Friday night ramblings

It's a lazy Friday night, one of those when you have tons of work to do but don't, and blog instead. I am sprawled on the bed typing with pink fingertips. A good and appropriate question to ask at this juncture is - why pink fingertips? (A lesser question-asker would ask, "why fingertips?") Well the answer is that I just spent the last hour and a half practising the ukulele while watching TV, so my fingertips on the left hand are a little sore from all the string pressing. I know, you're curious how one can practise the ukulele while watching TV. Enough questions for one day.

I just realized how lucky I am to have grown up with music education. I mean, the note-reading is basically drilled into my brain, although I haven't played a piece in ten years, I instinctively hum to the sheet music and am able to hear the music in my head. It's like knowing a language, that you can read and write and think in. And I keep rediscovering stuff that I had long forgotten, such as names of everything (like, er, triad), and it's really fun to suddenly remember the knowledge that you didn't know you knew. Also, as a result, I have been able to save myself S$200 on ukulele lessons (just because my parents spent thousands on me as a kid) and teach myself with this really handy book that I bought in London: Ukulele Fretboard Maps: The Essential Patterns That All The Pros Know and Use. What a confidence-inspiring title! And it is a good book.

I went to the only ukulele shop in Singapore yesterday and got my strings changed. The staff was a cute guy who taught me how to change the strings and waived the string-changing charge (S$2 per string was the cost initially, on top of S$12 for a set of strings). Awesome customer service. I also got a digital tuner, since before this I was tuning the uke with my naked ear and some flash videos online, and it's a pain because ukes go out of tune very easily. Thus equipped, I was able to practise a little yesterday evening and today evening, and although I am not playing anything coherent yet (besides a mean C major scale without looking at my fingers... heh) (oh yeah! I can play Jason Mraz's I'm Yours, a friend taught me once and it's like the easiest ever) I am learning and should be able to familiarize myself with some chords within a couple of weeks.

And it's so exciting to speculate the songs that I will be able to play and sing to! If I had this sort of drive when I was 7 I would've saved my mum and I a lot of pain (mental from her part, physical from mine, as she used to coerce me into practising by holding a cane. Awesome childhood.). But I guess it's never too late. I am also trying to get through the phase of tender fingertips as quickly as I can, basically to grow calluses on the fingers on my left hand as soon as possible so that the strings will not hurt anymore. My right hand is facing another dilemma - to pick the strings easily I should have longer nails, but I hate growing my nails out (another imprint that my piano-playing childhood left on me - short nails are crucial so that they don't go all clicketty clack on the keys). I am still figuring this one out.

I am still having insomnia at night. I don't know if I should go dragonboating tomorrow, as I won't be there next week (GOING BACK TO KL OH YEAH) and if I don't get enough of sleep tonight tomorrow I'll be pretty tired. Besides I still have 2/3 of the paper that I'm going to have to finish by Monday, and dragonboating will take a huge 5-hour chunk out of my time. However, I do feel like I need the exercise, I've been doing nothing but sit in the office all week, and the sheer action of not doing anything is giving me a backache.

*like one hour later*
Just said goodbye to Housemate David who's leaving Singapore for Taiwan to do his PhD. He's leaving at 5am so I'll probably not see him again... his presence will be missed. Sigh.

I should go to bed.