Busy Week

Bleah...this is terrible. Real life has been eating up all my online time...preparing homework, preparing for the Concert, talking to real people. Heh, I'm sorry that I'm neglecting my virtual audience (hmm...so much is implied by that term). Real life is just more interesting, I'm afraid.

Just so I don't forget, a list of things for future blogging opportunities:
1. Post-SYF Dinner
2. Guitar Camp
3. Practice for the Finale song
4. HCJC Concert

Most of this week's been taken up by Guitar stuff, as you can see. Been chugging away at churning out a programme booklet design for the Concert, and just finished what should be the final draft. It's actually not that bad. It's not even tedious...I prefer it to real essay work any day =P The design and conceptualisation process, all the technical stuff, everything's rather interesting to me. Maybe it's because so much of it is novel. But to combine IT and photography and literature in creating a corporeal product that will have emotional significance for lots of people later is definitely worthwhile.

Perhaps design is something of a forte on my part. Well, at least I like doing it. But the person who's really good at it is Greg. He knows how to use the pro programmes for 3D rendering and all that fancy stuff. I'm using a free trial of Ulead PhotoImpact. Not as advanced as PhotoShop, but it'll do. And I've been spending the last two hours exporting a high-res version of the programme booklet design. I knew printers required high resolution to print nicely, but 700 dpi was way out of my original expectations of 300. Which means now I've got a 600MB picture sitting on my hard disk. Really, it's prodigious. My comp was hardly powerful enough to export such a big file to begin with. As it was, it took hours to do it. And it's not even a particularly colourful file...it's just big in terms of dimensions.

Oh well...I reckon the next week will see Guitar stuff continue to dominate. On the one hand, I really don't mind...the notion of hanving a corporeal immediate goal to work towards that is not academic in nature is a nice feeling...gives you a reason to go to school every day. But then there's always the nagging feeling of all those essays hanging over my head. Managed to clear Lit essays on Labour Day, rather aptly, I have to say. But there's still 1 E Hist, 1 Hist S and 1 Lit S essay pending. Not to mention all the math homework (which, I have to admit, is rather relaxing, a kind of respite from all that reading for the Hist homework). But all the same, I'm determined to engross myself with Guitar stuff. Our term is coming to an end, and the Concert will be the last big thing we do, our batch of Guitarists. And homework will always come...this Concert is only going to happen once. It's clear where I should put my attention, isn't it? =P

It seems too that with things coming to an end, and coming to an end on the high note that SYF left us in, we're beginning to really enjoy Guitar. At least I am, and I hope everyone else is too. Guitar is something to look forward to nowadays. Partly it's because there's so little of it left, but also SYF and the Camp have brought out lots of wonderful things in the other Guitarists that I hadn't seen before. Couple that with the push factor of the mundanity of class life (as it stands right now at any rate), and class time is merely a formality to get to the real meat of every day...Concert prac.

I do have more to talk about on our Concert preparations, but preparing for the thing must take priority over talking about preparing for it. So the rest...till another time.

* * * * *

Kingdom of Heaven is actually a really good movie. I thought that it was some kind of fantasy LOTR-type flick, which wouldn't have been bad, except that it's been done already. But as a portrayal of the Crusades, I have to say that it was intriguing...and boldly honest. While talking about this religious topic, the film managed to avoid passing a biased judgment on any one faith. If anything, it was evenly anti-religious as a whole. And it's quite understandable...seeing those troops going to war in the name of religious fervour is sickening, in that the rank and file are driven by a religious zeal that is warped all out of proportion by an elite that would exploit religion for political ends.

Yeah, the striking thing was that the movie was a statement against Religion, rather than against any particular one. And with religion taken to those extremes, I can't see how it's rationally defensible. And yes, religion isn't a rational matter, but to separate the two so exclusively is a mistake. It allows Crusades to happen. And it is clear that religion can be a dangerous thing if you don't think about it. Once again, having faith does not excuse you from thinking about why you believe. I can see why people like Purvis would be afraid of (or ambivalent towards) Christianity...the Crusades would have been fearsome to anyone from this day and age. And yet, it seems incomprehensible how people could have swallowed the crap that the elite came up with. If someone tried to justify a political grab at power by religion nowadays, he wouldn't emerge unscathed, let alone victorious. Or at least I'd like to think so.

Lots of blood in that movie. After a while you realise that death is death, no matter what is used to justify it, or who delivers it. And at the end of the movie, Saladin challenges the Crusader Baron to raze Jerusalem: "I wonder if it would be better if you did [destroy the city]", and then, "What is Jerusalem worth?" "Nothing. Everything." It really is a rather humanistic approach to the Crusades. In the end, after the religious warmongers had been dispatched by the Saracens, the Baron is left to defend Jerusalem, for everyone, Jews, Muslims and Christians, much to the chagrin of the bishop.

Heh, anyway, it was a welcome break from everything to go watch that movie...class politics, schoolwork, even Guitar. And I haven't seen a movie in a heck of a long time. It felt good to be in a movie seat again, smelling popcorn, immersed in larger-than-life sensory input, and watching the audience as much as the movie. A break from real life then, in order to reposition oneself to take another look at real life. Have to do that again, and soon, before the term is out.

pondered by phoenican @ 8.5.05