BBC Proms 2005

the proms season's just started... w00t! bbc's providing a 7-day archive of the concerts -> http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/listen/

highlights of the last week were (IMHO)
Gilbert & Sullivan's HMS Pinafore (Prom 2)
Michael Berkeley's Concerto for Orchestra (world premiere) and Vaughan Williams' A London Symphony (original version) (Prom 5)
and
Nielsen's Symphony No.4 (Inextinguishable) (Prom 6)

w00t for good music!

apathy's fashionable

hi period. i think you're quite right about not caring being a front for incompetency. apathy functions as a kind of escape - like coz my chinese is really bad, so i pretend that i don't care about not being able to carry out a conversation in chinese.

but maybe more than being a "front for incompetency", apathy IS becoming fashionable. in mainstream society, you're expected to care. to be passionate about things. positive, constructive, desirable things like schoolwork or chinese language. it's considered a desirable trait. to be apathetic is a sign of rebellion - "i don't care about mugging, so i go around saying 'hao lian lah mugger lah' in a nasal voice". and rebellion is always popular, especially rebellion against mainstream society.

apathy towards the pillars of mainstream society has become a badge of our subculture's rebellion. and that's perhaps the most dangerous of all traits. subcultures always become cultures: witness jazz, graffiti, and tea (the custom, not the drink). subcultures have always arisen [arose?] because their members were passionate about something: expression, food, the environment... but our subculture is passionate about apathy. how crappy is that.

please tell me that i'm wrong. that we haven't created a culture of apathy. that we don't not know and not care. that we don't actually like to fail.

please tell me that i'm wrong.

rumination

i ponder too much. many other people probably get along with less than half the doubting that i do a day. or maybe i'm wrong and everyone's equally, if not more – what's the right word? – angsty than i am. according to Wikipedia angst is sometimes used with a derisive connotation that "mocks the expression of a common adolescent experience of malaise". i don't care, i don't feel derisive about angst.

anyway today was a good day, i had only 2 essays to do, and got some math quizzes back which were actually good news. heck, if you spend 2 hours mugging chain rule, product rule and quotient rule, you'd hate yourself if you didn't actually do pretty well in a differentiation quiz.

What is apathy and what is ignorance?

I don't know and I don't care.

as you should by now, i am plagued with a gnawing doubt about what i believe and whether it's true, and about what i think is right and whether it actually is. it's a product of our society, where you have to be right or you're deemed a failure. everyone likes success. just that, in our society, success means being right and earning money and having 3 or more. (odd how these stock phrases enter my thoughts at just about any possible moment.)

can human thought be controlled? do we even know if we are being brainwashed? how can we know?

answers please.

society

multitudes of numbers are marching across my conscience. dy by dx equals the sine of 2x times an old music box. "what is x?" and other metaphysical questions just don't and can't distract me from the truth anymore. the truth is that i don't care, and i've given up caring, and i don't want any smart-alecky types questioning whether i really care or not because i'm blogging about it and if i'm blogging i must care about something. over-reasoning is just dumb.

music can't help me. it's just a means of escape. and i can't escape because to escape means to return. just that the escape means the difference between sleeping now and 10 minutes later. it's kind of paradoxical. music increases my current happiness. but it decreases it tomorrow because it robs me of sleep time. and hell, we all need sleep.

our shared air-conditioned values of equality and brotherhood and living the examined life just can't keep the will in me. the question that confronts me now is: is it better to stay up till past midnight just to finish all that work, or give up and live life? if living life means exchanging an education for present happiness, i have to choose the former. an education offers a greater chance of success, measured in the eyes of our society. and i have to respect that since i'm a member of this society, with all its flaws.

are people solely the products of their society? if they are, can they transcend this? how?

please let me know the answer.

KLIA

hi all i'm blogging from a lounge at KL International Airport. we're here en route to singapore, from vienna, and waiting for 4 hours or so. i think a train would be faster lol. anyway we won the competition - joint first with the orchestra from beijing. i shall blog more later, there's a queue :)

Post n

This is just slightly under 5 hours before the pre-tour SNYO concert. If you count on the concert starting slightly late, it's just over 5 hours before the pre-tour concert. We're playing lots of pieces today. and it's scary. it's scary that we're so underprepared, and so raw. I hope we don't let Mr Lim down, he's been putting in all his heart into the competition and concert. argh. i suddenly feel ashamed of myself. i've been slacking all this while. If everyone put in more effort we'd be less drained after each rhsl. but there's no point getting pissed and criticising everything, cos that'll be going down the same path that RISE has gone. heck, i hate string ensemble, its irritating, it smacks of authority, where people "order" other people around like they aren't people but slaves.

For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool
By making his world a little colder

anyway. this isn't supposed to be another RISE rant. i hope tonight's concert is good. so that we can all feel good again. yeah.