we're going wrong/We've all become the same*.
written: 11:10 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 31, 2005

Twice over and it's amazing. It's a formula but it's not formulaic; it's November's Chopin, but it's not classical, or more technically, it's not remotely Romantic. It's just Jay Chou, his talent for the world to appreciate, and hell I appreciate it so damn much that I can't even put it into words sometimes.

After he came into the picture it suddenly became in vogue for singers to write their own songs; after Dong Feng Po (#5 on Jay Volume 4) everyone was doing the pop-cum-traditional-Chinese-music thing; and how many subpar male singers try to copy him by adopting the same hairstyle, the same mumbly singing, the same rap/R&B shit that sounds like an imitation at best?

Because, you know, you are the original and you copy yourself and you're still the original. I hate American hip-hop and all Asian wannabe-attempts at copying, gesture-for-gesture, word-for-word, beat-for-beat, American hip-hop, and yes, Jay Chou is hip-hop and I hate hip-hop but I love his brand of hip-hop because it is Chinese at the same time.

As a general rule I don't listen to soppy love ballads; but I love his soppy love ballads precisely because they are not soppy. They are always break-up songs with very well-written lyrics, and, in the case of this album in particular, very amazing vocals. Track #3 blew me away the very second it started playing; the music is reminiscent of traditional Chinese pieces, his vocals are amazing (if you think he hit pretty high notes on Ge Qian, you ain't heard nothin' yet) and if it weren't on his album I would never have recognised his voice, and that last verse reminded me of Taiwanese folk tunes.

He knows who he is and what he's capable of and he isn't afraid to flaunt it.

His anti-paparrazi song has the most scathing and sarcastic lyrics ever, for a Jay Chou song, or for a mainstream Chinese pop song, period. In one verse he starts out trying to be politically-correct by saying things like, I know it's your job and I understand; but then he turns everything around by wrapping up that verse with something along the lines of, But at the end of everything you're still a dog that I control.

Also, the title of the track is brilliant. Si Mian Chu Ge; there's an intriguing historical story behind this aphorism but I can't remember what it is, except for little bits and pieces about something regarding a war between different states, one of them "Chu", and how the weaker state was surrounded by the war horns (is that what you call it? I have no idea) of the stronger state, and so the idiom stuck and we use it to describe situations in which one is completely surrounded and trapped. So you wonder, taking into account the above paragraph: who's the one under siege here? Jay Chou or the paparrazi, because the latter can't survive without the former?

Also loved the way he repeated the word 'dog' ('paparrazi' in Chinese is roughly translated as the Dog Team). It's so deliciously demeaning and you hardly see the politically-incorrect, fuck-PR side of him.

No songs devoted to Patty Hou, thankfully. Then again, maybe that Romantic Handphone song was partly about her, even though Vincent Fang wrote the lyrics (and wonderfully so, I must admit, despite the stupid theme).

My favourite song? Track #3. So Chinese, such amazing vocals, beautiful, beautiful melody. The duet with Lara is surprisingly pleasant; her vocals didn't overwhelm his, and she played a supporting role at best, so I'm glad. Still, I think Wu Ding is the ultimate Jielun duet and he's better-matched vocally with Landy Wen.

His up-tempo tracks just rock. A local reviewer said that Blue Coral is supposed to be a continuation to In the Name of the Father (#1, Jay Volume Four, a track I love to bits and pieces and will always love to bits and pieces) but I fail to see how that is the case. Maybe he meant lyrically; I wouldn't know then. I have next to no idea what the lyrics of his non-love songs are saying.

Have I ever mentioned how bad my Chinese is?

Jielun didn't disappoint, doesn't disappoint, never disappoints, and will never disappoint.

Having said that, I do wish he'd experiment more with different music styles. The accompaniment on Track #9 did remind me of this Irish tune thingy we line-danced to back in SNGS, and then we have Track #3 which I will be raving about for months and years to come; but I think he's in a position right now where he can come up with the most outrageous experimentations and still get away with it. I personally can't think of ways he can experiment but hey, I'm not the musical genius here.

Seriously, I don't think I blindly worship him; I genuinely think that he's a genius, and I genuinely like all the songs he's recorded thus far. Barring the exceptional Kai Bu Liao Kou which is my least favourite Jielun song by far, everything else rocks, even the immensely unpopular Kun Shou Zhi Dou (Track #8 from Jay Volume Five) and how it's not exactly the best rock song I've ever heard.

What can I say? He's magical. Full stop.

**

On this note I would like to express a few opinions about how stupid some Jay Chou fans are. They are ripping apart the poor Life! reviewer who gave the album a 3.5/5 rating for the dumbest of reasons.

First, they're all like, "How can dis b 3.5/5? i wud gif a 5/5 lorz!" when they haven't even heard the CD. They fail to remember that not everyone is a rabid Jielun fanatic; that the stupid number-of-starz-given shit is really beside the point; and that the content of the review was actually in Jielun's favour. People should seriously learn how to read.

Second, someone actually said, and I quote, "I dont like people to call Jay as 'Chou'.. It sounds rude to me.. seems like he's biased towards him.."

I feel a 'people with bad English should die' rant coming on. Must. Not. Succumb. And I laughed out loud when I read the first pseudo-sentence (a sentence is not a sentence without a proper full-stop to end it). The person who posted that comment is 16. When a 16-year-old can say things like that, I seriously fear for the future of this country.

Third, just look at this:

'i tink they way he describes everything is horrible.
it doesnt really make any sense to me at all.
lyk the.
"But there is hardly anything remotely classical on the album , save for a chorale prelude on second track Blue Storm."

beating around the bush. for i dont know whats his point=/
'

(Note to self: Do not get started on spelling and punctuation.)

(On second thoughts, another note to self: Do not get started on how bloody and blatantly and excruciatingly stupid that comment was, period.)

To see the offending and offensive thread, as well as the review under fire, click here.

I personally thought the review was fair.

I guess that's the difference between one who can read and one who can't.

**

Okay, so maybe I'm mean, BUT I CAN'T HELP IT. My mom is like this too! Another artsy elitist snob. Ha, ha, ha. She was criticisng Jielun's choice of title album and going, "Is he trying to copy Chopin?"

See? My overly critical nature is in the genes!

And Mom, Jielun will never succeed in copying the great Chopin no matter how hard he tries, and I'm sure he knows that.

**

Anyway, something worth mentioning: I was reading a judgment for a defamation case and in it the judge quoted a verse from Othello.

That was a nice surprise.

**

I should probably talk about today's presentation.

Well.

I was reading from my script, I was rambling and my tutor told me to 'slow down' which made me ramble even more, my tutor asked me about some specific facts of our fact pattern and I couldn't answer and so my group members had to step in, I thought I did horribly, it was so obvious that I didn't put in much effort, I was the weakest link in the group, and my group members totally kicked my ass.

Luckily for me, during the first three-quarter of my speech my tutor was distracted by something else and I think she half-paid attention and so I could get away with saying things that barely made sense (at least, to myself they barely made sense). I just wanted it done and over with, to hell with my grade, I didn't give a fuck and I still don't give a fuck.

At the end of it though, we (surprisingly, at least for me) received pretty good feedback. The tutor said, "[Yelen], good signposting." She also commented on me rushing through the whole thing and hell I told myself not to bullet-train through the thing and try to make it look like I can speak English, but no. My left contact lens was dry and thus my vision was half-blurry, and I just can't present things, period. Maybe the fact that I didn't do any substantial work for it factored heavily into the equation, eroded my level of confidence or completely obliterated it, I don't know.

I'm just glad it's over.

**

I bought three new pieces of clothing from Esprit which totalled up to about $130 after various discounts. I love my new clothes. They are so pretty. I love my new knee-length skirt. When I saw it I instantly fell in love with it because the colour is so pretty, a gorgeous shade of dark pink, almost red, and I paid $72 for it even though they didn't have a new piece. As a general rule I don't buy clothes in the price range of 70 and above that have been tried on by others; but the skirt, oh the skirt, it's so gorgeous that I just tossed that rule out of the window. And it's a size 38 which a bit too big for me but they didn't have 36 and the skirt is so pretty that I didn't care in the end.

I love shopping.

**

My mom went off at me again in the car about the law school thing, my detachment from it, my constant proclamations that I want to do Lit, my slim chances of getting into Cambridge, the way I'm not studying.

I wish I could tell her everything but she doesn't get it. If I could be 19 over and over and over again I would gladly get through law school now and do what I'm passionate about when I'm 19 the second time round; but of course, you're only a certain age once, you can never turn back the hands of time, once a period has whizzed by it's gone for good. It's damage that is irreparable, like all consequential and substantial damages to things that mean a thing to anyone.

I can't do this because I don't feel for it, because I never wanted to be a lawyer, because the only thing that I've consistently wanted was to write and to pursue that and Literature in a university worth my while. She thinks that Cambridge is my only alternative route, that I'm naive enough to think that I can say "fuck the stupid end of semester exams" because Cambridge is an absolute possibility, that I'm not trying hard enough.

Maybe I'm not trying hard enough, and I think I'm wasting my parents' CPF money the longer I stay in law school. But I'm not presumptuous enough to stupidly believe that Cambridge is real, that they would remotely want someone as mediocre as me, and that I have the goods to bank on it; because I know I don't. If I get in it'd be because other successful applicants rejected it in the favour of Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford, or because they failed to meet their required triple A's. The probability of me landing a spot is 1 in 4 and I'm pessimistic and also very much aware of my lack of ability and so I'm going to be the three people who don't make it.

But having said all that. Having said all that, I hate the way she goes, "So you won't get in then" like it's a fact when I tell her things like that. Maybe she's trying to give me a reality check and to steer me back towards law school; but all the same, her lack of support does hurt sometimes.

I don't know. The more I try to explain things to her, the more agitated she gets, the more worried she is, the more she nags, and I know she means well, but.

But she doesn't get it, the way I want so much more out of university life than this, the way I can't do this anymore because it's not who I am, the way I'm irresponsible and childish and do things for their instant gratification, the way I need this instant gratification, how much I dread the rest of my life, the vehement passion with which I abhor Pragmatism.

After all's been said and done, I still end up wishing that I was never born. Things never get better; they keep getting worse, and worse, and worse. I'm disgusted at how banal life is, how trivial our concerns are, and I'm intrinsically repulsed by conformity and uniformity and I don't want any of this, I wish I could retire to an unknown world and be cut off from civilisation but no, I'm a city girl at heart, I could never survive a day in the mountains or a forest.

I don't even know what my point is anymore.

I can't live in the future. My one and only reality is right now. Long-term turns me off, Instant Gratification is my new motto in life.

All these spell Disaster. You know how it is.

I wish I didn't have to deal.

* Have A Nice Day - Stereophonics

before sunrise // before sunset

Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010