the feeling and the fray

on the left:the feeling; on the right:the fray
last night i went to see the fray concert at the kool haus in toronto. since the dvp was closed all weekend, the trip downtown (via yonge st) was a pretty crazy ride full of morons turning left and idiots stopped on the side of the road for no apparent reason. oh well, no matter. we managed to get down safely and even though we didn't get that free parking spot at least we got there and didn't have to wait in line TOO long (we stood in line for about 45 mins) despite leaving my house at around 7:20pm.

the opening band for the night was the feeling and they were wicked awesome! i am so a fan of theirs now. so incredibly entertaining. at one point the lead vocalist/guitarist got so crazy with his dancing he started kicking one of the drum crash cymbals with his foot. then at the same time the bassist went to the drums too and was bashing away at the set with another set of sticks while the actual drummer kept playing too. i was laughing so hard it was so freakin' hilarious. those guys were so fun to watch because it was so evident that they were having so much fun themselves. oh and did i mention their accents? they're from the uk so they had these great brit accents that reminded me of my cousins. i wish i had an accent.

honestly, after watching the feeling, the fray was less entertaining to watch. maybe it was because they generally seemed more into their music the last time i saw them live, but everyone has their off days i suppose. also, isaac (the lead singer) is at a piano so it's not like he can dance around and kick the cymbals with his feet. (haha that was so gold.) nevertheless, they still put on a great show though and they played two new songs which were pretty good. towards the end of the show this guy (i think he was groupie) came out because it was his 21st birthday. everyone sang him happy birthday then during the next song he proceeded to sit on the piano and drink. seriously, this guy must have been so wsted afterwards. he drank one kegger full and at least two bottles of beer in the span of like 4 mins. the drummer was laughing so hard that i was surprised he was still able to play. there was literally a stage guy whose job for that song was to hand the birthday boy more alcohol. that whole part of the concert was kinda dumb.

oh well, i still had a good time. :)

pictures from the night can be found here.

nick lachey | resolution

there's something about this song that gives me the chills. everything about it just seems so...vulnerable. poor guy. great song.



that high B nick hits during the verse...wow. simply, wow.

unnaturally green



as part of my birthday present from liz, we went to see wicked yesterday and i thought it was freakin' awesome!! from the minute i stepped into the canon theatre to the moment i stepped out, i was so excited!

in terms of our seats, i couldn't believe our luck when we purchased our tickets. never before have i ever sat in such good seats at a musical (orch row EE seats 25 & 26 - fifth row centre.) it seriously doesn't get much better than that. i swear one of the performers in the ensemble looked right at me during the musical! haha. it was awesome being so close. i got to see everything from facial expressions and stage make-up, to costume/set design and spit flying out of the performer's mouths. very cool.

as for the performance in general, i thought that it was done really well. the performers were great, and the musicians in the orchestra pit were right on. (omg i would LOVE to play in a musical.) i guess if you were to compare our performance with the original soundtrack you'd hear a lot of discrepancies, but i really liked hearing it live. i loved hearing how the performers really personalized their roles in the little things they did to tweak their part. seemed all that much more...real.

i waited a looooong time to see this musical and it definitely didn't let me down. the plot was great, the singing was great, and the music was awesome! i totally recommend this musical to everyone.

so what did i think of wicked? i thought it was well...wicked. ;)
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totally random...

so during the intermission i walked out of the theatre and into the main foyer area when i saw this guy who looked really familiar. i guess he thought i looked really familiar to him too because we just kinda looked at each other. then we kinda walked towards each other going "jeremy?", "sharon?", "jeremy ross?", "sharon man?" hahaha. i seriously couldn't believe the randomness of it all.

anyway, he was one of my classmates back in grade eight. it was cool seeing him again and hearing what he's been up to lately. i guess despite turning 23, i still look the same as i did when i was 13.

i'm still trying to decide whether this is a good thing or not.

one year older

today i turned twenty-three. i still remember when i first turned ten and went around proudly telling (and showing) everyone that my age was "two full hands". i thought it i was so old. haha. i can't believe that was thirteen years ago now. wow.

thanks everyone for everything. :)

i'm so excited!!!

after waiting for more than a year (we literally bought out tickets back in july 2005) it's finally *almost* here. in exactly one week from today, i'll be sitting in the canon theatre, orchestra row EE seat 26 (fifth row centre baby), watching wicked with my lovely sister, liz. :)

oh it's gonna be SO awesome. wheeeeeeeeee!!!

everyone deserves the chance to fly...

feeling jittery

ever since my music therapy internship started a two weeks ago, all i've really been doing is observing, going to orientations, going on tours, and more observing. tomorrow (yah, i know, working on saturday mornings suck) i'll be leading my first official music therapy session. it's my first time leading a session since i've been in school, and first time ever leading a group music therapy session on my own (at laurier they're done in pairs), so uhmmmm....yah. we'll see how things go. and hopefully they'll go well.

mandarin classes and othello

a super nice fellow at my church has started teaching people in the english congregation conversational mandarin. he is so nice. :) anyway, since my chinese is the suck (it is SO bad...i can't even handle cantonese very well) i decided to take up this offer and signed myself up for classes. at first, the lessons were focused on learning the phonetics of the consonants and vowels of mandarin and now we've moved onto actually speaking some sentences. oh dear.

i can now say, ni hao (how are you?), ta shi wo de baba (he is my father), Wo chi Zhangguo cai (i eat chinese food), and lo ren (old person), among a few other words/phrases.

yay! with my limited/broken mandarin, i can now have a very odd and random conversation with someone...given they can understand what i'm trying to say. ;)

anyway after mandarin class, adrienne, jo, and i, took a trip to toys 'r us. omg. i've forgotten how fun that store can be. i think we might have been the oldest ones there that were buying things for ourselves as opposed to kids. meh. it was still good. :P adrienne bought cranium, jo played a random paintball video game (which was kinda like duckhunt, only not as cool), and i bought this:

<-- othello, my favourite board game of all time!!

now that i've bought the regular sized version i'll no longer have to use the tiny miniature travel-sized version to play which is a good thing because i don't know what happened to it. oops. i guess it was too small to keep track of. :P

yay for big othello. i love it. :)

new beginnings

beginning #1:
evening course. today i started my evening course at ryerson. i suppose it's school, but it doesn't feel like it because i'm not a full-time student anymore. also, almost everyone in my class seems so much older than me so instead of feeling like school, it just feels wierd. haha. i suppose i'll get used to it. :P anyway, my prof seems pretty nice and easy to understand, and the people in my class are okay too, no complaints there. unfortunately, the same can't be said about ryerson's demented campus which doesn't make any sense. in other words, it sucks. it really does. from the time i got off the subway to when i tried to find the right bookstore (they split their bookstore into two different places...who does that?!) i got lost. then when i left the bookstore (with no textbook in my hands because apparently i was at the wrong bookstore) and tried to find my class i got lost again. good thing there are helpful people walking the streets of toronto because i had to ask a few for directions...yah. i miss laurier.

beginning #2:
music therapy internship. my music therapy internship starts tomorrow! i can't believe it's actually happening. my degree is finally going to be put into use, and i'll be one step closer to trying to figure out what i want (and not want) to do with my life. here's to trying to create a little niche for myself within the world of music therapy.

beginning #3:
worship team. the new worship team i'm on is meeting tomorrow. after three months of meeting up and playing with the summer worship team every single week it'll be wierd not seeing some faces and seeing new ones instead...weird, but in a good way of course. haha. i am so smooth.

beginning #4:
kingdom kids. i'm one of the counsellors for my church's fellowship for grades 1-5 (how did this happen?! haha) and we had our first official meeting last friday. it turned out pretty good, despite us not knowing what we were doing or what was going on, which ultimately resulted in us starting LATE. oooops. oh well, i'm always open to learning and i suspect i'll be doing a lot of that for sure.

so with all these beginnings i feel it's time for me to say good-bye to lazy summer days of doing absolutely nothing. they were great while they lasted, but now i'm moving onto bigger and hopefully better things.

a different kind of september

the "school bus" is here, but this time i won't be on it.

now that i'm no longer an elementary/high school/university student,

september just isn't the same.

so blessed.

1461 days . 48 months . 4 years
happy fourth justin, i love you. :)