Saturday, May 16, 2009

The top 10 list!

Of modern day Wonders who inspire love for jazz. Here they are (in no order at all)

1) Diana Krall


2) Karen Souza


3) Sophie Milman


4) Shelby Lynne


4) Stacey Kent


5) Katie Melua


6) Jazzamor


7) Jann Arden


8) Chris Botti


9) Jamie Cullum


10) Dave Koz

A tribute to Eva Cassidy


Today, I discovered that my fav artist, Eva Cassidy has passed away back in 1996 due to melanoma (which is a type of skin cancer). Eventhough Eva has been one of my fav artist of all time, I know barely anything about her except that she retains a large essence of the Americana culture which I admire and love. Suddenly today I read her bio on Last.fm and found out that she passed away from the disease. When I read that I just felt a sudden gush of sadness for her despite that she is just a stranger to me. I love her music, I love the culture that she lives by, I don't know her. Which is what made me feel strange because I barely know the lady, how can I feel sad for her death?

In the end, I concluded that: even if I don't know her as an individual but I know her soul. Her soul is her music. Her immortality is within her music. And as far as I'm concerned, even if she has been gone for 13 years now, she still lives with us today with her music. Great artist she is.


Alex (the outdated)

Monday, May 11, 2009

New Sem, New Resolution

(inserts crappy opening music here)

Its the beginning of the new semester and this semester, I am taking: Operating Systems, Founding of American Republic, Introduction to Advertising, Principles of Management and Anthropology. All 5 which are extremely unbearable. Wait.. Scratch that.. 4 are extremely unbearable, only 1 is just unbearable. And that 1 is Operating Systems. That is because we are given computers + internet so we can FACEBOOK and PHOTOSHOP within that 1 hour of class.

I have not been to American Republic class. Intro to Advert was VERY memorable in the sense that I actually remembered that the lecturer comes from the same area as where I live: Wangsa Maju. Anthropology, as my facebook status reports (done during class via iTouch) is B-O-O-R-I-N-G (Daniel can testify to this with his snoring) but on the plus side, we have field trips (work!) and the lecturer seems quite bubbly.

And finally, we have reached the rant of the day: Principles of Management; the most ironic class ever. The lecturer has no proper management. First class; I entered and she was setting up the laptop and everything which ate into the first 5 mins of the class. She asked a girl who was very clueless to fetch the RGB cable for the projector. While waiting for that girl, she chatted with us and spoke of getting the lecture notes photostated. Then the girl arrived back saying that she can't obtain the cable so the lecturer went to the very same place to fetch the cable. Just setting up wasted 15 mins of class time. In between break time, lecturer started talking about her experience of working in China for about 15-20 mins.
Second class, I arrived 20 minutes late and lecturer was only on slide no. 1. In fact, it seems like she just started. During break time once again, she started displaying and guiding us on her experience in China for another good 15-20 mins. Not only her time management is terrible but she tries to hard to be funny and it just makes her seem bad. And she has little 'technical knowledge'. She asked us how to understand people, to which I answered EQ (Emotional Intelligent Quotient), she said, "No need EQ EQ all!" What is that supposed to mean? She just said, "You need to listen." I don't know. YOU LISTEN TO ME, ITS EQ!

Signing off,
the frustrated Alexie.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

This little mystery novel called "Life"

Sometimes in life, unexpected things happen. These unexpected things that I mean are bad things that are usually avoidable but somehow we were not 'lucky' enough (Or sometimes it is that we are not unlucky enough).

This concept is very abstract and I will illustrate in a series of real life examples. Last time, I got into an accident. It was stupid in the way that it happened. It just feels like I lost my focus for a split second and next thing you know, BAM! It hits! It was during a jam so there was not much damage or injuries, thankfully. However, the way the accident happened was so silly that it could almost be comedical.
That accident could be easily avoided but it happened. Why?

Another example I will demonstrate is: a close friend of mine, recently lost her wallet the night of her birthday. It contained RM 180 (which was a gift from her mom), her IDs and her spiritual talisman (dont know what you call it besides talisman). She was confused because if she had placed it in her bag. If it fell out, another friend walking behind her would've noticed. If she had dropped it outside the house, her mom could've seen it. But the wallet is lost. Why?

Well, I'd like to think that no matter what, we humans living under this sun have a spiritual bond with the spirits. Whether it is God (whichever God you believe in), Karma or just the good wandering spirits or even Gaia, spirit of the Earth. These spiritual guardians protect us. Like my friend says: if we give out to the world positive energy, the world will in return protect us from harm.

My conclusion is: The silliest mishaps happen to even the best of us. Does that mean that we are careless? Dumb? Irresponsible? NO. It is a way that these spiritual guardians protect us from even greater mishaps. If the tiny accident had not have happened, I could've landed in a bigger accident that could've caused me my life. If my friend had not lost her money, ID and talisman, she could've lost even more money, even more important documents and it will ultimately affect her life luck.

Any mishaps happened to you lately? Just remember whatever is meant to happen will happen. Give nature the positive, nature will give back to you. Peace OUT

AlexXx ;)