Down Memory Lane

22nd September 2016

It's one of those nights when I revisit songs from the secondary school era to accompany my late night study sessions. This time round I chanced upon the song Pupus on Youtube and you know how one ends up listening to the rest of the songs in the artiste's repertoire. During my early teenage years, I was very much into Indonesian bands like Dewa 19, Sheila on 7, Peterpan, Kerispatih, Samsons, Letto, Nidji etc.

In fact, the first outdoor stadium concert that I was allowed to attend was one by Peterpan at Stadium Merdeka a decade ago when I was 14. It rained cats and dogs on the day of the concert that we were drenched by the end of the night.  I kept the nearly damaged ticket to mark the beginning of my concert going days (siap sellotape balik elok elok okay!).

Once's vocals can melt the hearts of ladies out there

The sound of the Mandolin and the lyrics <3 

These were the songs that slowly sparked my interest in lyric writing (first) then songwriting. I remember writing lyrics on the blank page of my exam papers while waiting for the exams to end. I had to erase it off before handing in the papers for marking. Those were the days of cheesy 'cinta monyet' lyrics I wrote based on my friends' love stories. Imagine having your BM or English language teacher reading those unrelated stuff on the last page of the exam sheets they hand out to students. Malu weih! *sambil imagine muka Cik Adilah or Puan Zubaidah reading my jiwang lyrics * Never know...they might have brilliant lyric ideas to contribute kan? 

My late mother loved Indonesian music and I remember seeing her collection of cassettes comprising keronchong songs by Hetty Koes Endang as well as Bob Tutupoli and Broery Marantika's albums.
Whenever we went for karaoke, she would select the Benci Tapi Rindu song that it's now become a habit of mine to select the song and sing it in her memory. I guess that's how the love for Indonesian songs rubbed off on me.

23rd September 2016

This is how we ACCA students roll on a Friday night yo!

I uploaded this on my Instagram story and received a DM from Airina saying she was about to upload a similar photo of her studying for her Masters. I immediately thought of our SPM motivation song : OAG's Generasiku and replied "Segalanya dalam genggaman, Walau apa pun takkan menjadi halangan!". Yes, that's how we motivated each other to study in Form 5. Seven years down the road, we're still listening to the same song to motivate us to study. The power of a well written song.  Can't thank the songwriters enough for these amazing songs that we can still relate to at different points in our life. 

Indahnya dunia ketika kita muda remaja !

Not forgetting Faizal Tahir's Gemuruh 

"Segalanya pastikan terbukti nanti!"

Baiklah, back to studying. I shall try to blog more often from now. Selamat malam, folks!