really, it's an educational trip

Mood: nonchalant
What's on: "A Certain Romance"- Arctic Monkeys

But really, it's another spring break. The band and orchestra will be leaving for Myrtle Beach tomorrow afternoon. I'm fairly indifferent about it at the moment, but things will probably start looking better soon enough. After hitting the beach, the bus ride will seem like nothing.
Today has been slow and still is. Sorting and packing doesn't seem very appealing, nor is homework and other work, so I'm here blogging.

Diplomacy is international Relations started a few days ago, and things have already begun to heat up. Maybe it's just me, but the situations have been the most problematic for us, Italy. I guess 2 days away from might be a good therapy, everyone is already stressing out; I know I am.

Because I feel bad for forgetting to post before Cleveland, I leave you all with this and part deux. Enjoy it.

Bazz' Album 05 (Part 2)

(Con't from part 1)

So, 4 month later, it's here. After getting bored of writing reviews, I left this post for awhile and came back ever so often to work on it.
A lot of what I've listened to in the past year has been "indie". It's hard to define the genre since it's very broad. But for the most part, I see experimentation as a key feature in indie music. Through out the year, there has been some really weird albums produced that I can't even began to comprehend let along appreciate. So I guess those fall under the extreme indie genre that I will not touch.
I kind of tried to pick albums from different sub-genre. These aren't in any orders.

(links are good for a week)

Indie love

Worlds Apart
...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
Track Pick-"Will You Smile Again for Me?" (6:50)

The band name might suggest an equipment-destroying, I-hate-god-and-you, heavy metal band, but Trail of Dead is considered an indie rock band. Instrumentals, meter and style variations, vocals are among the things that shines throughout this album. The band's sound has toned down a lot since their debut and is more experimental now. There is a pure instrumental waltz track in the middle of the album that makes me a happy panda.

How Strange, Innocence
Explosions in the Sky
Track Pick-"A Song for Our Fathers" (5:44)

This album doesn't fail to captivate me every time I listen to it. Technically, this was first released in 2001 as a limited debut album. Because of the demands, it was remastered/re-released this year. (So, it's still legitimate for me to include this) EITS is a post-rock band. The overall sound is more mellow/emo than their others, but doesn't fall short of the essential dramatic elements that defines the band and the genre.

Broken Social Scene
Broken Social Scene
Track Pick- "7/4 (Shoreline)" (4:53)

The Canadians are fighting back. BSC is a project-esque band formed by some major indie names in Canada (Metric & Feist to name 2). This was a new band I heard this year that made its mark. There're a lot of depth to each song. Not limited to sound/instruments/effects, but also lyrics. Personally, not as good as their last album, but still grabbed my interest in the band.

Underwater Cinematographer
The Most Serene Republic
Track Pick-"King of No One" (2:26)

Toronto based indie group that shares similar sound with Broken Social Scenes but with less synth and more mello(both are under the same label actually). Because of that, I might've been abit bias judging. Nonetheless, a good post-rock album that's definitely better than some other indie bands. (Reminds me a little of the Postal Service)
More worthwhile bands from Arts and Crafts (the label): Stars, Broken Social Scene, Feist, Apostle of Hustle

Black Mountain
Black Mountain
Track Pick-"Druganaut" (3:47)

More Canadian debut goodness. At first, the name suggested to me a folk band. The vocals do somewhat reflect that, but the sound itself is a rollercoaster ride through sax rips, bass rifts, lyrical rhymes, and experimentation party. Majority of songs are over 6 mins long and does take awhile to develop. Give it some patience, it pays off in the end.

Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus
Cloud Cult
Track Pick-"You Got Your Bones to Make a Beat" (3:02)

These guys are a bunch of hippies. Nonetheless they make some awesome music. I love this album because it's highly experimental. The 25 tracks are all fairly short and displays a distinct style in each one that'll entertain most ADD people.

Akron/Family
Akron/Family
Track Pick-"Lumen" (5:30)

This would be my pick for a top acoustic/indie album. The melodies and vocal are both very soothing, and drove me to sleep when I neared the end of the album.(I'm saying that as a good thing).But under the acoustic guitar, there is more. Afterall, aren't indie music suppose to be out of the norm? Many of the tracks are dubbed with random background effects( bird chirps, sea waves,clicking, etc) The most random has to be the 2 min. track of pure noise/hisses right after a wonderful ballad. I wasn't a big fan of that, but it doesn't deteriorate the album at all.

The Runners Four
Deerhoof
Track pick-"Midnight Bicycle Mystery" (1:59)

12 bars blue, acoustic, distortion, synth, experimental under a hat. First thing anyone notices about this band is the probably the vocalist, who happens to be a jap bass playing chick. (Snap, Asian) It has enough cuteness to shame generic jpop singers, and enough accent to add that edge to the vocal. Just a fun album overall. But wait, for more "jap bass playing girl in indie band", check out....

Lost Marbles and Exploded Evidence
Enon
Track Pick-"Knock That Door" (2:53)

(I wonder if it really is a coincident?) This album is a collection of singles and Bsides, which display a range of styles from the band.The same description can be applied here from Deerhoof, though I like the vocals more here. (Because all the tracks sound unique, it was hard to just pick one, but I couldn't help but feature the cute vocal)

Silent Alarm
Block Party
Track Pick-"Banquet" (3:21)

I have to give props to the Brits for their new wave of indie artists. Silent Alarm has a unique sound that's catchy and makes it stand out from the rest. I don't believe the band has made it big in US yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did soon. The remix album released soon afterwards was some what of a disappointment, even though most of the tracks were remixed by some good big time artists.

Justamustache
Thunderbirds Are Now!
Track Pick-"This World is Made of Paper...Held Together by a Stapler" (3:33)

Garage rock with synth/electronics. I guess there aren't many similar bands, so this gets some recognition. Reminds me abet of Bloc Party, especially some of the riffs. (I also like the covers of not just this, but all of their albums)

That's 3 down

Mood:Pleased
What's on:"Australasia"-Pelican

School is slowly getting back to normal. I always feel like I have some mass amount of projects/homework due tomorrow or tests to study for, but right now, the only thing I have tomorrow is a calc test and a French assignment. There is like a void, and I try to convince myself that I probably missed something. Of course, I'm not complaining.
The past weeks has been pretty hectic: Robotics, tennis, band, make-up works, end of quarter, etc.
3 days of missed school and I already feel very behind. This might sound wrong, but I would rather have gone to school on Wendsday than gone to the Lawrence Central band festival in Indy. Calc is really the only thing that gets screwed over (besides tests) when I miss school. During the 2 days I missed in Cleveland, we started discussing limits and L'hopital's rule. Reading the book didn't help much (or rather, I was too lazy to look into it), and I ended up giving up on the homework assigned over break.
I was fairly worried about the test yesterday, since I didn't know how to do half of the problems and is not a big fan of limits. But after some mass homeworkage and help from Klumpe, I think I'll do decent, or at least good enough to raise my grade a point or two.

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I didn't get home till 6:30 today even though tennis ended at 5:15 for me. I guess there was miscommunication between me and my mom (I still blame her), which ended with me unintentionally leaving my car at school. I bummed a ride off of Connie to tennis, where we played challenge matches again. The girl I was up against was some Freshman named Hanna. I was already prewarned by Christine, who played her yesterday. And to quote, "Hanna is a byotch."
So the match commenced. I noticed her extreme apathy pretty early on in the game. Later when her friend Katie walked in, she started whining endlessly about how cold it was, or how she wanted to go home, or how much this sucked. She got pretty pissed off when the score evened out to 7-7 after 4 rounds of deuces (though I was positive the score was 8-6) . On the last game, she stopped caring completely and smashed every shot to random places.
It didn't bother me so much that she didn't compliment and was emotionless---the reasons why Christine didn't like her, but the fact that she acted like she didn't give a damn is annoying. It's as if she went out of her way to make sure that I knew that she didn't care. That to me, is some shitty sportsmanship.
After my match was over, I phoned home to find out that my dad was going to be out till late entertaining guests; I then called up Clif to make him take me to school. He was coming back from playing Frisbee golf, so I started hitting with Christine and Connie after their matches were over. It was enjoyable, as we didn't have to care about the team, tim, scores, or anything. Only if the season was like that, then I would like it so much more.


When I got home, I noticed a thick opened envelope from Carnegie Mellon that read "Official Fat Letter". Usually when you receive a "fat" admissions envelope, it's a good indication that you've been accepted: Alas, the congratulation letter. As I sifted through rest of the mail, I saw a regular sized envelope from "Admissions:NYU". Hoping that it's not a rejection letter, I opened it to find it being some crap about National Merit Finalists that was completely irrelevant for me. Relief, at least.

As far as college goes, I'm still indifferent. I haven't looked at half of the stuff Purdue sent me, let along Michigan. I found out a few days ago that I got put on the waiting list for Washington University, undoubtedly my #1 choice. Though it is far less painful then getting rejected, there's really not much of a chance of me going there anymore.
I guess we'll see how things go. There are still a few colleges left to be heard from. I'm not expecting miracle, but hopefully expected outcomes.

So it ends. 1 week of what?

Mood: blank
Now playing: "Teardrop"-Massive Attack

How spring break ended. It's a shame really, I haven't even begun doing everything that needs to be done, and the prospect of school makes me want to cry.

Robotics were another 3 tiresome days. We didn't do as well as Cleveland, but I half expected that.

On top of robotics, tennis, sleep, and movies, I haven't really done much. I went out most of the nights, and by Saturday, I was bored with the idea and just wanted to go home and sleep (which I did, around 9). There's been some ups and downs, but overall, things went well. Tennis was not as bad as I expected, though I'm still not looking forward to after school practices.

Another short one I guess. Sleeping and not doing calc sounds good for now.

not a very creative title

Mood: Meh
What's on: "Legs of Bees"- Fruit Bats

I'm in the usual lack of motivation for blogging, so this will be unfortunately short even though I do have many things I can elaborate on.
Cleveland was a fun experience, thought I can't say it was the best way to start off spring break. (For some reason, it just didn't feel right) Speaking of which, it has been an "odd" week thus far. My general apathy and laziness has prevented me from doing anything productive. I'm still upset about my "missing" 1 gig cruizer and mp3 usb port, which is preventing me from uploading music, and better yet, charging the player. On top of that, my phone is still half broken. I did finally talk to a Cingular rep and got a number to call but haven't gotten around doing so.
The mentioning of school makes my head hurt. I try my best to not think about it, but that's becoming harder now that I'm worrying about my non-existent java project.

Moral: School is going to suck hard next week.

Tomorrow is the start of more robotic goodness on campus. I'm looking forward to it minus the getting up early part.

It's almost time

Days are going by at an alarming rate. I can still remember the procrastination of college apps, and now apr 1st is not that far away. It's been 8 weeks since the semester started, yet I have less than 5 pages of notes in International relations.

I'm leaving for Cleaveland tomorrow right after school. It's finally time to the hours paying of on the robot and the website (hopefully). I guess there's more team spirit this year, perhaps because half of the team is consist of seniors, or perhaps because our robot might not suck this year. Either way, I'm looking forward to the competition even though I won't be able to slack off this year.
Cynthia made fealt costumes for people. (Including Navid's pimp hat and cane, X's pirate hat, Ian's 461 cape, and my Alien hat) Some how people have managed/are starting to bleach their hair for Cleaveland, and color dye for the week after; posing off of the swimmers--- I guess that makes me a possuer too.
I asked Ang to help me with the process last night. we went to pick out dye from Wal-Mart where upon I spent over 30 mins trying to figure out what to get. I settled with a box of blond bleach and deep red dye, which I'm now having seconds thoughts on.
Actually, I haven't gotten the consent of my parents, so I wasn't really sure how they would've felt. but hey, it's for a good cause, so they shouldn't disapprove of.