Of universities and the city.

I went up to London with George yesterday. Forgot Mum's camera of course, so here are my crappy phone pictures:

I was meant to live here. Seriously. Apparently I would've been if my family had been able to afford it.

Today, on the other hand, was spent ordering uni prospectuses, noting down open days etcetra etcetra. I ordered about twelve, but I have two uni's that I love (York and Nottingham) and one where I love the course but not so much the rest of the place (City of London. The trouble is, I'm constantly worrying that I'm aiming too high. York and Nottingham both have pretty much everything I'm looking for - courses with varying modules so you can get an all round view of the subject (music) while still focussing on certain areas, study abroad oppurtunities to places I' really interested in (Finland and Japan respectively), and they're in good locations. Plus they're quite far from where I live, and while I love my family, I don't particularly fancy living with them and commuting up to London every day. Which would be what would happen.

However, I need two As and a B for York, and one A and two Bs for Nottingham, and I don't know if I can manage it. Then there's the trouble of what subjects to take next year: I love English and I fucking HATE media studies, but should I take the one I like more, or suffer for a year if I'd be more likely to get into a decent uni? Ugh, this is such a mission! Help! At least I know the exact course I want to take...

Also, my thoughts go out to everyone in Poland following the plane crash that killed many important members of their government, including the president. May they all rest in peace.

Today's music is a Florence & The Machine demo. I like it way more than the final version!


Peace&Love

Of a newly revised bucket list.

- Study music at university.
- Tour Europe by train and visit every capital city.
- Learn to walk in slip on shoes.
- Join some kind of group of political activists.
- Join a band.
- See the Northern Lights.
- Read all the works of Shakespeare.
- Go scuba diving.
- Meet Tuomas Holopainen.
- Dye my hair some insane colour.

I'm sitting here surrounded by stray paper, a vegetarian cookbook and my beloved iPod. And it's bloody freezing.

Spring is finally upon us. I hate spring, basically due to the weather (I'm British, all I do is complain about the weather!). It's mild and rainy, the inbetween season. And I like extremes. Still, it's a time for new beginnings. I think I'm going to fiddle around with the colourscheme on this thing.

Easter holidays - a bittersweet feeling. On one hand it's great to be off school and to be able to go out and do all kinds of crazy things with my friends and boyfriend, but on the downside I will be spending nearly all of it working. A/S level exams are painfully close.

We didn't make the media deadline, which sucks. I don't want it to sound like I'm blaming someone else for my own mistakes, but to be honest, the teachers were the ones who never gave us any equimpment with which to do the aforementioned coursework, and thus it is ALL THEIR FAULT. Ah well... we're nearly done, so we'll be getting it in as soon as humanly possible.

Today's music is Leverage. Because the vocals from 3.34 to 3.45 made my heart skip a beat.


Peace & Love

Of callings in life and boredem.

I get bored way too easily. That's my revalation for the day.
  Yesterday I learned a couple of things that are pretty important: Trust your instincts no matter what anyone else says, and being a signpost is the shittiest job ever.
  Oh, and I need to be more assertive.
  Emi and Carmen filmed some of their media project yesterday (after a casting disaster) and I somehow ended up standing next to Hayley holding up a sign saying "KEEP OUT, FILMING." Of course I was completely ignored by everyone, due to just standing there holding up this folorn piece of paper, while Hayley argued with the people who refused to go away.
   I was talking to my singing teacher last night, and she was asking me about university. I know that I want to study music, and I'd also like to study abroad for a little. York used to run a study abroad programme to the continent, but it's since disappeared from their website. My teacher was telling me which countries were good and bad if you were thinking purely from a musical perspective, and I happened to ask her what she knew about the Sibelius Academy, which was one of the links on the programme. She turned to me and exclaimed "Oh, Finland's a great country for music, especially for singing!" My face went like this: :D
   So yeah. I had a plan. Now I have a reason.
Peace & Love

Of Christmas raving and farewells

 Last night was one of the most epic moments of my life.

I had so much fun!

It was the day of Hayley's long awaited Christmas party. Becky brought crates of alchohol, but this time, I wasn't the only sober one. The uninvited guest never showed up. Several people told me they loved me. I got a chance to wear my awesome red shoes. We sung a very drunken rendition of My Heart Will Go On. Jon Bovi described the song as "magical" and I nearly did a spit - take with my lemonade. And I got covered in cat hair.

Celine Dion - My Heart Will Go On

It was also the last time I could see George before he goes to New Zealand for three weeks over Christmas, so we did present swapping. He gave me some Malteasers and a bracelet which is pride of place next to my Camden one. And (though this is pretty much for Emi's benefit since she said she'd probably forget), I definitely did have my first kiss this time.

Overall it was one hell of a party!

Peace & Love

Of Christmas illness and yore

Yesterday, we had our school Christmas concert. We spent an entire day rehearsing for it, which was primarily spent being bored. One of the lines in one of our carols was hideously chromatic, and set to the words "In the scene of yore".

What, pray tell, is yore?

We didn't know, so we added it into every sentence we could.

Having heard the yorechestra, the reyoreder consort and singing in the sixth fyorem choir, we went home only to return three hours later for the concert itself. It went fairly smoothly, but the descants we had to sing were way too high. I am not a soprano. The last note was so high I actually thought I was going be sick. Not fun.

Today was one of those days when you just feel awful for no apparent reason. I think it was a bit of a mixture of a sore throat and cold, tiredness, stress and the imminent departure of ones boyfriend to the other side of the world for almost a month.

Bad times. 

Not much else to report, although Hayley's having a Christmas party on Friday, which should be awesome fun!

Peace & Love

Of hopes and dreams

I was talking about this with George, so I decided to make a bucket list.

.Go scuba diving

I love the sea and I've always wanted to try this, but I've never managed it. I go snorkeling on holiday but I'd love to be able to dive down and see all the fish and such.

.Get a band started up

Kind of done this. Myself and Emi had a band practice today, and will hopefully be doing the same every week. We'll find the rest of the members eventually!

.Go To Japan

Done this. I went there about a year ago and it was incredible. I'd love to see my host sister again, and all the people there were just so much nicer that here. I'm almost definite that I'll always be living in England, but if the BNP came into power or something, Japan would be my second choice!

.Go to Lapland and see the Northern Lights

I've had a bit of a thing with the Northern Lights ever since I read the Phillip Pullman book, uh, Northern Lights. Lapland (I've only seen pictures of Finnish Lapland but I'd like to see Swedish Lapland too) seems to be one of the most beautiful places on earth. And I'd like to see Father Christmas.

.Meet Tuomas Holopainen

Nightwish's keyboard player/main man. A bit of a personal hero of mine. I'd just like to see him long enough to say hi or something. I'm not a weird obsessive fangirl, but I do have a massive respect for the guy due to his massive composing skillage.

.Make sure that people know I'm there for them

Sometimes I worry that people don't know this, and I hope some day I'll be able to make it clear.

.Read ALL of Shakespeare's plays

I used to hate this kind of thing, but I love Shakespeare right now. So far I've read Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night and half of The Merchant Of Venice, all for English Lit. This could take a while.

.Be able to at least make myself understood in a foreign language

I'm not exactly a genius at languages so I don't know whether this will ever be achieved, but I'm in my sixth year of studying Japanese now. I'm also attempting to teach myself Finnish.

.Go to a music festival

Done this. I went to Love Music Hate Racism back in '08, the second time I saw a Damon Albarn related project live. I wasn't really sure what was going on when I went but I left with a totally different view of politics! I'd like to go to Glastonbury or Download or something one day.

.Hurl an onion bhaji at Nick Griffin

I'm pretty sure he's been egged before, but due to his racist views an onion bhaji would just be immense. Plus they're quite tasty.

Peace & Love

Of the good and the bad

The Good:

.I can't physically stop singing. If I saw a bear I'd be singing "oh look, a bear!" before wondering why there is a bear on the loose in the dullest corner of England and then running.

.Russell Howard's Good News is AMAZING.

.George asked me out on Wednesday.

The Bad:

.I have a headache.

.I have too much work that I should be doing.

.I'm uninspired and slightly bored.

Peace & Love

Of gigging and Willy Wonka

Well, myself and Emi somehow ended up playing (she was playing guitar & singing a little, and I was singing) in the art corridor on sixth form open evening. Why we got put in front of art I will never know, all the visitors were like "is this music?" and we had to go "No. This is art." But it was fun all the same and we gained three groupies (Steph, Georgie and Will.)

Anyhow, the "setlist" (in no particular order):

Colours of the Wind - From Pocahontas (Me)

Heaven (Candlelight mix) - DJ Sammy (Emi)

Walking In The Air - Howard Blake (Me)

Knocking On Heaven's Door - Bob Dylan (Emi)

My Immortal - Evanescence (Both of us. Acoustic version, nearly all of which was made up on the spot!)

Let It Be - The Beatles (Both of us)

Times Like These - Foo Fighters (First sung and played by Emi, I later attemted to sing along too but since I didn't know the words this was rather unsuccesful)

Sleepwalker (A'cappella version) - Nightwish (Me, with hastily improvised ending after the second chorus due to the bridge type bit being too high and not really wanting to sing the slightly innuendo-y bit in front of the teachers who were walking past at the time.)

Where Will The Birds Fly - Written by us and Aly, played by both of us minus the cello part

Freefalling - Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers (Emi)

"Emma's Song" - A song Emi wrote, I don't know what it's called... played and sung by her.

Romanza - Some Spanish bloke (Emi)

Wonderwall - Oasis (Both of us)

In other news, we had book character day today, Ed made an AMAZING Willy Wonka, and I met up with George which was great.

Music today is the newest release from The Rasmus. I don't usually like The Rasmus, but I like this. Plus Nettan is in it which makes it instantly better.

The Rasmus feat. Anette Olzon - October & April

Peace & Love

Of being shepherds and amaranths

We had open evening at school yesterday which was... succesful. I guided a family round, sort of rambled on at them at length about the music department (good to plug your own subject eh, and everyone does English and media) but we didn't have time to go up to Japanese, which would have resulted in more rambling.

After that Emi and myself sort of turned into "guide shepherds" which basically involved wandering round the school and dragging the younger years kicking and screaming into showing more people round. Everyone's knackered by the end of this I can tell you!

By around eight we realised no-one else was coming, so we wandered into the music blockCarmen and watched her play the piano. First she played something she'd been learning, then a really with happy, silly sounding piece that she called "Becky's Song"Nightwish's Amaranth. Being the Nightwish nut that I am, I already because it basically sounds like our friend Becky in music form. Then she did a piano version of knew she could play it, but she does it amazingly well so I was in as much awe as Emi, who was like ♥_♥!

Then our music teacher came into the practice room we were in and asked us to help tidy, so we did. We ended up tidying pretty quickly, so we made our ways over to the piano in that room. It is The Worst Piano In Existence, and more than one person (student and teacher) has had the idea of burning it and claiming the insurance. Nethertheless, there it stands. So, Carmen started playing Amaranth again, and I started singing along. Then the two teachers came in and really liked it.

By the time I leave, I WILL have inflicted this band on the entire music department.

Nightwish - Amaranth

Today we have a day off, so I'm going for chinese with some friends.

Peace & Love

Of musicizing and vocalizing

Microphones are awesome.

I've been singing since I can remember and have been having lessons for four years. My first teacher taught me for most of this time, but she moved to another country and now I am being taught by a classical soprano. Saying that, I don't have a classical voice at all. I'm a mezzo-soprano. Anyway, here's a couple of covers.

Nightwish - Mother & Father (From The Poet And The Pendulum)

Evanescence - Breathe No More

And here's my crappy attempts at composing (it was meant to be minimalist but it really isn't.

Moi - Tunnel Vision

Peace & Love