丁噹.

The reason why I’m doing the second post in a day is because I’m bored – I did sneak out to attend a research seminar at City University just now. The research seminar was conducted by Dr. Chung, under whom I spent one semester doing a course in. I received my lowest grade in my 4 years of studies at NUS, but Dr. Chung remained one of my favourite lecturers. Since he’s in town to give a seminar there’s no way I’m going to miss that – just for old times’ sake. I think he must be quite surprised to see me just now. Had a quick chat with him after the seminar, and I think it’s really great to see him again.

Oh, something more important – I want to recommend this album:

Her name is 丁噹 (Ding Dang). The first time I heard her songs was during the Mayday concert in Taipei last Saturday. To be honest, before the concert I’ve heard her name, but I didn’t really give too much of a thought to this newcomer. Then during the concert my impression about her totally changed. She opened the concert for Mayday with 2 of her songs “離家出走” (no, it’s different from Janice’s version) and “可以不可以” and I must say that her voice had immediately captivated me. She had a wonderful voice and had absolutely no problem going across 2 octaves (the promotional materials said that she can easily move around 17 notes). I also admired how she conducted herself in front of the crowd at Taipei Arena – imagine opening a Mayday concert in front of 15,000 people who haven’t really heard of her name before – she appeared very calm even though at times she did come close to tears (probably because she’s too touched or something), her voice did not break at all. After the Mayday concert, I went to get her CD from one of the music shops in Taipei and to be honest while the album was brilliant, it did not do any justice to her abilities because I think she sounded so much better while singing live. Nonetheless, it was still probably the best spent NT$380 (or HK$95) during my Taipei trip. Just to make sure that I get to hear it everyday, I’ve promptly moved the entire album into my iPod.

To be honest, as far as I’m concerned, I have no problems with singers who don’t compose their own songs, as long as they have a great voice and sing well. It’s people who can’t sing and yet pretending they can that irk me. Worse still, some of these people have never seemed to improve after being in the market so long. The industry keeps on blaming people for killing the music industry because of illegal downloads, but have they really thought about the fact that they are churning out rubbish that insults the word “music”? I’m sure if a singer is good and have good songs, people will not hesitate to buy their albums.

Thursday.

The past few days in office have been boring. Apart from doing some revisions for my Security+ exam, a bit of playing around with MySQL and sneaking out to the Hong Kong Book Fair, I did practically nothing constructive in these couple of days. I’m not someone who can endure long periods of boredom, so I hope there will be a new job for me soon in which I can really do something. That said, I’m still not hearing anything from the companies that I’ve dumped my resume to.

My left elbow is swollen and it’s giving me a bit of pain, especially when I straighten my arm or rest my elbow on the table. I don’t know where it came from, and I don’t think it’s particular comfortable. Hopefully it will go away soon.

Contemplating sneaking out in the afternoon again. This shows how boring my job is now. Damn, I need to get out of this place otherwise I’m going to go mad soon. It’s like, when I look at my friends back in Singapore and see that they are all having decent jobs and I’m stuck in Hong Kong with this crap job, I wonder if I’ve made the correct decision in returning to Hong Kong. I know I’ll probably have to slug it out in Hong Kong for another 2 years because of my Masters, but whether I’ll still stay here after that is really something that I’ll have to give a serious thought.