Project Complete! I'm finally satisfied...

Finally, I have completed the most ambitious and challenging song I’ve ever attempted. I almost wanted to give up so many times, chiding myself for being so foolish for attempting such a difficult song, but I persisted. I'm glad I'd believed in myself, in the power of brute force practicing, and that lack of rapping skills aside, I would blunder my way through it anyhow. Any guesses on what the song is?
.
.
.
 -drumroll-
.
.
.

Yes, I’ve recorded “Satisfied” by Angelica Schuyler from the musical Hamilton!

**Spoiler disclaimer: If you haven’t seen Hamilton yet and you don’t want to be spoiled, don’t listen to this.

That said, why haven’t you seen Hamilton yet?? I highly encourage everyone to listen to the songs and watch Hamilton - in fact I enjoyed watching Hamilton far more after listening to all the songs (on repeat). It can be hard to understand if you’re not used to rapping and the accents and America’s history, so I recommend everyone to listen ahead of time to truly enjoy and appreciate Hamilton. 

It’s not much of a spoiler anyway since it’s a biographical / historical musical (in rap), though I’ve looked up Hamilton’s fact vs fiction, and the story in “Satisfied” seems to be fictional and imagined based on writer's creative license. Not sure if that matters to anyone, so if you don’t mind being spoiled, please go ahead and press play!**

It’s the most challenging but also the most fun song I’ve ever made. It’s my favorite song in Hamilton and one of my favorite musical songs ever, and I’ve been thinking about recording this song for a while. I started on it back in August and September, and gave up so many times...until these few weeks I decided to really push through and finish it. I’m so proud of the end product in the end, though everytime I listen to it I wince inwardly at all the mistakes I made or parts where I didn’t quite sing on pitch or catch the beat right. Still, I know it will always have a special place in my heart.

To make this song work, I had to stitch together multiple tracks - it ended up being 5 different tracks! Each track took so much time to edit and move around and refine just so they would all work together...I had one for the instrumental music, one for the chorus, one for Angelica’s part, one for Eliza’s part and one for Hamilton’s! And if you didn't realise, I sang all the parts by Angelica, Eliza AND Hamilton xD.

Recording this was my most time consuming project yet...and my oh my, it was a lot of fun pretending to be Hamilton, Eliza and Angelica. I guess the actress in me really enjoyed it (haha I was in drama club in elementary school, definitely loved acting as a kid! I probably still do...)

Anyhow, keep listening on to the second half of the song if you want to hear how I sound like pretending to be a guy xD. It was such a challenge to act with your voice while singing and rapping, then lowering it so it’s like Hamilton’s, then singing higher so it’s like Eliza’s, then wittier to sound like Angelica’s. Haha I tried my best, please excuse how funny it ended up being 😂

It’s also one of the most difficult songs to sing because of how high it got, how much power you needed to sing while being out of breath, and at the same time figuring out when you actually should catch a breath so you don’t die with the next 8 counts of rap or singing! The rapping was so fast at times, I could barely catch the right beat, and oftentimes Angelica sings a little off-beat too, leading faster or going slower at different parts. When I finally caught the beat, I then lost the melody; when I caught the melody I then lost the rhythm; I also kept stumbling over the words or going too fast or too slow or mispronouncing them. My mouth and tongue were definitely tired out from saying so many words so quickly!

I also couldn’t switch between singing and rapping so seamlessly, I was just not used to it. It was a whole new skill set I had to figure out...haha I felt like I had to level up, it was crazy hard! You know what it’s like, trying out tongue twisters and not quite getting it, and then practicing over and over again until you’re tired out and still not quite getting it right?

Yeah, that’s how it felt the whole time I was practicing and recording the song...and I was never any good at tongue twisters anyway. I also didn’t listen to or attempt to rap growing up, so it’s a whole new level of challenge for me.

I know I sound terrible compared to the original singers, so I am very impressed with how well those Broadway singers sing and rap and act and dance continuously - it’s so impossible to do all of them at the same time perfectly! I can only imagine how much time and effort they’ve put into it, the hours and hours of practicing the songs just to get it to that perfect level of quality.

Frankly, it was intimidating taking on this song, but I find the end result incredibly beautiful. I now appreciate much more how hard this song was, and that the Hamilton tickets were totally worth the price of admission 😂, given so many high level difficulty songs. It’s not just the melody and singing, it was how fast and slowly you have to rap, and memorizing those thousands of words!!

Anyhow, let me know your thoughts on the song, and whether you liked my rapping! I personally think my rapping was terrible but if you liked it, I can do more rapping songs xD I’ll take suggestions!

LIfe is fleeting

Last night, my mum gave me a call out of the blue. I don't usually get calls from her, especially since I've just called her last weekend, but I thought maybe she missed me or there was something she wanted to ask me.

My mum started making small talk for 5 minutes, and asked if I've had dinner, what time it was over here, and whether I was home or not yet, etc. Then she said in a very strange way, in a way that I found odd and funny and somehow it all made me want to laugh, "You are coming home next year for Chinese New Year right, to see relatives and have dinner reunion together...it seems like you'll have one less relative to see." Then she stopped.

And I went, "What?? What happened! Who was it??"

She told me an uncle of mine had died last night, on a vacation trip in Japan. I was in shock and couldn't believe my ears. He was my favorite uncle and he seemed so healthy and happy the last time I saw him. That he died so suddenly was shocking to all of us.

I asked for more details, and it turned out he was in an onsen and the official cause of death was drowning. Given that he's 79, I'm guessing he probably lost consciousness because of the hot water in the onsen, and then drowned without anyone realising.

Did he die alone? Were his friends around? Was he surrounded only by strangers? He probably died naked and alone, which seemed so sad and lonely, yet ironically it is the way all of us came into the world. I remember in elementary school, a friend of mine used to say, "We come into this world crying, while others around us smile. We then leave this world smiling, while others around us cry." In a way, it was a painless way to go, and he was probably in a good mood given it's a vacation and all, but it's so shocking and saddening for us.  I kept ruminating over the situation, the scenario, how it could have happened, how did it happen?

He was supposed to come home today, he was on a group tour so there should have been other people with him. Why didn't anyone notice? I just went to South Korea and did the hot springs/onsen experience as well, and I kept thinking back to how it was like in there. If someone was suffering or drowning, would I have seen it? Could I have missed out on someone dying in there?

And the hard realisation hits - yes I wouldn't have noticed it. There were multiple baths, and everyone kept to themselves and avoided paying attention to each other (since we're all naked). The only way I could have noticed was if they were sharing the same baths with me and were a few feet away.

I feel this ache in my heart, this sad grief, which I couldn't make sense of as I didn't know this uncle that well. I didn't cry or feel grief for my grandmother when she passed, because I didn't know her well. I remember posting about it then, and wondered if I was so cold-blooded I couldn't even cry for my own family.

Then suddenly, somehow, I started to cry, because I remembered how good my uncle was to me. He's the most gentle person I've known, always smiling, always happy and beaming. I've heard he's stubborn and old-fashioned, and was not on good terms with one of his sons, but he's nothing but kind to me everytime I saw him. He used to drive SBS (the public bus) and we knew him fondly as the SBS uncle, and he'd retired a few years ago. I wished he had more years to enjoy retirement life.

The last time I saw him was Chinese New Year 2016. It's been more than 3 years. I haven't seen most of my relatives for that long as well, and I used to see them every few months, some of them every month. Suddenly being isolated from my big family made me feel sad and alone.

I realised I was crying because I felt helpless to help him, to help others like him, to help my family back home. I'm too far away and there's nothing I can do. I'm thinking for my poor aunt, she must have been so terrified and wracked with guilt since she couldn't be with him. I hope she doesn't blame herself, it really isn't her fault. It was an accident that no one could have anticipated.

I started feverishly looking up onsen deaths and the hazards of hot baths, especially for the elderly. I know even for me, I've had harrowing experiences with hot springs. I love sitting in the hot springs, and once a few years ago in Colorado, I lost track of time in there and nearly fainted. I stood up and blood rushed away from my head and I blacked out, I was dizzy and couldn't see, couldn't breathe properly. Heart pumping furiously, I had to lie down outside the baths and just breathe for quite a while before I could see again. I probably sat in the baths for 30+ minutes - and they say you cannot sit in there for more than 20 minutes.

Even at the hot springs in South Korea recently, I felt my heart pumping harder and it was difficult to breathe after a few minutes in the baths, especially since I was going a few minutes at a time in each bath. I think after 15 minutes total across a few baths, I had to get out and rest for a while in a cold shower, it was definitely a little too much to be in there for too long.

It seems like there's a lot of advisory against elderly, people with heart attack risk, high blood pressure, etc. going into the baths. In fact, this article suggests that we shouldn't be in the baths for more than 10 minutes, and definitely not under influence of alcohol.
https://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2016/01/22/deaths-from-drowning-in-bathtubs-up-70-in-10-years-report/

Friends, be sure to tell your parents and elderly relatives, to stay aware of how you feel in the baths. While it may be relaxing and easy to lose track of time, take care of your health, especially if you have certain health conditions that make you susceptible to fainting in hot baths. I really don't wish this sort of tragedy to happen to anyone.

My uncle's sudden death really hit it home for me, that we never know when we'll last see someone. Life is fleeting - treasure the people you care about.

About family - I want to communicate better

Like most Asian families, my family is conflict avoidant, so we never talk about anything deep or contentious. We are also bad with expressing feelings to each other. While I have some resentment with the way they used to try to control me, I think I’m getting to a point where I can be at peace with it.

They still want to play a role in my life, still be a parent to me, still have some say in decision making, some control. But they also recognize I’m an adult and can make my own choices now, which I really appreciate. I think things are getting better, though we’re still not talking about the things that matter.

I really have to remind myself, next time I feel triggered or controlled or frustrated:

• Breathe and count to 5
• Remember they love you, and this is how they express love
• Remember they need to feel loved and needed, so I should recognize it and tell them that I love them, that they are good parents. Validate them and appreciate them, so then they will listen to why you don’t want to do what they’re saying (e.g, I know you love me, you’re worried about me and care about me, so you want to protect me. However I am an adult and prefer doing it this way, so I hope you’ll respect that. Remember that I love you, and you’re still a good parent in my eyes)
• Set expectations and boundaries for what is ok for them to say or do vs not (e.g, that’s not ok to say, I feel hurt, I know you want me to do this but that’s not ok with me)
• Let them know what a successful parent means - it doesn’t mean they can help or do anything for me, all I want is for them to be there for me and support me through my choices, that’s good enough. I want them to trust me 

Now I need to figure out HOW exactly to say all this in Chinese, while not being triggered lol. And that’s not even the hardest part - it would be getting over my own discomfort and awkwardness of addressing this head on, when all our lives we’ve lived by the philosophy of keeping up harmony by avoiding hard topics.

Friends, if you’ve done this before with your loved ones, definitely let me know! Would love to get some pro tips on difficult conversations with family, plus points if it’s in Chinese 😉