February 24th to February 29th

I have a new activity to add. I've joined a hip hop class from 7.15 to 8.15 on tuesday nights. The classes are conducted in New World Park.

~Hip hop: Classes were conducted by one teacher who was up on the stage. We were in the amphi-theatre and had to follow the steps that he did. The first thing we did was warming up, which reminded me a bit of the cheerleading warmups. After that, he asked us to walk and bounce to the music, while he watched us. Then he started us on doing a ball-step-walk, and then other one where you extend your right and left leg out in alternation. Later we combined all the moves into one continuous dance, and repeated it except starting on the opposite leg and doing all the steps in the opposite direction. The second half of the lesson was spent learning some 'Crunch'. Crunch is a very exaggerated and energetic dance form where you really have to accentuate your moves. The basic crunching involves breathing in and out so that your body moves up and down. This can then be combined with other steps. We learnt how to stomp without hurting ourselves. Again the teacher would go through different types of moves, and then combine all of them together to do a dance. We also had to cheorograph four beats of free-style moving.

~Chamber: Ms. Leong told us that we only have two weeks before our Ria performance. The dress code is again black and white. This week we went through the Kaiser Waltz twice and its sounded better. We also practised Air on G-string and worked on dynamics so as to make it more expressive.

~Math tutoring: I think christine made the right choice in doing the core paper. She got an 84% on the first paper she tried, so hopefully she'll be able to make it into the 90s when the exams come around. i think its good because it boosts her self-confidence and also helps her to understand the basics of math and the questions in general. I'm also hoping to do a timed practise test, just to make sure that she's able to work within the time limits. Another problem would be carelessness and lack of focus. I haven't thought of a way to overcome this yet, but hopefully it'll come to her with more practise.

~Piano: The teacher was sick so there was no lesson.

~Reading Buddies: This week we moved from the classroom to the library on the first floor. This week i had Hey Jin, Oliver and one japanese boy whose name i can't remember. The japanese boy was rather fluent, but i'm not sure if he fully understands what he reads. he was also rather shy with his responses. Hey Jin also read very well, and chose a very short book. Oliver as usual outdid himself and read both expressively and fluently.

~Netball: Netball was cancelled this week.

~Mentoring: Nikki forgot to turn up again.

~Theory: We learnt about fourth voicing today. Wilson showed us an example from the song called Autumn leaves that makes use of intervals of fourths in the baseline. He also showed us how fourth voices is commonly used in Jazz pieces, as they sound much more dissonant and open, as opposed to consonant chords like I, V, VI. he's allowed me to work on a piece including fourth voicing rather than to do the modality thing.

~Solfege: Solfege this week focused mainly on sight-singing. It was quite easy, and the dictation and harmony were also at a relatively simple level. The only problem i had this week was with following the tenor line in the harmony exercise.

~Badminton: Badminton was again playing more games and smashing. I tried to make my opponents run this week by alternating the direction in which i hit the shuttlecock. Its very fun to do so, and i have the feeling that I've got the makings of a saddist, if i'm not already one.