hey people.

hold on.

i know at times we're really dumb. like when laoshi tried to help us 感覺 the song, 感覺 the kind of feelings someone is supposed to have when they see what happened to the poet, when we, being the ones playing the song should have felt the kind of fury months ago when we started playing the song.

i know what is it like when you put so much of yourself into something, then in the process when you look back, you ask yourself, what was the purpose of this whole thing? then you want to back out.

i know what is it like when you have to run marathon. and i know all of you out there know what is it like when you have to run 2.4km during napfa. you are running 2.4 and you're working so hard to beat your record, or at least, make it for the bronze award. but then somewhere at the 1.5km mark you CHOSE to tell yourself, i havent enough energy left and then you slow down your speed and perhaps even start to walk the rest of the distance.

but do you know what is it like when you finally complete the thing. the kind of feeling you get when you say, "I don't regret me turning back. I don't regret me forgetting the whole idea about giving up halfway."

do you know what is it like when you complete your 2.4km and you put in your best. you didn't walk. you didnt tell yourself even ONCE that its okay to get just a silver, or even a bronze.

i think for now, many of us are losing our drive, because this is not just 2.4km. this is far more than that. it might be 4.8km of mental race we are running, 6.4km, or even 10km. then halfway, like from the above we ask ourselves, what are we doing? then you want to back out, or give up.

now that all of us are wanting to get gold with honours for syf. we are sacrificing time to study, we're sacrificing sleeping time. some of us even, might be blasting the syf songs into your eardrums on the way to school. i do all those things. and because at one time i was buried so much into doing those things that i wanted to give up.
i seriously wanted to say, hey. i don't want to come for practices anymore. i don't want to participate in syf anymore. i can leave more time for my math. then i can show my teacher that i improve and i dont have to sit beside the monitress every other math lesson.

because then, i didn't know why was i doing all those things for. what would a piece of cert saying gold with honours mean to you after 10 years, when you look back?

there are ensemble mates of ours out there asking themselves, why do i have to get so upset just because my SL is displeased with our playing? why should i let myself be affected just because laoshi wasn't satisfied and was ticked off during practices? why is it that i have to give up time to play just to practice a few more hours of guzheng?

yes. label it as the heck-care attitude. label those people who have these thoughts going on in their mind the blacksheep in the ensemble. yes, they heck-care because they do not know what they are supposed to care about now.

if you're having second thoughts about you putting in so much into the cca itself. then i tell you its for the ensemble mates. its not the piece of paper you're going for. its not the piece of paper with another two words 'with honours' you're after. you're after the satisfied look of your ensemble mates. you doing it for yourself because you love the cca. you do things for what/who you love.

dont see cca practice hours as grilling hours which leaves you with no more time to study after you reach home. see it as a process whereby you can spend more time with your ensemble mates. see it as a process whereby all of us, including laoshi are working towards a common goal.
don't see gold with honours as a competition or a title you all are fighting for. see it as the destination whereby you and your ensemble mates will be reaching SOON to be on cloud nine.

i was complaining to youth group leader at my church about my busy schedule for guzheng because of syf. then she said, "when did nanyang became so xiong about cca? but look on the bright side, at least you're doing something that you love."

then i realised that she was right. we are all doing something for the things that we love. for the people that we love. even as i type this, i feel on fire for cca.

to be frank, i wanted to post on the blog because i didn't want laoshi to leave us. i had this very bad feeling about posting on guzheng blog after i posted the plmgsswillbedefeated thing on the blog. it took alot of me to sum up this courage to type this out, out of fear that i'll make a wrong move again.

before i typed this, i seriously felt like crying and have started to cry because i really feel 心酸。but i don't know how to express which part is making me feeling 心酸. but i thought, maybe for now what we all need is this booster to boost us such that we feel on fire to get gold with honours and not a 'pusher' to push us unwillingly to the destination.

You know how a caterpillar blooms into a beautiful butterfly? It must have been really tough for it to wriggle out of its shelling. It did. and so will us.

we're now going through this tough process of wriggling out of the shell. and since the caterpillar did it, so will us.

so jiayou nygz. (: find a guzheng mate to lean on when you get tired of this wriggling out process. but we will, eventually, on April 25th.

i was just wondering, what on earth am i doing, typing away at the computer when its 12.15am in the morning. i'm telling you now, i'm doing it for something and someones i love. we're all doing it so that we can remember, all of us making out way towards one destination and us doing it in the end. we're not doing it for a piece of paper. (:


HOLD ON GUZHENG!
ITS ONLY 16 DAYS MORE!
YES, IT'S NOT MUCH TIME, BUT WE WILL MAKE IT OUT, JUST LIKE HOW THE CATERPILLAR DID.
WE'RE STRONG, DUDDETTES!
AND WE KNOW WE CAN DO IT!


and yes, hahas, my BIG name and thats, cherie. (((: