Can't be hateful, gotta be grateful

I already know I won't have the time or energy after Thanksgiving to be able to blog, so I thought I might as well share my thanks and reflect on this past year now. (My thanks extend to Ark Music Factory for another ridiculous music video just in time for the holidays.)

Ark Music Factory's "Thanksgiving Song"

First off, I'm still changing as I grow older, but I think I went through a very rapid transformation this past year since last year's Thanksgiving, and there are a handful of people and events to which I am extremely grateful for. I'd probably still be a lost sheep by now if it wasn't for everything that has happened thus far.

I hope this doesn't come off as dark as I think it will be, but I'm thankful for my very last break up with my then-boyfriend about 18 months ago. It wasn't a healthy relationship at all and because I wasn't the one who would break off, getting kicked out of the relationship pushed me to look at myself honestly in the mirror to accept that I need to be happy and strong on my own before seeking companionship. I remember it being a bit of a painful process, too, as the break-up was about a week before my Confirmation.

Around this time one year ago I joined a new youth group and we started praying through Thao Luyện Nhẹ Nhàng, or "Lightworks". Most people in the group were my age but we all came from different schools and I didn't know anyone very well, but as the program was progressing I gradually loved everyone and was able to relate to them on a spiritual level. We were all kind of lost sheep to varying degrees, and being able to pray for each other helped me to understand a lot more what it meant to be Christian. Lightworks finished after 14 weeks and by then I knew a little more solidly 1) What God's love was all about from Anno Domini, and 2) How to live.

These days I wonder what the kind of person I'd end up being in some parallel universe where I didn't have married, loving parents and God in my life. I think I'd have this never-ending craving to fit in with popular people in school and many of my friends would probably be the people I can't deal with in school right now. Or, surprise surprise, what if I was an incredibly good-looking boy that all the girls wanted me?!

Kurosawa (left) and Nakanishi (right) from Sukitte Ii Na Yo

Hypotheses never end for me no matter how grateful I am about my life...
Whatever I dream up, though, it never compares to the life I live today, because I'm sure I'm on the right path to being the kind of person I want to be.
I want to be the kind of friend who helps to make her own friends better people;
the kind of daughter whose mom can happily trust completely and support endlessly,
the kind of musician who performs with honesty and inspiring musicality,
the kind of teacher who has more to teach about the future and reality than her own actual subject,
the kind of girlfriend who can light a fire in her boyfriend's heart and inspire him to share a love with her beyond romance,
and the kind of blogger who can limit the sappy, poetic endings to only the most special blog posts.
(I try not to do this, sorry.)

Happy Thanksgiving, God bless.

Fostering a viola

Until May I am "borrowing" my cousin's viola. I really don't want to return it because the tone of the viola is darker and so much more rich and I love that sound!
I will be using this lovely viola for my IB HL Music recital in March and maybe I'll play in my school's orchestra with it if I can catch up on reading alto clef! Though I am more competent in violin, I feel the challenge of playing viola in orchestra will be tons more exciting than Carmen Fantasy on violin. I'm so excited right now!

I am naming him (viola) Pablo as in Pablo de Sarasate. It was the first name I thought of and I did want to change my mind to name him Karol for either Former Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła) or Karol Szymanowski but then I'd have a hard time deciding which reference to tell people, so I stuck to Pablo. I love Sarasate's music, anyway, so there's no regrets!

After about thirty minutes practicing Vocalise on viola without a shoulder rest really hurts, though, so I can't play as much as I want until I buy one. Going back to violin even after just thirty minutes on viola feels like this, though:

Things I never learn

I've been really happy with what the Missha Signature Real Complete BB Cream has done for my face these past six days I've been using it! I feel fresh and confident when I walk out the door no matter how many pimples I have! (And that is a problem as well....................................)

Make up has liberated me from caring about my diet and because Dad bought Cheesecake Factory Cheesecake that Saturday that Mom bought me the BB Cream, and also because my violin student gave me an entire chocolate log cake the day after, I haven't found any reason to take care of myself! Mixed with the fact that the more I eat, the less water I drink, my skin has been paying the price, and I am dependent on BB cream each day these past six days. (Cheesecake is my kryptonite... it makes me forget the most important lessons on health and beauty.)

In order to combat this, I have now limited myself to one slice of either cake and only one Keebler cookie (ACK My grandmom gave me Sandies the Sunday I received my student's chocolate log cake! Shortbread cookies also make me weak ///crying///) per day. I must also drink at the very least three 48 fl. oz. of water and two cups of green tea on those days I decide to indulge. It's still not healthy to have a slice of cake every day but so long that it's here, I want to surrender to its goodness.

My face, digestive system and my bowels are not having it lately. I'm worried about Thanksgiving and Christmas season coming soon! :( ...American and Vietnamese food combined, and loads of it at that!

This is Annie, crying signing off.

End of the quarter and saturday morning shopping

Well, guys, I made it a fourth of the way through my last year of high school. It went by really quickly and I feel absolutely great about myself and my GPA. (I haven't felt this way at all throughout junior year, so this is a nice change.)
Already in two months I've had some major changes in post-secondary education plans but I feel I'm going to stick to these changes. No, I'm not going to audition to enter any music minor programs because with all the classes I will have to take in my first two years of college in order to transition to Pharmacy School, I won't have time. I can always study with a private teacher alongside studying on my own terms, too, so it's all fine. My friends certainly were expecting me to audition into Music School, but it's not the life for me right now. I do want to enroll in Music School ten years down the road, though. We'll see!

Yesterday was our last day to see the orchestra sub--the handsome one--and strangely it wasn't a bittersweet farewell at all. There were times when he hated working with us and we hated working with him, but we laughed it off yesterday and put it aside to talk about Drake and Degrassi.

<insidejoke>We just want to make music.</insidejoke>

He wrote me a simple and sweet letter of recommendation for the school's Music Honors Society and now we're all Facebook friends, so there's really no bad side to his leave. :)

This morning after Mass my mom took me out to "Asiandale" to shop for BB CREAMS, of all things. I've known about them for a while and have coveted one for so long, but never brought them up because I thought my mom would think I'm materialistic. She found out from friends at work when she brought up her concern for my skin problems and looked up Missha BB Creams on her free time - I'm so touched that she cares about my skin more than I do sometimes! :')
Getting there was no problem. Getting out was, though, because we're women. Walking into a cosmetics store alone is enough to cast this spell of "Let me just sample everything and never return home", plus, the packaging for each product makes you think they're jewels!

Basically, what we ended up bringing home was this:

It looks like a month's worth of free samples.

And what my mom planned to get was this:

Right: Missha Signature Real Complete BB Cream

I'm wearing the BB Cream sampled in the store right now, and for its fourth hour, it still looks flawless. I'll post some photos and do a review on it sooon.

Four-day weekend in the school county means I get to do nothing and hang out with friends care-free. Happy four-day weekend!

I just want to play music

There are times when I feel like Calculus homework helps me practice violin better.

There are also times when I feel like I was meant to play in orchestras for the rest of my life. As a violinist my parents kind of expected that should I excel, it'd be in the solo performing route. And I like playing concertos and sonatas but I usually prefer a LOT of sound, so I turn to large orchestras.
That's my home field, a large orchestra. So, it really bugs me that now that I am an adult, I'm expected to be as competent as a music major to be able to participate in symphony orchestras. I'm slower than most and I try every day, but as time passes from this point, I will soon be incredibly below the standard expectation to join any professional music group. This is my self-loathing part of me speaking, of course, and it's because I have just watched this:

The school looks as hard to get into as Juilliard except it humbles itself so it doesn't have the pressure of the name "Juilliard" slapped on it.

The professors there are a plus, too, take it as you will:

Dimitri Murrath

In all seriousness, though, I really miss the experience of just playing symphonies and orchestral suites. My school orchestra played Brahms Symphony no. 3 two years ago, and I didn't appreciate it then as much as I do today.

And at districts last year I got the chance to play Bartok's Dances of Transylvania and Grieg's Holberg Suite among other beautiful pieces.

I. Prelude and II. Sarabande

III. Gavotte and IV. Air

V. Rigaudon 

I missed regional auditions this year, but I will NOT miss districts! I just want to play beautiful music with equally dedicated people. :(
I guess that is my dream - "A dream that DOESN'T MAKE MONEY."

Brb crying on the inside.

"I am suddenly alive..."

The shock of winter,
The coming on of spring...
Suspended summer nights,
The evening flights that
only fall can bring...

I am suddenly alive,
I would sail across the world for just the color of your eyes.
You appear, appear to me.

--"Octet" from The Light in the Piazza

The past couple weeks have been a blast! My school orchestra had our first concert with our substitute and it turned out to sound really wonderful. I've also noticed that with the music he selected for us, I had to be pushed to think while I'm playing to play it well, and I don't know if it's because he's commanded us a couple times that I finally got to understand how important that was, or if I had grown wiser as a musician and decided to do it on my own too. Anyway, preparation for the first concert and the actual performance turned out to help me grow a lot, and I'm so grateful.
 I wrote a review about it on the orchestra blog.

This week I also have my recital list finalized so I don't have to worry about picking out a new song to practice and to perfect in a limited amount of time because A) I have been working on some beautiful pieces yet never had the chance to perform them, so the recital's perfect for them, and B) I'd much rather spend so much time perfecting the sound of the pieces I already know the notes by heart. I feel like since my recital's in March and also because I am a lazy person when it comes to practicing (Hahaha....), I can get a lot more valuable work done perfecting musicality in four months rather than technicality in a new piece and then having little time to touch on musicality.

So far, the program is:

1. People of the Far North - Nobuo/Hamauzu
2. Attack on Bevelle - Hamauzu
3. Besaid Island - Hamauzu
4. The Swan - Saint Saens
5. Pavane for the Dead Princess - Ravel
6. Vocalise - Rachmaninoff
7. Concerto in B minor op. 35 - Rieding

And it'd last to about 33 minutes at minimum which rocks. I really only need 20 minutes to send to IB, but going over makes me feel great.

I also found out today that my math grade jumped up two letter grades on my report card thanks to a massive test, THANK YOU CALCULUS.

Things are looking well. Annie out!

Practicing

When I was still formally learning piano my mom (my teacher) would always tell me that "practice makes perfect". I carried this on with me as I took on the violin and consequently dropped piano, though over the years it's become second nature that I didn't even hear the phrase anymore. I picked up the piano again two years ago as a method to channel my emotions after a break-up.

I always went to the practice rooms every chance I could during that period and that was when my then ex-boyfriend noticed and helped me practice piano better. Over the years, I had either forgotten or never learned how to practice well, because when "practice makes perfect" suggests that the focus is perfection, I had only thought of the end result. And the end result should indeed be perfect, but what I didn't catch years ago is that the journey to perfection is just as important. Perfection and how to get there are equal, so we have to know how to practice before even getting to sounding right.

It's easy enough for people who have had private instructors to understand. Looking back my mom emphasized slowing down to be able to catch mistakes often. I just never really thought about it and why it works. And it always bothered me to slow down, because I am young and energetic and I like things to be fast-paced. It wasn't until two years ago when I decided to pick up very pointillistic, impressionist piano music that I practiced slow deliberately and saw how effective it was (with the help of my ex-boyfriend, of course, who is in every way a much more accomplished musician than I am). I took it as I was investigating a martial arts fight while I slowed down the time. It's much easier to see precisely how the fighters move about as they move slower than in real time.

Now as a high school senior who finally understands this paradigm, I am more critical of other people's playing, but also more understanding. One of my friends (I'll call "T.") is a skilled pianist and violinist and is continuing to study music in college. I commemorate her, except she is lacking in proper violin skills for one reason only: she does not practice slow. T. has a common issue where in order to sound better, she speeds up her playing each time. She is a much more agile player than I am, but because she doesn't see the importance of slowing down, her playing has become sloppy. Another friend (I'll call "A.") just naturally speeds up as he plays because he has not been a disciplined counter through the years, so he has an even harder time practicing and getting better at home, I imagine, because he is constantly lost.

The problem, here, I believe, is that practicing slow was never enforced and reinforced in them as musicians, and they're not alone. Anyone who is studying music in grade schools is probably lost in understanding the importance of practicing properly. In class, the teachers only have time to enforce how to sound correct without explaining how to get there. It's a terrible loss for students who want to better themselves as performers but can't because they don't have the resources to grow. And this group of people, frankly, make up more than half of my high school orchestra.

Dear Mom, I should be a music education major.