Lieder ohne Worte

Braces are off; please don't go away with the idea that I have horrible teeth- I don't, they're pretty average. It's the whole overbite/jaw thing. It was plates/braces or jaw surgery and apparently I was too young for that to be healthy. :P Appointment delayed by half an hour but they are *off*. Actually, the whole removal lost its novelty- afterall, you just....forget the braces are there, after a while and that while has long since past. *pokes* Now it feels like my gums are all swollen and teeth are all slimy and smooth. Bleh. 

We've got Regional debates this afternoon, going up to TA at Four which means I'll have to miss Fencing, because it takes about an hour to get there. *pokes*. Impromptu. *double poke* and it will be at least 8 before I get back which means any hopes of sleeping tonight is gone. *thwacks* . My violin teacher is going to get a nasty surprise.

Whipped out the old Bartok yesterday; it's one of those things that's...not a cliche as such but a landmark. But like a gutter; landmark, rather like Vivaldi's concerto in B4 and Bach Double, everyone knows how to play it, everyone hates playing it but everyone wants to make sure everyone else knows they can play it even though it's easy and boring. B4 & Bach Double is for idiots and babies one of those 'group play-and-let's-be-idiots-at-this-party' type, whereas Bartok is for laughs. Romanian dances. Played in the dorms, it was similar to:

"Oh yes, let's play and kill these harmonics in rememberance of the days when we went -oooh- and *bop*"

I mean, it *is* rather fun, though the only thing you do is play it really fast and as we are told and told again- well, not anymore, but still- speed is for noobs. Not quoted. :P, but there you go. beginner stuff. You can play it. Really. *hands you teh music. But the thing is, I haven't praticed *anything* I was supposed to. -shrug- Better think about debates though there is nothing to think- it's going to take up all my 'free time' today, at anyrate.

French assessment tomorrow. Meh. Memorising vocab are toodles, though. 

Ah, they'll be making the ____________ (insert region name here) team from these comps,pbbt. I nearly got dragged into the JUNIOR team because technically, I can enter in that team, though there probably will be compilcations later if we make it into the __________ team later in the year. I refused point-blank. What were they *thinking*? I'm not angry or insulted...just...amused and rather frustrated. They tried to do this for WaiMaths as well, and mind you, we *did* come second but still...I don't know what they'll do without me. I mean, WaiMaths is for....how many years ago? *rolls eyes*

I am so not going to be dragged back down into the junior department. I take back what I said before- it *is* an insult.

I'm not supposed to be typing this, but Chem is so boring today; all we're doing is little books and formulas though its going to be over soon so there it goes and it's clean and all but not as clean as physics. We don't have the option of phil. classes here- very few NZ school offers Philosophy so I'm jealous of all you Yankees out there who *have* those courses and I'm going to bop those who have those courses and don't take them. I'm so jealous. at least I'm be able to take some in Taiwan every year. pbbt.

This is such a spammy entry.

I recieved an email yester-night from my cousin- well, one of my closer cousins in Taiwan (she was on a business-trip/aka holiday a few days back) that she had been proposed to! This is quite...well, meaningful looks all around because her boyfriend is extremely...*too* sweet. It scares you. He has a really good camera though, with tonnes of lenses, so it's good to have him in the 'family' I guess. *shrug* His family- well, him- owns a Financial Consultant thing company or something (I have actually the vaguest of ideas) so they're pretty well off. 

Anyway, she said *yes*. *rolls eyes*

What happened was that he took her to _____ Friday (I can't remember the name. It's in the email she sent me that I can't access here at school *thwacks*) and pre-arranged it so that when dessert was served- icecream, or somethin similar- her diamonds were in the actual dessert.-.- Sounds like somethin that happens in a Korean drama! I guess it's romantic enough...*doesn't really know anything in that field.* Anyway, I'll see if I've got a picture of the actual diamonds, as she hasn't sent the files over yet.

My first reaction was- "Wouldn't it get all sticky?" -Nobody else seemed to *care*. So everythings presumably pretty hyper at their end, and I guess I'm feeling...happy? Actually, I don't feel anything at all. But we can still use exclamation marks so it *looks* like I'm happy!People are so stupid these days.

I'm in the middle of a two-week break from comp. classes up at the Uni, and I still have to go through the score and put all the markings in. *thwacks score*. There's the theory that all 20th/21st century composers love to put markings in their compositions and that is *not* true- the only sense I can gather from that assumption is that the people who are going to preform the music are utter idiots without experience/practice/initiative. You can *tell* what needs to be done- especially in the areas of dynamics and only the utterly *special* are marked in. Argh! I'm just thinking I can move on to the next assignment instead of sitting in here writing markings for idiots! *headdesk*
This is so immature of me. I don't think the whole ice-cream thing has worn off yet. So I'm sitting in here in front of useless keyboards and slow computers which have been disguised with new monitors but are still actually their old durian selves. 'Slaughter House 5' by Kurt Vonnegut (have I spelt that right?) Good enough book, I guess. 

Okay, that's me on a not-so-angst mood. Going to be late. Bell. History. Got to go.

Haven't updated for a while now-

Debate had been...Tuesday night; over a hundred schools I think; somewhere around a hundred, which is quite a big feat, over here especially for 'practice' nights. It's quite strange because I was all set to bail out weeks back, before any of it happened but since I was [s]bullied[/s] into auditioning, I had to stick with it. The teacher is *extremely* manipulative, it's amazing, and I was backed into a corner; But it's good, I guess because I did get into A1 (I argued against the level-'scoring'; it sounds more like a sport which I guess it was,) which means we will be going around the place [s]arguing[/s] debating. It'll  keep me busy :P We have...two subs, one of whom never turned up even though she was *supposed* to; -anger- But it didn't really matter all that much because the adjudicators all engaged us in Irish Debate for the first two hours. It was overkill, but it was fun. Our side won. 

All in all, it was...good, I'm going to have to go right to the end now but we have a good team. -Practice moot: (Stole this from the first regional champs this year,) ' This House believes that parents should be able to design their children' Bioethics Final and all that; which was good because we have just gotten through seriously meaty stuff in Bio concerning genetic engineering -umbrella term, please don't shoot me down- We were negating, and I think we won simply because of the whole morals issue [s]and jealousy. No, seriously, people only go against 'designing' their children because they didn't get designed themselves, adjudicators included. That's cheating, that is.[/s] 

It was fun, all the same, except I arrived back home past 12 in the morning and still had my composition stuff to do-
Minimalism. We are progressing so slow I just...disconnect in class (I'm the only girl- isnt' that strange? I thought it was) ... Not to sound arrogant...but a simple exercise can take up to half an hour and I'm just sitting there; doodling and thinking about what we should have said about religion in that Bioethics thing- (We won by *squints*  -this much-, even the Adjud's said so. I was appalled.)

It's a good excuse for me to play around on Sibelius, though, even though Dad's back and he- it's like having a bird of prey over your shoulder-  you can't concentrate, let along compose. They took everything out of the studio though, and now the harpy room is seriously cramped and I *hate* cramped- so they can 'keep an eye on me'. It's more than inconvenience. The first one I wrote, for two pianos, I binned- it was so bad. If anyone has Sib, I'll send it to them and prove it's badness, you have to read it to believe (It's like that French song we got played during second period; for goodness sake, we dont' need *songs* like that to teach us French vocab, it's torture but our teacher is Canadian, so there you go-) 

Back to minimalism. Apparently it was good because I hacked and stuffed a few voices in there that had inklings of the Chinese flavour, but all they are bloodly repeated fifths and god knows what else (come to think of it, I had no chords in the first half so I have no idea how them came to that conclusion 0.o) and it is disturbed- it's not usually this bad- but the over-lapping clash of styles...argh. It's very Minimalistic, I suppose, but it's so frustrating. So I binned that one- the demi-semis are impossible to play though- but I have to get at least *one* done by...tomorrow.

 -.- Ah well, Minimalism. It’s boring, but it’s easy. You can have so many repetition it's just like...I don't know,  almost as if everything else you expect to be simplistically monotonous.  It's like the taste of  water. Sort of.

That reminded me of the Euro trip. Will post something about that soon.

Auckland Grammar came down to play our school in basketball today, and one of the girls in my history class played in our school A1 (see? I told you.) team- it might have been two girls, I don’t know/don’t care-

And we ended up being all dragged to watch. I don't watch sport, usually. The only things I watch are selected DVDs and concerts- sport doesn't interest me all that much, for some reason, but since I'm all high from the camera (Oh! Yes. I got a new camera yesturday. No. Two days ago. Something like that.) I ended up cheering pretty normally. It was still a waste of time; we could have been in class talking about Germany or something just as stereotypical (we are *not* doing Germany. We did that way back, we're having a meaty debate 'round celtic//religion- mind you, I have *ze best* History teacher, even though history is a doddle, he is so cool- instead we had to sit there in the gym and make cheering noises. I never stayed until the end of the game; but apparently, we lost by 12 points, which was sad because when I left, we were winning by 8. 0.o It looks worse than net-ball. Then again, you play netball in the rain. Does anyone here play basket ball?

Been locked up inside, finally got out and took some photographs, they’re on my dA gallery. Taking photos are…I don’t know, fun? Not the word, more like impassive. You project emotion, you project perspective but really, it’s all very…

 I don’t know, it’s to get away from music, I guess. And talking about music, I have to go to teh chamber practice- got that up at uni tomorrow straight after comp. class so I really don’t have the energy or the enthusiasm to do this at school. [Omg teh gosh, I've updated my journal.]

 Had lots of other things, but they’ve totally evaded me now.

We had our school Performing Arts competition yesterday. Its really strange, because, since I've skipped all the years and that sort of jazz, I didn't know what was going to happen- and it said CONCERT at the end of the name, which is too long to type up.

Anyway, this means I chose a piece which wasn't quite ready at the audition/semifinals' Recital, but was okay yester-night. And no, I didn't play Rach 3, though I was *seriously* tempted to- but it wasn't my fault, as at that stage (Term...2? Early 3?) I hadn't had Rach 3 *at all* polished, and I didn't want to embarrass myself. -_-

I *was* going to play Shubert's!Impromptu, which I played for the NZRMT Scholarships, but for some strange reason, I decided not to at the last minute. *thinks back to why.*---*can't remember* Anyway, I ended up ruffling and playing the Rach Prelude- *the* Rach Prelude, which, apparently sounded okay on the new grand our school bought, esp. for this years comps.

It wasn't too long so the audience (hopefully) didn't fall asleep. :D And the great thing is, I accompanied for several performances/items (Which reminds me- I was the only UNPAID accompanist there. And the only one under 25. RAR! PAY-RISE. PAY-RISE) - which wasn't great itself, really, even though one of our items *did* win the vocal duets section, but I got offered a job (WITH PAY- yay, go me.) by the Music HOD.

Then I got high eating chocolate eclairs, which I didn't even like. And I drank wine. *bubbles*-Oh, and I got a cup. But I don't know what it was for. I was just like- 'Ooh, its me. Okay. Next?'
***Meh. :P

Hey, I think there might be a recording of the concert lying around somewhere! If I find it I'll put my (badly) played Prelude on here. Or a bit of it. I'll cut out all the bad bits. :P