Part 1: How Orianthi Panagaris and guitars entered my life and never go out forever

Flashback to the 29th of October 2009. The premiere of Michael Jackson's This Is It. I watched it on the first day and was totally stunned by Michael Jackson, too enthralled to say anything. 4th of November, I watched it again. This time, my eyes laid on a blonde female guitarist. She was amazing. The first time when I watched the movie, I did see her but I was too focused on Michael Jackson and I didn't bother anybody else. The second time I watched This Is It, I found her being extremely awesome. I love her more than Michael Jackson's previous guitarists.

















Reason 1: A girl playing guitar is darn amazing.
Reason 2: She is not those wild bad-ass guitarists.
Reason 3: She is pretty.
Reason 4: She is talented.
Reason 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10...............The list goes on....














Tell me this girl doesn't dazzle you, then I will tell you to go to see a doctor or check your eyes and brain!

I did notice that it wasn't Jennifer Batten in there, but my friend kept on insisting that it was Jennifer Batten and said how loyal Jennifer Batten was towards Michael Jackson. But then, I realised, this girl's much much much younger than Jennifer Batten, and their faces aren't alike by any means. I went back home to Google her. 

From there, I know her name is ORIANTHI PANAGARIS. Adelaide born guitar prodigy. Gorgeous, talented and cute. Most importantly, she has her style. Instead of being the wild, rebellious, wild, bad-girl looking guitarist, she's the exact opposite. Sweet smile, pretty face, long blonde hair, pure, nice voice, down to earth, humble, friendly and polite. Whatever good qualities you can think of, you name it and she has it. No joke! Upon looking her up, I spotted her music video-According To You. I was totally blown away. Seeing a girl playing so insanely fantastic at such a young age made me speechless. Plus, looking at her photos, she's cool! There's no other words to describe her except for the word PERFECT! Since then, I started having interest in guitars and her as well. Well, I actually had an acoustic guitar at home for quite some time but I never had the real passion to learn it. Until I saw her.....I started to consider....I started talking about her A LOT in school. At first when I first mentioned her my friends didn't know who she was, then after 1 week or 2, nearly all of my classmates know her. Orianthi's photos appeared more and more on my Facebook and her songs went into my iPod one by one. Unconsciously, I was addicted to her (until now, I still am) Then, the 3rd time when I watched This Is It, I knew by heart that I MUST LEARN ELECTRIC GUITAR. 

By the time I watched This Is It for the 4th time, ORIANTHI PANAGARIS had already become the 2nd most important person in my life. (No.1 is Michael Jackson for sure). It was after my major exams and my mom asked me if I wanted to get double grade ballet classes. After considering for a day or two, I plucked up my courage and told my mom I didn't want to get double grades, I would just take the lessons as usual, one exam a year. However, I told her I wanted to learn guitar. Not acoustic but electric guitar. She kept quiet and didn't say anything. I was certain that she knew where did that idea came from because I couldn't stop talking about Orianthi ever since.

At first I suggested that I would go to the free guitar lessons which my tuition teacher was providing, at her residential area with other people who were much older than me, even though it's only lessons for acoustic guitars. That's how I started. But the lessons were held every fortnightly and I knew I wouldn't get to learn much before the long holidays end. So I begged my mom to let me go for real lessons at music schools. Frankly speaking, my mom wasn't really supportive towards my passion for guitars. Just like what many people think, she thought (still thinking, I SUPPOSE :p) that guitars were more for guys. It's a male dominated thing, and it would be weird for girls to learn guitar. Seeing Orianthi being so charismatic on guitars, I know that statement isn't true anymore in the 21st century. In the end, mom gave in to me...I was begging and begging non-stop day and night with 2 conditions-I had to find out and with everything about my lesson before enrollment AND I couldn't buy electric guitar immediately because she's afraid that I might give up on electric guitar very soon. Anyway, I agreed without hesitating. 

I had 3 guitar teachers. The first teacher, I only had 1 lesson with him and then I quit from that music school. I initially chose that music school was because it's in town and I could go there before my tuition. Before I enrolled, the person in charge over there told me I didn't have to buy electric guitar beforehand, she told me they would lend me one during my lessons. On the first day of my lesson, the teacher was 10minutes late. After coming in, he crapped a lot, boasting about himself and didn't teach me anything at all. What made me furious was he asked me to bring my own acoustic guitar to each lesson. Something's not right here. Obviously, the music school was just trying to get me enrolled and it was practically a lie. I questioned them and the owner of the music school then told me she had already mentioned that to me in advance BEFORE I enrolled. What a joke! So my mom went to complain and got all the money back.

2nd guitar teacher was a rather old man, good tempered but I didn't like him not having the passion and energy like young guitar teachers do. He's that kind of teacher who taught based on books. Not fun at all. I didn't want it to be like my experience on piano lessons which was exactly like that. Anyway, after having 2 months of express class with him, I bought my first electric guitar. Sad case it wasn't PRS, Fender or whatsoever, but as a beginner, I would just stick with it without any complaints, temporary. I bought it with my own money. Actually it's the money given by the banks because I got straight As in PMR. I bought an amp with it too! x)

Soon, I switched to the other music school and met my teacher, Alex. (Despite the super lame jokes you cracked on facebook, you are A SUPER GREAT TEACHER! THANKS ALEX! YOU ARE THE BEST TEACHER EVER!) He was the one who taught me my first guitar solo at my 2nd lesson. Unbelievably, he taught me Orianthi's According To You as my first song!!!!!! Gosh!!!! It was hard work but totally worth it. And he also taught me Orianthi's Highly Strung which killed my fingers a lot, and it took me nearly 5 months to learn the complete song. Even I can't go to his lessons anymore right now, we still remain as friends, a nice teacher and a funny friend! :D








My obsession for guitars can't be stopped anymore!

See.........having Orianthi as my guitar goddess, I am sure I won't lose passion anyhow. How can you lose interests in guitars when you have such an inspiring guitar goddess to look up to?!?! I got Orianthi's Believe album from a friend for my 16th birthday present. And I got even more obsessed with her. Then my friend gave me her poster as well!!!!! My ORI FEVER got more and more serious, but who cares? Just like Orianthi said in her interview that she wished that she would be able to inspire more girls to play guitars, now I am one of those girls and I am proud of it...darn proud! I LEARN GUITAR BECAUSE I AM INSPIRED BY ORIANTHI!


My very first Orianthi album ♥

I AM SO GRATEFUL I FOUND THIS GIRL NAMED ORIANTHI PANAGARIS.

THANK YOU FOR ENTERING MY LIFE ORIANTHI, THANK YOU FOR ALL THE INSPIRATIONS, THANK YOU FOR SHOWING THE ESSENTIAL OF MUSIC, THANK YOU FOR BEING YOURSELF, AND THANK YOU FOR BRINGING GUITARS INTO MY LIFE AS WELL.

Here's the start of my obsession with ORIANTHI PENNY PANAGARIS! You can called it insanity; I called it MY ENDLESS LOVE AND SUPPORT FOR ORIANTHI PANAGARIS!

[To be continued PART 2: SEEING ORIANTHI LIVE IN CONCERT!]

Stay tuned!

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Today is the last day of my school holidays, 29 minutes left. It's not exactly the last day of holidays, but it's holidays on the weekdays, weekends are taken for granted, so I can't be bothered counting them.

So...I have set my aim, and from TOMORROW onwards, I will go for it without doubting myself anymore. I got to believe in the Law Of Attraction.

What I need to do is to STUDY STUDY STUDY. Sounds boring I know, but because I wanna go into the Bachelor Of Commerce in Melbourne University, there's no shortcut to it. (I said already I don't want Bachelor of flirting - read my previous post here)

I had spent more internet money than my previous months here in Melbourne. Because it's holiday, I tend to log on to facebook and skype with my friends more often. However, from now onwards, it's the end of these days.

I swear to myself, I will NOT facebook and skype at home during the weekdays before I have everything completed. Honestly, there's no way not facebook-ing when I have the privilege to "exploit" school's free wifi isn't it?! Haha.....

Now I have set up 5 rules that I have to force myself to follow. Starting a brand new habit from the beginning, it is tougher than it sounds. We all know that, especially when it comes to studying.

Rule 1: Study harder harder harder and complete homework (including extra exercises from books) and read up textbooks after lecture (textbooks are hypnotizing and I don't like them :p).

Rule 2: No facebooking and skyping before completing homework and reading assignments.

Rule 3: The only TV time allow is during sit-ups sessions and every week 2 hours of Love Rain. Fullstop.

Rule 4: Sleep early, wake up early.

Rule 5: Tired time: eat fruits, play guitar, learn hangul.

Before I start plunging myself into my exam mode, which I hadn't recalled for MONTHS, tonight I am blogging this post. My last 15minutes will be spent on blogger. I practically spent today enjoying myself. Probably not so much of enjoying oneself, but it's like doing random stuffs, which made me feel like I have gone back to my high school crazy moments: blogging, video shooting, random photo shooting, facebooking and blogging again, which is this post.

I think I better go to sleep right now.

Tomorrow is a brand new start for me. The start of the battle of life.

Day 1, my mission will be:
- read finish literature book: The Boat
- finish Maths exercises and lecture notes
- do English homework
- check info for upcoming History essay

It's really time for me to get myself into the back-to-school mode~~Got to go now, bed time, nearly 12am. Nitezzz~~~

Friday, April 20, 2012

Received a call from my mom last night while I just walked out from the washroom. I thought it was just a random phone call because I wasn't online. However, it wasn't random. It was kinda terrifying. I don't know what kind of adjective to use for now so I'll just stick with that.

What freaked me out was my mom's sentence, "I am not sure if you could still see aunty Y by the time you get back."

SHOOT! That didn't sound like a random phone call anymore. I had a bad feeling about it since I roughly knew what she was talking about. "Her cancer has spreaded to the brain."

I remained silent. I didn't know what to say. Some weird fact about myself is that sometimes when I actually have things to say but don't know how to express, then I will rather keep quiet because I am afraid that I might say the wrong things at the wrong times.

Normally, I don't think kids bother much about their parents' friends' issues right?! Probably just an "oh" and "uh-huh", which are the common responses which the kids give to their parents when it comes to THEIR business. However, for me, it's really different.

I grow up among my mom's friends. My mom has a few close girl friends who were her primary/high school friends back then. Since my mom was a young mother in her twenties, when she went out with her friends, I tagged along as well. Among her friends, there weren't any kids, except for me. So I would be treated like a princess. I still remember there was once out of total randomness my mom and her friends brought me to a game arcade. It was really insane. They played and gained the coupons for me to exchange whatever gifts I wanted to have. Totally pampered me to the max. And also, I used to follow my mom out for meals with her friends and even karaokes. I learnt the 70s and 80s cantonese songs from them and they also tried to learn the taiwan pop songs from me x) All those memories were mesmerizing. Right now, my mom's friends have their own kids and I am not the one to be pampered anymore. In fact, since there's a very large age gap between me and her friends' kids, I am the one who's being the babysitter. Yet, I still love mingling with them.

What I am trying to say is that, even my mom's friends' stuffs matter to me. Back to aunty Y whom I was talking about earlier. She is one of my mom's close friends who I mingle around a lot too. Earlier this year, she went to Korea for some kind of project and I asked her if she could help me buy some earrings online. I actually thought that she most likely wouldn't bother me because it was really troublesome to place an order on website with NO ENGLISH but Hangul. She didn't guarantee me a green light at first but eventually she managed to buy back for me. I was going to return her the money but then she told me that those earrings were for my 18th year old birthday because I was coming to Melbourne. My Jung Yong Hwa's and Jang Keun Suk's earrings, in total 5 pairs were given by her, which I really really really cherish with all my heart.

Seriously, upon hearing my mom told me this incident, I was calm. Too calm until I felt afraid of my own weirdness. And there was the other bad news - my neighbour just found out that she has cancer. Worse still, it's terminal stage and most probably her life span would be just 1 year.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!?!?!?! Why the freaking hell is everything bad happening to the people I know?!?!?!?! Can't there be any good things?! At least....the very least, give me 1 good thing that is bound to happen or whatsoever....



Is fate to be blamed?! Who are we to comment when it comes to facing fate? Life, Death are some parts of nature. Eventually everyone's life will come to a fullstop. We all know that, but isn't it a major eye sore when right in front of your eyes you see living their lives happily and healthily somehow got a disease and they are told that their remaining life span can be counted off in a hand?! These people's fullstops jump out from the middle of nowhere don't they?! Put it this way then, personally to me, these fullstops are like bird shits.
It sounds gross and nonsensical if you read those 2 words, but indeed, they really are like bird shits. Let your imagination run...put yourself into this kind of scene: a beautiful morning, the sun is shining, there's breeze blowing and the flowers are blooming, you are taking a stroll in the park with your beloved puppy, enjoying the music coming out from your headphones and looking at the little children fooling around. SUDDENLY...there's a splat. "PLAT!" (sound effect!) The splat landed on your cheek. Smells hellish and feels slimly, wet and warm. BIRD SHIT! Screw it!

Now you get what I mean? o.O When everything seems so perfect in a nice morning then there's this bird shit which is ruining every single thing in just a second.

I used to think a lot about this topic but every single time I ended up making myself miserable and the answer which I am desperately searching for is never attainable. So I gave up on this and never wanted to think about it. Until now..........I can't help it.

Humans are so helpless when it comes to challenging fate. We can never ever predict what is lying in the future waiting to ambush us aggressively. We humans might be the most "high class" organism living on this planet. Yet, when it comes to fate, we are nobody. We are as vulnerable as a speck a dust. With a tiny blow, we are going to vanish. The power of fate is apparent in this particular situation. A baby was born in Africa but was starved to death after 1 day. Perhaps you could say that the problem was caused by the parents. But standing in the baby's shoes...do you think he got to choose which parents he want? Did he choose he didn't wanna originate from that particular sperm which carries the certain genetic codes? NO of course....everything is fated for him. And if 2012 was going to be real, can you do anything about it?! There's no way to run....no way to escape, death is what you are going to face. The one and only thing. No choices can be made. No opportunity cost is present. There's no 'agree' and 'disagree' but only an 'accept' button.


Is this what live is all about?! You leave everything to fate? Undoubtedly, fate is really controlling life and death, but to me, it's only under certain circumstances. Like those people who live healthily yet they get illness which can't be cured, under that situation, there's nothing to be said, the only thing is to accept the fact and keep on living life day by day, enjoying it to the fullest. On the other hand, say a serious smoker who smokes 5 packets of cigarettes a day, drug addicts injecting a bunch of hazardous chemicals into their blood vessels, people who suffer from aids because they sleep around mindlessly..........Can these people complain? Yeah of course they have mouths, duh! But we outsiders KNEW the consequences that they are bound to face when they were doing those kind of stuffs idiotically. Fate CANNOT be blamed for this. Agree? I will reward them with 3 big words "IN YOUR FACE!"

We don't know how long our life spans are. Some of us have 100 years, some 80 years, some 70, some 20, and some even only a day. I have lived for 18 years and 2 months (EXACTLY 2 months from my birthday). How many more years do I have?! I don't know and I would never ever know. I suppose it's human nature to procrastinate, right?! Say, there's an assignment which is due in a month's time, majority of the people wouldn't go back home and plunge themselves working on it; when in a day's time, everyone will start working immediately. And I somehow find this resembling with humans' attitude dealing with life. If someone happened to find out that they only have 1 year to live, do you think they would procrastinate anymore? It is obvious that they will try to fulfill whatever dreams that haven't fulfilled if they are still capable of doing that. Of course, there are people who will become lifeless because they are preparing themselves to go into their coffins by just counting the days left on the wall calender.

From this incident I realised that we humans shouldn't procrastinate. Don't say something like "I'll leave it until next year", "I will settle that after I get marry", "I will do that after 2 months" or whatsover. You never know if those days would even come to you. Life is unpredictable. Live life to the fullest. Life is about fulfilling the dreams. 人因梦想而伟大, I do believe in that. Before we step foot into our grave, make sure you don't bring any regrets with you. Whatever you want to do now, if it's not something bad, then just go with it, without looking back. Don't take the path and doubt yourself halfway and wishing to turnback. Take the route and continue it, making the best out of it.

This is life. We can't challenge fate, but we have the ability to live it to the fullest.

Yes, what I need to do now, I am clear about it.....That's why I am ending this long winded post here. I have things to finish off.....

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Back in high school my friends and I used to complain about how ugly our uniforms were and were freaking desperate to get rid of them. We either wished that we would have uniforms like the Japaneses' and Koreans' which are super duper cute or we would get to wear our own clothes to school.


Japan students' uniform.


Korean students' uniform.

So envy when I look at them. I got these pictures from google.com as I typed in "Japanese student uniform" and "Korean student uniform", in the real life, are their uniforms like that?! Can someone tell me the reality is as good as these?!

Come to think of it, I never had a full-body picture of myself wearing my high school uniform. Now I regret not camwhoring with it :/ Oh well, nevermind, right now I don't have the faintest idea where did all my uniforms go :S


This is my primary school class photo. Look how childish looking we were :p And this is how our primary school uniform looks like. Frankly speaking, up till now, I still prefer primary school uniform than high school uniform. Dark blue is much nicer looking!


So this one is our high school uniform. With huge wholes at the side, I used to stuff my arms into them for fun x)

As much as I hated school uniforms, right now I wish that we could have uniforms for college. I am so lazy to think of what to wear to school everyday. Just imagine having to study until late at night and the next morning struggling so hard to get out of bed, freezing after jumping out from the shower and there comes the trouble - What am I suppose to wear to school?

I am NOT that kind of person who will overdress for school. There are many students in my school who dress up really perfectly to school and with makeups everyday. Undoubtedly, they look awesome but personally I won't waste my energy in doing this everyday. I am a T shirt girl. And guess what?! I am damn proud of being a T shirt girl, there's nothing wrong about it. And my friends actually said that I look younger in T shirts (than those people who overdress, despite the fact that we are actually about the same age)...T SHIRTS ROCK TO THE MAX! Look at Chirstina Grimmie, our beloved girl next door who looks fantastic in just T shirts :D That's what I love about her, even though she has skyrocketed to fame but she is still the usual girl who wears T shirts (mostly from Hot Topic and Target!!!)


Alright nevermind, I admit I am unsuitable to be those super glamorous girls who can turn the school into a fashion walkway. I'll just settle with T-shirts and jeans then :p 


Mind to share with me what do you all wear to school? And what is the type of style that is simple yet presentable? :3

Monday, April 9, 2012

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