H1N1 and being knocked out.

Remember, just because I haven't written does not mean that I'm not going to! I'm just waiting for interesting stuff to accumulate so I can fit it into a fairly long post.

Now then!



Wednesday:

Hard rock LPW which was Rebel Yell this week. Had ALOT of fun with this one, naturally going bonkers on stage as I prefer to do. Brian gave me a 98/100 so it was a near flawless performance. To quote (not word for word but the context):

"All right, now what the hell am I going to criticize?"

Rest of the week has been filled with school stuff. Shawna (teacher that I see the most since I have at least one of her classes every day) made me promise to do a modern rock LPW so she could hear me sing. She continued by mentioning that "Pink - Please Don't Leave Me" was up next week. I promptly said no, my personal motivation was that I want a really serious song this time and Pink has made alot of songs with either goofy themes or goofy videos. I opted for doing "Shinedown - Second Chance" instead. This'll be happening on monday, week 6.



Thursday:

Started feeling abit of joint pain during the day, a sign that I'm catching a cold normally. By 2pm I was starting to feel pretty bad and had random single coughs. At 4pm I was feeling horrendous with intense joint pain, rough headache, fever and fatigue. I went to my last class but had to leave halfway through, it felt pointless to be there since I was just sitting around. The asians in one of my classes suspected that I had contracted H1N1, which may or may not be true. By the evening I was completely knocked out and could barely move due to fatigue and bodily pain. I kept waking up every few hours during the night.

Friday:

Completely knocked out during the entire day. Joint pains intensified even more and I was constantly squirming in bed since all positions were hurting. I managed to get two sandwiches and a bowl of yoghurt into my system, but that was it. Drinking water was hard. I spent the entire day in bed and come evening time, things were starting to look brighter.

Saturday:

Feeling alot better today. Joint pains are still there but I managed to stifle my dehydration and with it, some of my headaches. I can at least walk straight now. Hopefully the worst of these symptoms will be gone by monday.

Stay safe people! Don't catch this bug whatever you do!

K-1 World Max Final 2009

(Picture is from Final 8 which is an older event, this post is regarding the Final which was decided on October 26th)


I am a huge fan of kickboxing and especially the K-1 World MAX series. K-1 is a kickboxing organization that is active around the world, mostly in Europe and Japan. The fighters in this affiliation are usually around the 100kg mark (220 lbs) or heavier. The World MAX series is for fighters weighing 70kg and below, this is to allow shorter fighters a good stab at world competition.

This evening on Monday the 26th, the finals for 2009 were held in Japan. The match card for the actual competition fights were:

Yuya Yamamoto vs. Giorgio Petrosyan (Petrosyan being my top contender for claiming the title this year)



Buakaw Por. Pramuk vs. Andy Souwer (This fight could go either way as I saw it. Was surprised by the final decision.)

Buakaw vs. Souwer

For those that have yet to see the fights, I will not spoil anything but just to say that all fights were entertaining and had good performances. The final fight will not be posted here so as not to spoil anything. You can find it on youtube or via a google search.

Have a great day/night!

Being abducted to a movie shoot

This monday was an interesting endeavour. I ended up being an extra in a short movie production. The location would be Columbia College of Film Production.



Day started off as normal, a couple of classes and hanging out with people inbetween. Sky had told me about this short movie that she and an acquiantaince were going to be part of, so she abducted me and her friend Chris to join in on the set. We picked up Jacob (other guy participating in the movie, I think he is studying for a bachelor's degree at MI). We got out at around 6pm and met up with the crew. Matt, the camera man (silent and professional), Chris, the director (now known as DirChris since there are two in this journal), Emily the make-up artist, Justin the assistant director (AD for short), Peter who was playing a security guard, and Heather, who was assisting DirChris since he was both producing and directing this short movie. There were others on set as well, but I never caught their names unfortunately.

Me and Chris ended up as silent extras on the movie set, being customers at a bank (however plausible I am as a customer at a bank, what with my vast array of bracelets and my scarf). Our job was done within an hour, but the shoot continued until just before 11pm. We may have had quite some downtime, but I was enjoying myself since the people were pleasant enough to hang around with, and they apparently enjoyed my wacky behaviour.

Tuesday:



Tuesday held no interesting news really. I went to watch a fellow named Rob perform Led Zeppelins "Black Dog" at the classic rock LPW. Being from Florida, he shall now be known as FloRob. Because it sounds hilarious. Rob is a really good singer, but had blown his voice during the first performance (this was his second time performing the song) so he was abit strained. He solved it in excellent fashion using different note patterns, making his own version of the song in the progress.

Well done, Rob!

Wednesday:

Boring day today. Not much to report really. Made a tasty beef sauce and spaghetti.

I am a sucker for Oreos! They are the "Ballerina" of the US.


As always, stay safe and enjoy life! Make every day a great day, for yourself and others!

Internet and LPW

Had a few performances yesterday, the biggest being the "Classic Rock LPW". This week was the week of Van Halen, bringing on the song "Panama".

Let me sum it up like this: I did two more performances just because I was completely exhilerated and found it incredibly satisfying and fun to be on stage again. Afterwards I was drained and pretty tired, but happy. I'll definitely be attempting more classic rock LPWs in the future.

In other news: WE HAVE INTERNET! FINALLY!!

Orange County randomness

Yesterday was a strange but very fun day.

First lesson was sightsinging. Business as usual except we had a hispanic substitute teacher. Word of the day was the fantastic version she had of "Any questions?" which ended up being "Any qvesteeans?". Being my usual self, I was doing my best to get some laughs off of people. Some wanted to learn some swedish words and one girl in particular was taught "Himmel och pannkaka". This somehow evolved into a group lunch and the promise of going to a Halloween thing. Long story short: Halloween thing turned out to be closing before we could get there.

Interlude: Girl's name is Skylar (Sky for short) and she is an old guitar student from M.I.

I had not spoken to her before this sightsinging class. Her origin is Orange County, which is where I'll take us next.

Sky had her birthday this day and she promptly decided that we go to Orange County (Which is more than an hour away from Hollywood). Said and done, we met up with Chris, a very good friend of Sky and also a GIT student at M.I.

On the road we were! (Except I had to pee really badly or I would have wet my willy inside my breechers).

Ending up in Orange County, we spent the evening at the house of Nicky, Sky's childhood friend. Joining us were the already mentioned Chris and also Louis (a welshman who was visiting Nicky), Armin and Cameron (both guitar students at M.I.). The evening was spent in the family jacuzzi and pool, with pizza for dinner and a vast array of snacks. I felt properly spoiled by this generous family. It was a fun and great evening.

Came back to NoHo at 1am and crashed in bed, only to wake up six hours later. Today holds a LPW (Van Halen - Panama) and another performance (Pain of Salvation - Pilgrim). Hopefully it'll go well.

Live safe! Enjoy every day!!

The Live Performance Workshop (LPW)

A quick explanation on what a live performance workshop (LPW) is (in very stern and robotic writing):

a LPW is a performance by students. There are various genres suck as modern rock, classic rock, blues, funk, etc. Every genre has their own time slot during the week. For example; classic rock has 430pm - 7pm every tuesday. During the weeks up to this tuesday, students can sign up to perform their respective instrument in a band performance.

Clarifying example:

I sign up for week 2, classic rock. The song is Panama by Van Halen, this is the only song I can perform during the classic rock time slot on week 2. I can only sign up for the vocals, whether it be lead vocals or backing vocals. A guitar student would sign up for the same time slot and the same song. Come performance time, him and I along with other students for other instruments would perform the song Panama by Van Halen. If there aren't enough students, a teacher would fill that spot during the performance.

Every student has to amass 10 performances by the end of the quarter. This means a student has to perform at least once per week on average.

Yesterday, I spent two hours doing backing vocals for Lady Gaga - Poker Face.

That's right, I was MUMUMUMUUUUUH.

School has started!

This last week, I have bled money into our new house. My room is almost done and it is awesome!

School has started. There are ALOT of things going on.

This has been your twitter post on a site not even remotely meant for that purpose.

Orientations, moving to NoHo

SO! The past week has seen ups and downs with eventful days.



Me, Scott, Corey, Soto and Corey's friend Sean visited the LA county fair, which was quite fun. Once again we stopped by the Sakura Ichi restaurant which was fairly close. Scott decided that he would set his sights on getting drunk, ordering a proper bottle of sake while doing so. When we finally ended up at the fair, Scott was properly drunk. I had a few drinks myself and was walking around being tipsy, which made the entire endeavour more interesting.

Musician's Institute has seen some action as well. Thursday had a general orientation for new students (there were MANY). Let's also say that I am a very small minority when it comes to the ratio females/males in the voice program. I guess I should be happy? HOORAY!



Orientation in itself was first of all delayed by about 15-20 minutes (these are musicians after all, delays are to be expected). When the show finally started, we were treated to a performance by one of the voice teachers, aptly named Mama-O (yes, she is a soul momma and yes she talks like one as well). I found her to be fairly awesome, partly because they performed "Killing In The Name Of" by "Rage Against The Machine".

The day was fairly long, mainly containing information, information and more information. This information was about everything, literally. I now know that a microphone is supposed to be plugged into an amplifier, it's true!

Friday had an orientation for international students. Mostly it was info I already knew about so it wasn't much new stuff. Afterwards though, we were treated to a free lunch and performance by some students at MI. I hooked up with some other swedes and generally mingled with people from all over. One of them is also an avid blogger, so therefore I am linking her blog for your viewing pleasure (Her blog is alot more fancy than mine, more pics as well).

Short note: We've also started to move our stuff to North Hollywood. The only major things left to get is my bed and desk. Naturally it will be fricking IKEA!!

Stay tuned! Hope you enjoy reading!