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Monday, October 24, 2005
band camp
came back from my band camp poor and exhausted.
as in my previous post, the band camp was super tiring in terms of actual practice... kept dozing off during practice which isnt a really nice thing to do in a polite society like japan. especially when i was sitting in the front row just in front of the conductor... heh.. but cannot be helped lah..
i thot being so tired in the day, i will just faint into my futon at nite... but miraculously, i lasted past 3 am for both nites (while waking up at 740). for what i also dunno... i mean the japs are like just drinking and talking and me, lost most of the time.. but still somehow managed to keep myself entertained enough to not go sleep earlier..
the place was near mt fuji, but so ulu that there is no handphone reception... queer, if you consider that there is reception on top of mount fuji, but no reception in a small town near mount fuji.
anyway there are some things i observed during this camp that are interesting, and some just plain funny... so thought i'll just share my thots...
i was in the instrument party for the first time since many years... me very bad one.. hehe.. always slack and not do instrument party during NTU days... but this time i did, not to impress the japs, but did it cos of the free car ride that i can get. ;p the japs are real organised bunch of ppl, evident from the queues when taking the escalators, waiting for trains, crowd control, etc. in moving instruments, they also damn organised.
they would label every single thing that needs to be transported, and have a checklist and all, and load and unload them in a real systematic way. the last time i was in an instrument party, it was so much different. i'm not saying this is a better system of course, just a more organised one. heh... i think our way is more efficient, although more prone to errors. nevertheless, i was pretty impressed with their systematic approach.
on the way there in the car, shimazaki showed me his newly-bought 4-day-old white PSP. (i of course showed him my 4-month-old black PSP in return...) he was playing this game called guilty gear.. it is a 1-on-1 fighting game much like street fighter. ok.. so what's the big deal? you know during sparring games like this one, you tend to get excited and try to do all the fanciful quarter-circle punch or half-quarter-front-back combos etc? it's kinda hard to keep the controller still when you are doing so on other platforms. similarly, on the PSP. it was so funny because when he was showing me his game, i all can see is a blur of screen, cos the PSP was like shaking so badly due to his numerous combo inputs. wonder how he can see how the game develops.. hehe.. clearly the PSP isnt suited for some games, i would think.
when we reached, i was surprised, as much as others, to find that there was a massage chair (think osim type, but this is national) placed in the rest area. well the best thing is that it is free!! so we all had fun taking turns to have a go at this one... of course throughout the 2D2N, i had many "go's" with it and was thoroughly satisfied. will be great to have more though... i mean some kind of pleasure, you will never get enough of, right? ;p
on the first nite, while talking, they were saying that this so-and-so is a H-woman. so i asked what that means. they say H stands for hentai, which translates to kinky, or sexually perverted (of cos they were joking around when saying that the poor gal was H, and surprisingly, the gal was just smiling and didnt refute that.. hmmm). they then taught me another similar word - 助平 (sukebee)... looks like a nice word in chinese right? well in japanese, this means lewd or lecherous. they then taught me a 3rd word - むっつり (muttsuri). according to my dictionary, this means sullen or sulky. but they say the meaning was that, but changed liao. so i think it is describing someone who has nothing to say (about some particular topic). so combining the 2 together, むっつり助平, it means that you are secretly lewd. the opposite will just be openly lewd, which they say "open 助平". heh.. then they went on to say who is open and who is muttsuri sukebee.. lol..
on the same nite, i saw naomi brushing her teeth while participating in a conversation with the rest. what was amazing was that she could do that so well, and there wasnt any err "froth" from her brushing. and she did that for over 15 mins. i saw her going at that the next day after lunch and the next nite again. unable to withhold my curiosity, i asked her how she could do that. upon closer inspection, i realised that she wasnt using toothpaste - which explains the lack of "frothing".. heh. she told me that she read that according to findings, toothpaste doesnt do anything to improve or preserve the state of your teeth. the important thing is just to brush your teeth properly to keep them free of any food debris and other alien objects. i was like damn surprised, cos this was the first time i heard and saw anything like this. i told her i cant refute that, seeing her close-to-perfect set of teeth. and she has been at that for 5 years.. wow.... anyone heard of the same/ doing the same??
on the second nite, our conductor, whom i shall address as sensei here, brought out a tape of a recording of some orchestra performing romeo and juliet, a piece we are practising for our upcoming concert. they were fast forwarding and rewinding back and forth, until a part where the recorded program ends and there on the 29 inch TV, in front of half of the band, is a still of a gal lying naked on a bed. lol!! haha, sensei got hold of the controller and tried to rewind or stop the tape, but somehow the VCR froze at that scene for a good 5 seconds or so, while everyone was like saying "sensei...." and laughing... haha.. these short seconds must seem like eternity to him... poor him. rule no. 1 - never record any shows over a porn tape and forget about it. haha... damn funny.
during one of the meals, okada, a guy seated next to me, told me that in japan, ppl don't leave food uneaten whether they like it or not (after seeing that i left some corn uneaten). i looked over at his, and to prove my point, i pointed to his untouched fish-skin. others were watching in amusement of course. he, in turn, proving his point, ate the fish-skin up. i didnt follow suit. ;p i gaijin lah, rude or not, i dun care ;p
on the last day, hirato, the poor gal in charge of the whole of this camp, asked me if i have paid up for the "drinking party" for the first nite, which costed 500 yen. i didnt, but did not know about it (the need to pay extra). i looked at her for a moment, wanting to tell her that "i only drank 2 cups of coke, c'est tout!" mind you, the cups were tiny. and i didnt even eat the nuggets or anything, while they were being let loose on the food and the booze. but in the end, i said "i hadnt" and i paid up... sigh... should have drank more coke if i knew.
after breaking camp, while on the way back, i was playing a bit of my PSP, and sleeping in the car quite a bit. i woke up in time to witness takeuchi paying for toll at 2 separate ocassions - once 600 yen, and another 800 yen. now 800 yen is roughly 12 SGD. and the suay thing is that after paying, the exit was just 500 metres up. haha... he was complaining that 800 yen was too expensive for 500 metres... i think so too... he complained until we reached the toshiba grounds (were we had to unload and return all the instruments)... haha... yeah, i sure will bitch about it if i was the victim of the 800 yen toll...
after the fatigue and dinner, ozaki sent me back to my dorm. along the way, he was fiddling with something which i found was an FM transmitter. apparantly it is a device such that you plug it into the earphone jack of your, say, mp3 player, the transmitter will transmit the signal into FM, so that your radio (here the car audio system radio) can receive this signal and play the music through the audio system... smart hor? me again super ignorant, never see this before. really quite shen... no need to invest in a new car audio system, and no need to have to plug your ipod to your expensive interface anymore... hmmm... why didnt i know about this nifty little gadget? gotta get my hands to one of those...
notice i didnt talk about any band related stuff, hehe... cos nothing much interesting to talk about lah.. just practise and practise only lor... anyway, hope to upload some pictures soon to share with ya all... hehe...
hope this post was interesting for ya, as the experiences were for me.
posted by winz at 1:29 PM
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2 Comments:
Surprise!! but I do know about the FM transmitter cos my colleague showed it to me before.heh...
By
Anonymous, at
11:50 PM
haiz.. i think me the only dinosaur.. ;p
By
winz, at
11:12 AM
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