The 3 T's, Triangle, Timpanis and the Titanic

Ugh, I 've finally stopped rubbing my eyes so I can say something now.

If you're not the best percussionist in your section in the Orchestra you play the triangle.
I, have been in that position many times.
There are quite a few advantages to that.
The gentle ring and 'ting' of the triangle fits in anywhere in most pieces, when it's right it's right, when it's wrong it sounds right (95%).
You also cannot play the wrong note. It only makes one note.
When I'm lucky enough to have a decent part on the xylophone or the glockenspiel, it usually involves me counting for about 16-17 bars (64 bars once!) - with a changing time signature (different amount of beats in a bar).
And I cannot count.
Or rather my concentration span does not reach the capacity to count for so long.
Also, the glockenspiel parts have been time and time again very exposed.
And I do not perform well under pressure.
I quite like the triangle.

The timpanis are pretty cool I guess.
I think I have a photo of me playing the timpanis.

5 minutes of browsing and its not great quality.
I remember that concert, it was about a year ago.
I was showing off my skills that I could play that, the xylophone and the flute so I played all 3 and in between every piece of music I would run about to my destination.
To be honest, I don't actually play the timpanis, I just pretend I can, push the pedal to get the right note, and hit it and perform rolls on it.

My conversation with my brother sums it up pretty much:

Me: I have a 3 bar solo on the timpanis in Wind band!!
My brother: I didn't know you could play the timpani!
Me: Neither did I!

The timpani also fits into most places, however its very easily out of tune, and seeing as I am in a room full of amazing musicians, they can probably tell.

My first year in county orchestra was when I was 12. It was quite intimidating as everyone was 15  to 18 roughly. I was playing the traingle....yay. The conductor then made the orchestra applaud me for my triangle skills because I was hitting it 'beautifully' and making the perfect note.
Go me!

Oh and I just wrote 'Titanic' in the title because I needed to make up for the 3 T's. Actually I coud write 'tambourine'. Nah.

In the Hall of the Mountain King - Xylophone duet

My brother and I did a little duet on my xylophone of 'In the Hall of the Mountain King'. We finally got it on the 5th take, hope you like it! 

Long time no speak... and better get complaining

Well hello, its been.. how long, a week and a bit?

Guess what?
I've been in school.

We had a lesson with an awesome substitute teacher, who everyone pretty much loves. It was a biology lesson and my friend was going to write that animal ditribution was affected by 'environmental stimuli'. I was unimpressed. Pretentious much. (In my English essay I only used simple words like 'effectual' and 'portraiture')
So being the mature student I am, I stole her work and gave it to another boy in our class to hide. It got a bit out of hand.
Lets just end it with that she wrote a withstraining order that she got the teacher to sign.
But its okay.
Because the teacher then mouthed behind his hand that he used his fake signature.

Argh. Brain freeze. There was something else I wanted to talk about.

Oh, I had to go see the headmaster. Basically the art teacher sent me and a friend to see him because he had an idea that need executing. Well another student had already been sent up for being naughty, so when I knocked on the door he shouted with a very angry voice to come in.But he lit up when he saw me and asked how I was, because he knows me for the mature student I am.
Anyway, his idea.
He went to the cinema recently to watch 'The Muppets' and wanted to design some posters based on the muppets to get year 11's to revise. Or as we have to draw it... 'Git Revizin'. Or as I can't spell incorrectly spelt words 'Revzin'. Git Revzin.

You know the M&M peanut ones? (Yeah, M&Ms again, I'm pretty surprised). Well in case you don't know, they're chocolate covered peanuts in different colours. Please don't think I'm being patronising, because my mum didn't know this.

So she ate quite a few of the M&Ms and after a few, she complained that they all tasted the same, and all had peanuts. She accused M&M company of tricking her that each M&M had a different flavour. No mummy, thats skittles. And the M&M packet did say 'peanut M&Ms'.
Now I am being patronising.

My parents, luckily, have a good sense of humour (well I say good but they don't laugh at half my jokes so maybe not), and suggested I write to M&M customer service to complain about it.


If anyone works in M&M or knows someone that does, tell them to have a look at this.

Au revoir.

Mmm. Deadliness of irony 3?

On Thursday I went shopping with my mates. Lets call one of them - Jane.Jane came over to my house in the morning, and we set off for the train station 18 minutes before the departure time.
I stumbled around with my boots, attempting to walk.
There was a can on the road by us that was going so slow. Whoops, I meant "van on the road". My brother forbade me to use the backspace key.
There was a van on the road by us that was going so slow. Then, it drove ahead of us. Then, it pulled over. So we walked ahead of it again.
Excuse my bad narration.
So we joked about, saying we overtook the van. Hahahahaha.
We had to walk by a primary school, and there was this sign-y thing that lit up with '30' if you went too fast (over 30 mph theoretically). I made this hilarious joke about how the thing lit up when we past it, but we just didn't see it because we were too fast. Hahahahaha.
Walk. walk. walk.
We arrived at the train station.


And, er, how do I say this.



Well, we missed the train.

By 3 minutes.


Even though every time I set off 18 minutes before I make it in time.

So, er, it seems we were a bit, well, slow.

The next train was in 2 hours.

London Adventures. Part 2. V&A museum. Boom.

After struggling to get to sleep, because the air conditioner kept turning off, and after swapping beds with my brother, we got to sleep.
Then, guess what, we woke up the next morning. I made some coffee, because London water tastes iffy, and they had free instant coffee. Then I ate some pork pie. And made some tea. Because London water tastes iffy.
Boom.
Introduction done.
Proper stuff now.
V&A museum. Museum of art and design.
My brother and I were let loose with a camera.
We went straight to top floor. Ran up the flight of stairs.

The museum had just opened and there weren't usually anyone in the more obscure places.

Top floor of the museum.... And those stringy bits have patterns of light running through. But the timing was wrong so my brother failed to get the light in the photo.

THE best part was when we hijacked the glass lift for our own photographic purposes.

For example...

And...
Yeah.

And, of course, there are real exhibitions. Which we took seriously.



My favourite exhibition was the Glass.



And I took a lot of photos of my brother from above. Basically, I waited with the camera while he ran downstairs. Fun.

Oh I love the museum.

London Adventures.

Valentine's day, my family and I took a long train ride to the most romantic place possible. London.
We went to Leicester Square, and straight into China-town. My brother would like to add that there were construction works, but if I'm honest, I didn't notice. Because we were in China-town, and there was food, lovely smelling food.
Dribble, dribble.
Walk, walk. We went around Leicster Spuare, and lo and behold, the only shop I saw that day that was possibly bigger or matched the size of Superdry. M&M shop.
(Oh dear, I see that my father has downloaded Glee, must restrain myself from watching it and finish this blog post)
ANYWAY, the M&M shop, 4 floors worth of M&M merchandise. There were M&M weird statues everywhere, and expensive merchandise with M&M written on it. The most ridiculous thing I saw though, had to be this grotesque sparkly shirt (a collectible) for £2,200 (ish).My eyebrows popped up.

I saw a guy with a cool coat on writing a long Valentine card on the tube. Which was sweet, but he should have done it at home, with more effort. But he did have a bag with red roses and chocolate. Well, it would have made me happy.

Then we ate.
Oh we ate.
Such nice food. Nice. Nice. Food.
Spicy Taiwanese beef noodles in soup.
Er, little chinese pork dumplings (?)
Spicy beef and tripe.
Noodles with oysters and stuff in this nice thick soup.
Chicken, with nice sauce.
Fried rice.
AND
milk tea with pearls.
NICE.

Travelodge. in Southwark.
We were very tired. For we had a five hour train journey to get to London. Admittedly the time did go quite quick as we played card games, that were rather addictive.

WOAH! I know this isn't very organised blogging. But I just went on the M&M website and personalised M&Ms with my face on it. I would never usually use this expression. But. LOL.


Anyway, travelodge. I think I can sum it up with one picture.

Relax.

Part 2 to come.

Whitney Houston, dead.

First Michael Jackson, then Amy Winehouse, and now Whitney Houston.
In quite a short period of time, 3 major artists have died.
And quite young too, from being unstable, with drugs, alcohol ecetera.

I remember when Michael Jackson died. The information I could remember was his doctor being someone - 'Murray', and that he died of a heart attack (?)
My brother and I were quite silly, but we came up with the 'truth' behind this 'murder'. Murray was related to Andy Murray (the British number 1 tennis player, but sometimes Scottish), and attacked his heart with a tennis racket, making it a 'heart attack'.

When Amy Winehouse died, we were on holiday in Amsterdam, and it was around the same time of the Oslo attacks. So our nights at the hotel were glued to the tv. In fact I never really watch the news, so I probably would not have known about it if I were not on holiday (I only watch the news when on holiday).

I don't remember how I found out about MJ's death, but I remember the whole school talking about it, and I was one of the first ones in school so I heard a lot of 'did you know...', so in the end I wrote a little poster saying 'Yes, we know MJ's dead' and stuck it to our form room.

And Whitney Houston. Ashamedly, I found out of facebook.
'R.i.p. Whitney Houston'
'R.i.p. Whitney Houston'
'Amy Whinehouse dies everyone bangs on about it, Whitney Housten dies hardly anything is said, its a sad world.'

Then I quickly google her name, to check if its true. (Wikipedia has already updated to include her death!). Yeah, its true. Then I wrote a blog post about it.


It took me forever to work out R.i.p. stands for rest in peace. I just thought it mean rip, or was latin or something.
Oh, and now brother tells me it is latin.

Will my life of lies and deceit never cease?

 

 

Sigh...

and here we are again.

.
.
.
I remember this girl in my primary school once, and when we had to knit she would turn her chair away from the teacher, and move her arms like a train to look like she was knitting.
.
.
.
And today me and my friend finally figured out what we will do when we are older.
We are going to run crossword championships.
We had to do a crossword in R.e. today, and we were so inspired.
We have even come up with some of the rules.
...sigh
.
.
.
We also had to write about justice and injustice in the lesson.

I could have gone deep and talked about how there isn't a clear definition.
For example,
A hard-working man and a lazy man both have an equal amount of money.
On the one hand, thats fair as they have the same amount.
On the other hand, it isn't fair, because the hard-working man deserves more money.
And the question to number 7, is that the world won't ever be a fair place, because everybody's view on justice differs.

I suppose it is easier to describe justice as splitting 10 sweets between 2 people equally.
But.
What if one person bought the sweets with all their own money?

Well,
as if that doesn't make my head dizzy.

Dancing on Ice?

I use to watch this reality tv show called 'Dancing on Ice'.
There would be these not-really-famous celebrities paired up with professional skaters and they would 'dance on ice' every week.
And I use to really like it too.
Once I had a packet of skittles, I poured them out, counted it, and seperated then into groups so I knew how much I could eat between each advertisement break. I even sorted the colours into order so I could leave my favourite ones (yellow and green) to last.
But, I grew up and matured a little over the last 2 years or so, and have stopped watching it.
Its great entertainment if you want to watch extremely mediocre 'celebrities' being dragged around on the ice,
and to be fair one out of 12 of the contestants are quite entertaining.
So to conclude
.................................
Although I would never watch it now,
its a great way to ration how much skittles you eat.

Oh, how rare. A refreshing monday.

This is rather awful.
I am going to write about the feeling of a Monday. And the weather. But don't worry...Eisteddfod is here to make things better (!)

So, Wales. Temperatures were fine, not one q-tip in sight (withfrains/withthrains herself from making some terrible joke about dandruff). Its not great for the mood of people in school though, here we all are, dutifully learning about the perfect tense in French, and some lucky kids are off school in England.

The weather was rather lovely here, warm and Spring-like.
In short, I found it easy for once to get out of bed.

And off to school I went.

Oops, my memory is going. There was drizzle rain. Which is still fine.
'I love drizzle rain' <--- quoting my vegetarian friend who eats bacon to support the local economy.

But the weather was still fine.

And, behold the greatness, hold headlines, prepare the newsflash.
EISTEDDFOD's back.
Its a Welsh celebration, where people act, sing, dance, and play instruments, write, draw ecetera.
And of course, the winners of the writing competitions get to sit on a chair while our rugby-fanatic welsh teacher waves a sword about.
Our school holds one every year. And every year our house (school split into three 'houses') loses.

Oh, the memories.

In my first year I joined garage orchestra where I hit two wine bottles with a wooden spoon in an attempt to recreate 'Mama Mia'. (We lost that category)

In my second year I entered the instrumental soloist competition where I was against two grade-8 violinists. (I lost) I also took part in the English dramatic where I was a doctor, and got into trouble for 'stealing' a lab coat from the science department to look the part. (We lost that category)

Last year, I was an American male criminal (Dandy Dan? in Bugsy Malone) with an Australian accent and a fake moustache drawn on by an eyeliner. I also wore a huge silk gown, and baggy pants. (Need I say what we came in the category?) I also entered the instrumental soloist (joint last), and the writing competition.

And....behold the greatness, hold headlines, prepare the newsflash.
I came third in the writing competition, meaning a prize of £5!
It was a great moment, 10 mins with an online rhyming dictionary and writing a poem resulted in glory, joy, and euphoria.

I gloi, mae Cymru yn lle hyfryd a gall yr Eisteddfod fod yn hwyl. Ond nid yr iaith yw, oherwydd yr wyf yn hyn o bryd yn teipio i mewn i Google Translate ac yna copïo a gludo'r testun i mewn yma.
(To conclude, Wales is a lovely place and the Eisteddfod can be fun. But the language isn't, because I am currently typing into Google Translate and then copying and pasting the text into here.)

When I was little,

When I was little, I was a carrot thief.
There I was, probably about 3, just being tiny and doing whatever 3 year-olds did 11 years ago.
Being me, that was most likely, lying on the floor 'drawing' with crayons.
(Source: not memories, but a photo of me lying on the floor 'drawing' with crayons)

And my mum was in the kitchen, cutting carrots up, preparing for the evening meal, and she placed the carrots on the worktable.
And then the carrot thief snuck in, being absolutely tiny she could go anywhere unseen. (My mum may have been in the toilet)
So I pulled the chair to the workplace, climbed on top, and grabbed a handful of carrots.
And ran like the wind.
For my mum had seen me.
I sat at my little table on my little stool, covered the carrots with my hands.
Only the carrots stuck out at both ends,
because,
well, because I was 3 and had tiny hands.

Funky Friends

I think its about time that I dedicate a blog post to my friends.
In no particular order.

-The one that has recently started wearing a skirt to school, sometimes the wrong way around.
-The one that has too much amazing hair. And calls me Corinney bear.
-The two that look like each other.
-The one that has stinky perfume in her pencil case.
-The only one that is taller than me when I wear 3-inches boots.
-The one that understands my passion for marshmallows.
-The one that I need to reply to via airmail.
-The one that whose favourite sandwich, is smoked salmon and cream cheese.
-The one that has hips, and is a boy.
-The one that who points out all my accidental innuendos.
-The one that I need to trip up using my slide-down-the-wall technique.
-The one that is in love with Gok Wan, and even has his glasses.
-The one that used who gave me tiny pig for christmas.
-The one that can burst my bottled up tears.
-The one that I walk home with, and can pull off most hairstyles.
-The one I call my half-neighbour.
-The one that always has amazing German chocolates.
-The one who I once gave a finger-puppet to.
-The ones I have forgotten to write one specifically about.....................................

Any orchestra with me in it, will never be prim nor proper.

Sunday morning, 10 am, Orchestra practice...
Percussion section, me, and three other girls.

It was great.... well, as great as it gets.
Me, playing the glockenspiel, hitting some notes every minute in a piece or so.
*** playing the snare drum, eniviously expertly.
*** playing the timpanis.
*** standing by the xylophone, standing there, counting the beats until, I guess until the piece finishes and we can all sit down.

And then there was a ginger kid. He was going to join our percussion section... great, we needed a drummer, who could play the drums. Unlike us, drummers who can't.
So the the staff told him to join us, and we would be lovely and look after him and give him parts to play.

We spoke English, he spoke English. And we know his name is Benedict. Or Benjamin. Or something else. Bashfully I admit to you, (I can't remember).
But the beautiful outcome was that he ended up eating cheese and onion pringles for the rest of the 4 hours in rehearsal. He didn't even produce one note. Wow, thats even worse than my first rehearsal. (Call me Corinne, Corinne the trianglist).
Oh, but then, I can't say much about him eating pringles, I ate chocolate digestives in a piece once where there was one note, which I couldn't even play at the right time, and choked in the pianissimo (very very quiet) part.

BUT, that wasn't even the worst part.
Cymbals,
loud,
sonorous,
distinctive.
And the exact instrument you should not entrust me with.
So, I was given the crash cymbal (a cymbal on a stand, usually part of the drum kit, hit with a mallet).
Well, once they found it they gave it to me.
It was already halfway through the piece when we set it up.
And I started hitting it, (to the correct beat, I must boast)
And, silence, a dramatic clean finish.
HA
And, silence, *crash* (everyone swivels around to look at the culprit) *nervous giggling*.

Yeah, even with the conductor waving for a sharp finish, I continued right through, hitting the crash cymbal with all my might. Being me, I died a little inside. Oh, how embarassing.
I nearly ate my scarf, trying to hide my face.

V&A Museum

A writer's block. And lets just talk.

When one finds oneself stuck.
I would not call it a writer's block.
But rather a lack of inspiration.
And though I would not call it, oh I don't know, a lack of oxygen.
It does feel a little empty.
So I will just talk.
Romeo and Juliet.
What we are studying in English.
And I must admit I hate to admit this.
I 'kinda' appreciate Shakespeare.
I guess when you look at something in depth.
There's always more.
And that something more.
Is what makes it so clever.
And how he uses poetry and writing skills.
Well, I wish I had his skills
And then there's my shaved carrot joke.
A joke a fine comedian - yours truly, made up.
But everything think its terrible.
But everyone still laughs at its stupidity.
And in a way.
Thats why its a joke.
Its not clever, but it made people laugh.
In fact, one could say because of how bad it is.
Its good.

And, so with the effort of a tired Friday evening brain.
I wrote a blog post.
About.
Well, being uninspired.

What did the shaved carrot say to the cucumber?
'I'm smoother than you.'
What did the cucumber say to the shaved carrot?
'At least I'm cooler than you.'

I'm joking, its just bad. But considering its the first joke I have ever made up.
I think I have a good chance of being better than Michael McIntyre.