It just occured to me that to achieve success in any aspect of life, all it takes is just pure discipline. Discipline to do what is required to be done as correctly as possible, and the discipline to do whatever is required as regularly as possible.

Discipline leads to effort. As the famous guitar saying goes: "Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect." All my life, i've known many disciplined people achieving success in their respective fields. To me, success is just a simple form of recognition. You are
successful when someone just say, "Yea he's good".

I shall try to be as disciplined as possible. I think i'm doing fine right now, but it can be better when it comes to the simple nagging bad habits like supper and sleeping late.

I find it very disturbing when people do illogical things. Like my group mate refusing to make the powerpoint presentation more fancy, and refusing to wear a tie during the presentation. Doesn't he know that we are graded on appearance and format? It's a professional communication course, but what he's doing is not very professional. He doesn't have the "take the bullet for the team mentality", so now i have to jeopardize my own grade because of him.

I've been taking the bullet far too many times. Sometimes i wonder why. I'm not Jesus.

Rosli Mansor's manager tried to add me on Facebook, but i think i'll ignore her this time. I have far too many acquaintances who I don't really know shit about. So i guess it's time to stop adding random people and try to focus on those who are more helpful. And i think i can do without advertisements on Rosli's wonderful guitar events. I'm just not into the scene at all, so gimme a break local music.

Today's the 2nd ippt workout in 3 days. Kai and I have a pact to do 1 Ippt every alternate day. I hope we have the discipline to pull this thru. I know Chao doesn't really have it, but his SBJ is quite cmi, so i guess he's abit worried too. Hope he can join us, so we can all motivate each other somehow.

My shuttle run today was quite good. The technique is there. Brake early and reach out to save 1 step. It's just tt i couldnt grab the 2nd thingy properly so it slipped off. But at least the technique is there, i'm quite happy with that. Kai mentioned that in OCS they have a different grading for IPPT. So a 100%er is one who can do 20 chin ups, 60 situps, 9.+ shuttle run, 260 SBJ and i believe a 9.14min 2.4km timing. Sounds like something to aim for. I'm sure if anyone can do all that he's definitely a very fit person. Chuan comes to mind.

There are many financial agents out there who are mainly interested in getting their clients to buy investment-linked products, cos that's the most profitable product for the FA. I always feel that when you become a FA, you will definitely lose your conscience, cos ultimately, you need to
feed yourself and your family. So you will try to rationalise that IL products are somewhat useful and good for the client, when it is actually not.

Term insurance is always the way to go. It's out in the papers. Only the ill-informed can be fooled into buy IL products. I hope my friends reading this can be enlightened slightly. FA friends will have alot to say about this, but my stand is very clear: IL products are a definite
waste of time and money. Stay away from them dear random stalker reading my blog.

Guitar Update: Lesson 12: The C Form

The C form is the 3rd "mode" of the minor pentatonic scale. A pretty easy shape to remember. The lesson actually revealed quite abit about this scale shape, that there are actually many bendable notes hiding inside. Which makes for alot more interesting phrasing ideas compared to the D form.

I dun really use the C form at all, but after today, hopefully it will unlock some mysteries. There are 2 licks that are actually quite playable, and they sound very blues to me. One explores bending on the 4th string, and the other explores half tone bending. Half tone bending is quite hard to master cos i'm already too used to bending a full tone. But it adds a nice tension to the the target note itself, and even if it's abit off it can be passed off as a quarter note bend or a transition note kinda thing. Interesting.

The solo presented in this lesson is quite similar in structure to the previous few solos i guess. Basically it plays on a few motifs, and expands it alittle in each bar. I usually write my solos this way also, but sometimes pple find it repetitive. But motifs are definitely a way to start off a good solo, especially if it's a catchy motif.

Been playing abit over 1 hour and a half today, cos every lesson i will go thru the previously learnt licks at least once (by once i mean in all 12 keys). So that takes quite a bit of time, and i actually yearned to have more time to play just now. Guess the hunger to play is coming back, which is good in a way.

Probably should learn the lesson first, then revise everything from the most recent to the least recent. Anyways they are ordered in decreasing difficulty, so i guess it's more practical in a way.

Also, today i realised some inadequacies in my note searching. Essentially, having a good fretboard knowledge is important. Cos i always change keys when i practise, it's important to locate the position of the next upcoming key. For the root position of the pentatonic scale it's easy, cos the root is at the 6th string, so i can shift easily as i've memorized that string. But when it comes to the D and C form, it's abit trickier, as the root is at the 4th and 2th string respectively. And i admit i do not have mastery over those strings yet.

One way i work around the searching is to have some reference note. Like the 2nd string 12th fret is B, and 5th fret is E. So it aids searching notes like D# and G# if you know how many frets these notes are away. For the 4th string it's alittle bit different, in the sense that i search by octaves, referenced from the 6th string. so like D# is 11th fret on 6th string, which the octave is 13th fret on 4th string. Something like that.

I believe my note searching technique probably takes more mental "calculation" compared to pure memorisation, but i feel my brain has more crazy stuff to memorise like the steps to perform a Multiple Adaptive Regression on a time series.

Oh well it's late. Time to crash.