Out of the frying pan
I said a few months ago that the Gershwin concert I had attended would be my last for the year. But, weeks later, I search for Rachmaninoff's name on Sistic just for fun and found yet another Rachy concert. By the Singapore National Youth Orchestra. Which was held yesterday. On the programme were a Debussy piece, a Glazunov violin concerto and Rach's Symphony No. 3. Don't know what they were playing at, playing a piece composed by the guy who ruined the premiere of Rachy's first symphony. But I must admit that the concerto was not bad. No match for Rachy though!
There wasn't any encore by Kawasaki, the violinist. Which was a first for me. I clapped with all my might hoping for at least one but none came. Then it dawned on me that Glazunov might not have written songs for solo violin. Or maybe violinists don't even give encores.
Like every concert that I had been to, this one didn't disappoint. The superb orchestra was aided by the fact that the symphony itself was a masterpiece to begin with. Haha.
I attended the concert with my cousin, whose attendance was last minute. Because she failed her PSLE and I was - I used this word before but am forced to use it again because I can't find another word that conveys the same 'feeling' - relegated the task of babysitting her. Yes. Not only tutoring her. Reteach her PSLE stuff from the bottom up. But also playing counsellor, trying to change her mindset about studying. Because she hardly studied, spending all her time watching drama serials, on Facebook, SMS-ing and talking on the phone. It's no easy feat, trying to change her ways. A preliminary test of her English and mathematics yielded shocking results. Her grammar is atrocious, subject verb agreements and the tenses having thrown out of the window. Her grasp of phonetics is non existent too, which results in the wrong spellings of even the most common words (like eaten). Simple calculations are challeges to her, and she doesn't even know the 12 times table.
Die lah... I have to tutor her everyday for a month, if my mum were to be believed. There go my holiday and my freedom. I never thought that I'd be doing PSLE stuff after my O levels.
There wasn't any encore by Kawasaki, the violinist. Which was a first for me. I clapped with all my might hoping for at least one but none came. Then it dawned on me that Glazunov might not have written songs for solo violin. Or maybe violinists don't even give encores.
Like every concert that I had been to, this one didn't disappoint. The superb orchestra was aided by the fact that the symphony itself was a masterpiece to begin with. Haha.
I attended the concert with my cousin, whose attendance was last minute. Because she failed her PSLE and I was - I used this word before but am forced to use it again because I can't find another word that conveys the same 'feeling' - relegated the task of babysitting her. Yes. Not only tutoring her. Reteach her PSLE stuff from the bottom up. But also playing counsellor, trying to change her mindset about studying. Because she hardly studied, spending all her time watching drama serials, on Facebook, SMS-ing and talking on the phone. It's no easy feat, trying to change her ways. A preliminary test of her English and mathematics yielded shocking results. Her grammar is atrocious, subject verb agreements and the tenses having thrown out of the window. Her grasp of phonetics is non existent too, which results in the wrong spellings of even the most common words (like eaten). Simple calculations are challeges to her, and she doesn't even know the 12 times table.
Die lah... I have to tutor her everyday for a month, if my mum were to be believed. There go my holiday and my freedom. I never thought that I'd be doing PSLE stuff after my O levels.
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