Yesterday, One Direction’s new single Live While We’re Young which was scheduled to be released on the 24th of September was leaked and today it’s playing on radio stations worldwide. Fly FM itself has already played it about six times in three hours, which is great and this makes everything about today great. Perhaps I should also mention that I (or technically, my Twitter account) was mentioned on Fly FM this morning when they were reading their mentions from people who were requesting them to play LWWY again. My five seconds of national fame right there. This is something to be added to my resumé.
There’s this thing I’ve been pondering about for quite some time now, and always wanted to blog about it, and somehow the release of LWWY reminded me of it after I’d filed it away a few months ago. Wouldn’t it be strange when you grow up one day, and tell your kids that you used to listen to music of the 00’s (how do you even pronounce that)? I mean, would they still be considered oldies? Music from the 70s’ to 90s’ are considered oldies in the 21st century which is plausible because they do sound old, but does Nicki Minaj sound old? Will she ever sound old? And how will the music be in many years to come? Will there even be music? Perhaps they’ll just be weird and strange noises- oh wait, that’s dubstep. I don’t know, dubstep is what I think would be the music of the future. We’ve all stereotyped the future to be this pristine and entirely sharp universe and that’s what I think dubstep is all about. Being sharp, I mean, not pristine.
Weirdly, now that I’ve wrote all of that, I can see a future in which we tell our children that the likes of One Direction, Kanye West and Lady Gaga were our “oldies”. Perhaps they will think they sound old too. I mean, how do you define “oldies”? I think it suits better as a term that means “music we listened to while we were young many years ago” instead of actually possessing the essence of “oldness”. In a way, it’s pretty sad that our future oldies are mostly songs about partying, having sex, drinking and doing drugs…remember when The Beatles sang about wanting to hold your hand? Subtlety and chivalry has definitely deteriorated with the times, but everyone enjoys their own music, there’s no fault in that. We can’t stop the waves of modernism from washing up our shores.
“Mum, when did you first fall in love with Dad?” “Well, he had me at the first time he played All I Ask Of You by Skrillex on his iPad from across the bar counter.”
It’s certainly no John Cusack with a boombox playing Say Anything outside your room but perhaps this is 2012.
Today was MTV’s Video Music Awards 2012 and my babies bagged three Moonmen for Best New Artist, Best Pop Video and Most Share-Worthy Video.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to win a Moonman for you guys,” said Harry Styles during Hasbro’s twitcam yesterday, not knowing that they will be winning all the awards in the categories they were nominated in.
Look how far they’ve come! And they deserve every bit of what they have now. It’s their year, it’s their goddamned well-deserved year and I’m just so, so proud of them.
Okay that’s enough 1D feels for a blogpost, all my 1D feels are usually directed to my tweets but I’m overwhelmed with feels today so I hope you won’t mind this leakage.
Apart from that, I also got my car today. Yes, my car. MY CAR. I HAVE A CAR!
Introducing the Harry Mobile (credit to Thira for helping me to come up with that ingenious name)!
It’s no Mini Cooper, but it’s very well-conditioned and has a built-in CD player (I’m sorry, I’m just very happy this car comes with a built-in CD player) and is just wonderful and great and very nice and THANK YOU DADDY THANK YOU MUMMY!
Hands itching to get on the steering wheel, I gave the Harry Mobile a test drive around the neighbourhood:
And yes, that is me in a pair of pajama bottoms, I don’t wanna talk about it.
Okay you want more feels today? Recently, Soo May Jie Jie told me she had two media passes to go watch The Wanted live at Sunway Lagoon and I got so excited, thinking the show was on 14th of September, a Friday, hence I’d be able to attend the concert but it turns out it’s actually on the 17th, a Monday, and also so very coincidentally the day I will be sitting for my JPJ driving test.
Figure out the math by yourself. But don’t talk to me about it. Ever. Discussion about The Wanted’s concert is strictly forbidden within a mile radius of my presence.
OH DID I SAY I WAS DONE WITH ONE DIRECTION FEELS? BECAUSE I FORGOT ONE VERY IMPORTANT DETAIL:
THIS is a video recorded by my friend Mackenzie from yesterday’s Hasbro twitcam aka the video in which Harry Styles says hi to Michelle aka ME
And that’s all folks! Let’s get this trials thing over and done with in four days, shall we?
Many of you might know that just last night/this morning (I honestly still do not know which term is the more accurate one) I woke up at 3.30 AM just to watch the Olympics Closing Ceremony and let me tell you why I am and have been making such a huge fuss over this.
Number one, One Direction and Ed Sheeran was performing at the Olympics Closing Ceremony. That is a good enough bulletpoint for Reason #1 the end.
Number two, this is a totally and absolutely new thing for me. And I don’t mean that watching the Olympics Closing Ceremony is a new thing for me; getting up at three-thirty in the morning to do so alone is. I have never done anything like this before. I have never even stayed up past 3 AM before (except that one time I read The Hunger Games until 5 AM and then proceeded to cry when I found out what time it was which probably doesn’t count because after that I slept until noon). So this was all very new to me. Like a new adventure. Kind of like rebellion but not really because I wasn’t rebelling against my parents because they were okay with it but maybe rebellion against my dull, routine-centred life and it was all very exciting to me.
So the previous night, I went to sleep at 9 PM and that was a pretty restless night. I woke up twice, once at 1.40 AM and once at 2.20 AM, always checking my alarm to see what time it was. I even dreamed about watching the Olympics Closing Ceremony at Mei’s non-existent (yet) apartment. Is it obvious that I was excited no it totally isn’t is it
And then when my alarm rang I dashed out of the room so fast you would never catch me waking up so energetic on a school day (or any other normal day during which you wake me up at 3.30 AM, to be honest). I brushed my teeth, woke up Beneh and Laiyy and started livetweeting the Olympics Closing Ceremony.
In retrospect, I think my excitement was more 70% excitement due to rebellion and 30% excitement due to the Ceremony (aka I’m only watching for One Direction and Ed Sheeran).
Later on, I found out the Youtube live streaming was actually much slower than the live show so I went downstairs alone in the dark and watched the live broadcast on TV2 instead. I didn’t want to at first because I was scared but you should know the power One Direction has over my current life right now which is not a very healthy element of my existence.
And so I spent the next three hours watching the whole thing while livetweeting with Beneh, Laiyy, Wahed, Thira etc (albeit incomplete livetweeting because I HIT TWEET LIMIT HALFWAY THROUGH THE SHOW) and whatsapping with Mei and Sakina. Other highlights of the Ceremony included half of Oasis namely Liam Gallagher singing Wonderwall, a Spice Girls reunion and virtual appearances by John Lennon of The Beatles and Freddie Mercury of Queen.
By 6.30 AM, I decided to switch off the TV even though the Ceremony had yet to end because I had to prepare for school. And school today was just a whole day of gossiping with Beneh and Laiyy about the Closing Ceremony. How awesome.
So is this the turning point of my life where I actually get to lead a real teenage life now? I’ve been giddy with residues of excitement over both my staying up and the Ceremony for the whole day that I actually felt more energetic in school today than any other day during which I practice a normal sleep routine. It’s like a hangover but a nice hangover because I’m not actually throwing up or anything but memories of last night/this morning would always seem ethereal whenever I revisit them.
And yes, I’m just going to straight out admit that I only watched the Ceremony for the acts (two particular acts, to be frank) but I’ve never been interested in sports nor the Olympics so I’m not going to just jump on the hype bandwagon just because it’s Olympic season (except during the Lee Chong Wei vs Lin Dan match because it had something to do with Malaysia so it more or less also had something to do with me). Some people truly do watch the Ceremony to celebrate the ending of three weeks of sports unity, but sadly I’m not one of those people nor am I going to pretend to be one. I, however, am a fan of British performers and entertainers and I’ll do what I can to catch a glimpse of them, even if it requires me to wake up in the wee hours of the morning just to witness their two minutes of screentime.
I live by the motto that it doesn’t matter if it’s a good idea or not if it makes a good story. So one day I’ll be telling my kids about that time I woke up in the middle of the night just to watch the boyband I was hopelessly devoted to on my television.
Hello! I popped off the surface of the Earth again, I know. First off, I’d like to blame school life, for being so hectic, and also procrastination, my ever loyal friend, and who can forget laziness, who practically lives in my bones and feeds on my motivation.
Playing the blame game aside, let me just tell you a few things that have happened in my life, because really, what else is there to say here?
Two Fridays ago, I went to Penang for an orthodontic appointment. I’d hoped this would be the appointment in which I finally get to take off my braces since the orthodontist last told me that I should be able to get them off by June and it was already the second last day of June but no, I’m still a braceface and not only that, I have to resume wearing rubber bands on my brace hooks again.
After that, we went shopping at Queensbay Mall and this was what I got:
How to Louis Tomlinson
On the 2nd of July, I had my seventh grade violin exam and let’s be real, it’s not something I really want to talk about so just know that it was something which I was glad was over. I came out of the room feeling like a thousand years of burden had been lifted off my shoulders, and I thought, well, I sure as heck ain’t ever going near the violin again!
And then irony took a stroll through my life and one fine Thursday afternoon, I started to search for One Direction music sheets online…and soon I was printing all of their songs’ music sheets and I have not stopped practising all of them since then until now. Ironic isn’t it, that I found myself playing the violin more after exams than I did for the exams. I love playing the violin, I really do, despite all my whines and complaints and my sworn hatred towards it since last year. I only hated it – refused, even to pick it up and play it because ever since I started learning the violin since I was 11, the only things I played were exam pieces and scales for the exams. Over the years, I just got really fed up and decided I wasn’t going to go near it anymore. My life was already exam-oriented as it was, I didn’t need another exam to surround my life. It was like utilising a favoured item to break yourself apart, and I didn’t need anymore cracks on my glass walls.
The constant nagging thought of violin exam results aside, I recently did a cover of One Thing by (who else?) One Direction and here ya go if you’re not worried about scathing your own eardrums or something:
Just last night, I went to Pacific for stationery shopping and long story short, I found the One Direction Up All Night Live Tour DVD. That’s it, that’s all I’m going to say about it. That is it.
I sincerely apologise to anyone who really couldn’t care less about One Direction because it seems to be the only thing I can blog/tweet/talk about these days but before you start going on a hating spree, do know that they have made me very happy during these otherwise mundane and depressing months so…I don’t know. Maybe you care, maybe you don’t. I like platypuses.
Alright, well, remember that horrible, horrible headache I had which I described in my previous post? Well, it is good and gone! Now let me move on to something else nicer lest I jinx myself with further elaboration.
Today is the last day of the June holidays and coincidentally, it’s also my birthday! But before I continue on that, let me give you a recap of some of the interesting events that took place during the holidays.
Vern, Jia Ying, Jia Yuan, yours truly, Ying Hui and Jing Sheng. The rest went back earlier.
On Monday, 4th of June, we had a mini primary school gathering at TM Corner, and I say mini because only 10 out of 65 people turned up. Among the ten were Jia Yuan, Cheah En, Zhao Xian, Ying Hui, Vern, Jia Ying, Wei Xing, Jing Sheng, Hui Xiong and I. Despite that, it was still very nice as we caught up with each other over steamboat and teppanyaki. Later, everyone started to groan and gripe about being too full so someone suggested a jogging trip at Taman Jubli Perak the next morning and what was initially a joke turned serious and that’s what we did the next morning, although this time, the number of people that turned up was reduced by 50% and only five people turned up: Jia Yuan, Ying Hui, Zhao Xian, Cheah En and I.
On Wednesday, 6th of June, me and 30+ members of MYF including Jia Yuan and her younger sisters hiked the Penang Hill. We set off for Penang in a bus at 7am and reached the park where we would begin hiking at around 11am. It had begun to rain by the time we reached the park so everyone whipped out their raincoats and umbrellas but I only had a cap in hand so that was my only protection (from the rain, not anything else omg) for the hike.
The hike started pleasantly, although admittedly (and this is an embarrassing admission) I had a hard time keeping up with Jia Yuan and the rest because they were fast, I was weak and under-exercised, and the road was bumpy and tricky, so solve that equation by yourself. So about half an hour later (I think), I had to ask Jia Yuan to stop for a while to rest (initially I’d asked her when we were stopping to rest and she gave me a look saying no one was going to stop to rest dun dun dun) because I was starting to feel dizzy and inhaling was starting to feel painful. I looked around me and everyone was almost gone and we weren’t even close to the top of the hill and we were on a hill and that was when I started to have a panic attack. I sat down but vertigo still made my head spin and my hands and chest were starting to numb and it was the scariest moment of my life. I legitimately thought I was going to die right then and there. Like, my heart was going to stop and I’m going to die on a hill. I started blabbing subconsciously after that (Jia Yuan said she got worried because I was literally making no sense) and by this time, most of the other adults bringing up the rear stopped to access the situation.
Things weren’t improving even after quite some time and when I tried to stand up I collapsed almost immediately so the final plan was to…actually, I don’t quite know what the final plan was but it was settled that I wasn’t going to continue climbing up anymore. And then something happened. Uncle Joseph and Jia Yuan helped me to stand up really slowly, aided with his constant encouraging words and when I stood up on my two feet, the numbness actually vanished instantaneously. Just like that. I still don’t know what really happened, what caused the numbness to take over my nervous system and what chased it away, but I’m still too afraid to Google the symptoms yet so let’s just praise the lord that I was able to overcome that obstacle.
After that, we (by this time, “we” meant Uncle Ti Pheng, Uncle Joseph, Uncle Kenny, Angeline’s dad, Yi Hong, Jia Yuan -those wonderful, wonderful people who stayed behind to help me- and I) continued to climb up the hill at a really, really slow pace and I had to rest a couple of times because I was feeling pretty weak and then halfway through the hike I actually had a muscle cramp.
But despite all that, we managed to make it out of the hill! Woo yes celebration! But I cheated a little on the tar road by hitchhiking a stranger’s jeep all the way up the hill. Here, I want to take this chance to thank everyone who helped me during that tough time from the bottom of my heart. Honestly, I don’t think I would’ve ever made it out of the hill without the help from these people: Uncle Ti Pheng, Uncle Kenny, Uncle Joseph, Angeline’s dad, the pastor, Yi Hong and Jia Yuan. I’m sorry to have caused so much trouble and I cannot thank you enough for all the help you guys gave.
At the top of the hill, we cleaned up and then took the train down. Four hours of climbing up the hill, five minutes of descending it. The biggest irony of my life.
After reaching flat ground, we headed for Queensbay Mall, where we were given 2 and a half hours to shop and eat. Jia Yuan and I broke away from the group to shop for clothes and books. We each bought a shirt at Padini, and then had dinner at this lovely English-styled cafe called Winters Warmers (I think) and the food was brilliant, although that could just be our hunger. It was probably the loveliest meal I’ve had in months.
Soon, it was time to leave and I was dead beat with and the tendons in my legs were screaming but I managed to stay up throughout the whole trip back to Alor Setar, gossiping with Jia Yuan all the way. The moment I reached home, the first thing I did was check the Internet (did you honestly think I was going to say I went to sleep immediately? No, that is not the kind of life I lead, sadly) and then only went to sleep, completely conked out.
So that was how I spent my holidays. Seriously, those were the only productive days during which I actually got up to do something. Other than that, my universe was just the bed, my phone, my laptop and the TV.
Moving on to the birthday mood, this year, I decided to do nothing, which really isn’t such a huge decision, let’s be real. But my parents initially wanted to hold a celebration for me which I finally rejected because I just wasn’t up for it. I don’t know, I just think…birthdays aren’t such big deals you know? (Says the kid who cried when no one entertained her during her birthday last year oh whoops!) But yeah. I’m already happy enough that people take time out of their schedules to properly wish me a happy birthday, some even accompanied with lovely essays about my brilliance and awesomeness (which is actually non-existent, I assure you). So, thank you everyone for the wishes!
Did I mention that I got a pair of aviators for my birthday from my dad?
Are these Raybans? The answer is yes.
And no, I totally wasn’t trying to channel Harry Styles that idiot from One Direction, what are you on about.
See, Aifa, I told you this post would veer off into the direction of…One Direction.
Besides that, my parents also got me several books as early birthday presents: Insurgent by Veronica Roth, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Paper Towns by John Green, Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer and A Feast For Crows by none other than the brilliant George R.R. Martin of the A Song of Ice and Fire series.
Oh and before I leave, let me leave you with an incredible gem that came in my email inbox last week, which in itself is probably the greatest birthday present I’ve received this year.
michelle teoh 