Bonjour! I'm just going to pretend I didn't just disappear for months again.
The reason why I'm here again is because recently I got a hard disk and I managed to illegally download Adobe Lightroom onto my computer! So this means the 32GB (not joking) amount of photos that was originally stored on my computer can finally be placed somewhere safe! Plus, I don't need to only rely on VSCO on my phone to edit photos!
I'm really excited k
So basically this means I will get to edit my photos in the future and it makes me really excited :)
Alright, alright. Update!
It's the middle of the semester and there are many things different
I have decided to switch my major. I am currently majoring in Environmental Engineering and it took me two semester and a whole Summer to reach the decision that Engineering is definitely not for me.
The major I am planning on switching to is Life Science. It's basically biology, and honestly, lab rat > engineer.
My hair isn't blue anymore, it's pink! But of course, pink is such a hard colour to maintain *sigh*
Yo. My life may be in shambles but I still update my instagram with the hashtag #TheMisAdventuresOfSophomoreNoel daily. It takes extreme commitment k, please read my intsa please @NoelHasFeathers
So... I won't promise to update my blog anymore, cos I'm just going to not follow through anyway. I'm unsure if anyone actually reads this thing anymore, so go comment: MushyKickapoo on my recent Instagram to let me know people read this thing thanks
Here are some unreleased photos of my wonderful hair, edited using Lightroom hehe
Hello! Summer has officially officially started and I had an amazing time up on 中橫! I was debating with myself whether or not I should break my chain of nostalgic Sem 2 posts and blog about 中橫 while it was fresh in my mind, but then I uploaded the photos to Facebook already and if I blogged about it I would only be adding detail to my favourite moments.
(That was me persuading myself to not break the Sem 2 posts, btw) Therefore I shall resume.
The next thing that happened after Bicycle day was 社博 (Club Exhibition) and 期初社大 which roughly roughly translates to: Club Presentation at the Starting of the Semester. We had a stall during club exhibition and also a mini stage where we did 20 minute sessions. Besides that, we accepted a gig on a bigger stage, where we dressed up and everything (well, I did anyway). It's a little complicated haha, but it only shows how busy I was during that week. I had more than ten songs to learn and perform. But it was worth it.
I was going through the photos of 社博 and I found that because I passed my camera to other people, it was filled with photos I didn't take. And because my portrait lens' focus is controlled manually, most of the photos were out of focus or the lighting was weird haha. So I'll just choose the best.
It was really fun, performing on such an intimate stage, we were situated at the entrance of the exhibition so there were a constant stream of people passing by, but all they did was just pass by, hahaha. It was a challenge to see how well one could grab the attention of people wandering nearby. I still need more practice, obviously.
Besides performing, we had to hand out flyers and basically promote our club. I know this sounds weird, but I honestly like chatting with strangers.
Day two of 社博 we had the scheduled performance on the big stage. It's called 動態舞台 Action Stage (?) and I performed with Linus, Xuncheng and BJ. We did a set of three songs, the last one being Uptown Funk. As I don't have the ability to play guitar that well, I played the melodica and ukulele. I honestly really liked our performance that day. It was cute and my melodica arrangement was spot one hehe.
Setlist: 1. 關於我愛你 by 張懸 2. 因為你 by 女孩與機器人 3. Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars
And behold, some badly taken phone photos. Front camera photos are absolutely horrible.
Compiling photos is such hard work, and I always start these posts with such enthusiasm but then it starts to bleed out as my laptop refuses to cooperate. So halfway through these posts I start to lose patience and then I rush to the ending. Which is exactly what I'm doing now.
期初社大 is a full performance, with different bands from Minyaotuan in the club. But that's just how our club ikes to do it. The other clubs here in NCKU all do different things as the purpose of this presentation is to attract people into our club.
I was super excited for my first ever 期初社大 in which I had a chance of performing in. Besides that, I was also the emcee for the event. Before the semester even started, I had already picked out the song I wanted to cover. I wasn't even in Taiwan when I picked out that song. Enthusiastic Noel is slightly terrifying.
And I was also asked to be the lead singer for another song. A Taylor Swift song, Begin Again. But because the weather was extremely unstable (it dropped to 16 degrees), it took a toll on my voice. I couldn't control my voice they way I liked it and it made me sound like a duck.
This is 起床歌 by 曹格 Gary Cao, he's Malaysian and I really love the bluesy, big band vibe of the original song. We wrote a little something at the starting of the song, as a contrast to the happy upbeat feel when we go into the verse.
I'm pretty sure there are two swear words in it but my Taiwanese friends assure me there isn't.
I don't really like Begin Again, to be honest, cause I just don't feel as strongly for the song as I do for 起床歌 but everyone told me they liked Begin Again better. Ah well.
Below are some of my favourite photos of the event
Okay, I'm sure there are plenty of photos on this post now.
I'll leave ya'll with this video of me dancing to Uptown Funk
You may or may not know, but I decided to hide my birthday on Facebook this year. The main reason being I wanted to experiment on my new friend in uni, see if they remembered (I did tell them a few months ago) instead of only relying on Facebook's notification.
And I was honestly very surprised to find that a lot of my closest friends remembered! This proves that people actually care. Mostly people only started wishing me after seeing my mother's birthday post (it has more than 150 likes now, wtf) on my wall, so at the beginning of my day, a bunch of aunties and uncles (whom I've never met) started wishing me. It was actually kinda cute haha
Anyway, I'm really grateful for all the wishes, especially the videos I received. I'll post a few soon. But first of all, I wrote a song for my nineteenth year. It's not exactly an original, but that's what I felt like writing haha.
Lyrics: I remember In early September Arrived in Tainan With my dreams and plans Started university Caught up in activities And suddenly I find I'm 19 Happy birthday to me Remembering 18 I proclaimed myself Queen Dyed my hair red But I was still slightly green Now I'm 19 All the places I've been The faces I've seen My hair is actually kinda green Happy birthday to me Happy birthday dear Noel Happy birthday to me
I would honestly like to thank my parents, eventhough we can't celebrate together this year, they made sure I was still treated like a princess :)
I didn't actually celebrate grandly like the previous years, all I did was to go out and makan with my brother. Here are some of the photos of the night.
Food was good and my brother belanja me so everything was well hehe.
Also in the afternoon I was chilling in our GuitarOffice and my friends gave me a kawaii cake haha. Kevin gave me a bubble blower too. It was extremely random.
My friends are so adorable haha
Speaking of adorable friends, my Homosapiens with Boobs made a video for me! It was filled with my snapchats and their love. Also filled with copyrighted material. Yiwen tried to upload it to many places but got blocked off so we spent three hours during midnight fussing over technology just to let me see the video. Her data even ran out halfway through. I love Yiwen.
And then another cute video I received was from my friends who were climbing Yushan (Jade Mountain), the highest peak in Taiwan. The video is honestly so adorable, listen closely to the other people speaking in the video. And they obviously didn't plan this, so when they suddenly started to sing the birthday song, their faces were so hilarious.
It made me very happy
Then after dinner, Xuncheng jio me out. Turns out he wrote a song for me. It was a song we wrote when we graduated from New Minyaotuan and he upgraded it. It's really nice, although you can hear me try (and fail) at harmonizing to this song haha. They lyrics are in Chinese and I damn lazy to translate lah, so just enjoy k
Of course, I can't forget all those cute and random DM's that I received, there are reasons I'm friends with all my friends. And through those DMs I remember why.
I guess, being 19 looks like it's going to be a hell of a ride :)
Note: Music is down below, I posted some of the songs my friends performed and 擊敗人's original song
Bicycle Day/Fair/Something Like That
Every year during March the uni hosts this Bicycle Day thing (單車節) and every department has a stall and high school students flock NCKU to get to know what we university students are doing in uni. Hahahaha. What a joke. We have no idea what we're doing either. Anyway, besides the departments trying to impress high school students, the foreigners of NCKU are also in charge of food for the event, we have a mini international food extravaganza. There are many stalls from the Malaysians, Macau-Hong Kongese (?), Paraguay-ians(?), Thai, Vietnamese and so and so. It's pretty cool actually. The Malaysians had Nasi Lemak, Pulut Hitam, Onde-onde amongstother Kuihs and also Pisang Goreng. Feels like home. So besides all that, there are also performances from the clubs in NCKU to try to impress high school students too. And naturally GuitarClub had some performances and we went to support our friends. Oh yeah, besides all that, there was also a hipster market at the Banyan Garden.
Anyway here are some of the photos of the day. They're an absolute mess.
Oh yeah, the event was held on Qiaosi's birthday hence the overexcited little bunny she became.
BJ has pretty fingers
I then went to the Malaysian stall to support my home country homies. I mean, yeah. My brother was there. So I went and belanja my friends my hometown food.
Also I accidentally busked.
P/s: Linus is a horrible photographer
Okay, performance time! The following are some of our club's Minyaotuan members and then following that is 擊敗人 The Undefeatables (??) This band from HotMusicClub with some of our senpais in it.
Hipster market time. We went scavenging for Qiaosi's birthday present there haha
Most of the stalls were managed by NCKU students. They were selling their handmade cookies, desserts, crafts and art. I bought the Finn and Jake sticker for my laptop hehe.
Yay then after that we went for dessert at this place that forces you to check in on Facebook for cheaper grass jelly. (Qiaosi took some of the photos shown below)
An incredibly pop pop song. I'm sure you've heard it. Four chords.
One of 擊敗人's original songs. I just like sharing songs my friends wrote.
Wow. Damn boring hor? I quite lazy lah. Actually the series of event didn't happen this way, but I split the photos up like that so to make me writing it easier. We actually tapaoed the grass jelly and sat down to watch 擊敗人 perform. So... Don't trust my blog.
Okay, I'll leave it like this for now, the next post will have videos of me performing!
