Jump In The Fire

Jumpstarting A Dead Heart

2009-10-18T02:06:00.003+08:00

My blog's semi-dead right now. So anyway, where to start, where to start?

Ah yes, Cambodia.

I went to Cambodia for an Overseas Community Project. It was fun and stressful. Fun because it's....... well a different country. Stressful because I was part of the journalist team and also partly because of GC. Not much to say though. All we did there was help students for three days and enjoy the rest of the country for the other 4 days. After the trip, I fell a bit sick which sucked so bad.

Hmmmm. Jyeah, GC's over. Now I'm left with programming and our journalism (documentary film) assignment to do. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!

Anyway, I'm hella bored right now, so I might as well get some damn sleep.

Why I Should Ride The Lightning

2009-07-27T00:02:00.003+08:00

My To-Do List for this week:
- Finish and submit FBIS Assignment 2
- Finish my WDS project
- Get a case for my Dean Metalman ML
- Raise at least 50 bucks
- Obtain all upgrades in Prototype
- Sleep an average of 7 hours a day
- Learn "Ashes of the Wake"
- Try not to fuck around during lectures
- Try not to spend unnecessary amounts of moolah
- Learn to skip count by 36,539

The light at the end of my tunnel is a freight train coming my way.

How To Look Like A Total Idiot

2009-07-24T00:19:00.004+08:00

Long Sleeves: $150
Pants: $150
Tie: $40
Belt: $50
Shoes: $99.99

Looking Like A Total Idiot: Priceless

Me on Wed. 22/07/2009

It's like prom all over again, having to wear formal clothes and all. Oh yeah, the attire is for our CARC case study presentation. Gaaaah, aside from feeling like it's prom all over again, I felt like I had a family to feed. Meh, I guess our CARC presentation was... "alright". With 39 slides completed under 16 minutes, yeah pretty much fine, on top of that our tutor asked us only 1 question which was sweeeeet. Haha, means that all's clear and well :] I'm glad that's done, finally got a significant burden off my back. Used to have 4 projects, now left with 3. The next 3 weeks will be a looooong stretch. With 3 more projects to do and 3 additional exams to prepare for, tsssssss, damn son.

Eh, enough of academic stories. My picking hand (right hand) is failing me right now. I can't do proper triplets in a 240 bpm (beats per minute) song. I guess that's the effect of sleep deprivation. Been deprived of proper sleep for uhh... 2 weeks now? All thanks to projects and a certain game calleeeeddd...

I'm not addicted...yet o__o

HOORAA-OHMYGOD! WHAT THE FUCK!?

2009-07-05T23:30:00.003+08:00

Our TP band just passed auditions! YES! Now waiting for peer evaluation schedule to be out.
But just as I was starting to celebrate, I caught a glance of this week's schedule and I was like:

Gaaaah, shit. Still got a lot of projects to do.

Drag Me To Hell

2009-06-28T01:53:00.004+08:00

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

This week was fucked uppppp, and yet I'm happy. I managed to change my bass strings this week. They're damn amazing.

D'Addario Nickel Wounds - godsend strings. They sound heavy for a light gauge. Give's a bright tone. Now I sound like Dave Ellefson or Rex Brown! Haha. It's a perfect match for my EQ setup. Allows me to punch through the electric guitar's distortion without ruining their sound.

Well, on to my hellish week. Barely slept this school week as I had to finish my projects in WDS and FBIS. Fundamentals in Business Information Systems is a bitch!

Sunday
- finished WDS subject

Monday
- rushed FBIS presentation, worked on it til 5am

Tuesday
- PRESENTATION GOT POSTPONED! SLEPT DAMN LATE FOR NOTHING!

Wednesday
- compiled FBIS final report, worked on it til 5am

Thursday
- submitted final report, barely did anything, finally got a bit of rest

Friday
- fucking early-ass workshop, had to drag my sleepy ass to TP

Saturday
- so happy to slack, kept procrastinating

Interesting right?
No.

Oh yeah, Friday. I planned to watch Transformers with my friends. We met up at Cathay at around 5-ish. Cathay looked like it was hosting an IT show. Hahaha, Goddamn. All cinemas for Transformers were fully booked until 12midnight! That's like an ultimate let-down to us. So we just slacked in Plaza Sing instead. Haaaaa, accomplished nothing. Sad.

Laterrrr. I'll wake up around 9 or 11 or whatever then I'll attempt to watch Transformers with my friends again. Hopefully there'll be seats this time. After that, I got band sessions at CQ. Hopefully, Syed will make it or else I'll be the one singing my ass off again which is something I don't really like doing. Then after that I will retouch our FBIS presentation. Yey, so damn interesting. Not.

Jehova Made This Whole Joint For You

2009-06-16T22:10:00.003+08:00

Didn't get to go to Ryden's house because we all played DotA til 5am, haha. And as a result, we were all tired and in dire need of sleep.

Today, I spent most of my waking moments thinking about my projects. No, I didn't do them, I just thought about them. After going in project-making frenzy yesterday, I felt a bit "tired" and decided to take a break today. Today was quite surprising because I didn't bother to pick up my guitar and play some shit. Haha, honestly, I think this is the only day in my term break that I seriously took a vacation from my life. 7-8 more weeks til the end of my term, and man oh man, everybody's rushing their projects. Haha, I fucking love college.

I've been listening to alot of New Radicals' songs lately. The mellow-ish atmosphere's helping me relax. Andddd their songs are a bit catchy, ang got great grooves too! I seriously recommend people to listen to them, especially if it's a slow day. Their songs - damn hypnotizing.

Before this post gets any more boring, I'd like to say... uhhh, bye(?) Haha.

- KimE

Web Design and Creativity

2009-06-16T01:31:00.002+08:00

Web Design is driving me on the edge. I don't know shit about Expression Web 2 yet that's why I'm so damn worried. So far, I've managed to do around 70% of the written shit about WDS. That was a significant burden I managed to take off. The next shit on my list is doing the Nav-diagram, concept templates and the references for my project. Still a long way to go, because I know template design's gonna be a bitch. Once all that's done, I'ma move on to FBIS.

FBIS, so far is a boring subject. But lately, I've managed to at least appreciate it. Its complexity and dynamics are couple of things I'm starting to like about it. I've heard people say that it's common sense. Well, that's a part of it, but the other part also involves deep understanding of the concepts at hand. Come on, you don't expect business men to go make decisions without considering various factors. Well, for my FBIS project....uhhh, it's honestly fucked right now - around 60% more to go. Shit, shit, I need to stop procrastinating and get my FBIS shit together. Damn!

Uhhh well. I've been playing around the fretboard lately, and I've discovered alot of good sounding note-combinations/positions. I've also been working on the my alternate picking, clocking in at 250bpm. Yeah, I'm trying to be Kerry King on bass. I've been conjuring Lamb of God-ish riffs for quite some time now. Yeah, fuck it. All the riffs I've managed to come up with either sound Slayer-ish or Lamb of God-ish with a hint of Frank Klepacki. If it's not that heavy, I come up with licks that sounds like it came from the Dave Matthews Band. Uhhh, extremes. I still have to work on my thrash metal riff composing abilities. Anyway, later I'm going over to Ryden's house to work on some original material. I hope we make at least one song after 8 hours.

Pushing The Envelope

2009-06-11T02:52:00.007+08:00

Haaaaah, shit. Finally done with editing and finalizing my programs. Damn, the obsessive-compulsive part of me got me good this time. I've been tinkering one program for three hours straight, my eyes and ass hurt right now. Haha, all's good though. I'm a bit happy - introverted moment right there.

Shiiiittt man.

Got four more projects/assignments to do. Wooooh. Good luck to me.
Web Design's gonna be a bitch.

The Second Coming

2009-06-08T23:52:00.003+08:00

Last Sunday, uhhhhh, was ok I guess. I woke up around 10-ish, took a bath, then went to church. Uhhh, I ate lunch at Cafe Cartel with my family. Then I went to Yamaha to scout for Orange bass amps. Yamaha got a sale going on right now that ends early July. It's a fucking Godsend. Now I have a reason to save cash. So yeah, I stayed at Yamaha for around two hours, give or take a few minutes, hanging around, chilling with fellow guitarists, and freeloading on some bass, haha. So after Yamaha, I went to some bookstore to read magazines for free, amazing. After that, I went to 7/11 to purchase candy and Coke Zero.

Everything was kind of plain up to that point. So yeah, after around five hours of plain-ness, I met up with Ryden, our drummer, and Kevin, our rhythms. Too bad Sam, lead, can't make it that day. Those guys are my second band. We went to a studio to jam a bit and also because there's a vocalist who wants to audition. So yeah, our band currently has no vocalist (except me) and is on a quest to find one. Uhh so, we played three songs - Symphony of Destruction, 18 and Life, and The Trooper. We kept repeating them over and over again until our session degraded to a talkshow segment similar to Oprah. So after that, we smoked outside a bit then ate at this chicken rice stall a few blocks from the studio we've been in. Then after that we watched this gig held in Plaza Singapura. The guys we first saw were good. They sounded damn good and they did a hard rock cover of Careless Whisper. GODDAMN, FUCKING HAWT. And they also did a damn good hard rock cover of You Spin Me Round by Dead or Alive, damn catchy. The following band was a screamo piece of shit band who kept trying to make 9 people mosh. They had like a crowd of 16 people, fucking pitiful. We left after the vocalist did a forced scream.

After that, we all smoked again, then parted ways. I went home, refreshed myself a bit then went on to play RA3: Uprising til 3:30AM. Gooooddddammmn.

Bass-ically

2009-06-06T01:10:00.008+08:00

My role as a bassist is to make the other guitarists look good. My bass lines mostly just mirror whatever the guitarists do. It's that damn easy. Or is it?

Normally, people think that bassists are not really that important to a band. I've had my fair share of "hey, I can do that too" or "your guitarist is doing that, how come you're copying it?" or even "you call that playing? that's too damn easy!" comments (varies with language - tagalog, english). I can grasp creative criticisms, but I don't get why people have to point out the obvious. Moving on. So yeah, being the bassist in the band is not the most flashy position in my opinion. Most of the time, people will be more enticed to listen to the parts the guitarists are playing and thus the bassist gets ignored. Well, that happens alot to me. It's not that my bass parts are inaudible, it's just that the sound I produce register at a low frequency making it a bit unnoticable.

Why the fuck did I choose bass anyway, given all these negative shit?

Well, mostly because I don't want to stand out. I don't like being "flashy", therefore I can't be a guitarist (guy playing 6-string electric guitar). It's not that I don't have the skills to play solos or complicated riffs so don't get the wrong idea. Trust me, I can play shit that you'll never expect a bassist to play *wink*.

My roles as a bassist are:

To provide solid sound foundation.
To emphasize chord progressions.
To "glue" together the sound of the drums and the guitars.

I like making the others sound good. Good in a sense that I provide the foundation for their sound by juxtaposing (copying-repeating-duplicating) the progression of chords and shit like that. The emphasis of chord progressions make the sound more solid and neat rather than fucked up and messy. I've actually tried to not play bass in a song (Peace Sells by Megadeth) during one of our band's practice session. It sounded like absolute shit. Think of it as eating ramen without the soup. The sound's still there, but it's not that solid without the bass backing up the guitarists. With regards to "glue-ing" together sounds, the bass keeps the guitars and drums in check by providing the basic chord progressions. As you can see, all three roles coincide with each other.

About bass parts being easy, well not all. There are some cases where you can just play an open E-string for the whole song. There are also some cases where you have to do fills and solos. Depending on the song, the mirroring part may be easy or hard. Let's say you're doing a song by AC/DC, chances are that you'll only be plucking three or four notes which make up the main progession of the song, now that's Goddamn easy. However, let's say you're doing a song by Lamb of God, chances are that you'll be mirroring some fast riffs, now that's quite challenging.

As a bassist, I've learned to keep my act clean and simple. Clean in a way that I don't mess up my parts or be a distraction ot my fellow band mates. Simple in a way that I reduce the chances of my pride getting blown up, with relation to showing off. After all, there's no point in chasing your own tail right?

I like being a bassist. I care about what people tend to say or how people tend to generalize the concept of being a bassist. With that in mind, I want to prove them all wrong. I want them to see that bassists are capable of amazing things, take a look at Victor Wooten for example. Now that's an amazing bassist right there. Bassists are underrated, underappreciated, and sometimes even taken for granted. Well, we bassists have an answer for that and it's a big fat middle finger with a big fat smile :]

Til next time,
Kim

Bass, Booze, Bullshit

2009-06-05T00:17:00.002+08:00

It's technically Friday now and I don't feel like sleeping yet so I'll write a few lines here and there to keep myself busy and hopefully make me fall asleep in the process.

Uhhhh, my plans for today are a bit vague. Well basically, my day's gonna be about bass, booze, and bullshit.
- About bass, because Friday is our band's jam day.
- About booze, because I'll be drinking later on.
- About bullshit, because I know something random and shitty will happen to me today.

Term break doesn't feel like a vacation to me. It feels like a "You-Got-2-Weeks-To-Finish-Your-Projects-Or-You-Die" break to me. Well, it's mainly because my projects are all half-assed unfinished works made without motivation and direction. Well, not really, but you get the point. At this point, I think I don't wanna do my projects anymore.......... Yeah right, as if that'll happen, I'm too obsessive-compulsive to let that occur. As of now, I'll just relax and take my time and play bass until my fingers respectively grow mouths and tell me to stop playing.

I need to get myself together. Seriously. I've been living off Oreos the past few days (I'm too damn lazy to get/cook food because I need to study for term tests). I feel like a hermit in my own house, only getting out of my room to get food or pee or take a bath. Haha, it's kind of funny I guess. I've been sleeping at like 4 am in the morning and waking up around 9 or 12 noon. Goddamn, my internal clock is broken as hell. It's vacation, and I'm still killing myself.

Well would you look at that, I'm feeling sleepy already. So yeah, signing off.

Til next time,
Kim

First Blog Post

2009-06-04T19:27:00.001+08:00

I made this...account in blogger because Multiply is getting stagnant. So yeah, I hope I can achieve world peace with my blog posts :]

I have nothing creative to write about so I'll write about random shit instead. Yesterday I watched Terminator Salvation. The visual effects were great, but I do wish there were more fighting scenes. You wanna know how good it really was? Terminator Salvation is so good that it made me hold my piss for 85 minutes. Seriously.

Uhhhh, today. I woke up around 12+ then I went online for...uh... I don't know. It's a routine, I guess. Anyway, so I took a bath then I went around the kitchen looking for something to eat. Unfortunately there was nothing ready to eat. Mom wasn't home, she went to meet some friend of hers. I hate cooking so I just grabbed an Oreo and ate that. After having a first-class meal that consisted of three pieces of Oreos and a glass of water, I went to my room to play bass. I played, Seek and Destroy, Hourglass, Crown of Worms, Breadline, Tornado of Souls, Vigil, Walk with Me in Hell, Omerta, The Faded Line, Black Label, Orion, Jump In The Fire, The Four Horsemen, Peace Sells, Cemetery Gates, Cowboys From Hell, Last Kiss, Peace Sells, Holy Wars, Symphony of Destruction, I Shot the Sheriff, No Woman, No Cry, Laid To Rest, Master of Puppets, The Trooper, Aces High, In My Darkest Hour, Trust, A Tout Le Monde, Battery, Disposable Heroes, Phantom Lord, Anesthesia, Paranoid, TNT, A Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation, Through Glass, And Justice For All, Mr. Brightside, M.IA., Unholy Confessions, and YMCA.

Yes YMCA, I know the bass line to that song. I learned it yesterday night actually, after watching Terminator Salvation. HAHAHAHA, it's damn catchy so it's not my fault...I think. It's fun to play, meh.

Anyway, I'm bored as shit right now so I'll go play DotA or Red Alert 3 or something.

Til next time,
Kim