Woo I've finished my 3 weeks or so stint of working (teaching primary school bands). Received my pay on Wednesday and I've spent half of it on a mouthpiece. It's a Yamaha 59-GP. 24K Gold-plated on the rim, inner cup and inner shank. Now that I'm no longer working, I can spend more time at home practicing on my trombone. My audition is on 5th January in the morning so that's 11 days away. Hopefully all goes well for that.

Had a sumptuous Christmas dinner at Abel's house yesterday. There was turkey, ham, macaroni and sausages. Ate, played a bit of basketball in the dark and home after that. Many thanks to Abel for the hospitality and the food! I guess life will be more relaxing these few days and in weeks to come, studies will come first again. Well, a Happy Boxing Day and be safe everybody! :)

Another week gone. It seemed to run like clockwork everyday. Go to Compassvale, teach for 8 hours with little significant progress and head home tired. To be honest, 8 hours of band practice for 5 days straight is unhealthy both for the musicians as well as the teachers. But, I've no control over such things so what can I do? This coming week will be my last week at work and after that it's all focus on my trombone playing. I just had a day out with my buddies, Michael and Daryl. Probably the last time I'll see Michael this year, I hope he'll have a good time in the USA and maybe one day if I have the $$$ I shall fly over and visit him. Abel organised a farewell party for Michael yesterday but only the guys came. Played basketball for a few hours and after that it was dinner time! KFC and pizza. After that we presented him some presents and went home. I hope next week will be less clockwork-like for me. Having a variety of schools to work with is better, to me at least. Well, Merry Christmas everybody! Enjoy whats left of your holidays! :)

Back from band camp! I went there on wednesday with absolutely no intention to stay overnight. But...Mr Yeo wanted the band to watch a video. He uses a Macbook so there's no VGA port on his laptop, then, Ms Claudia Tan got somebody to bring her laptop to school. Ok, done setting up then..her laptop cannot play the audio part of the video. So..I went home, it was about 8:30pm by the way, so I decided I won't waste trips to and fro just to take my laptop so I brought my stuff and stayed overnight. Overall the camp was alright but to be honest it lacked a variety of activities. It's basically music practice nearly the whole day and about 2 hours of games on the 2nd day. I'm not saying it's not good, in fact I think it's good because it allows the members especially the younger ones to experience band camp since my batch didn't organise one due to the HK trip. I do hope the band will be successful in its forays into NBC and/or SIBF next year. But whatever it is, I hope they will continue to work hard despite the disappointment (to me at least) of not being able to participate in next year's outdoor SYF. From the camp I can see the the members are showing improvement musically and I'm pretty sure they'll sound well in time to come. Well, they have 2 good weeks of rest and hope they'll continue to make improvements. In fact I'm also having a good rest this weekend because Yuhua cancelled their practice! Was supposed to go there tomorrow morning but they cancelled the practice instead. Kai Yuan told me that Compassvale is having practice everyday next week and I'm very worried because I don't wish to get posted there the whole week. Well, I shall know in time to come. Tired...sleepy...goodbye people.