seniors did a great job for the orientation and I had a lot of fun. Too bad some bozo just have to ruin everything by an act of disgrace, that is to steal. Seriously, that was low, man... To steal something off another poor soul while everyone else wasn't watching because they're at the field is just low. I'm not sure if you could get even lower than that since it's lower than dirt already. Sucks be to you, thief.

I hope the gap between the seniors and the juniors that has been bridged together through these few days of orientation isn't affected or strained. Else it would be a shame, really.

Yeah, it makes me sad.

dave-o

dave-o :: says:
i very much prefer ur(kitchen utensil) style than say.... sonic edge or that altered frequency schmequency

Thanks for your time listening to God Who Never Sleeps and What You Want Me To while you're in the university's LIBRARY. Thanks, man :)

More on Form 6 and the little sea-monkey buggers in the future.

It's not easy to be, alright! ;)

doing the right thing

Just recently I had the opportunity to go out for supper with a couple of guys and we talked about many things and one of the most important thing that we talked about is: doing the RIGHT thing.

I think this whole idea of 'doing the right thing' is very subjective. Something that is right for me doesn't necessarily be right for you. For example, a person might have to eat 3 tons of chocolate a day to combat some kind of strange and unknown disease and that would be the 'right thing to do' for him/her whereas for diabetic patient, that would be a death wish.

With that out of the way, I realised that all of us struggle to do the right thing everyday. Right now, at this period of my life, I must start to put things in their place by putting my priorities RIGHT as in the really CORRECT order of priorities instead of the biased one. Sounds confusing? It is... for me, at least.

Let's talk about the biased one first. I know everyone should put God first in their life and I agree with that whole-heartedly. But the thing that I'm having gripes with is this: many people misunderstood the meaning of putting God first in their life. Here is what putting God first is NOT:

1. Going forward and commit oneself to serving and doing stuff in YF eventhough one knows that one couldn't possibly handle it.
2. Pushing on and do things in YF 'for God' eventhough one's parents have said NO MORE.
3. Using YF as a reason to force other priorities off the list... for e.g. Studies, friends, family, etc...

Here is what putting God first should be like:

1. Studying His Word instead of goofing off doing something else when the opportunity arises.
2. Attending YF and Church instead of going off to some places that one don't really HAVE to go.

I think it's true that we humans are creatures who yearns for approval of others. Because of that, we want to do things that OTHERS thing is right and because of that, we don't do things that are truly right for us.

With that I shall end this post and I urge all of you to rethink every single decisions that you have made and you're going to make. Please think carefully if what you are doing or what you will be doing is right.