:: 1.41421356237 ::

:: Thursday, November 29, 2001 ::

cadenza to rachmaninoff's third concerto, first movement, is not half as hard as i thought. i can play the cadenza! i can play the first movement cadenza in rachmaninoff's third concerto!!!!!!!!!!! :D *shakes bootie*

:: sqroot2 11/29/2001 06:40:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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hmph, just woke up and ate. my hands are still freezing...saw vicky for like...10 minutes today...*sigh*...

:: sqroot2 11/29/2001 06:37:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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my hands are freezing...brrrr. i stopped playing piano because my hands were too cold! sheeesh!

huge *yawn*...the loss of sleep is really getting to me.

:: sqroot2 11/29/2001 03:50:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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off to shower, then sleep. great.

:: sqroot2 11/29/2001 01:51:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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dammit, i wanted to at least be interviewed for hino motors! I WANT TO BE ABLE TO WRITE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to write so that people will want to read my writing!! and so that they will like it! what's wrong with my writing, someone TELL ME!!???!?!? FUCK!

:: sqroot2 11/29/2001 01:28:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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i want to hurry up and finish my FUCKING ENGLISH ABSTRACT so that i can get some goddamned, blessed sleep. i haven't played the fucking piano, i haven't practiced the fucking cello, i haven't done my comp sci homework in three days, i haven't done my math homework in two days, i want sleep! shit!

i don't know how i am going to survive the drudgery of tomorrow, another school day. i want to cry, or do SOMETHING, to relieve some of the stress that i have. my back's hurting...i have such bad posture at the computer. ick. i just cracked my neck. i want to go out with vicky for dinner or SOMETHING on my birthday, oh i doubt i'll get that. oh well, huh? my sister's lucky, she's going friday night to see andrea bocelli at the staples center with her boyfriend (?), she just told me. i'm jealous, and of my own sister? god, heaven forbid. my neck muscles ache, ouch.

i can't think of what else to write. i'm really depressed, i want to sleep...

:: sqroot2 11/29/2001 01:10:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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i want to live without thinking about others' opinions of me. i want to be normal, but only by my own standards, which should be the only ones that would exist. i don't want to live by society's standards; i don't want to be young compared to my peers; i don't want to be the only one guffawing in math class, with the rest of the class having accepted my facetiousness and frequent craziness. why don't we all have an integration contest? improper integrals, trig substitutions, miscellaneous substitutions, volumes of rotation, surface areas of rotation, integration in parametric mode--just a whole page, and we compete. bring it on, guys. how come no one else wants to do that? and what about chem? why can't everybody be like me in my passion for chem? hiro last year said "you're so pompous" to me in chem...he's changed, and i've changed, but nobody else likes chem the way i do, except maybe peter. i want to do the thermite reaction! who else goes around saying that? a kid at mac today asked me, with a nice scrunched-up face, why i listened to classical music. i don't know! because i like it, for the same reason that you listen to dmx's what is the name? how do you go down? something about going down, and it starts with an obscene, filthy phone call. can any of you sing rachmaninoff's third concerto in its entirety, all forty-odd minutes? i want to know someone else who can. or who thinks that the THIRD movement is the true greatness of the piece. let's all think that, shall we? please my tortured conscience, my anomalous conscience for one night, one measly hour even?

i am tired of being special in the few ways that i am. at least for now i give up those things to you. here, take them. these vestiges of enslavement--i will be john doe now. steal my identity! take it! when i wail for it, bring it back to me, i am weak and i need my special traits. but not now. begone, you, with them.

:: sqroot2 11/29/2001 12:18:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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at orchestra rehearsal, one of the elco assistants played a few bars on the piano--Rachmaninoff's third concerto, the opening. i want to play that piece! i want to play all that i want to play on the piano--prokofieff sonatas, brahms's two rhapsodies op. 79, chopin etudes, beethhoven sonatas, goldbergs. i know i can play any of those pieces, there's no doubt--but no time, and it takes me a time to learn those pieces! i want to play them! rachmaninoff's third concerto especially. that's one impossible piece. i want to play it! the score's open in front of me, i should be continuing to work on my abstract, but i want to play those pieces! i want to know that if i can't write as well as i want, that i can PLAY WHAT I WANT!

:: sqroot2 11/28/2001 11:59:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i'm doing my english abstract now.

orchestra today was hectic. last rehearsal before december 2nd, which is the day of the concert. we overshot by fifteen minutes, whereas usually we leave fifteen minutes early. i got home at...10:20 or so. THEN i began to work on my english abstract. yay, fuck. now i'm about a little more than half-done with this piece of shit...it's so easy to do, just it takes a long time.

i keep on thinking about perfect dark (n64 game, ya know) multiplayer--G5 building, when you fall off the walkway accidently and fall, fall a second or two..till you hit bottom and your screen turns red...during the fall you can look up and see the four walkways...and they get smaller and smaller...*shiver* falling forever. what would that feel like?

:: sqroot2 11/28/2001 11:56:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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well, well...congrats to the hino motors ppl, i guess; what else can i say to the victors? i hope you win, maybe. yeah, i hope you win. all nine of you.

i'm disappointed that my essay didn't make the cut, but oh well--c'est la vie, que sera sera. here it is, i just pulled it out--i remember now. well, i thought it was a nice piece of writing. my personal opinion counts the most to me. then why am i disappointed that i didn't get in? had i written an essay that i was completely satisfied with, why, then i wouldn't be disappointed. it's like fuck the southwestern youth music festival judges; i know i played well by my own standards so i'm happy and you can give me nothing if you please. so--the bottom line is this, that i am not satisfied with my essay. that's why i'm disappointed in myself.

but you can salvage the carcass of a shipwreck, so here i reproduce a quote that i included in my essay, one of my favorite quotes, so powerful, by francois mauriac, nobel laureate: “No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.”

and then someday i'll rewrite my analysis of lolita to do justice to nabokov--but more importantly, to do justice to myself, to what i think i am capable of doing.

sounding a bit pompous, eh? sorry guys, here, now's time for a quote from dostoevsky's notes from the underground:
"However: what can a decent, respectable man talk about with the greatest pleasure?
Answer: himself.
Well, so I too will talk about myself." (end of chapter 1)


:: sqroot2 11/28/2001 06:13:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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while i was walking out of school today after fifth period, robert harbison caught up to me. hi, hi, and he left...my goodness this anecdote shows no sense of coherence. so he calls me over a half-minute later, pointing at something on the ground of the parking lot ten meters away. it was a dead crow (raven, isn't it?), decapitated, feathers spread around, a bloody clump of feathers close by--with a beak, maybe?

i had my digital camera, and took a photo of the dead bird. not for pleasure, but more as a requiem for the bird. a fitting end, so to speak, that the bird was firmly ingrained in my mind. half-belly-up, legs pulled in, no head, no head, only the black asphalt where the head should have been. requiem for a dead bird--or should the piece be called requiem on the death of a bird? or after bach, capriccio upon the departure of a beloved raven.

:: sqroot2 11/28/2001 03:12:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i love part five of crime and punishment, especially the section where raskolnikov talks to sonya!

...my back is hurting more than it ever has before.

:: sqroot2 11/28/2001 01:14:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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some people's writing styles i admire. i want my writing to be like theirs, and i try--but without really succeeding. nabokov, whose own translation of lolita into english reads like poetry--or some of ellison, in his most sublime moments. or vicky or colin, closer to home--i like their writing styles. yet when i read blogs by anybody, you seem to get such a sense of personalization. of someone's own writing style--and not style, but writing style. personal style...not when mr. colin says this writer has style or this person doesn't, but his own style. ya know? slicking back your hair, leather jacket, velcro shoes, that kinda style.

perhaps i shouldn't try to write, it should come. i really enjoyed writing last year in mrs. patterson's class with the journals..she'd come up with these humongous prompts and we'd write and write, and usually i wouldn't finish in the time she gave us. and then free writes--i remember i spent seven pages once on a free write, when she calls for about one page per journal entry. wheee. writing is cathartic; i think i've been through that already a long time ago, and would i be wrong to say that many people think so too?

still, i'm my worst critic. and in my job as a critic i compliment myself and i deprecate myself. i love using commas--last year during a few peer edits people mentioned that my commas interrupted my flow of ideas. but commas make my ideas flow! they sectionalize my writing! they make sentences logical! commas, commas, commas! and i also hate...some of the mannerisms i have. and i hate it when i use a lot of ellipses; it (my writing) looks disgusting and THEN those darned ellipses really stop the flow of writing. for me, ellipses often don't lead to something else; they are a hiccup and an abrupt red light when you're about to speed through an intersection. *shudder*

i guess i'm my worst critic in music too. (music again!!!) you know, practicing comes from within. it's the betterment of oneself, the ultimate in devotion to oneself. if you don't make music first for yourself, then i don't think you're a true musician. even a music missionary would first make music for himself--in order to spread music, wouldn't he have to satisfy his own demands first? music should be made for oneself. often, performing is a bragging act--but more so a tribute to oneself--in the sense that it's a milestone in musical development. it takes a lot to make a performance, and in such a sense you have to have developed musically before you are ready to give a performance. and indeed in itself, a performance is a maturing and learning experience. what better way to learn your own faults and your imperfections--when you're up on a stage, being scrutinized by an audience, the lights shining brightly on your face, blinding you, when you're being distracted by a hundred things at once--then you see...and you can laugh at yourself and your fallibility--can i really make music??? he he he he he...

on the same note, teachers who make their students memorize everything they play when they are in performance really aren't doing the right thing. memorize if you practiced enough so that you can memorize it; don't memorize for the sake of memorizing. make music, and use your book if you have to!!!!!!!

i wish all pianos had the same action and the same feel on the keyboard. yamahas have deeper keys than steinways, i think--and my teacher's bluthner piano (made in leipzig) has large, deep, hefty keys that take more power to press down than usual. i want my own piano--i want to go piano-shopping--and find a piano with an action that i like, an action that's heavy enough to balance the weight of my hands, with a nice beautiful tone, not too metallic but still agressive and harsh if i want it to be, with the bass and treble balanced...and with ivory keys. ohh. ivory keys. i want a piano with ivory keys!! you know what to do for my birthday now, take me out to a piano dealer... :P if only i had the money!!!!!! *sigh*

anyway, for me it's so much easier to play on my yamaha than on any other instrument; i'm so accustomed to my yamaha. the keyboard is pretty...nasty...alex said words to that effect once. the keyboard is nasty--not in the sense that it's crafted poorly or that different keys have different touches--but it's nasty because you really have to work to get a nice tone out. it's so easy to get a harsh tone because you can press a key all the way down w/o a sound and then wha-ck! at the bottom of the key you get to the last little lever that just whacks the string and the piano will go boing. i'm used to it now...and it's good that i have a piano with such a temperamental keyboard because few actions of other pianos feel funny. and i can coax whatever sound i want out of it. it's really quite enjoyable when you know that you have control over the keyboard.

and the hardest challenge of all is to play softly. any pianist, save a two-year-old prodigy who's performing, has enough arm energy to make a very very loud sound. but to play softly--that is an art. eagh. it's hard. in liszt's first concerto, second movement, at the end of the 24-bar(?)-long piano solo, you have to hit an f-sharp...a single f-sharp, the one right below middle c...softly, ppppppp. it takes a lot of control to do it at just the right dynamic level...i use four fingers of my left hand. FOUR fingers, just for one note--at super pianississimo--four fingers, so i can control the key and the note. that's what it takes...to play softly.

:: sqroot2 11/27/2001 11:47:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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alex told me today that my blog was boring, so he just closed the window. no apologies to him forthcoming, though--if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it.

feel really sleepy. grading the chem lab books is really really tedious because the handwriting of many students is not very conducive to fast and easy reading. and then so many things are all over the place. eagh!

:: sqroot2 11/27/2001 05:12:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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heh, my computer is really wacko. IE just froze, so i had to start up and log in to mail and blogger again. whee...not fun. hopefully with my new computer networked i can use that one--but i'm scared shitless to try because it seemed like turning on the new computer and networking the two together yesterday whacked my tcp/ip if it indeed can do that.

have to catch up on c & p reading!!

ya know what's disturbing--angela hewitt's recording is so different from gould's that the pieces sound completely different...i can't even recognize most of them as a variation that i know.

:: sqroot2 11/26/2001 10:10:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i was blogging about my new cd when my computer inconveniently froze.

i came back from borders about forty minutes ago; i purchased the goldberg variations played by angela hewitt. miss hewitt is a young canadian pianist whose recordings of bach's works for keyboard have been amply lauded. i trusted the opinions of critics and the like when i bought her recording today without ever having listened to her playing.

her playing is highly...what is the word i'm looking for...maybe characteristic. the way she tosses off the ornaments half-liltingly in the aria...otherwise, her tempi are quite varied from glenn gould in gould's 1982 recording--the recording that i'm used to listening to. that's not to discredit either artist. some pieces she takes considerably more slowly than gould, but the aria in itself is taken faster.

two things strike me immediately about her playing. first, her playing is often very staccato and detached--which lends a bouncy air to her playing, but this detachedness sometimes gets carried away, and the result is a plucking sound, a sharp, short sound, not necessarily pleasing. second, her playing is much lighter that that of gould's and indeed than that of many pianists'. she has great control over the keyboard, often achieving a true pianissimo without the use of the soft pedal. perhaps her hands are light. my hands are heavy, rather very heavy--which turns me off from mozart pretty quickly. i just can't get a tone or timbre suitable for mozart without much effort.

anyway, that was a shitload of music.

WHAT CRACKS ME UP is in the cd booklet there's this praise for her playing that includes:
"An extraordinary collection...[she] plays...with precision and serenity" (Playboy)
HAHAHAHA...what the HECK is playboy doing reviewing HER recordings? come to think of it, though, she sort of has a bushy tail...just kidding.

anyway, if you thought that that was the end of my posts about the goldberg variations...HAH...you're not in luck. more to come! i love blogging about music. it's my passion...!

comp sci lab today was freaking hard...because setw() wouldn't work. GAH!

i can't find the number for the DMV...HELP! aaaugh. i want to take the driving test soon, so that i can get my license and drive around!! heehee. i want to drive by myself! wherever i want! it must be some sort of psychological pleasure, because i can't think of TOO many places where i'd want to drive...i can think of a few though. :D

oh, my dad got salmon from albertson's...baked with just salt and pepper and a bit of hennessey (sp? alfred? ;D)...tastes good. $1.99/lb, if you want to get some...frozen...MMM.

:: sqroot2 11/26/2001 10:03:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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ai, i have to blog about love sometime...seems to be the craze, but i have to get my thoughts out somewhere. i don't know...maybe not on this blog, it's very public...whee... .

:: sqroot2 11/26/2001 11:22:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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eagh, i submitted a template to snorcomments for my comments but it hasn't been updated yet...well, i'll just have to wait.

:: sqroot2 11/25/2001 07:56:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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whoops. forgot to link MADELA, it's up now--any other friends that i've missed????? doh. aarti. aah, when i get back home (at usc on sis's computer)..i guess i could just look at the links on vicky's blog and see who i'm missing.

:: sqroot2 11/25/2001 06:35:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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well, well...i got a scooter! :D isn't the appropriate smiley something like ^_^v? close enough. whoopee...i went to my uncle's house and rode my scooter with my cousins. we ended up watching a bit of shrek, which is simply rollicking, setting aside the fact that my uncle had to ask me for several explanations--like what a fairy tale was. heehee--

my fingers are frozen; that's not good. whenever i play the piano and my fingers are warm, they get cold because the piano keys are so cold. immediate, rapid transfer of heat from my fingers to the keys. speaking of piano, i'm beginning to learn the aria, 30 variations, and aria reprise by js bach, more commonly known as the goldberg variations, on my own time. ooh, it is so charming!

count von kaiserling/kaiserlingk or some other weird german spelling; there seems to be no correct spelling--had insomnia, so bach ripped an aria off of the notebooks that he gave anna magdalena and wrote thirty variations on that aria and gave the whole set to goldberg to play. goldberg was kaiserling's pianist--court pianist? something like that. the variations were to ease away kaiserling's insomniac nights; i doubt they were used to make him go to sleep because the pieces are rather lively except for the aria and a few of the variations.

vars. 15, 21, and 25 are the only three in a minor key. wanda landowska dubbed number 25 as a "black pearl", so it's called "landowska's black pearl". it's very chromatic, you can tell that just by listening to it--sort of spooky. just sort of.

i have glenn gould's 1982 DEFINITIVE recording of the variations. when he was a young man in 1955, he chose as his debut album the thirty variations and aria and aria reprise. his manager and producer tried to dissuade him, knowing that the goldberg variations were dead (they were at that time). but glenn gould went ahead and recorded the variations--and blew the world away. in 1982 he wanted to rerecord the work--to show a, and i loosely quote, "mathematical relation between theme and variation". to say anymore, he said, would require a book.

i need to blog more about these wonderful variations, and about bach's music.

has anyone [even] heard of the goldberg variations?

:: sqroot2 11/25/2001 03:50:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i'm looking at disgust at my chain of short posts just a bit back...but i don't want to edit them out. frankly i think they're annoying to look at, but during each post i was feeling something. you can't just toss all that out...

at any rate, i just came back from eating a potluck dinner at the house of one of my dad's friends in the taiwanese army, back when they were eighteen (?). nothing special or remarkable...we all started meet the parents, which was hilarious for what little i saw of it.

oh i don't know. i have im boxes dinging at me, at least visually...ding ding ding...

some time i'm going to draw up a list of the piano pieces that i believe should be included in every repertoire. oh fun fun fun!!!

"It is better to have loved and lost, than not to have loved at all." Sir Alfred, Lord Tennyson. i won't say this isn't love unless i know better...and i don't.

:: sqroot2 11/24/2001 09:17:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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snorcomments should be up soon!!!

:: sqroot2 11/24/2001 02:10:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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i'm going to install snorcomments soon. whenever i get a chance.

:: sqroot2 11/23/2001 01:33:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i don't fucking want to go to college. yeah, no parental influences there, or precious few. where will my friends be, though? where am i going to go?
harvard, yale, mit--what the fuck am i supposed to do on the east coast? i've never been there my fucking life.
caltech--so close to home. i like pasadena, i guess. but...so many people say it's bad. my sister's friend, upon my telling him that i had applied to caltech, said "but you're not going there, right?" fuck.
stanford--way up north. not much to do, not the bustle of the bay area that i associate with san francisco and berkeley. beautiful campus, it blows me away. but i don't like it. just doesn't seem right. it's so expensive; caltech is the least expensive of all the schools, by...two thousand bucks? that's chicken feed, compared to the total tuition.
sd i don't want to go to. la i don't like much--i've had tastes of it from quiz bowl and MUN. and then there's berkeley, whose surroundings once epitomized exactly what i wanted in the bay area--liberalism, liveliness, spontaneity--but then it was like bleh when i visited it over the summer.
i don't think that i can be satisfied at any college that i go to. i don't want to go to college.

other things i want to blog about, but i...no time now. *sigh*

:: sqroot2 11/23/2001 01:30:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i'm drained right now, i don't know what to say...there probably isn't much i can say.

:: sqroot2 11/22/2001 11:32:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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happy thanksgiving, you guys.

:: sqroot2 11/22/2001 11:17:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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"i do not deserve to look into the mirror."
isn't that profound? i think it is.

:: sqroot2 11/20/2001 11:36:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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you give, you take...sometimes i have to cool my passionate, send-everything-you've-got-for-it side down a bit. :)

:: sqroot2 11/20/2001 10:16:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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on second thought, snorcomments looks cool..easily customizable! i'll see...

:: sqroot2 11/20/2001 07:43:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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blogback isn't accepting any new users. that, when i actually wanted to switch... >.<

:: sqroot2 11/20/2001 07:41:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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nooooooobody online, practically. 25 buddies. funny funny...

i'm still gradually reconciling myself with the fact that it gets dark earlier. i like it, but it seems so unnatural. i like waking up in the dark or semi-dark, too--which doesn't happen now. sort of sad, but oh well.

tomorrow's minimum day--yay. then long weekend, which is not so much yay--no school, that is to say, don't get to see vicky. for...four days? great. egh. not fair.

i finished my book about sviatoslav richter yesterday. there's a bit about prokofieff in there that i want to put here, about one of prokofieff's friends committing suicide...

i'm sneezing like crazy, and my back aches. time to do some back exercises today...i keep on thinking bach when i type back. so i think i'll play some bach, too. sheesh, could it be ANY colder......*shiver*

:: sqroot2 11/20/2001 07:30:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i have a crapload of quotes from crime and punishment that i want to put up here. well, i'll save it for later, when my copy of the book is closer to the computer.

rumo[u]rs going 'round about formal... :P well, so be it. didn't think we were quite recognizable that night...

i got twine today--the world is not enough. as in the video game. and controller paks--all n64 stuff. what surprised me was that at best buy, there's practically no n64 section anymore. the xbox and gamecube and ps2 sections are pretty large, but n64 is relegated to a single corner. i didn't find the section for n64 until my third pass around the console games area. one thing--how is rareware so good at graphics, and EA not? twine (made by EA) has SUCH crappy graphics compared to perfect dark and goldeneye.

piano lesson, too, first time in four weeks--my teacher came back from her europe trip. working on beethoven's sonata in e-flat, les adieux--the only program sonata that beethoven wrote.

don't know what to blog about. trying to change...halfway successful...my attitudes about certain things...yes. :) at least one of you knows what i'm talking about...sometime, somewhere, i'll jot down what an ideal day would be like, detailing my only wish if i knew it would come true--like the hino motors essay prompt. it's always fun to revel in visions and wishes, isn't it...

:: sqroot2 11/19/2001 08:36:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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quiz bowl yesterday. last night was formal, and then the meteor shower. i guess i'll go chronologically. quiz bowl was enjoyable. ppg went up.

formal was fun. the first and only winter formal that i went to and that i will go to in high school. coincidental that it falls on the same night as the meteor shower, huh?

it's not really formal that i want to blog about; it's more personal circumstances. the dip that went with the chips and the pretzels was good; they had unlimited drinks. so that'll suffice as food update for the night. otherwise, i tried to dance; ed liu, ed castelo, terada, and quite a few others i think were surprised when they saw that i was actually there. heh heh.

that's probably the only formal dance that i'll go to in high school with vicky, for certain reasons. i wish that weren't the case. it's good that i knew that yesterday; i probably savored and enjoyed the night more. just the same, part of me wanted to remain blissfully ignorant of that fact. no pressure during the night knowing that it was the only one. no worrying about the future. no counting down the hours of the night half-despairingly, as time only runs forward, never backward.

it'd be unfair to declare that my parents are a huge hindrance--more accurate to say my mom is one. i can't go anywhere with my relationship with vicky if my mom is so against it. she makes everything hard, impossible; what am i supposed to do? i [and vicky] can persevere...but for so long, without sign or indication of fruition? it's disheartening, to say the least. it saddens me...it's the one main thing that saddens me to the point of how i am usually...listless, pensive... what can i do...!!! i still have to talk to vicky, and respect her opinion.

so last night was the meteor shower, eh? they came frequently--generally one every few seconds, sometimes two or three together; sometimes a minute apart. i watched it after io got home from formal--counted 42, went to take a shower, and then went back and counted up to 100 and then went to sleep. so many meteors...i made a wish on the last shooting star, #100. a desperate wish...yeah. we'll see if it comes true, eh?

everything else in life seems so inconsequential compared to what i mainly blogged about above.

:: sqroot2 11/18/2001 10:24:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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family emergency, so my cousins are having the night over.

just a thought--an empty plate is so lonely looking. after it had once held the last slice of leftover rebaked dominos deep dish pizza. sad sad sad.

:: sqroot2 11/16/2001 10:13:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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here in computer lab, finished my lab woohoo

:: sqroot2 11/16/2001 08:53:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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blogspot is down. funny funny.

yah, some of you know why i seem perpetually down these days. these days being...three, four months. i don't know what to do. shoot myself.

:: sqroot2 11/15/2001 11:19:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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here in stamper's room. don't know what to do; just blogging. too many things running through my mind. though i doubt you could tell if you were looking at me. mm, good smells. :D tomorrow is math test--waah! must know the weierstrass substitution of z = tan(x/2). sin(x) = 2z^2/(1 + z^2) and cos(x) = (1 - z^2)/(1 + z^2). my my, tim today said that "all these guys" must be gay, meaning weierstrass and whatever other mathematician that has haunted our lives--Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier, which i just checked up online, though thank goodness i don't understand Fourier series and won't have to in the near near future. oh, and taylor, and maclaurin, and all those lucky guys. damn they're smart, why couldn't i torture some high school students too! maybe i'll be walfred lecter (as in, mr. lester's alter ego, as tim puts it), though i haven't seen silence of the lambs or hannibal.
i am being unusually verbose today. probably because vicky's sitting next to me, which is quite happifying. that's not a word, she informs me. okay, fine. hm. not too much to say--i have to study a load of math for tomorrow's test. the school orchestra isn't too enthusiastic about the liszt concerto, so i suppose i shall see how things turn out. yesh yesh. saturday is coming up soon! woohoo! :)

:: sqroot2 11/15/2001 03:26:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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hm. i'm not in the mood that i was in yesterday when i said that i would put a passage from the executioner's song on my blog. but anyway, i have a few page numbers jotted down, let me pick one...oh, here we go, page 345. gary gilmore (serial killer) wrote this to his girlfriend, nicole.

You said that girl's letter [a girl wrote a fan letter to gary, who mailed it to nicole for her to read] was like a slap in the face--Baby, Baby, I didn't mean anything like that when i gave it to you! I just thought I'd let you read it. Guess I wasn't thinking, huh?! I'm not gonna write to her. Your'e the only girl in my life Angel. I wouldn't take a thousand girls for you.

lbj--el burrito junior. i like the super burrito--with rice, lettuce, chunky beef (well, i get chunky beef; you can get chicken and what not), guacamole, sour cream, and enchilada sauce. it's one hefty motherfucker--five inches across, two-three inches tall, nine-twelve inches long (i can't remember exact dimensions now). mmm! and then lbj's tortilla chips--like one HUMONGO bag for .75. for y'all who don't know where it is, it's on PCH somewhere past Palos Verdes Blvd. and before Knob Hill--that's really approximate, but it's hard to miss. building looks like a wienerschnitzels, or however the heck you spell that.

papa john's pizza is cool. first off your orders come with their special garlic sauce, which is like all melted margarine :D so i dipped my crusts in that. (i don't like plain crusts unless i have deep dish; otherwise, it's too bland.) and then the parmesan cheese and red pepper shaker things were so nifty! :) their crust actually is a bit sweet, not salty at all. i had it for the first time on oct 29th, after my interview with ms oda, and was pleasurably impressed.

ok, next things to address--karen oda, halloween, more prokofieff.

hm, i'm feeling halfway cheery now. that's gotta be a new one. go kevin. woohoo--though there are so many things that i can be pissed off and depressed about. whee, life is so fucking complicated.

:: sqroot2 11/15/2001 12:04:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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passage from executioner's song coming up next.

:: sqroot2 11/13/2001 11:45:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i'm too strung out. i blew up today at someone, an action that i regret. strung out? is that even the appropriate idiom? just too wound up. wound up too tight.

:: sqroot2 11/13/2001 11:31:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i'm trying to sign into my yahoo classical-pianists group, but it isn't working. fuck that shit.

here's a funny link. http://www.snopes2.com/humor/nonsense/piano.htm

:: sqroot2 11/13/2001 10:11:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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my parents don't let me use the net much now. that's probably the main reason why i haven't had any decent posts in a longass time.

well, i'll address liszt--i get to play the liszt first concerto with the school orchestra at the winter concert! :) y'all better come, 'cause i'm gonna stop the show. well, not really; it's a pity that the piece isn't more well-known than it is.

AND my archives are whack.

about prokofieff--sometimes i get his music, sometimes i don't. like with the third concerto, first movement, i love him. the long clarinet solo melody at the beginning, which returns in the piano part, is understandable, it's fluid, it's beautiful. and then the toccata section that occurs twice in piano and once in the orchestra is great, too. just the fingering's a bit hard to work out >.< but musically, again, i like it. it's comprehensible. then move to the third movement (still talking about his third piano concerto) the opening theme is a bit hard to grasp. and then you have another theme brought in by the piano, a scale in thirds. the music becomes rather dissonant and complex. so i don't really understand the third movement.
take his second sonata in d minor. i adore the last movement. i get it. but then i don't find too much sense in the first three movements, and neither do i find sense in the last movement of the sonata no. 7 op. 83, the "war" sonata, other than the recurring left hand theme. bit of interesting info--it's in 7 8 time, really irregular. that odd rhythm engenders the left hand theme, which is basically g(8th note) b-flat(quarter note) g(8th note)--a syncopated rhythm that just sort of beats itself into your head.

now i have to go check to see if it is really in 7 8 or if it's in 7 16 or 7 4. but i know it's seven. :)

egh, i didn't address the eighth sonata nor did i address the other two movements of the seventh sonata. some other time.

:: sqroot2 11/13/2001 06:20:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i actually slept over at my uncle's. why doesn't vicky want to go to delaware...

:: sqroot2 11/12/2001 06:15:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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hm, might be going to uncle's house later...fun...

:: sqroot2 11/11/2001 06:30:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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wow, zac uses same template as i. no identity crisis here, though *wink wink* :P

new link: linda, of brendan fame.

:: sqroot2 11/11/2001 05:08:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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HAIRCUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i wanted to analyze the second movement of rachmaninoff's third piano concerto now...will do it later, i guess. for all you classical music fans out there, stay tuned! and for all you !classical-music fans out there, stay tuned! (aren't you proud of my c++ boolean notation)

:: sqroot2 11/11/2001 03:34:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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yay, i just finished my uc essay. yeah. a real unemphatic "yay". oof, my back hurts. hmph, want to go to san gabriel, it's at least fun.

why does waynn have to walk in to all of this...ironically, almost exactly a year ago, our situations were reversed. it was caltech quiz bowl, mrs. stamper was sitting next to me, i recall almost saying something to her...but i don't think i said it. something to the effect of "waynn is lucky".

:: sqroot2 11/10/2001 03:59:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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I just woke up an hour ago, feeling shitty as hell because i woke up so late. no morning to speak of, eh. now college apps for the rest of the day, joy. my computer's c drive was defragmenting all of last night, which meant that i couldn't use the computer to go online, check mail and blogs, etc. fuck.

what to do, what to do...oh, i pulled out and listened to rachmaninoff's second symphony again yesterday. it is quickly becoming the favored piece of music for deep depression. especially the adagio, what rapture. if you guys want to listen to it, tell me. i must spread the wealth! it is such a beautiful piece of music, and perfect for when i'm depressed.

oh, now i remember why i was depressed yesterday. i came home from working at MAC (ya know, tutoring little kids in math) and was about to use the phone, but my mom promptly said that i couldn't, and that all i was thinking about after i got home was using the phone. fuck her! sheeeeiiit. fuck this life--it's so fucking complicated.

:: sqroot2 11/10/2001 01:12:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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lento e rubato con morbidezza...that was the directions for some piece of music. i can't remember now, but it's such a powerful phrase.

:: sqroot2 11/08/2001 11:31:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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and guess what....NEW COMPUTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOHOOOOOOO! 1.3 gig athlon...at least in my eyes that's woooooooooooonnderful. :D dad actually got windows 2000 installed...it was just a put-together computer! :)

okay, now i'm going to go type up my hino motors essay. i wrote it on nine sheets of legal pad paper, double spaced. hopefully it'll turn out long enough typed...

:: sqroot2 11/08/2001 11:27:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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hm...not much to do. i'm relegated to blogging here...i don't like it as much as home.

:: sqroot2 11/07/2001 12:45:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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hm. i don't know what to say. i'm not as depressed now, but then...still i'm not perfectly happy. english today was like...ARGH when will this be over so i can go to my locker!!! *sigh*.

i still have to blog about liszt, prokofieff, lbj, papa john's pizza, halloween, interview with karen oda...

:: sqroot2 11/06/2001 11:09:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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fuck it. i'm depressed.

:: sqroot2 11/06/2001 02:32:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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an interesting parallel just popped into my mind.

last year around father's day, a tai chi chuan/qigong instructor of my parents demonstrated his art at a ceremony held at a buddhist temple in san gabriel. other dads also demonstrated different things, but his was the most impressive.

first he went on stage and did about ten minutes of qigong. then, he asked for a dollar bill and two volunteers from the audience. four plastic chopsticks (you know, the tough smooth plastic kind) were brought out. the two volunteers held the chopstics by pinching one chopstick between each pair of fingers, so you had two guys standing up there with four chopstics horizontal one on top of each other. the middle part of the chopstics was bared.

so the qigong instructor takes the dollar bill, and, through supreme concentration, slices each chopstick in half right down the center of the stack of chopsticks. it was amazing. with a dollar bill!? and i saw it with my own eyes.

i wish i could do that. afterwards, i talked to him, and he encouraged me to learn qigong. he said that if i practiced, i would be able to do chop or two with an index card within not too long a time. i never initiated lessons, and my parents eventually stopped taking lessons with him.

i don't know what i was paralleling this to. i woke up about an hour ago from a long nap. *sigh*. depressed. what's there to cheer me up?!?!?! i want to do something--like cry, say, but i cannot.

:: sqroot2 11/05/2001 06:17:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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eh. today i didn't get as much of vicky as i otherwise would have wanted.

i don't know exactly what i feel. perhaps a mixture of confusedness, annoyance, frustration, dissatisfaction, restraint. all these things. they make me pensive...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ultimately my heart is unsettled. i'm so frustrated, yes, frustration would be at the top of those things.

this morning, our orchestra was practicing my piece, which is liszt's first concerto. the theme was supposedly sung, back in liszt's time, to the german phrase "das versteht alle nicht--nur ich!" which supposedly means "this is a mystery to all of you--only i!". anyway, i was conducting because marino had gone to help out mrs. marino, and was commenting that the recurrence of the theme was supposed to be softer and more lyrical. in exactly those terms--"softer, and more lyrical". eddie [kim] pipes right up with a wonderful british-accented parody of what i said. fuck him. it DOES have to be softer, and more lyrical, and if you don't agree with me, or you make fun of what i said, so be it. you don't understand liszt, and that's your own great loss.

:: sqroot2 11/05/2001 03:01:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i'm so pensive right now.

:: sqroot2 11/05/2001 12:02:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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eh...hm. what to say, lots...

:: sqroot2 11/04/2001 10:11:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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hm, i built...two other bridges today. fun! so that was my day so far--tutoring and then bridges. well, may go off to see sis at usc...

:: sqroot2 11/04/2001 03:23:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i am just only taking a shower now after an extensive, civil discussion with my mother. i am so tired. i don't know what to say about how i feel. either i'm too tired to put it coherently, or i'm just feeling too many things and fragments. i don't even have the mental coherency to distinguish between the two.

:: sqroot2 11/04/2001 03:43:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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just came back from seeing the one. not particularly whoopeeeeeeee about it, though...igh, i didn't like it much. the company counts more ;)

the gods have answered my prayers!!!!!!!! (if i were religious)

formal...how will things turn out?...i have no idea...i'm just hoping, and, to some degree, coercing my parents......to a small degree.

:: sqroot2 11/03/2001 10:02:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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at matt's house building bridges! fun! :D

still depressed.

:: sqroot2 11/03/2001 01:04:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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i want to be simple. i want things to be simple and everything to fall into place and work out right. i want to play rachmaninoff's third concerto...to get my mind off this, to comfort myself--to show myself that i can do something that i really really really really really want--of course i can't play it. it's way too hard.

bless my lizard's repose.

everything to just turn out right. split infinitive *takes a bow* how cruel, how torturous life can be. this is not the actions of anyone else, this is not by my beloved lizard, all this that i am feeling--it is my own emotions, my own...impulsiveness taking the better of myself.... oh, stupid me, silly me, dumb me.

"I shall not envy lovers, but long for what they share"

no, i have no need to envy them. but yes, i do long for what they share. normal couples, i long for what they share...what a true line.*sigh*

:: sqroot2 11/03/2001 12:48:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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no, no! i am having so many mood swings today!
but i just want vicky for one night! with nobody else!! formal? or just a date, a plain old date--sometimes i just want to be plain.
i'm breaking down, so i'll stop now. it's time for me to take a chill pill, wipe away the superfluous desired-for tears, and just take it easy. take it easy. it shouldn't be a hard thing to do, RIGHT???

:: sqroot2 11/03/2001 12:14:00 AM [+] :: something to say? []
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feeling...calmed after reading an email. some sense of divine tranquility...???
good luck to all SAT people, and to lizard in particular. :P

:: sqroot2 11/02/2001 09:47:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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{i typed this about twenty minutes ago when i wasn't connected to the 'net. here it is.}
i feel so deflated right now.

my fingers are freezing and my ears are burning; my nose is half-stuffed. rubbing my eyes only makes me see less clearly.

i feel wretched, low, crushed. barely possible circumstances conjoin; my emotions magnify the situation, heat up the situation, probe the situation like a curious tongue on a canker sore. what can i do? i am powerless.

oh, but if i could put so much more on this blog! were this blog to be an earthly confession, like prufrock's! if if if. if!

i am so sad! disappointed?! frustrated! what, what can i do?

and then, what if my statements are taken the wrong way? by My Intended, by whoever else...no, no, no, don't get me wrong, my friends...but how can i tell you how you shouldn't misinterpret me...without saying how you SHOULD interpret me and in effect say things that i don't want to be made completely public????

prufrock had the advantage of being completely anonymous. i am not given that luxury; i cannot confess here.

:: sqroot2 11/02/2001 09:46:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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eh...today and yesterday i've been through so many emotions. my mind is whirling, my psyche is disintegrating.

the subject of the formal brings up so much inconvenience--extensive arguments with mom, worrying on my part (unwarranted worrying...?)...*sigh*.

reblogger just lost all comments, oh well. should i change to blogback?

perhaps i am too emotional of a person. i am so frustrated at this second, so despairing at other times, disheartened, sad, depressed, lonely...i don't know what to do! cuxjt, xini rw qyuwei!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *sigh*

:: sqroot2 11/02/2001 07:03:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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ooh i wanna read matt's blog about girls! :D...my views of you have changed since last year around this time, matt...

:: sqroot2 11/01/2001 08:10:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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lotsa short posts, i realize. sorry..

:: sqroot2 11/01/2001 05:26:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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hm...not much to say, science bowl yesterday was fun...

:: sqroot2 11/01/2001 05:11:00 PM [+] :: something to say? []
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