Advanced Bass-ics

Saturday, June 27, 2009 at 1:58 PM | Posted by Juwen
Been playing pool fairly regularly the past few days and I think I am starting to regain a lot of the knowledge of cue ball positioning that I used to have last time. Unfortunately, thinking too much about placing I forget to actually put the target ball in and that just makes me very annoyed. The games could have ended faster but noooo, I had to pull off sub-standard shots but have good placing after that. Meh.

Anyway, the title sounds very oxymoronic but there's good reason for that. Lately, I somehow stumbled a few bass videos on Youtube and I am very drawn by it. This person does only Japanese songs and it's the songs from animes although this person has done a cover from a jazz fusion group as well. Below are some of the more listenable-to-the-general-public videos...

This is sort of heavy-ish J-pop, bordering J-rock. By the way, listen carefully and watch what's being played on the fretboad especially at 3:47 to the key change. Oh and don't blink.

This one is a cover of a Japanese jazz fusion group called T-Square. It's actually one of the very few heavy-ish piece by the jazz group. Same advice as before, listen carefully and you'll hear the same technique from the previous vid as stated above from 4:43 in this vid.

This is more like J-pop. Here, here (check out the slap/pop ending) and here are honourable mentions but be prepared for high pitched Japanese singing which makes it hard to listen through the whole thing but just listen to the bass. Did you manage to hear and see the 16 beat per bar lines? No way I can do stuff like that man...

Now after some Youtube comments and Google-sleuthing, there are some things that I found out about this awesome bassist who goes under the moniker of Tissue Hime (Princess). First of all, this person cosplays (for those ignorant about the Japanese anime culture, it's dressing up as your favourite charactor in your favourite anime/manga) which comes to no surprise given what this person has always been wearing in all of the bass videos. That outfit comes from the character Nagato Yuki from the manga and anime The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. That's fine but upon further reading, that bassist in the Nagato Yuki outfit is a guy...Yuo, you read right, a guy...

I pause here for you to rub your eyes and wait until the shock subsides and do your own research. For those who know a little bit more about the weird things Japanese do and are not surprised at that, you may proceed. Apparently there are more bassists who dress up like female anime characters but we shall not go down that deep dark alley but Tissue Hime is one of the more skilled and less obvious of the lot.

I don't know about you but it was pretty hard for me to tell whether it was a guy or a girl. At first I thought it was a girl and the first thing that came to mind is that "Cool!! A girl who plays a killer bass". Only after I started looking at the related videos did I glance on the comments saying that Tissue Hime is a guy. Or at least that was the general consensus. Half the time people on the comments were asking on whether the person was a guy or girl and answering back questions about gender. Majority of them say it is a guy and backed it up with some evidence (and a little rusty knowledge of Japanese) but there are still a tiny proportion that are pretty adamant about Tissue Hime being a girl. The other half of the comments were saying something like "OMG!! That is awesome!!" and people answering questions of gender saying "Who cares if Tissue Hime is a guy or girl?? Look at the bass skills man!!". All in all, the comments can be quite funny and personally I take the side of the "Who cares, that was awesome". Someone posted a comment somewhere which I think everyone should take it upon themselves instead of worrying what's Tissue Hime's gender.
If Tissue Hime is a girl, I'm in love with her.
If Tissue Hime is a guy, I'm jealous of him (his skills).

It's no surprise that that comment had a lot of thumbs up to that comment. But coming back to the point that I want to bring up, those fill-ins and bass melodies are something which I am only just barely beginning to do and after watching the covers s/he does makes me more inspired to learn some of the fill-ins and hopefully one day play like that. Of course there are my bass favourites like Victor Wooten or Marcus Miller (my personal like) but often they seem so distant when they play. Sure it is all cool with groove and such but it feels so out there. With Tissue Hime, s/he is like your slightly-not-so average person out there who just make bass videos. And so it makes you feel like that skill level is very much achievable. With me playing bass a whole lot more often in church, I try to incorporate some of these fill-ins and as a result I need to improve speed, dexterity, muscle memory and callous fingers (check). I can't stop listening to these vids because I really want to hear and burn it in my brain the crazy finger work and sound so I can transfer it to my bass sometime in the future.

On another note, it should be pretty obvious why the Tissue in Tissue Hime appears. It's the tissue boxes that appear in all the videos except one. Noticed that the number of tissue boxes are all different? The number of tissue boxes visible on the videos tells you how many videos has been made by Tissue Hime before the current one. So the first video had 2 boxes so there were 2 videos before that one. The first had none so that was the first ever video Tissue Hime posted and you can work out the rest. Pretty interesting gimmick I'd say and a nice personal touch too. I want to play like that...

Interlude:
Bible stories that seem pretty hilarious. Also like the Lolcat picture on the site.
This is actually quite thought provoking. We have humans are so rich with culture here on Earth but ever wonder how does that fit in when we all go to heaven. Revelation 5 says that there is a multitude of people all worshipping God and they come from every tribe and tongue. And presumably with it is every single cultural group with their own culture. Will culture just disappear when heaven comes?

Got back my prints from my film and I was pleasantly happy with it. Just need to refine my manual focusing on my 24mm lens as I tend to back-focus it a lot with that lens. Unless my lens IS back-focusing. For those who don't have the benefit of Facebook, which I just found out that there are people reading this not having Facebook, I'll post them here as well. Also a good time for me to test how Blogger handles pictures.


Fill in the blanks...



"Atheism is a non-prophet organization"

Auction Rooms

Auction Rooms

Auction Rooms

Auction Rooms

Auction Rooms

















Uphill



I sometimes get too excited that I forget to focus (pun intended)



Doctor Who's previous service provider...



OId Town Coffee in old style film. The camera read my mind


Ok, that was pretty tedious to do on Blogger...need to find a more efficient way. Currently, Xanga does better uploading multiple photos on blogs better than Blogger.

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Mixed bag

Monday, June 22, 2009 at 1:08 AM | Posted by Juwen
OCF this time round has been the emptiest I've seen ever since I came to Melbourne. Sure it is the exam times but it's never this empty. The other contributing factor was that the church camp started that day so apparently some of the OCFers (no doubt the pre-clinical med students) are over there. So empty that there were only 5 ppl from my Bible study group (out of a possible 17). Serious.

Anyway, we were looking through the book of Ruth in OCF just as a filler to July Camp, Mission Month and the second semester. The first thing that caught my attention was how Ruth and Orpah responded after their husbands (the sons of Naomi) died. Naomi decided to go back to Bethlehem after hearing word that there is aid there as compared to Moab where there is a famine, she persuaded Orpah and Ruth to go back to their mother's home. Initially they both wanted to follow Naomi but Naomi further reasoned with them otherwise. On a side note, the reasoning I thought was a bit odd. Naomi questioned them on whether they are still willing to wait for her to bear sons, watch them grow up until they are fit to marry them. That is if of course she is able to do so by finding a husband that day and (I think) give birth to sons that same day as well. Obviously impossible. Bottom line is that she questioned them on whether they would remain unmarried just to be with hopefully someone in Naomi's family line (-ish). Somehow that had an impact on Orpah and so she left for her mother's home but not so with Ruth. When Naomi further persuaded Ruth to go back, Ruth gave this almost-can-be-used-as-a-romantic-cheesy-line reply of not leaving her no matter what. She even when as far as claiming that Naomi's God will be her God and that is a pretty big claim for a non-Jew to say almost immediately. She even swears that God with "punish" her if she is separated by any other means than death. *gasp*

Now normally, like anyone knowing how to read the Bible, you'd look for clues in the previous passage etc etc but this is the beginning of a book with little reference about Ruth's past (as far as I know). So we are just left with this. I wonder, what made Ruth say such a thing like that? Even to say that God will be the God of this Moabite woman? It is quite hard to fathom such an event and I wonder what went through her mind when all of this happened. Of course, the textbook answer is that it is all God's plan, work of the Spirit etc etc. Still, it's almost unthinkable for such a reply to come up ever so suddenly from a person whose people worship other gods. The amazing thing is that she was "grafted" into the Jewish family line, becoming the great-grandmother of King David and of course Jesus Christ, inspite of her not belonging to the Jews in the first place. And as we will later see in the book of Ruth, it's another OT textbook example of grace.

A few interesting articles:
Weird attempts at cashing in successful products
Weird sources of fuel for cars
Weird that Burmese people don't go "Huh. That was a funny coincidence"

I don't know if you've seen clips or news feeds on Obama killing a fly during an interview, but when I was on the main page of Youtube and I saw the title "Obama Kills Fly: Ninja Remix", you have got to click it.

Lol. Apparently quite a number of people were asking PETA on their comment regarding the fly-killing. Good thing PETA didn't make noise...or they suffer same fate as fry =P

It's been a long time since I've played pool and today we spent two hours playing pool in a place just literally at the back of my apartments. That place has pretty good tables since they are pretty new, they keep virtually everything in check and they maintain they pool balls well by polishing them after use. Not bad, explains the $16 per hour price tag. The only thing I'd have to pick on is that the place is Asian town. Of the 20++ tables used there, there were only two non-Asians playing. Coupled with the Korean/Taiwanese pop songs blasting over the speakers. They had posters of rather famous people in the pool sporting arena all over the wall. The funny thing is that there were only 3-5 people. The most common was Jeanette Lee (one of the top 5 women pool players in the world) and she has the most aggressive look whenever she plays (seen a couple of matches). And there were some unknowns like Miyuki Sakai and Yu Ram Cha which I should try and look for vids of them. Notice that they still fit well into the whole Asian town feel? That's good until you see a guy called Semih Sayginer, a Turkish carrom pool player as well as quite a renowned trick shot player. Quite random-ish.

Which reminds me, the other thing I think is cool apart from female bassists are female pool players. Not the ones who just started or play when everyone else is chipping in to play pool, the ones who have been playing rather seriously and can give you a run for your money. My first touch of pool was when I was 9 and my mum tried to teach me pool. But it wasn't until when I was about 15 that my maid at that time who taught me quite a fair bit about pool and I played with her when she has her off day. And she is pretty good. She even taught me how to play darts and once tried challenging me to a game of 501. We kinda forgot about that game but nonetheless it was still cool. Yes, it would be extra cool if I know someone who plays bass and plays good pool. And extra hot =D

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The bright side of life...

Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 1:15 AM | Posted by Juwen
The past few blog posts have been pretty negative, gloomy, armageddon-ish so I shall balance it up with some of the other fun things happening around. Not to say there isn't anything negative about the day but I choose not to spoil it for everyone. Here we go but before one more round of shameless advertising just to get everyone's heads that I'm not on Xanga anymore www.ju-wish.blogspot.com

No better way than to start up with some news.
GPS navigation system with Homer's voice. Sign me up please!

According to this article, the average tweets per person is one. ONE!!?? That means that currently there are 300+ people out there with Twitter accounts that haven't posted anything at all. And that is just me only. The Twittersphere is a lot more empty than one would normally think. That is sad. Which party is sad, us Twitterers or the non-Twitterers or the no-message-Twitterers, is an entirely different question.

A little encouragement for those undergoing exams now. Just be fortunate that you are not like the Chinese or Japanese around this time sitting for the entrance exams for unis. You all would die if you were in their shoes so count your blessings.

Yay, more incentive to eat KFC because it is a teeny-tiny-microscopically-slightly healthier for consumption after they announced that they are changing to healthier oils for frying. Thank goodness! Every time I order a box meal with OR chicken or Wicked Wings, I feel like I need to eat the same weight in oats to get rid of the oil/cholesterol I just consumed. So with the new oils, I'll need to eat a teeny-tiny-microscopically-slightly less oats. Yay!

Job discrimination in Australia still? Maybe that is something I can say to my mum if I decide to go back home. Sneaky-nya...

Thanks to a recent comment on Facebook, my eyes have been opened to the world of international Disney songs. Songs that have been translated in dozens of foreign languages for the benefit of those who do not understand English. This one caught my ear, from the movie Hercules, the song I Won't Say I'm In Love from the character of Meg. I was surprised that the singers involved in the other translations are not bad, some pretty awesome and in most cases the backing vocals are also pretty good. This is a song reminiscent of the older Disney movie/musical with a hint of gospel that I can listen to for awhile. In case you don't remember, here is the song in the original English

Followed by the numerous translations attempts in, no particular order of preference, (get ready for it...) Italian, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Hebrew, Catalan, Norwegian, French, Icelandic, Arabic, Portuguese, Turkish, Finnish, Czech, Russian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Greek, Danish (turn up the volume on this), Thai, Spanish (Latin), Spanish (European), German and Hungarian. But yes, I am amazed at how different languages can still convey the same message (roughly) to the same melody of a song from a language foreign to theirs. There are some video sync problems with some of the links but still fine. And yes, I did watch all of the links above but I did enjoy most of them.

Speaking of which, I think we should do a Disney cartoon/musical marathon. I've forgotten how much fun those movies were with their songs. And I think after being recommended so many songs/musicals, I'm starting to develop a soft spot for them. My current fave is still Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Oh no! I'm turning into Khai without the ability to grow facial hair!! =P

And then after that we should watch Disney cartoons with the local language of the setting eg. The Little Mermaid in Danish, Aladdin in Arabic etc. I think that would be cool. Now there's an idea, I wonder when will Disney make something that has a Japanese setting to it or Japanese legend/folklore/mythology. That way, it would be beneficial to my Japanese plus catchy charming Disney movie feel.

I feel like Sound of Music...

I foresee some people are going to poke me back about how I remembered the lyrics, scenes and (apparently) pitch of the songs in The Little Mermaid. In my defence, I have a sister. Enough said. To "prove" my point, there is a certain group of 4 girls who sings all the parts of this song

Not to mention others like Be Our Guest...insane. So my sister watched Little Mermaid as many times as those 4 girls to get the whole song down.

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Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 1:56 AM | Posted by Juwen
First things first, a little shameless advertising. I just realized that my blog posts are going straight to Facebook so for those reading this on Facebook, this blog address is www.ju-wish.blogspot.com. It's not much but hopefully there's more stuff to fill the blog with, since I've moved from Xanga.

I've gone from bad to worse now that I have a much higher chance of going home. It's not that I don't want to go home, that's besides the point. I'm nervous about going back because there are little jobs that I can secure and that makes me very fidgetty. After having long talks with my mum, it seems that studying here is 1)slim 2)detrimental to finances. Although we have established that studying will kill 3 birds with one stone, it is a very big stone to throw and it seems that we might not be able to throw that stone. Mum wants me to go into overdrive in applying for jobs here in Australia but without a residency it is close to impossible to get one and that's my ticket to staying here. Been looking at other studying and working options elsewhere but things aren't looking so good. This period of time has definitely been the hardest I've been through. It's sort of like a major personal recession much like the current financial recession, equally as grim. The other thing about this "recession" is that if I really want to stay/work here, I'm going to have to sacrifice a lot of things. Friends, church/OCF, personal opportunities, self-esteem etc. and after evaluating what that amounts to, it is very daunting. So much so that it's too much for me to give it that all up. Which makes me more adamant on studying but at the same time I know demanding this is very selfish of me. I'm stuck...God help me...

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Mum's the word...

Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 3:59 AM | Posted by Juwen
It's been awhile since my mum set foot in Melbourne and I would have to say I am not liking it to some extent. Every now and then, I get a lecture on what needs to be done in particular how to stay here. I think she has made it crystal clear that I am not to go back in any circumstance unless I have no option which feels quite forceful. I don't know if this is all in my head but I think she is psyching me out of going back home with political instability (fair enough), random bashings of people she know etc. She really wants me to get a PR, even more than I do! And with that comes every fighting chance of me getting one no matter how slim it is as long as it doesn't involve anything higher than the cost of the PR application. It just feels very strange.

Well anyway, regardless of what goes on now, one thing is for sure that the next month or two is going to be the most uncertain months ever. I'm think it's safe to say that I would like to drop my course, simply because on hindsight, there are waaay too many stumbles just trying to take and do this course. Now the big question is am I able to start another course, one that would gear me towards working in companies rather than in uni as I previously had in mind? Or rather, are my parents able to let me start? Difficult question to answer. Bear in mind that despite me giving up on the academic life, I still want to go into it later down the line. Just that now is probably not the time. In the end, it is in God's hands and whatever action that will happen it is because that is the path that is best for me. Pray that I will understand this far better than just saying it.

Going to have dinner with my relatives tomorrow night since my mum is here. I was just arranging stuff with my sister on what time should we leave etc. and she mentioned that it is time to put on the social face. Quite interesting, because I would be putting on the meeting-my-benefactors face aka. facing-judgment face aaka. family-progress-report face. Almost every time, I sort of dread it when I'm going to have dinner with my relatives because I don't like the settings. Your head goes through what are the possible questions they are going to ask you and figure out prepared answers for those and the usual nonsense and by the end of the day you feel so drained thinking so much. Really not worth it man.

Most people love it when their mothers/parents come over to visit because they don't have to cook. Their mums will cook their favourite dishes and everything will be just peachy. I, on the other hand, do not have this priviledge. We'd almost always go out to eat. It's good once in awhile but when it becomes an everyday thing, you really become quite sick of it. Especially when you know that home cooked meals are always the best. Even more to my disadvantage, my mother is the lesser cook of the two. How great would it be for your mum being a stellar cook that will just transport you home because of what she cooks. Her taste buds are OK but her food opinions are often swayed by other people, much like her opinions about anything. When it comes to food, I often look up to my dad. Until now, his fried rice kicks the behind of any other fried rice (Jon Lai's one came close though). Not to mention, his salted veg soup, soya sauce pork and other Nyonya dishes. His palate is excellent and can almost pass for a proper food critic. But, he is the person to go to for Chinese food and not food in general. He doesn't like Western style cooking nor pastries nor desserts. He will still eat them but rarely anything impresses him. Being a person who loves food, my parents aren't good role models for me. In fact, most of the techniques of cooking/baking I have I learnt from scratch. But I digress. I'm just saying that I would like to be that person who would rejoice in home cooked food from my parents when they visit. Eating out all the time is a chore.

On a different note, my sister is going back to Malaysia for 2 weeks. That means I will have the whole house to myself for 2 whole weeks!! That means a party with alcohol, booze, wine, champagne, moonshine and shandy!! But seriously, thinking about it, I had an idea somewhat threading along those lines. I was thinking that I'd invite a few people (no more than 6) and I'd cook either a 2 course lunch or a 3 course dinner. The catch is that I would do this every day for a week (except Sunday). It is an interesting concept but a challenging one at that. Will need a lot of planning especially that I aspire to make my own stocks for the lunches/dinners. *rub chin* Very interesting. Needs more thought...

Writing these things at nearly 5 in the morning messes up what you want to say, so forgive me if it doesn't seem like there is a point to all of this. I do, just that it got lost between the overly salty instant noodles and the mildly stale bread I had for supper.

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Of strange dreams and flippy things...

Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 4:13 PM | Posted by Juwen
So far so good in Blogger. Less cluttered and easier to manage unlike Xanga. Especially that they have changed their layout sometime ago. As you all can see, a pretty nifty background behind means a little more freedom in what styles I want and once I've reversed engineered HTML and other people's design ideas, who knows that I'll do. I should try posting pictures up soon just to seen how it handles photos but I'd doubt it will give me any trouble. My only gripe is that there is no shortcut to underline text in Blogger and you'd have to do this manually in HTML. Not that big of a deal but it is a hassle and it is a good thing that I don't use it that often. Second gripe is emoticons. There is no default emoticons to use but it might revive my love for ASCII emoticons as is should be =D Unless other people convince me to go to Wordpress, this should suffice for another several years or so.

Lately I've been having a string of strange and utterly bizarre dreams. After Twittering about it, seems that other people have fairly interesting dreams as well. Most of the dreams mentioned are as a direct result of watching TV. The second last dream that I remembered was influenced by MasterChef but that night was a 2-for-1 deal where I got a strange dream regarding someone. Last night was no exception in the weird dream arena but this time there are no TV references. Stranger still, is that nearly the entire conversation was in Japanese, most of which I didn't fully understand except the several sentences of Japanese I spoke in the dream. Even stranger is that those sentences made someone cry with joy. That's when I woke up and feely very puzzled, like the "Huh??" look. Of course there are more details in the dream that depicted here which provides a better context but it is a bit much to say here. I say this because I'm pretty sure people reading this will take it the wrong way, so whatever it is you are thinking (and I'm pretty sure who might do such things...yes, you!), don't.

Freezing cold Melbourne...

This has got to be the most hillarious, over-the-top hack of a flip clock

Oh and by the way, I'm getting a flip clock as a result of that. A pretty overpriced flip clock but for the sake of being steampunk-ed and shear coolness I'm still getiing it. Who knows, I might try and modify that sucker. And she rocks. Looks a bit like Kari on Mythbusters.

I want his T-shirts. He's also on Threadless which makes it even better

On a more serious note, came across an article regarding curse words in the Bible. Never seen such a comparison made but interesting nonetheless. I'm not of the opinion that cursing is justified because the Bible "does" it so this guy claims, just an interesting article that needs more thought beyond that electronic page.

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A New Hope...wait, that's not right...

Monday, June 8, 2009 at 6:57 PM | Posted by Juwen
Okie dokes. I've decided to move my blog to Blogger just because I think it is about time for me to move blogs. So just for continuity sake, or at least the illusion of continuity, here's the previous post from Xanga...

--------
Alrighties. Mother came in Saturday morning where I was still sleeping because I couldn't sleep that night. Only managed to sleep about 8 in the morning and I really had like no energy to get up to clean the church. But the sleep didn't last long and I was in a semi-zombified state. After my mother came back from lunch with my sister, she immediately talked to me about what my situation is. At first I had the impression of a question and answer session but it quickly took a right turn into lecture mode. Then, whenever she askes a question and I was about to answer, she went on because it was a rhetorical question. Some questions that I thought were rhetorical were not and was waiting for an answer for awhile. Given my zombified mind, I'm not sure that I'm not reading the context of the questions properly or that really she is a champion in turning questions into rhetoric ones and vice versa. But her words were very divisive on my current situation. It's sort of like the words of Jesus except with far less consequences on your soul. She made it clear that there is no middle ground for something like this and I'm forced to choose one or the other. Given the time frame I'm in and on speculative hindsight analysis, I am quite incline to choose the other. She also sort of made it clear that she doesn't want me back home if everything fails which was strange. So, as it went for long lengths of time, I give a sub-10 word answer followed by a half an hour lecture from my mother. 2 hours went by before she had to go and meet her friend and stay over at her place. There was this battle inside of me of what to do next and it was so fierce that it appeared to feel like time had slowed down to a snail's pace. And then, something happened...

I somehow decided to check up on some of the other faculties in the uni to see if I have an out option which I doubted there was. But lo and behold, there was a night session on masters courses and they are accepting applications on that night as well and it's something that would give me another chance at a PR. How do you interpret such events given a history like mine and current circumstances? Do you see that as opportunity or is it all wishful thinking? Some people might even go as far as saying "That is a sign for you to get out" but I've always been skeptical about such comments due to the abusive nature of such words and first hand application in my family. Having said that, it has been percolating in my head for awhile and I'm inclined to accept such a comment. So what do you think? Carpe Diem or Persevere?

On a different note, I nearly fell off my bed after I just found out that, not only has a friend of mine gotten married but also just gave birth. She has never said much about her life and this was like a bomb. That was 5 seconds of initial shock I'll never see again. 2009 really is a year of marriage/married related events. Also I just got a lovely wedding invitation card from Sean to his wedding and I would L.O.V.E to go but it is in Singapore and it's in September =( Why Sean, why?? How can you do this to me? =P

Here's something to think about: according to a survey, half of all friends are replaced every 7 years. 7 years! One might think it's a long time but given how things are moving at warp speed, it's like a heartbeat. Which after a while of thinking, is sort of about right. We grow up forming our first fond memories in sandbox in the play ground right up to about after kindergarten. That's seven years gone. Going into primary school, we might see quite a large number of our kindergarten friends back in the same school or even class but we formed new ones in the process. Fast forward to the beginnings of high school, another 6-7 years gone and we might see the old primary school friends back in the same school but we formed new ones as well and losing others. And the process repeats with college/uni and then work place and so on. There are other factors involved but that's pretty much the main idea. Friends really come and go in a blink of an eye and for some, that's all it takes to influence someone's life. For us Christians, it gives us a rough idea on how long we might spend our time with each other before they disappear from our friend network, on how to preach and teach the gospel to others. Interesting.

Eye opening on food sizes

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at 6:57 PM | Posted by Juwen
Testing...

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