Friday, July 29, 2011

All The Single Ladies at the Pizza School

Tonight is dinner at Pizza School! This small pizza restaurant opened up near Dongshin Church.



While I was waiting for my pizza, there was some Korean version of "So You Think You Can Dance" on the TV. I never realized how talented Beyonce and friends are until just now, watching a few Koreans attempt to pull off her dance from "All the Single Ladies".

This will forever by my favorite version of "All The Single Ladies".

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Pokémon and Market Day

At my English Hogwan, there is a "Market Day". Every day, the students collect stamps for performing well in class. During the year, there are different Market Days where the students can trade in these stamps for fake American currency. They can then use this currecy to buy small toys, pencils, erasers, and other trinkets.

Anticipating this, I decided to buy some Pokémon cards for them to purchase. I opened the pack (I'm going to sell the cards individually) and this is what I got,



Quite a collection. I'm pretty conflicted. I don't want to let a lot of these cards go. Especially the Charizard! I'm sure these kids will enjoy it more than a 24 year old English teacher would though.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

On Speaking, Writing, and Music or "I ought to write more"

I really do think that spoken word may be the most unhelpful form of expression in existence. Writing helps you build ideas with words like you build a house with bricks. You can also get away with saying things that would otherwise sound absurd spoken aloud. "Absurd" sounds absurd spoken aloud. At least to me. Music does less to help in the arhcitechtual construction of ideas but does wonders for elevating the soul. Music lets the soul take flight while the rest of you stays on the ground. I don't suppose it gives the soul wings; rather it works more like dumping the ballast out of a hot air balloon, letting the whole of it do what it was meant to do in the first place.

Spoken word is clumsy. Unless what is to be said is prepared ahead of time, which would likely invoke the aid of writing, the expressed thoughts are likely to be unhelpful to the receiver, less coherent, and altogether less believable due to the medium. People will believe just about anything if it's in the form of a song that lets their souls do what they're meant to, and they're more likely to understand when the idea is built and fortified in prose the way the Beaumaris Castle is built and fortified in stone.

As such I ought to write more.

And possibly sing more.

But for now I think I'll focus on the former.

So long as there are things to write about.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

At The Fry House or "About to Leave"

I'm sitting upstairs at the Fry house with Vanessa. We are going to leave within the hour. I'm not quite sure why I'm writing this, as she is probably the only one who'll see this--at least the only one who will see this anytime soon. There is of course the chance that I'll do something amazing here that people will come from all around to see and then they might read this post. If that is the case, I apologize for how uninspiring you will likely find this and the rest of the book to be.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Brainstorming for Composition Project or "Learning Banjo"

I'm in a good mood this evening.

I've been working on my composition project for Music Theory.

The rough draft is due on the 9th. This is more of a brainstorm. I don't even know if I'll keep the chord progressions. So here it is, "Brainstorming in B Minor".

Brainstorming in B Minor - Click here to view PDF of Sheet Music
Brainstorming in B Minor - Click here to listen to MIDI.

Please understand--I can't actually play this. I can barely play block chords with a melody on piano. The MIDI file is a computer generated rendition of the piece based on the sheet music.

I've spent my evening doing this, and it has been enjoyable.

Things are going well for me. I've done well on all my midterms. I think the lowest grade I've received so far has been a B. I've decided to try and teach myself banjo on the weekends that I visit Miranda. Her father owns one. I played it a lot last weekend. I love the sound, it just makes me feel happy.

That's all for now.
Be blessed.