A NEW HORIZON...................

30th April 2009, Elder Hall, Adelaide: Never thought i would have a chance to witness such a talented pianist here. He is just amazing yet humble person. This rare opportunity was arranged by the Elder hall, which is the uni organization that arranged all the concerts, recitals,…etc every semester!!! Compared to UM, UM can put aside lar, hahahha. There are showcase and musical session almost every Friday for view performed either by the students or other groups, and there are also night concerts with various renown musicians visiting Australia.  Bought this ticket at a reasonable price for a student pass, otherwise to watch him performing live in a concert, the price can easily go up to 40$ at least for the cheapest!!! Surprisingly, many who attend the recital are old couples or old man, wondered why!!! Perhaps not many people in Adelaide appreciate classical anymore as much as those elderly do. TOO BAD for them!!!! Or not many knew about it.
For your info, Konstantin is from Russia and has been the recipient of several Foundation awards. Performed in many concert halls in Moscow and other cities in Russia and also in Italy, Germany, Holland, Austria, Crezh Republic and the US. Recently, he has won 1st prize and 8 special prize in the 2008 Sydney International Piano competition. Can u imagine dat? haha, that’s what make him so good!!!




Indeed, seeing him perform live is like seeing Beethoven to me or Rachmaninov perform live. His hands are so fast that u felt like you are seeing an octopus playing with many tentacles. The only drawback is the grand piano is not as good as he is, the grand piano is an old one.  In fact, the recital is meant for collecting fund to buy a new grand piano for Elder hall.






He practiced his play as if he is working for a job, even more hours for a performance!!! Imagine just playing the piano with the same piece over and over again to perfect it!!! That’s how much time and passion one such as him put into his career.

Oooo, i wish i noe how to play piano like him!!! i love the look of the grand piano!!! Wish i own one in the future, hahahha. But i guessed i’ll hv to learn how to play piano first, what i’ve learned before during the last 2 months in K2J all hilang dy. Sigh!!! Being aiming to buy a casio C-100 keyboard, but ………, sigh!!!! :(







My colleague who can play piano very well was so touched by his performance that she shed a few tears claiming that he is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good!!!! Imagine that, haha.  Guessed his age!!!!! Looked mature and good looking rite??? Some more, tall lagi!!! He is just 24!!!!!!








This were the pieces his played and he added a few extra after he got high!!! haha. Everyone gave him a loud long applaud after his finished. I wished to shout “bravo” like what i saw in the Nodame series, but no one did that, maybe everyone was too shy or that is not the culture here yet.

Got his signature off him, haha, very happy!!!








(^.^)

Winter days in Adelaide are usually cold and gloomy and grey. Temperatures can range from 3-20 degrees. Rainfall is the highest during winter, almost everyday is a rainy day, however, the rainfall here is very much different from Malaysia as the clouds cry whenever they like to, and the funny part is they cry for a while, sometimes they weep only sometimes burst into tears very suddenly then stop. But nothing like our Malaysia tropical storm, rains for hours like pouring water from above or for days continuously. The weather is worse if it’s windy. The wind kills!!! You felt each gust of wind penetrate your skin and chill your bone!!! You get very little sun shine and the day gets dark early. So winter days are Soooooooooooo sien, hid in the room, most of the time u felt like hiding under the warm Quilt and zzzz away. Your hands are freezing even by just holding the mouse, and your legs are numb even if u wore thick woolen socks. Basically, if i’m an animal, i would go hibernate, lol.

Yet 25th July was a bright sunny day, just felt like being activated by the sunshine. Just cant resist the temptation to go out somewhere and get some vitamin D, haha. The weather and temperature is just nice!!! So, i invited my 2 housemates to come along with me to my favourite spot in Adelaide – Hallet Cove, hehe, i even asked them to jog. They too felt like getting active, but not in the mood for jogging, so we ended up strolling along the cool breeze under the lovely sunshine!!! Trust me, you’ll LOVE the sun so much during the winter!!!
       

Flowers, flowers everywhere as it’s getting a bit hotter towards the end of winter. Some flowers were already in bloom. The lovely flowers make everywhere, anywhere a beautiful sight!!! Saw this sakura like trees, not sure it’s real sakura or the almond tree blossom which looks very identical to me.








As i mentioned above, winter get the most rain throughout the whole year, thus when there’s more sunshine, everywhere is in lush greeennnnnnnnnnnnn!!! Very pretty!!!


Hallet cove just looked so different with the green landscape!!! With yellow tiny flowers everywhere in full bloom!!! My last visit during December was all dry arid colours. Totally different!!!


Blue blue clear sky……, you’ll only get these during spring and summer mostly. It’s so peaceful to the eyes!!! Capture this photo with the little aeroplane, haha. Here you’ll see planes and sailing boat on a nice day!!!
Sook Xia, u’ll love this place since you like to see air planes take off. Even better off Glenelg, wahaha.






This time, we went down to the rocky beach. It’s such a nice place!!! This beach holds some funny geographical formation, ridges and rocks that have geographical significance.



Walk up the hill again in hallet cove, which looks really greennnnn!!! Everywhere is green now!!! Love it!!!
 
 

These tiny little yellow flowers looks very pretty when there are in scattered around in a big patch of green green grass.


Beautiful sunset during winter!!! What a nice way to end the day!!! I’ll come back again :)

Our regular dinner outing around Adelaide with my colleagues, tasting food from around the world, yeah!!! This one is in Market St, central market’s “little India”.

The Maya Indian Restaurant in Adelaide, Australia serves all sorts of Indian regional dishes like North Indian, South Indian, Tandoori, Mughlai and Kashmiri cuisine. It is among the very few Indian Restaurants, Adelaide serving South Indian dishes, like dosas with sambhar and chutney. Indian bread is also very popular here. The specialties of the Maya Indian Restaurant are paneer cheeses and cucumber raita. The menu also consists of regular North Indian Delicacies like butter chicken, kormas, rogan josh and a variety of Indian curries. You end your meal with some tasty Indian sweet dish. The Maya Indian Restaurant also serves thali plates, which is an entire meal for one person and is very economical (extracted partly from http://www.asiarooms.com/travel-guide/australia/adelaide/what-where-to-eat/indian-restaurants-in-adelaide/maya-indian-restaurant.html).

First time seen indian food with so many different sauce and different meat e.g beef, chicken, fish. There’s also dessert with yogurt mixed with lentils. The good is you get the taste of everything, the pity thing is all came in small portions.  Taste really nice but not really spicy.

 
(left to right: Phil, Xiao, Tash, me, Suraya)

I’m a person that will pay tickets to cinema for movies that i think well-worth. That usually occurs with big production or cool stunts such as, Matrix, the LOTR, transformers, …etc. Otherwise i rather download or wait for someone to have them and grab from them.

Somehow i know the movie: This is it, is not something i mentioned above, but as i’m curious of what Michael is like at backstage and of course i’m a big fan of his songs and dance and still will be, i just went to watch last night.

Surprisingly, there were quite some people in the same theater room. Normally, not many people would go for a movie in Adelaide as the tickets are considerably expensive if without any discount. This mean there are quite a lot of MJ fans who are same as me, willing to pay a ticket just to watch MJ.

It turned out that i like the movie quite a lot. Shed some tears twice, haha. Although it looks a bit like documentary style or the making of a movie, but it is through this movie, that i’ve seen MJ more closely, his character, his attitude, the person behind screen. In this movie, i really found out that MJ is such a music talented person, he knows all his songs so well, the keys, he arrange the songs the way he wish audience would like to hear, change the song plays, he direct the stage and the dance. Also, you’ll found that MJ has a kind side in which he always thank people, bless people, appreciate what people have done. One can see that he really worked hard for the concert, train and train, try n try again. He has hopes for the world, for planet earth, telling of the dangers of Global Warming and the lack of reversible time left.

MJ's concepts are often jaw-droppingly impressive. Even by just watching the snippets of the concert intended to be, i can imagine how grand and massive the concert will be. In the concert, Thriller was to involve a 3-D sequence, with all the different mummies which looks really awesome, effects footage for Smooth Criminal blends Jackson into film noir classics opposite Humphrey Bogart and Rita Hayworth showing MJ escaping again and his slow version of The Way You Make Me Feel looks like a super-sized tribute to Old Hollywood musicals. I REALLY LOVE this jazzy version of The way you make me feel. Unfortunately it was not in the accompanying album of this is it.

There’s also a new video sequence for Earth song, featuring a small girl who wanders through an abundant forest, falls asleep, and wakes up to find the forest destroyed by man. The progressively lost of Amazon forest caused him to write this beautiful song.

Shed tears as i knew it was regrettable that i won’t have any more chance in my life to see this person, king of pop live in concert anymore. haha.

The movie is not GREAT as in movies you would have seen for all the other action-thriller movies, but i think it’s really well-worth and you get to listen to those all time favourite MJ songs and watch all the cool dance again!!!If you are a MJ fan, i'm sure this movie will entertain and amaze you!!!! He will always be the KING OF POP!!! no doubt!!!
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