It’s unbelievable.

IB exams are over.

The IBDP is over. My pre-university (formal) education is over.

I. Am. Free!

Yes I am, and as I’ve been repeatedly announcing to my family, my friends on Facebook and the Twittersphere, je suis de bonne humeur.

I’m in a good mood. A very good one. One that I haven’t been in before.

This isn’t the usual post-exam relief, nor is it the freedom I pretend to experience during every year-end holiday. Those feelings are temporal, fleeting, almost unreal. I’m convinced that this time, the feeling is different – and it is real.  Emerging from the French exam (which was held in B3-06, due to the tiny candidature of French B and French ab initio combined) evoked an inexplicable sense of triumph. This feeling was probably reinforced by the fact that the French papers were on the very last day of the November 2009 IB exam calendar, but it is nonetheless truly splendidly gratifying to know that I have overcome The Baccalaureate.

My life for the past two years really revolved around IB-related tasks. Sounds like I’ve had a pathetic two years of “life”, eh? I disagree. (Cue gasps of shock and horror.) The evils of lifelessness, sleeplessness and arduousness are said to be the main characteristics of the life of an IB slave (i.e. all students undergoing the IB programme), but honestly this greatly exaggerates the very exciting and enriching roller coaster ride that is the IB programme.

The IB programme impelled us through the fires of EE, pushed us through the sieve of TOK, forced us through CAS (oh those tiresome AEFs – I’m sure everyone will remember those), whipped us with tons of science IAs, wrecked our sleep cycles with World Lit (World Lits, in plural, for HL English A1 students like yours truly), kept us in a stranglehold with IOC, and nearly killed us with the amount of studying we had to do on top of all that. My above summary of the IB workload makes IB sound like a two-year period where one is cruelly obligated to adhere closely to a set of regulations from a page of The Academic Slave Driver’s Handbook. But really, IB – at least from my experience – hasn’t been so terrible, and I doubt I will look back on the years 2008 and 2009 and think to myself, “Oh, what hell I had to endure.”

Reflecting on the examples of purported academic nightmares I mentioned above (EE, TOK, CAS – fine, this isn’t in any way academic; it is merely energy-, time- and brain power-sapping), IAs, World Lit, IOC), I think the experience has been more enriching than excruciating. Take EE for example. Sure, I sacrificed many, many Saturday afternoons to work out the extent to which the collapse of communism in Poland in 1989 was significant in precipitating the final collapse of communism in the USSR, but I enjoyed it so, so much, have learnt an incredible amount, and won’t mind doing it again.

Am I crazy? Yes? Jaw-droppingly insane? Yes?

I’ve heard that before.

But I must add that IB was also made tolerable and rather pleasant by the lovely venue the programme was conducted in: ACS. Yes, I know, the IB programme in ACS is actually run according to The Academic Slave Driver’s Handbook, but there was always a good mix of intense studying, even more intense slacking, ridiculous fun, fun and more fun. My Year 6 experience of HL English A1 strongly exhibits this balance. I thank my Year 6 English teachers from the bottom of my heart for making HL English wonderful – so wonderful that it proved a veritable competitor to HL History to be The Favourite Subject. My two teachers deserve heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps and heaps of praise for the amazing work they have done in making HL English manageable and enjoyable. Besides, both teachers have been exceedingly wonderful people in and outside of class, and I’m eternally grateful for that.

I haven’t begun to be sentimental about IB; it’s probably too early for emotions like that to sink in. Around January, when the usual school calendar begins – that’s probably when I might feel the void.

2008 and 2009 was really, mostly about the IB programme, ACS and IB-related tasks. Even A Level H2 German – save the Gießen trip and exchange programme – seems peripheral to the overall picture of 2008-09.

And now that the Baccalaureate is no longer ensconced in my system (as I have asserted for many, many months on my “About the Author” page), I even have to edit – no, re-write – my “About the Author” page on this site! Incredible! I’d written about how my subject combination is but “ostensibly undemanding”, about how the “brutally selfish” IB programme rarely deals out any free time, and about the pressure which during the last lap of my IB race was mounting on my “increasingly enervated shoulders.” All this looks almost comical now, now that I no longer need to “soldier gallantly on” amidst the onslaught of IB-related tasks.

Yet I fully understand that I mustn’t let myself deteriorate into an intellectually dead non-school-goer with a rusty brain in the following months of free time. University life isn’t that far away, and now that I’ve a place at both UCL and Durham to read History, I’m reminded that (some level of) work and (plenty of) reading must resume. Books by Francis Fukuyama, David Crystal and Steven Pinker sit on my shelf, awaiting my loving perusal, even as my latest haul of Hannah Arendt, John Lewis Gaddis, Eric Hobsbawm, and Edward Said makes its debut appearance on my desk. I will start on all these very, very soon, savouring Crystal’s and Gaddis’s wit, Fukuyama’s originality, Pinker’s and Hobsbawm’s scholarship, Arendt’s and Said’s astuteness… My academic pursuit of History must proceed apace, and after I get through the essays on Theorising Historical Consciousness as well as Margaret Macmillan’s The Uses and Abuses of History, I might return to Spence, Fairbank and Gray to keep in touch with the history of China, after which I must begin reading on modern Eastern European history again, after which I will…

IB is no more, it has ceased to be, and has gone to meet its maker. As the ecstasy begins to settle, I am reminded that there is just so much to do now! I must be off now; there is just no time to lose.

(This was written two hours after HL History Paper 3 on the 10th of Novemeber.)

Unbelievable. It’s been only approximately an hour since I emerged from the examination venue after my last History exam paper of my pre-university education. Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire” is playing on loop on my nearly-three-year-old Sony Ericsson phone’s Walkman application. Peter Seixas’ “Theorizing Historical Consciousness” and my notebook lie in front of me; my History files full of Regional Paper material are to my right. I’m still surrounded by History-related things, even after completing yet another History-related endeavour, and I plan to make sure this is a situation I will be familiar and comfortable with in the many years to come.

HL History has been an exhilarating journey. Some of my fondest memories of my two years in ACS are undoubtedly thanks to this subject that I have spent hours and hours on. From the introductory lecture during the bridging course (where the sound system in CPA1 refused to play the Billy Joel song mentioned in the above paragraph – to my utter displeasure) in my first week in ACS last January, to the actual IB HL History Paper 3 just now, I’ve enjoyed it truly and tremendously.

Although my love for History originated not during the IB History course but during my time studying O Level History in NYGH, HL History here takes more credit for strengthening that love. Beginning with lessons on the 1905 October Manifesto and ending our last lesson with reflections on our prelim results, the journey had its highs and lows, but it was overall exceedingly fun, interesting and promisingly memorable.

Here’s to many, many years of happiness between History and me. Yes, we’re married. ♥

Tim Singham: Eh, so what’re you going to study at university?
Me: History.
Tim Singham: PFFFFFFFFT! You’re joking!
Me: *staring around helplessly, smiling wryly and laughing dryly* Well… No.

Indeed, when I tell you I intend to read History at university, I jest not. I had better not be joking, because I’ve already applied to read History – course codes V100, V101 and V146 – at various institutions and universities in the United Kingdom (more specifically, Great Britain, and even more specifically, England).

As evidenced by the conversation quoted above, it is quite, quite ordinary for people not to take one seriously when one mentions History as a genuine academic interest. History? Huh? You can actually waste spend three whole years studying it at university? History is boring. Studying History (particularly at university) is a joke. Applicants to History have a 99% chance of being offered a place at any university, because the course is so bloody boring and bloody undersubscribed to. History graduates take forever to find employment, and if they do find employment, they are likely to be curators, curators, curators, History teachers or History teachers. A BA in History is as good as no BA. In short, History is useless.

It breaks my heart to hear all that.

My love for the subject was first kindled in 2005, intensified in 2007 and over the past two years, it has only gotten stronger, stronger, and stronger. It might have something to do with the fact that throughout my IB life in ACS I have had many brilliant, brilliant History lessons with a brilliant, brilliant History teacher, but I think History itself as a subject, as an area of knowledge definitely stole their thunder.

The word “History,” by the way, belongs to the same etymological basket as words like “idea,” “vision,” “wisdom” and “wit.” Coincidence? Not really, if you ask me.

History, ideas, vision(s), wisdom and wit have a lot in common. So many ideas of the past have had consequences so far-reaching that till today these ideas continue to affect the way people live. So many of these ideas reflect some sort of inventiveness, innovation and of course vision of the people who conceived these ideas. Wisdom is what one gains from prolonged, fruitful engagements with the ideas, events and historical narratives. Add the wit of historians to the subject and watch the incantatory power of language captivate you – yes, you.

Far from being the most useless or boring subject, History is actually the most enthralling intriguing beguiling mesmerising fascinating stimulating absorbing exciting engaging gripping engrossing subject I have ever studied.

History is alive. Contrary to all uninformed members of the schooling population and the public who believe History is a dead subject all about remembering dates, dates, dates, trivia, trivia, the occasional battle and bloodshed, dates and trivia, History focuses not on the rote learning of such details but on how to use these details. Sure, dates and years are important, but the reason History students need to know these things is to cultivate “a sense of the sweep and depth of history and why things are happening,” as Professor Christopher Smout from St. Andrew’s so eloquently put it.

If you scroll down and look to the right of this page, you will see the heading “Historia magistra vitae est” above the set of History-related links. Historia magistra vitae est – History is life’s teacher. It indeed is; the benefits of hindsight are manifold. Beneath the superficiality of everyday life lies a dense wealth of information. Thanks to the subject I am able to nod solemnly and recall the complicated events leading to the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre when reading news about the publication of Zhao Ziyang’s memoirs and its consequent revival of angry recollections of the events of June 1989, knowing that “news” is never sufficient knowledge. History is therefore not only helpful but also essential knowledge, and it keeps sentient, on my toes and in touch.

Encyclopaedic knowledge alone does not necessarily make a good historian, as historical content is but one constituent of a historian’s concerns. Yet the pleasure of engrossing myself with information is to me one of the many tremendously enjoyable aspects of History. I will always recall fondly the afternoons I spent in the national library poring over the few books on Poland, sifting out as much relevant information (i.e. information I can use in my EE) as possible, but at the same time enjoying the steady bombardment of information. The many, many essays I’ve read on the end of Communism in Europe and the Cold War have left me not enervated and disinterested, but ever-hungry, ever-thirsty for more.

I’m starting to sound lecherously, lasciviously drawn to the subject. But indeed, I really cannot get enough of the stuff. I love it and I want to spend a great deal of time with it.

As I continue my ultramarathon on the road to historical consciousness and erudition, I am convinced that my relationship with History as a subject is one that will strengthen, deepen and endure. The pursuit of History therefore brings to mind the idea of art for art’s sake, as well as Edgar Allan Poe’s Poetic Principle, where the purpose of art or poetry is inwardly directed, not fulfilling any extrinsic motivations. “L’histoire pour l’histoire” may be a liberal spin on the early 19^th century autotelic French art movement slogan, but I believe it fully captures the extent to which I believe in the self-fulfilling purpose of History.

According to Professor Simon Schama from Columbia University, History ought never to be confused with nostalgia; it’s written not to revere the dead, but to inspire the living. It’s our cultural bloodstream, the secret of who we are. And it tells us to let go of the past, even as we honour it; to lament what ought to be lamented, to celebrate what should be celebrated.

I couldn’t have worded that more accurately or beautifully. Our cultural bloodstream, the secret of who we are.

Tomorrow, Thursday, the 29^th of October 2009, at 1200hrs, I will be somewhere in Bishan participating in what will probably, predictably, promisingly be one of the most memorable and engaging experiences of my life: an admission interview to read History (V100) at the University of Oxford. The University of Oxford. The University of Oxford. Oxford. Oxford. At the moment, nerves are building, thoughts are racing and excitement is soaring.

I can’t wait.

Dear Mr Cleese, I sincerely hope you are spending your 70th birthday crazily and happily. Thank you for the decades of entertainment you have provided the world with, and here’s to more decades of that comedy genius of yours, Sir!

Looks like I’m engaging in a mini Mock The Week promotion here on this site! Here’s my latest favourite from the irreverent British TV series: Newsreel, featuring Gordon Brown and other premiers. All credit goes to the wonderfully creative Hugh Dennis – without whom Newsreel will completely cease to exist. Do not watch this video in the library or anywhere quiet; you are likely to be stared/glared at for laughing loudly or for emitting whatever sounds one can possibly make when one attempts to stifle laughter.

from: Frankie Boyle <news@frankieboyle.com>
reply-to: reply@frankieboylefans.com
date: 2 October 2009 15:02
subject: Hey – Look at this…

My negroes, my b*tches, I hope you are well

I have a few things to tell you, Frankie Boyle Club! This week, you should have received the decoding ring that allows you to read the messages on your membership card and badge. If you’ve not yet received the ring, it must be stuck in the post or we forgot to send it or something. Anyway, both messages read “I am a c*nt”.

My book is oot! Here’s a link to a wee sample chunk, in case you’re wondering if it’s any good.

I’m also doing some more tour dates, including a DVD record at the Apollo on June 4 & 5. Dig it!

And finally, I’ve decided not to do any more Mock The Week. I’ve done what feels like a good few thousand of them now and I feel I’ve mocked the sh*t out of the week. I salute everybody there (salutes). I’m going to concentrate on next year’s tour and some other funny things I’m writing. Be careful out there everybody.

Heil Hitler

Frankie x

———————————

Yes, Mock The Week has just lost the gem of a dark comedian who wrote the above email/note.

!@#$%^&*?

Frankie Boyle. Frankie Boyle. FRANKIE BOYLE.

Mock The Week participants, viewers and producers are sure to miss him. What is Mock The Week without Frankie? The other staples – Hugh Dennis, Dara Ó Briain, Russell Howard and Andy Parsons – still remain but it all seems absurdly hollow sans Frankie.

Though always clad in a well-fitted, well-ironed suit, Frankie defies his prim image with his outrageous quips and jokes. Frankie’s brand of dark humour tends towards being completely offensive sometimes, but I must take my hat off to the bloke. (What’s bloke in Scottish Gaelic?) Ridiculously talented at mocking the week (and the weak), Frankie is totally in his element on the show. Frankie’s lines are explicit, exaggerated, occasionally expletive-laden but always, always hilarious.

No one is spared from Frankie’s gibes. The Queen, Prince Harry, Gordon Brown, Princess Diana, George Bush, Islamic fundamentalists, Max Mosley, homosexuals, Kerry Katona, Richard Hammond… Even his colleagues and comedic accomplices Hugh Dennis and Dara Ó Briain become subjects of his skilful mockery. Yet Frankie gets away with everything all the time. His firmly established identity as a dark humorist sails him through his live shows as well as Mock The Week, whose content allows Frankie to thrive comfortably and happily in irreverence, impertinence, impudence and insolence, at the expense of everyone he chooses to poke fun at.

And it was Frankie, not Sir Alex Ferguson, that got me interested in the Scot accent and Scot semantics. I admire the so-called “minorities” in the comedy scene like Frankie who highlight the merits, demerits and most importantly idiosyncracies of their local humour. People are inclined to forget that British humour includes the Welsh and Scottish brands of humour; the English have established their ground in this field and are historically the strongest: Monty Python, Blackadder, Fry and Laurie, Steve Punt/Hugh Dennis, blah blah blah are all English. Frankie weaves Scot culture into his humour, and despite his tendency to be extremely Scot-deprecating, Scotland should be proud. Frankie brought Scot culture under the spotlight in Mock The Week. (Like how Rob Brydon brings light to Welsh humour and how Dara Ó Briain and Ed Byrne strengthen the identity of Irish humour. I’m now very intrigued by the Irish accent, language and culture.)

Whether it was about humans’ sad relationship with their pets, opening the racist door, the Zulus waving their “spears”, vegetarians, Willy Wonka being a paedophile, the Queen’s Christmas address, Richard Hammond’s anti-speeding advert, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, letters to Points of View, STDs, the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, Mock The Week After Dark, terrorism, aeroplane cabins decompressing… Frankie injected a dose of outrageous (I can’t think of a synonym) humour into Mock The Week. Take a look at this compilation of Frankie’s contributions to Scenes We’d Like to See, the final quick-fire round on Mock The Week. His sense of humour is manifest even in the kind of gifts he gives to his colleagues at Christmas; Hugh Dennis once received a box “for storing the souls of my [his] enemies in” from Frankie. On the whole Frankie is adroit, original, incredibly flexible, horribly unforgiving, extremely cheeky, very, very, very funny and the source of entertainment and laughs for those who can appreciate the darkest of dark comedy.

Mr Frankie Boyle, you’re bloody swell and a legend in dark comedy. You sure do your fellow Scots proud and Mock The Week is just not the same without you. Mar sin leat.

“Au revoir, auf Wiedersehen and arrividerci” were among Tony Blair’s last words in the House of Commons, months after he swore he’ll never say goodbye. Realising, after some time, that a goodbye to the green upholstered seats, rowdy assemblies of grey-haired men and women with stiff upper lips was inevitable, Mr Blair hit TRANSLATE and bid his colleagues and contemporaries farewell trilingually, successfully avoiding saying “goodbye” in English, and thus closing his final speech as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on a light-hearted note.

Last night Abraham and I bid farewell to Daryl before he flew off into the embrace of UK/Oxford. His goodbye at Terminal 3 of Changi Airport last night was kept as light-hearted as Tony Blair’s exit from office; plenty of laughing, joking, lots of chit-chatting and smiles. It was enjoyable discussing various poem and prose pieces (Fish by Keki Daruwalla is one noteworthy poem), as well as going through Shakespeare, Frost and elements of novels with Daryl. I thank Daryl for being generous with his offloading of essays and other materials; I now have a pirated copy of Steven Hugh Lee’s Seminar Series book on the Korean War, in addition to a heap of Stalin readings and some of Daryl’s essays. Generosity… yes, something I look forward to exhibiting next year when helping my juniors get through World Lit, IOC, English Paper 2, History, Econs, French/German and… TOK (HAHA)?

I’m very sure Daryl will settle in nicely at Oxford. The Bod, the Rad Cam and the St. Hilda’s library will probably be his favourite hang-out and hideout venues. But since he’s going to St. Hilda’s, the grassy patches along Cherwell’s banks will probably also be good places to laze around. I’ll have a good laugh if I hear from Daryl that he’s fallen into Cherwell River on his first punting session, but hey urban mythophiles, doesn’t that mean first class honours?

Today, the 1st of October, daily article-readers and suckers for historical bits in the news like me must surely be having a field day. On the 1st of October 1949 (60 years ago, for those whose mental calculation skills are worse than mine) China turned Red. The 60th anniversary of such a momentous event in the history of the modern world is certain to get plenty of coverage, and after my reading of these three articles, I eagerly await the publication of more commentary/opinion pieces, especially from these few websites.

I spent today nursing my awful, awful sore throat (which Autolycus thinks is caused by “all that German”). S-s-*cough*-sigh. It is possibly the worst and most badly-timed sore throat; my A Level German oral examination just happens to be tomorrow. I can just hear myself going,  „Guten T-T-*cough*-Tag, Frau (insert surname here). Heute möchte I-I-*clears throat*-ch über die Berfojworthousgjnner Phileoighirgbhsinkjsnfgkjsker spreughsiuhtiehuiuhcichen.“

I’m now counting on Vicks menthol lozenges, a lot of warm water and divine grace and mercy. Gute *clears throat loudly* Nacht.

It’s been over two months since my last post! How very pathetic and neglected and empty this bit of cyberspace must feel. Then again, yes, hello, I am still alive and around, despite how I have been pushed through the trials of life like an already pliable slice of fruit pushed through the jaws of a juicer.

Prelims end tomorrow; French ab initio (SL), as always, is my last paper. I have already treated myself to some post-prelim activities: reading, uploading (really old) photos (from a 2006 trip) on Facebook, chatting with old friends, visiting teachers in NYGH (oh I love/miss them), listening to music carefully (which is, to me, very important) etc. After last Wednesday I’ve also spent time thinking, reflecting, thinking and reflecting about my journey in ACS so far – the journey that will ineluctably draw to an end in a few months time.

I am saving all my sentimentality for the post-farewell Chapel/post-14^th October entry. For now I shall deal with something music-related.

(Before that – have you heard? ACS (Independent) is a recipient of the SQA. Ho.)

Popera has quite some time ago earned my distaste (kind of), but Il Divo’s Spanish version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah – now Aleluya – has stirred up in me a re-appreciation of Il Divo’s brand of popera. Save the sections with David attempting to change the timbre of his voice rather unnaturally [Que la guerra... miseria alguna], with Carlos overdoing his vibrato somewhat [Por que Dios nos proteja... tanta furia] and with the volume escalating in the typical Il Divo song climax fashion towards the end, the song, I must say, received a just treatment from the quartet. I particularly like the sections of repetitions of the word Aleluya sung by Urs (the second and third times Aleluya is repeated thrice/sung four times) – simple, unadorned, moving, almost liturgical.

Hallelujah (Aleluya)

Un soldado a casa hoy regreso
Y un niño enfermo se curó
Y hoy no hay trabajo en el bosque que la lluvia

El desamparado se salvo
Por causa de una buena acción
Y hoy nadie lo repudia
Aleluya

Aleluya, Aleluya
Aleluya, Aleluya

Un ateo que consiguió creer
Y un hambriento hoy tiene de comer
Y hoy donaron a una iglesia una fortuna

Que la guerra pronto se acabará
Y en el mundo al fin reinará la paz
Que no habrá miseria alguna
Aleluya

Aleluya, Aleluya
Aleluya, Aleluya

Por que el amor no hace al amor
Y no gorbierne la cruzion si no
Lo bueno y lo mejor del alma pura

Por que Dios nos proteja de un mal final
Por que un dia podamos escarmentar
Por que acaban con tanta furia
Aleluya

Aleluya, Aleluya
Aleluya, Aleluya
Aleluya, Aleluya

After returning from concerts at the Esplanade concert hall, I usually indulge myself in a post-concert drink, a long reflection of the concert, a thorough re-read of the programme notes and an even more thorough scrutiny of the programme booklet itself. But today my reaction is clearly very, very different. The urge to pour my opinions out into a word-processing document has never been greater, and now the pitter-patter of my typing provides an interesting accompaniment to Chopin’s Andante Spianato as I attempt to empty my mind of all the thoughts that have accumulated the moment the night’s concert’s soloist stepped on stage.

I left the concert faintly disgruntled. I had hoped this would be the concert to rekindle my concert-going disposition, refuel my faith in the arts – in short, re-inspire me – in the most positive way possible. I had hoped to feel the satisfaction of having watched a splendid, splendid performance. I had hoped to experience that tingling of excitement in the air as the full house of 1600 emerges from the concert hall chatting incessantly about the best performance they had seen in ages. I had hoped for a long, long, long standing ovation, three sparkly encores and thunderous, thunderous applause that refuses to subside.

But no – the soloist of the evening had failed to provoke such a response. A staggeringly atrocious rendition of Tchaikovsky’s first concerto. One substandard – and superfluous – encore. And (I might say) undeserving ovation from a tiny minority of the audience in the stalls. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw members of the audience actually getting on their feet to applaud the soloist’s performance. The soloist walked out, in, out, in, successfully persuaded the conductor and concert master to leave the stage after him, and walked out swiftly. I left the concert hall promptly.

My mind was racing. Physically I felt terribly odd; I felt paralysed, yet I was moving briskly as if on autopilot. It was an uncomfortable feeling. I was perplexed. Stunned. Shocked. Stumped. Speechless. And forgive me for the awful Bond reference but I really was shaken, not stirred.

Li Yundi had failed to impress.

Li Yundi.

Li Yundi.

I was completely dejected, deflated and disappointed – and I speak without hyperbole. To think that I had always staunchly defended Li Yundi in every single Li Yundi-Lang Lang debate I had ever bothered to participate in. To think that this very pianist that had totally failed to impress  me tonight ranked among my favourite performers on the classical music stage. To think that this was the first concert in a long time I had been sincerely looking forward to.

I risk sounding too much like a fan by admitting this, but I, very honestly, had been looking forward to the 30-odd minutes of that Tchaikovsky concerto for weeks. Months, even. The Goldmark symphony in the first half was something I just had to get through before the concerto. (Hadn’t heard Goldmark’s Rustic Wedding Symphony prior to tonight’s performance but my, did the symphony sound completely German/Viennese! Not a trace of Goldmark’s Hungarian blood!) Not that I particularly love the Tchaikovsky concerto; the prospect of watching Li Yundi live again was incredibly exciting.

The moment I had spied the monochrome, slightly androgynous but flattering photograph of the pianist on the SSO website I knew this was a concert I couldn’t miss, regardless of the programme and ticket price. Click. Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, read the programme details. Yes! The Tchaikovsky, a fixture of every orchestra’s concert season, with Li Yundi at the piano – couldn’t be better. Will he offer a new interpretation? Perhaps more energy – judging from his propensity to give of so much energy in all his performances? I delighted in the speculation, my expectations possibly heightening with each thought.  I remember pulling out all the recordings I had of the Tchaikovsky concerto out of my ever-expanding CD collection: Horowitz, Pletnev, Rubinstein, Ashkenazy, blah blah blah, and even Lang Lang needed a re-listen. In the days approaching the concert, I was encumbered with anticipation, looking forward to just that half of an hour when I would be refreshed and dazzled by a scintillating performance of Tchaikovsky’s first concerto.

During the intermission I spoke with a few friends and nothing was said about the Goldmark symphony; everyone was as excited as I was about watching Li Yundi in the second half. Rumour had it that Li Yundi wasn’t impressive during the open rehearsal earlier in the day, but I, the ultimate zealot, blinded by sheer excitement and perhaps just a little magnanimity, brushed the news off. I returned to my seat and soon found myself drumming my fingers impatiently on my knees. The winds and brass were rehearsing their solos, the flute in particular rehearsing the lovely second movement solo. Bell. Five minutes to the second half. A long five minutes dragged by. Doors closed. Finally, Li Yundi’s return was more than imminent – it was just seconds away.

I stared unblinkingly at the door via which performers enter the stage. Make haste, Mr Souptel, I silently chided the SSO’s concert master. Then the customary A from the oboe. The tuning never felt more redundant. The moment Li Yundi made his way out of the stage doors I applauded (almost instinctively) and I might just have stifled a grin. Forgive me for the lack of synonyms, but it was all so very exciting, really. He looked impeccable. Save for the slightly-too-long hair. But impeccable. Very promising.

Finally.

The music started – brass, strings, the full orchestra, then piano.

The piano. What in the world was happening?

The first movement was littered with wrong notes and other blunders. The second movement saw fewer faults, but the lack of precision and more problems returned in the shambolic third movement. Throughout the concerto the tempo was fickle and inconsistent, rhythm was unsteady, synchronisation with the orchestra was erratic, and – I hate to say this – the sheer number of wrong notes was painfully, painfully obvious. By the cadenza in the first movement I was ready to cry in anguish; the performance was abysmal for a pianist of his calibre.

There were hardly any occasions on which he could save himself. Yet the audience in the stalls seemed to have enjoyed the Tchaikovsky concerto tremendously; there were actually audience members in the stalls that were on their feet, and the excessively enthusiastic applause accorded to his performance was grossly disproportionate. While still reeling from shock I quietly hoped the thoroughly profligate applause could convince him to play an encore – a Liszt transcription like La Campanella, or something from Années de Pèlerinage, or something by Moskowski, Schumann, Chopin, perhaps an étude, or a nocturne, or a waltz. In fact, I wasn’t hoping for any piece in particular; I just wanted something, anything redeeming. The strangely almost unrelenting applause did eventually get him back for an encore – Liszt’s transcription of Schumann’s Widmung. Lamentably, his incredibly slipshod rendition of the piece did nothing to ameliorate the sinking feeling that by then had saturated my entire being.

Where on Earth had Li Yundi’s previously seemingly intrinsic, inherent, inborn, innate, completely natural sparkle gone? What had gone wrong? How did it all fall apart? How on Earth did it happen? Perhaps it was the jet lag? Perhaps stress? Perhaps nerves? Pressure? Fatigue? A daunting full house? Sweaty palms? A foul mood? Then again all these things should never affect a professional pianist like Li Yundi.

Whatever it was, I sincerely hope he overcomes it all soon. The world cannot afford to lose Li Yundi to such ridiculous adversaries.

His performance tonight was an enormous, confounding antithesis to his recital in 2003. In that performance the four Chopin Scherzos were perfect; the four movements of the Liszt sonata were each perfect down to the very last quaver rest. And the encores – oh, the encores – they drove the audience wild. Wild. The best version of Liszt’s La Campanella étude, followed by a balanced – not tacky, not over-indulgent – performance of Wang Ling’s Sun Flower, finished off with an incredible rendition of Liszt’s Rigoletto paraphrase… Evidently it is a night I still remember very clearly for its musical wonders. Tonight will be a night to remember as well; its lack of musical wonders will immediately come to mind.

Nevertheless I am unreservedly determined to watch another Li Yundi concert in which he sounds as impeccable as he looks. I refuse to believe that what I saw was all that Li Yundi had to show. Mr Li Yundi, if you happen to read this, DO PROVE ME RIGHT. Please do.

(The following is the second of the two articles written by yours truly for the latest issue of !nk. I must give loads of credit to Kevin Low who did a fantastic mock-up of Turnitin for the layout of the page. I will try stealing a pdf copy of !nk so I can re-post this article + layout here.)

A note on academic dishonesty – caveat lector

Term 2 often heralds weeks of mind-boggling academia and imminent doom. Year 6s scramble to complete their drafts of essays comparing wildly adulterous, bizarrely suicidal, insufferably self-assured Scandinavian women victimised by the social ascendancy of the proletariat in the late 19^th century, sweat out over yet-unfulfilled CAS hours, and itch to discard the final drafts of their extensively edited 4000 word-long works of art into the abyss of Final Grading, while Year 5s unburdened crawl swim bound excitedly towards the June “holidays”.

Time glides invisibly by like a halibut through the salty waters of the North Atlantic. You soon struggle to find time to take your Norwegian blue parrot out for its daily flutter or attend your weekly manicure sessions. Your last game of Left For Dead was a whole miserable fortnight ago. Your last movie at the cinema was about a stubborn infantile clownfish beating his father in a game of catch-me-if-you-can-in-this-big-blue-ocean. You, as your superlatively hip, cool, groovy, awesome non-ACSian friends (who have no idea how busy this Baccalaureate-thing gets you) would snarkily remark, have no life.

But you feel you have enough reason not to have a “life”, as astringently observed by your hip, cool, etc. friends: your to-do list stretches as far as 6.8914π times the perimeter of the Astroturf, and you look nowhere near to completing any of the items on the list. “How, how, HOW?!” you cry as you let loose a string of minced oaths.

The Blue Ocean strategy beckons. Behold assignment completion-acceleration like the world has never seen before: You might be inclined to sneak a paragraph or two of Niall Ferguson’s latest dissertation on the ascent of money into your almost-overdue history IA to meet the deadline and the word count. Or you might consider poaching an entire spreadsheet of data with accompanying photographs of the dying money plant and calculations for standard deviation from your unsuspecting classmate. Or better still, you might contemplate paraphrasing Hegel, Hume and Hobbes for your TOK essay.

Who reads Niall Ferguson anyway? Who monitors the eerie consistency of bio IAs? And really, who reads, will read and has read Hegel, Hume and Hobbes?

Well if the three questions in the above paragraph have ever emerged in the cloudy deluded mirage of activity that is your mind this writer aims now to poke logic-shaped holes in your arguments. (Quite a Blue Ocean thing for !nk to do, eh? Since when have we so blatantly associated ourselves with logic?)

Slipping a snippet of work that isn’t yours into your work is, in fact, illegal enough to have you stocked, incarcerated, hanged, or worse, expelled. If you think burgling your friends’ USB flash drives of IAs is harmless, this writer is terribly sorry to be the bearer of disappointing news; copying equals plagiarising equals wrong equals dire, dire consequences. Sure, “paraphrase” is not an anagram, euphemism, palindrome of/for “plagiarise”, but this writer is sure that you really wouldn’t want a half-body apparition of Thomas Hobbes rousing you from your slumber one night as you doze off whilst searching for synonyms of every other word in the Leviathan.

Adhering to our propensity to remain innovative, the Ingenious Blue Deep-sea Policies that we have embarked on include passing each piece of official submitted work through a respectable software called Turn It In. Pass your work through the eagle-eyed originality checker and it soon will be as thoroughly squeezed of plagiarised material and shoddy citation as an orange of its vitamin C-rich fluids as it endures the pressure of an industrial mechanised juicer.

As final deadlines for Year 6s loom, surreptitiously stitching in a piece of intellectual fabric of similar thread count and colour into one’s almost-finished academic quilt appears to be a tempting prospect. However tempting it may seem, this writer beseeches you to think and act otherwise. It’s as conniving as deceiving one’s party guests that one has cooked a homemade, authentic Italian dinner when what happened in the kitchen a few moments ago was merely an assembling of dishes made from readymade ravioli, frozen grissini and pre-cooked primavera sauce.

Nota bene: In the spirit of the blue ocean strategy that we have been briefed on ad nauseam, innovation, creation and conception of original work is more likely to bring returns and rewards to the IB student. Besides, what a show of hypocrisy it would be for any of us to sing of beacons of truth and light and not uphold our morality!

Brave warriors of the Internationalum Baccalauream Diplomus Programmus: suffocate your urge to refer heavily to the many loci classici that might lend you temporary reprieve. Brave plagiarisers who have yet to be turned in: mend your ways a little, lest you may mar your fortunes.